A/N: All my BO AUs are gonna be here. Enjoy!
Not proofread. Please review!
Shiho swirled on the chair, exhausted from staring at the screen day in and day out. Her eyes burned and her head ached. She pressed her temple and closed her eyes, trying to relieve the stress. She had work to do. The last experiment hadn't resulted in the way she expected it to. She would have to start all over again.
She sighed, frustrated that there wasn't much to go on. Her parents' notes were almost gone, there were just fragments left and she couldn't exactly connect the dots from the scattered formulas. All she knew was that her parents had successfully created a powerful drug, so powerful and so secretive that it ultimately resulted in their death.
She had no qualms in admitting that it was the Organization that had killed her parents, the same Organization that she worked for. She had never grieved her parents' death, too young to remember them but her sister, Akemi did. She would always feel out of place whenever Akemi would talk about them. To Shiho, her parents were scientist, nothing more nothing less than that, so it was difficult for her to feel any kind of love for them. They were just fragments of a child's memory and she wasn't a child now.
The door whirred and a girl entered her cabinet. Ah, Angel was here.
Shiho didn't need to open her eyes to confirm that. Her sister and Angel were the two people she trusted in this Organization.
"Don't you think you should head back, Shiho? It's getting very late." Angel said.
Shiho opened her eyes to find her best friend sitting on the makeshift stretcher.
"Yeah, I was about to." Shiho said.
Angel caught on the hint of frustration that tainted her tone and she said, "Didn't work out, huh?" She looked sympathetic.
Shiho sighed and nodded her head. "I don't have lot of clues to work on. It's getting pretty exasperating."
Angel smiled slightly and said nothing, letting her best friend decompress. She didn't have the mental capacity to be on par with Shiho but she always tried to understand whenever Shiho explained her theories and experiments. She would scrounge every biochemistry book to understand what Shiho explained. Her best friend was a genius and she was so proud of her.
After a while, Shiho asked teasingly, "So, how was your day? Had fun with makeup?"
Angel groaned out loud and Shiho laughed. The hatred Angel harbored for makeup wasn't exactly a secret between them. "Yeah, yeah, laugh at my plight. You don't have to patiently create a mask and then check to see if the texture is right." She flopped on the stretched and moaned, "Save me, Shiho-chan! I'm not good with makeup. You tell me to kick someone's ass, I'll do it. Hell, I'll even kick hundred people's ass, but this is too much! 'Ah, the contouring isn't right.' 'You need to make the paste with gentle hands, Angel.' 'The eyes are lopsided, Angel.'" She mocked her teacher, exaggerating with her hands.
Shiho continued to laugh at her friend's antics. Ran was always like this. Always cheerful and happy, not letting failure get to her. She tried to do better next time. Being with Ran like this filled Shiho's heart with hope and joy. Angel was the correct codename for her.
She smiled at Ran's mock acting, content in that moment. Ran stopped mid sentence while she was complaining about how she had to even practice posturing, and said, "Ah! We need to go. Akemi-neechan asked us to go eat dinner with her."
Shiho nodded and saved the data before turning the computer off. She'll work on it from scratch the next day. She got out of her lab coat and hung it on the hook.
She entered the code to shut off all the lights and finally closed the door after signing off on the touch screen. Ran was still talking, telling her about the training she received and Shiho took this opportunity to just look at her.
Ran was beautiful, dressed in a white and red striped shirt and blue jeans. She had long, glossy hair and deep blue eyes that were hypnotic. She had muscles in her body belonging to that of a karate expert, which wasn't unusual, Ran was a karate expert. She was five feet three, just a foot smaller than her. Looking at her happy, childish enthusiasm made her want to protect her. Shiho doubted that there would be anybody who wouldn't want to protect Ran. She was such a bright source of joy and happiness, that it made people automatically feel better. She was thankful that Ran was in her life, though she did regret what had brought Ran in her life. The huge scar running across her face from her temple to chin was a testament to what she had endured.
"Shiho, are you listening to me?" Ran asked when she didn't get a response from her companion.
Shiho nodded and intertwined her fingers with hers. Ran just smiled at that action and asked, "Enough about me. What did you do? Learn something new?"
They were out of the Organization main building and into the compound and the contrast between them and all the other agents were stark. They avoided eye contact with anybody else. Even those with partners avoided conversations. All of them had a look of purpose, mostly that purpose was death. They walked ram rod straight and the atmosphere was stifling. Shiho always had a habit to blend into the surroundings and she was sure that if Ran wasn't with her, she would have walked that way too, with no human emotions on her face.
She glanced at Ran and she was waiting patiently to hear what she had to say. Shiho smiled slightly and said, "Well, you know the last experiment I was telling you about?"
Ran nodded and said, "Yean, the one in which you were trying to use collagen, right?"
"Yes…" and Shiho was off explaining what she had done and what results she found. Nobody had explicitly ordered her to keep the experiments secret, so she found no problems in telling Ran. She looked so eager and open to understanding the process, that Shiho found herself going on tangents, explaining every little detail. Ran never looked bored and it boosted Shiho's confidence.
