Disclaimer: Neither Alex Rider nor Detective Conan/Magic Kaito belongs to me.
Warnings: Spoilers for the entire Alex Rider series, and up to around ep 479 of Detective Conan (the Detective Koshien arc).
Pairings: Some light Hakuba/Akako later on.
A/N: This is a crossover between the Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz and Detective Conan/Magic Kaito by Gosho Aoyama (and possibly more to come). That being said, you can probably read this with knowledge of only one of the above fandoms without getting lost.
The prologue/prelude is mainly setup for the long term plot arc, though if you know your Magic Kaito canon you probably have a good idea where it's going. The main plot starts off next chapter.
Chapter 1: Prelude
20 Years Ago, somewhere in the United States
It was a cool evening at the end of October, when a black car pulled into the driveway of the Halloway Mansion.
The guard who stood on a corner of the grounds had seen this car and many others like it ferry passengers across the bridge and over the rushing waters of the dark river which surrounded the old house on three sides. Sometimes the ones who stepped out were tall, dangerous men with hard faces and cold eyes. Sometimes they were bland men, who would step into a crowd and vanish like factory smoke drifting into smog. Sometimes they were women with swaying steps and hungry eyes. Sometimes they walked out of the house eventually and drove away again; sometimes they never did.
There were two who stepped out of the car this time. The guard recognized the man in black immediately; he was the right hand of the man who owned the old mansion, and his presence made even the hardened guard uneasy. The other was a woman he had never seen before. She wore a long dress which may have been white at one point but was now a dingy grey, and her hair was such an obnoxious shade of blonde it could only have been dyed. A large hat obscured the top of her face, but he caught a glimpse of cold eyes and marble features. The guard watched the two enter the house, the woman in front, the man behind.
It was nighttime and almost the end of the guard's shift when the two came out of the house, and he watched the two walk towards the car, again the woman in front, the man behind.
The two were halfway to the car when suddenly two shots rang out, and the woman fell to the ground, her legs red and gushing blood. Her hat tumbled to the ground. She turned her body with difficulty and stared at the man in black, who raised the gun to her head and fired for the third and last time.
Then there was the sudden sound of footsteps, and then his boss ran unto the scene, staring at the grisly tableau. His face was red with rage, and one hand clenched a gemstone which sparkled in the light of the full moon.
"The bitch tricked me!" The fist shook, and he threw the stone onto the still corpse. "Fake."
The man in black looked at the stone, then at the body. "She wasn't carrying anything else on her...and she sure as hell can't tell us anything now."
The boss thought for a minute, then spoke. "Dispose of these first, then go after Blake. Quickly." He turned and strode back towards his house.
The man in black nodded. He walked to the body and quickly made sure there were no signs of life, then stared for almost half a minute at the gem. It glittered back, silent and sparkling. Finally he gestured the nervous guard over. "Bag these and dump it in the river."
The guard followed his instructions, bagging the corpse and carrying it close to the river and its rushing waters. At the edge of the water he hesitated. He should be following his instructions to the letter, he knew, but something about the way the gem had tossed out it's rich colours under the moonlight fascinated him. He had some knowledge of gemology picked up in his wayward youth, and the tidbits which remained in his brain were firmly insisting that he was looking at a real and very valuable jewel.
What the hell. No one else wants it anyways, he thought, and furtively slipped the gem into his pocket.
Thirty minutes later the guard returned from the river and drove home for the night, both his task and his shift completed, and a slight jitter in his movements was the only hint of the jewel in his pocket.
3 months ago, London
The casual observer may have seen a certain woman walk into a flat in the Docklands of London one fine evening, but it is doubtful that they would have paid any special attention to the event. The woman was a short, mousy brunette with a pinched face wearing a common black trench coat, and the apartment building was indistinguishable from almost any other found in the area. Had they been able to follow the woman up the steps, though, they would have seen something very unusual indeed.
The building contained a total of five flats, but none would ever be available to rent for a member of the general public. The entire structure had a state-of-the-art security system incongruous with the rather dingy looking exterior, including patrolling guards with concealed firearms who nodded respectfully to the woman as she climbed to the top floor, and all of its inhabitants seemed to share a noted preference for wearing black.
As the woman ascended, her appearance underwent an impressive metamorphosis. She suddenly gained almost half a foot in height as her posture straightened, and the mousy brown wig was removed to reveal a head of bright blonde hair. By the time she reached the top, a good portion of the general public would have been able to recognize the lovely Aryan features of the American actress Chris Vineyard.
The people here, though, simply called her Vermouth.
The pair of guards waved her through the door on the left of the top flat, and she entered into a sterile room which had been outfitted like a hospital ward. She walked over to the single bed with its accompanying medical monitors and equipment, and the unconscious man lying peacefully on it.
The man looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties, had pale blond hair cropped short, and a scar that cut ruler-straight across his neck. Vermouth knew that he had pale blue eyes, that MI6 had a dossier on the man under the name Yassen Gregorovich, and that he was an assassin currently presumed dead by the rest of the world.
She looked up at the sound of hasty steps approaching, and smiled at the doctor who entered nervously.
"Hello Doctor, I'm glad to see you've been taking care of our friend here so well." She said. "Wake him up, won't you? We have some plans to discuss."