GA: A quick drabble-turned-not-so-drabble that I wrote for a friend. Criminal Shinichi AU, not much else to say other than I promise I'm working on STK and Divine.

Enjoy!


CRIM


"Check out the new meat."

"Whaddaya think he's in for?"

"I heard fraud."

"Tch, figures. Pretty boys ain't ever in here for the fun shit."

Shinichi Kudo - or Kudo Shinichi, had he been in his native country - didn't bother paying attention to the jeers he received as he was walked down the barren hallway, or rather he didn't bother exerting the energy required to turn his head 44.73° to send a passive glare towards the inmates ogling him like a freshly grilled steak. There was no need, really, not when they were nothing but a bunch of lowlifes stuck behind iron bars meant to hold them for the rest of their lives.

Shinichi wondered briefly if any of them had personal reasons to stare at him as though they wished to burn a hole through his heart, but dismissed the idea fairly quickly. He knew everybody who would possibly have a personal vendetta against him, had committed every shrunken socket and etched wrinkle to memory, and while these men were still scum of the earth, they weren't the same species of scum as the men and women he had locked up before.

And it wasn't like he was as scummy as them, either. These sons of bitches had decades of prison sentence for murder, rape, serial homicide...the worst of the worst. While Shinichi had one charge against him for arson - an honest mistake, really, and the charge was dropped fairly quickly anyways - the rest were fraud, larceny, simple small charges. His largest crime? Identity theft. And it wasn't like the identity that he had stolen was any more credible than when Shinichi used it, anyways. If "world-renowned magician of the century" Kaito Kuroba really was the person he claimed to be, then Shinichi would eat his own fucking shoe.

Really, it wasn't his fault that he had both the motive and the ability to become his doppelganger for the past, what, five years. Their parents were well connected, his small stint with Tokyo PD gave him access to files that civilians could only dream of reading, and it was just an added bonus that he so happened to look exactly like Kuroba. A one-way ticket out of Japan was easy enough, landing him in Orlando, FL - racked up the largest charges for that little stunt, grand larceny for the plane ticket as well as forgery against his fake visas - before he took his damn sweet time hitch-hiking around the US, racking up credit card bills along the way. His longest stop was nearly two years in some shoddy town in Wisconsin, living by the name Sanju Fukunaga while he slowly siphoned off as much cash as he could from an offshore bank in Switzerland (god bless the Swiss) he had registered under Kuroba's name. The fact that he got away with that was almost as sad as it was amusing; although limited on the details, Shinichi knew that whatever dirty laundry his dearest twin had, it was dangerous enough to let millions of dollars slip through his hands like running water. And despite the resources that the magician had, legal or not, he had decided to let the faucet keep running.

Honestly, it was amazing.

But that didn't last very long, not when his paranoia and wanderlust had taken a hold of him once more and he translocated to Las Vegas, which was unfortunately the last stop on his countrywide tour. He hardly had to imagine why the Clark County sheriff was waiting right outside LV city limits, or why he had been taken into custody in Nevada instead of being deported like he had assumed would be the case. No, the flashing neon sign with the curly-cue K's and the all too familiar face - the one that he saw in the mirror every day - was enough of a reminder that he had stepped onto his victim's turf of his own free will, submitting himself to whatever the magician willed.

And apparently, the magician willed that his old friend be locked away in Clark County penitentiary, right in the middle of the men whose likenesses that he had spent his high school years putting away. Oh well, Shinichi decided with a shrug. Maybe this would be more fun than rattling off numbers and statistics in his head and coming up with an answer to a riddle that nobody else seemed to be able to solve.

Maybe this would be more to his taste.

His cell was the farthest into the corners of the hall, his cellmate a burly man whose gaze was that of a lion sizing up an injured gazelle. Unfortunately for him, though, the cold streak that Shinichi had been known for in his teenage years hadn't waned at all from the ages eighteen to twenty-three, and he doubted that the man - the face fit a newspaper clipping he had seen somewhere in Reno, the name Schwarz a good fit - knew that he wasn't looking at a wounded gazelle, but a vulture waiting for its next meal to starve to death. As soon as he was thrown into the iron cage, he lifted his hands up through the bars, letting them uncuff him without a single emotion in his eyes. He rubbed at his wrists despite the lack of pain, putting on an obvious show for the idiots who put him behind bars before staring at Schwarz.

"Murder?" Shinichi's question was brief, and met with an equally brief shrug. "no, manslaughter. Your wife, your daughter, three members of city council and almost yourself if Officer Hempstead hadn't tackled you before you could pull the trigger."

"And who the fuck're you?" Good, he had coaxed a feral growl out of him; if he was lucky, he would be able to get a solid fight out of it before being thrown into solitary confinement for a week or two.

"Nobody as important as you, your highness." The sarcasm was thick. "Just a lowly thief and forger."

Another gruff scowl, but no provoked attack. Perhaps it would be harder than he thought. "Then ya better watch yerself around here, thief. Nobody likes a kid with a big mouth." He seemed to pause, but spoke again, slowly but with the promise of intent. "And might want to watch out for balls 'round these parts. Th'other inmates play dirty, and tomorrow the ministry's comin' in fer soccer."

Oh, that changed quite a few things. For the first time since landing himself in the holding cell he had become acquainted with twenty-four hours ago, Shinichi smiled - a wide, face-splitting grin that would have looked manic if it weren't for the ice that surrounded his aura. Perhaps two weeks in solitary wouldn't quite be enough.

"Oh, I'm looking forward to it."


GA: Not much to say down here, I guess.

'Til next time!

~G. Annihilator