Series: Keys to the Kingdom
Pairings: I know some people like to pair Suzy and Arthur but I honestly like the two of them well enough just as friends, so... er. None.
Warnings: Allusions to - well deserved - mutilation (well, maybe not on the Old One's behalf, the jury's still out on that one). A bit of sword fighting without actual swords being present on either side. And, eh, KID knowing things he very probably shouldn't. Again.
A/N: Fairly early on in the series, the Monday book during Suzy and Arthur's escape from the pit via the improbable stairs. Specifically, immediately following the trip into Suzy's past. The Omake that follows is, well, I did say I couldn't resist the monocle thing, didn't I? And, okay, so this series comes from the junior readers section, but since when have I ever let a silly thing like a suggested age range stop me from reading anything - and who else out there is waiting anxiously for Sunday to come out? Hands?
An Improbable Detour
Arthur came off of the improbable stairs again at a run.
A white gloved hand struck out from the darkness to Arthur's left like quicksilver, snagging him round the back collar of his borrowed coat and arresting his and Suzy's brisk pace with a suddenness that left him gasping for air despite the first key's ever strengthening presence in his right hand. He whipped around in a blind panic, left hand still gripping Suzy's tight and swung the key in a wild manner at where he predicted their attacker's face to be, certain that it was Noon, come to take the key back from him by force, since sending him to the Pit like a misbehaving child on timeout made to think about what he'd done had so obviously failed.
Even for the Old One, eyes took several hours to grow back, and Arthur needed only minutes to find them a new set of steps to escape. Perhaps if he was lucky he could even manage to sever that awful man's silver tongue while he was at it.
His back molars ached with the ringing vibration of metal on metal but even as he drew back his arm to strike again his eyes began to adjust to the dark and he noticed two rather immediate things about his adversary; he was shorter than Noon and, indeed, most of the denizens of any real rank that Arthur had yet to come upon in the House, just a bit taller than Arthur himself, and he was wielding, not Noon's fiery sword, but rather a strange, bulky looking gun, eyeing him warily over the barrel with astonishing violet eyes, one half obscured by the gleam of an old fashioned monocle.
"Easy kid." He hissed, lowering the gun just enough to reveal a boy about Michaeli's age or younger, though not so much that if Arthur decided to slice at him again he couldn't bring it back up in time to deflect the blow. His eyes flickered over to Suzy – who was clinging, wan and tragic, to Arthur's hand, mind still a hundred, perhaps even a thousand years away – and then back to Arthur. "You might have wings but I doubt either of you is in any real shape to use them, and five paces further would have sent you both plummeting over the edge of the roof." He spoke with a faint, unfamiliar accent, and barely above a whisper.
Straining to listen to his surroundings while he confirmed that they were, indeed, only half a dozen feet from the edge of a precipice, Arthur could hear faint shouting and the heavy tramping of many feet several floors down. And the distant wail of a police siren. He squeezed Suzy's hand firmly as her eyes began to clear, an equal part welcome back as it was keep alert.
She stiffened like a soldier at attention, narrowing a suspicious, unfriendly look the mystery boy's way and squeezing Arthur's hand back in response. "Who're you?" She spat as the shouting grew steadily closer, close enough for Arthur to realize that the words that he could discern weren't any language that he was familiar with – something Asian perhaps – though their would be savior had clearly been speaking English.
From the way the boy was tilting his head, eyes half slit in concentration, he seemed to understand the shouts well enough, and they put him on edge. He flashed what Arthur considered was probably quite a charming smile under the right circumstances, though now it only made him seem cornered and desperate. "Soon to be nothing more than a flitting shadow across the moon, I hope, though I suppose I should probably set the two of you right on the Improbable Stairs first." Keeping his grip on Arthur's collar loose, yet firm, he led the two of them to a whitewash wall on the opposite side of the stairs leading down from the roof before finally releasing him. "I expect that you've got more important things to do than stand around explaining to the fine men and women of the Tokyo Metropolitan police force – and Hakuba, for that matter – just what you were doing in the middle of a KID heist, and while they're certainly all good people they can get a bit overenthusiastic sometimes."
"How did you know about the…" Arthur started, pulling the key back up to cross defensively over his chest.
"-the stairs?" The boy arched an eyebrow artfully beneath the brim of a white top hat, running his gloved fingers contemplatively across the mechanisms of his strange gun, adjusting something with a casual flick of his thumb. "Would you rather I answered that, or got you back on your way before you wind up stuck here for good?"
Suzy crowed suddenly in triumph, one grubby finger jabbing at the boy's chest and leaving behind a startling black smear across an otherwise pristine white tuxedo. "You're a thief." She declared, undeniably pleased with her deduction.
The steady pace of running feet was suddenly interrupted by a faint twang and the hiss of escaping gas, followed by a scattered, irregular series of thuds.
"I prefer artist." The boy stressed, pulling a face at Suzy's blunt accusation but otherwise doing nothing to refute it. "Hakuba's not likely to have let the sleeping gas stop him, so we'll have to be quick about it – step back please." He said, and then fired his gun four times in quick succession.
Arthur was startled to find that the gun fired cards rather than bullets, and even more so when they managed to imbed quite deep into what he figured was either a concrete or stone wall, in the unmistakable shape of a set of stairs. On the other side of the small square building the heavy metal fire escape door slammed open with a sharp report, and the boy gestured toward the wall with a flourish, albeit one tinged with a sense of urgency. "Go on then." He urged, smiling in a kinder fashion than Arthur had ever expected a self-professed criminal to be able. "I'll deal with the picky pain." He added with a wink, before disappearing around the corner, white cape flapping behind him like a farewell.
Arthur took a deep breath and plunged on.
An Omake of sorts (because Friday's Noon wore a monocle and I am very amused)
Arthur gestured at the Experiencing Noon and frowned. "Does he remind you of anyone Suzy?" He asked.
An immeasurable distance away (as no one had ever taken it into their head to calculate the number of miles – nor the ever popular kilometer, or the slightly less popular parsang – inherent in a transdimensional leaps, particularly one between secondary realms, and likely never would) in Ekoda Japan, Earth, Kuroba Kaito sneezed.
It was a Friday.