She didn't even notice when they had reached the diner. Only when did she hear the sound of her sister calling out their names, she stopped talking. Her mouth was dry and it felt like she had been running for a while. One look at her face and Akemi said, "Discussing experiments are we, Shiho-chan?"
She flushed slightly and Ran and Akemi laughed. Sometimes Shiho could be so cute.
They sat at their table, Akemi talking about the college classes she was in, waiting for their food to arrive, when a scream cut through the air. The three of them stood up, trying to find who was hurt and saw a group of people surrounding a collapsed person. Shiho charged ahead, being the one with the most knowledge in science and ordered everyone to let her go ahead. Ran flanked her side, ready to protect Shiho if anything would go wrong. Akemi looked worried and notified that she was going to call for an ambulance.
Shiho knelt down, about to check the man's pulse, when a voice rang out, "Get away from the man and don't touch anything."
Silence fell over the diner, when a young man of Ran's and Shiho's age appeared through the throng of people. Shiho backed away slightly, standing next to Ran, annoyed that this guy was ordering her when she hadn't done anything wrong and was just going to check if the man was alive or not. Ran put her hands on Shiho's shoulders and Shiho stood up. Looked like this guy was some kind of professional if his authoritative tone was any clue.
The guy knelt down and checked for the pulse, everybody was on their toes, wondering if the man was dead or alive, but when the guy looked up, the judgment was out, "Call for the police and an ambulance, this guy is dead."
The nervousness in the room was palpable and some people were trying to escape but the boy ordered, "Nobody gets out of here, understood? If you try to escape, you will be treated as a primary suspect of this murder, is that clear? Now, everyone, go back to your seats."
Everybody shuffled back to their designated places, barring Ran and Shiho. Akemi had gone to call as the boy had suggested. Ran had tears in her eyes, horrified to see a man dead. His eyes were open and tinged red at the corners, his mouth was wide open and his neck was angled awkwardly, his fingers were splayed and he wasn't moving at all. The sight shook Shiho too and she linked Ran's fingers with hers, trying to support her friend.
It looked like this guy had been poisoned, going by the smell that came out of his mouth. It had been recent too, but before that Shiho had to ask something from that boy, "Who are you?"
The boy smirked slightly, and the smug way he stood already ticked off Shiho, and said, "Kudo Shinichi. I'm a detective."
~oOo~
Apparently, it was a case of jilted lover. The woman he was having an affair with behind his wife's back was blackmailing him, saying that she had videos and photographs of the two of them together in compromising positions and was asking for money to keep her mouth shut. When he went to her apartment to talk her out, she poisoned him. She had gone psychotic at that point, wanting the man to leave his wife and be with her. The poison found in his system was hemlock, so he must have eaten at her house. As to why he was at the diner, it was because the woman had called him, telling him that she needed to talk in a neutral location.
It was amazing how much detail the woman had hammered.
Once the police had taken the culprit away, with Ran's help, as she had stopped the woman from running away with a back handed punch, people were allowed to go. Most of them felt queasy, their appetite gone and they paid their bills to get out of the diner as soon as possible. Even the manager looked tired; the only excited person was the Kudo Shinichi guy who had just solved the case.
The three of them shuffled out too, having too much excitement for one day, when they were stopped by the detective. He looked at Ran and said, "Thank you for catching that woman. That was very brave of you, Mouri-san."
Ran was about to say something, when a voice cut her off, "Enough talking. We're going. Now." Shiho's body froze and she tried to make herself small, Akemi on the other hand stepped in front of her sister and Ran balled her fists, locking her jaw.
Gin was here. Just standing few feet from them.
The Miyano sisters walked outside, Akemi making sure that Shiho wasn't in Gin's proximity. Ran didn't move. Gin barked again, "Right now, Angel."
The detective, Kudo Shinichi was still standing in front of her, with a confused expression on his face, "Ummm… Mouri-san, are you okay?"
Ran nodded tightly, breathing in to control the fury that had taken over her. She smiled slightly at him and said, "I'm okay, Kudo-san. It was my pleasure to help you." She bowed down in front of him, "Our chaperone is here, so we have to go. It was nice to meet you, Kudo-san."
She walked away from him, not giving him a chance to say anything and a few seconds later, she and her friends were gone. Their chaperone stayed back and Shinichi looked at him, trying to figure out why the girls had gotten so scared and stopped in his tracks when their eyes met.
His eyes were dead cold and Shinichi shivered. Who was this guy? He stepped forward to reach him, when the guy turned around, walked ahead and entered the car that the girls were sitting in.
Dread filled him as he drove away and he didn't know why. This guy seemed dangerous. Were Mouri-san and her friends going to be okay?
A/N: Some of my imaginations. Hope you like it. It may be continuous or not, depending on what ideas come through my head. Thanks for reading!