Disclaimer: Neither the ficprompt not the universe was created by me. The style is the product of reading several thousand strips worth of Schlock Mercenary over the course of 48 hours. I just write what the voices tell me to… in this case, it was the personality of Schlock's Narrator.
Happy New Year!Fic
Fic Prompt: During the story, an important item or piece of equipment fails. The story must have a murderer involved in the middle. The story must involve a cape in it. A character opens a door.
– – – – –
Next Time
– – – – –
For the Kaitou KID, thievery is a magic show. He has his routine down to an art: Send a warning note to the police in the form of a riddle, pull off the heist (with absurd impossibilities to baffle both the police and the inevitable crowd), vanish into the night with his target, and then return the loot to Inspector Nakamori, usually in ways that play with the old man's terrier-like mind.
Being a magician and son of a magician, he is very, very good at it. Sleight of hand, optical illusions, smoke and mirrors, a willing audience, and a healthy dose of luck — such are his stock in trade. He has also been granted a cat's contortionist flexibility, reflexes and relative strength, a vocal range that ganged up with perfect pitch to imitate any voice he'd ever heard, and a secret room full of extremely sophisticated gadgetry.
Yes, he has an absurd amount of natural advantages for his job.
Depending on what you think to be fair, this could easily be balanced by the fact that every few heist nights, people have the tendency to try and kill him.
On this fine January night, everything has gone according to plan. Provided you think 'according to plan' means three self-proclaimed high school detectives (One half-British, one up from the Osaka prefecture on vacation, and one with a body regressed ten years to that of a child) figuring out his procedure and trying to thwart him at every turn. The first few times one or all of them had shown up, they had been unpredictable. Now, they are one more obstacle to overcome. The KID is also good at thinking on his feet. He enjoys the challenge.
Why yes, he is something of a masochist. But if he were sane, he wouldn't be stealing gems in search of a legend that caused his father's death. Nor would he be giving them back when they turn out to not be what he's looking for. Sane isn't really part of the job description. Manic, however, is.
Let's return to where all the action is, shall we?
See KID. See KID run — wait, no, sorry. Wrong storytelling device.
As usual, Conan has figured out the KID's plan just too late to stop the theft, but just in time to foil his original getaway plan. KID is now running up the skyscraper's final flight of stairs to the roof, where hopefully there's a good crosswind. Conan is a several flights below, but he'll catch up soon. KID is lucky Heiji is home in Osaka and Hakuba is still studying back in England. One detective on his tail is enough.
The door to the roof is locked. He's in a hurry, so he pulls out his cardgun. Ordinarily it can shoot playing cards through chalkboard, metal, or even concrete. In accordance with Murphy's Law, it completely fails to do so.
This, friends, is a plot device. The KID is obsessively thorough, and under no circumstances would he go into a heist without double- and triple-checking the working status of his equipment. The only thing that could reasonably cause such a malfunction would be an act of God, or, in this case, the narrator.
The KID is not amused. You can tell, because the curses he's muttering under his breath would have caused his father (may his soul rest in peace) to wash the young man's mouth out with soap.
He wouldn't be a thief worth his salt if he didn't always have a Plan B, however. He loses more precious seconds finding his lock-picks and wrestling unwieldy door open. Stealth is almost useless at this point, but he still twitches when it slams shut behind him with a startling 'bang'. He also really should be panicking right now, but he's riding far too high on the adrenaline rush. The grin hasn't left his face since the heist began.
It vanishes entirely when a bullet whizzes through his white top hat, close enough to his skull that there's probably a groove in his hair, too. He flattens to the ground, desperately hoping that the miniature detective isn't about to burst through the door and take a bullet through his heart. One of the KID's core principles is that no one gets killed. If he can, no one even gets hurt. Especially not one of the only people ever to give him a challenge any more. If he's not careful, he might even admit he's concerned about what happens to his rivals. They've learned enough about each other through cat-and-mouse that in a twisted sort of way, they're almost friends.
Conan's weapon of choice is a tranquilizer dart. The police are under orders to catch him alive. Consequently, the gunman probably belongs to the organization seeking immortality that wants to kill him before he can thwart their plans.
The night just got a lot worse for KID. It always does, when murderous assassins are after your life for trying to finish your father's last work. Which, incidentally, he failed to complete in the first place because they killed him off.
KID crawls around to the far side of the roof and half-leaps, half-falls off the building. Most would be terrified out of their minds, but he simply pulls the straps and levers required to turn his cape into a hang glider. This time, the equipment works.
Conan bursts onto the roof just as KID swoops away, a flash of white against the night sky. More shots nearly pierce his cape, but luck and wind resistance are finally on his side. His life and secrets are still intact, and even as he zigzags in defense against any more bullets, he schemes about the next heist. Concentrating on staying alive, the KID fails to see Conan's eyes narrow in annoyance. There is a slight softening around the edges, however, in the knowledge that the KID is still alive for him to catch the next time.
There is no evidence of any third party on the roof, and the source of the gunshots will have disappeared long before Conan can learn anything about them. There's nothing more that he can do. Scuffing his feet along the painted concrete, he opens the stairwell door and goes inside.
There is more to this story, because stories never really end. For now, even the characters remain the same. But this is not the place and time to tell it.
Where there is life, there is hope... and a next time.
– – – – –
I plead guilty to not knowing how to write What Happened Next. It's a generic enough heist you could splice it into just about any timeline, however.
Third person present tense still feels weird, even after writing a thousand words in it.
Review, please!
Ocianne
1/07