Chapter Eight

Sniper

A week after the ballroom fiasco Kaito decided it was time for another heist.

Alerting his cousin, he suggested that they lay bait to trap an organization operative at the private mansion in the semi-forested area. Ten to one would say that an assassin would rather strike from greater cover, and Shinichi agreed. Together they would fool both the police (with possible moles) as well as agents. If the organization really was after Kid, then the Magician and Druid were going to do everything they could to catch them.

-xXx

The long muzzle of a rifle, decked with a silencer, followed Shinichi's form as he flitted through the gathered officers at a private mansion. A Kid notice had been delivered in the owner's breakfast the week before, and the riddle was worked out to read that Kid was after a spectacular piece of green tourmaline along with other pieces in the large gem collection. The owner demanded that the best of the best came to guard his prize collection, and Shinichi was drafted.

A certain organization's snipers, Chianti and Koln, were present in the shadows. They were waiting to shoot Kid, but a long missing, listed dead, detective would also be a nice prize.

What no one knew was that there were two Shinichi's there, one on each side of the manor. The real one was well away from the crowd, waiting for the strike, while Kid, dressed as him, was in the thick of it.

Kaito, in his disguise as his cousin, was discussing security measures with Nakamouri, Aoko at his side, when he heard a faint whisper, like an owl's cry warped in a breeze.

'Danger, danger, abunai! Bad men, bad men, metal arrows!'

Kaito's eyes widened, recognizing the pattern to the whisper.

Snipers.

A wisp of smoke curled to the left of his vision, and he knew where the sniper was aiming and where he was aiming from. He couldn't duck, or it would hit Aoko, but he couldn't exactly take a bullet to the head and survive!

'ABUNAI'

There was the signal, and Kaito acted. Lunging to the right, he knocked Aoko aside and felt the round pierce his shoulder, dangerously close to a lung, but a second punched a hole in his stomach. The crowd surged, coming forward to investigate the 'detective's' sudden collapse, and someone screamed as they spotted the blood.

"Kudo-kun!" Nakamouri yelped. "Are you alright?"

Kaito couldn't respond. Feeling blood welling up in his abdomen he coughed, focusing through the pain to project an illusion of Kid atop the mansion, in the opposite direction from the sniper's fire, for the crowd to see, before letting it disappear.

"Kudo-kun!"

"Oh my god, is he alright?"

"Someone get the paramedics!"

"KAITO!"

The real Shinichi broke through the crowd to his fallen cousin, gathering him into his arms and trying to stem the bleeding. Cursing, he sent a silent command to his ghosts to sabotage the snipers and prevent their escape, and they did so with rather savage glee.

"The bullets came from that direction!" Shinichi yelled, throwing an arm towards the woods. "Get the shooter!"

Two dozen officers rushed forward at the command, and the other half began scouting the area.

Aoko fell to her knees as well, pressing hard against the wound in Kaito's stomach and kissing her boyfriend on the forehead, trying to comfort both him and herself. The paramedics rushed to the scene and quickly gathered the limp teen onto a stretcher and into the ambulance.

"Adolescent male, eighteen years old, two gunshot wounds to the torso." stated one medic into the radio. "No exit wounds, likely high caliber, current blood loss at substantial rates. Emergency surgery required!"

"Copy that, ER will be prepped and ready for your arrival. Do you have the patient's blood type?"

The medic looked to Aoko and Shinichi. "Do you know his blood type?"

"B-negative." Shinichi said.

"My blood's type B too! You can use me for a donor!" Aoko cried, gripping Kaito's hand desperately.

The medic waved a hand in a gesture to settle down. "Calm down, he's not critical yet." he said and turned back to the radio. "Patient is blood type B-negative."

"Copy that, Emergency surgery room is prepared for your arrival."

The medic put the radio receiver back in it's place and went back to tending Kaito's bullet wounds. "What I would like to know is why exactly he was shot."

Shinichi swore. "He was impersonating me for the Kid heist. He'd be the distraction in the crowd while I guarded the mark, no one knew there were two of us." he said truthfully, fishing through Kaito's jacket pockets. "I didn't know that snipers would be targeting me instead of the thief!"

Aoko fought desperately against her tears, and was suitably distracted when Shinichi handed her a ball of white fur. "Ah! Shiro-chan!"

The medic looked halfway between amusement and incredulity. "He keeps a cat in his pockets?"

"He takes that cat everywhere, little guy's small enough." Shinichi said, turning his attention back his cousin's pale face. "At least he didn't bring any of his doves this time."

"...I'm not going to ask."

-xXx

Kaito was brought to the hospital in record time and wheeled into emergency surgery. It stunned the doctors that he remained perfectly conscious until they anaesthetized him.

Meimi was informed as soon as Shinichi had a moment free to call her, given that he had to fill out medical forms and try to keep Aoko from freaking out. He also called Ran, telling her to bring Conan to help distract the distraught girl, who was currently watching the surgery room doors with blank eyes, holding a quietly mewing kitten-disguised dragon to her chest.

The silence was broken three times, once by a frantic Hakuba and Kuroba Meimi, the second by Nakamouri, three of his task force officers, and Inspector Megure with several of his squad, and the third by the arrival of Ran and Conan.

Ran joined Meimi in soothing a distraught Aoko, and Conan clung to his brother as stress leaked between their bond while the detective was questioned about the shooting.

"Kudou-kun, where exactly were you when the shots were fired?" Takagi-keigi asked, notebook open and pen at the ready. "Officers have captured three people, two with rifles, in the direction you pointed out, how did you know?"

Shinichi looked drawn and pale as he held his little brother rather like an over sized stuffed animal in his shaking arms. "I...I was on the balcony above the courtyard, facing Kaito. Fifteen minutes before that I was in the guard room watching Kid's mark, but I had a bad feeling that something was wrong, so I went to check on Kaito."

Takagi frowned. "What exactly is your relationship with this Kaito?"

"We're cousins. We look so much alike that it makes impersonating each other easy, but Kaito's a lot better at the acting part. I asked him to help me try to fool Kid, but I guess our plan didn't make it that far..."

"And the snipers?"

Shinichi chuckled darkly. "I know enough about guns and gunshot wounds to reverse-calculate trajectory, and the fact that I can really trust Kaito's sixth-sense. The guy almost always knows when a blow is coming his way."

All the assembled officers and detectives, save Nakamouri, raised a brow in question.

"Kudou-kun, how could your cousin possibly dodge a rifle shot?"

Conan giggled. "You've never seen Kaito-nii-chan move, he can be on one side of the room, and the next second he's behind you! He's a really great magician!"

Takagi looked unconvinced, but jotted down a note about Kaito's 'extreme speed and reaction time'. "Well, if he could dodge a bullet on sheer instinct, then why didn't he just duck?"

"His girlfriend was right next to him, if he ducked, the bullets would have hit and killed her instead. His first reaction to danger is almost always 'is everyone safe?', so the first thing he'd do is get someone that's in immediate danger out of harm's way." Shinichi explained, calming down as Conan's presence soothed him. "My guess is that they were aiming for his head and his heart from the higher up on left, so when he lunged to the right the levels were thrown off."

The detective shrugged and wrote the teen's observation down. "Now, how did you get onto the scene so fast if you were on the balcony?"

It was Shinichi's turn to shrug. "I jumped."

Nakamouri sputtered around his unlit pipe. "What? But that balcony was at least twenty meters off the ground!"

"Kaito taught me how to land from higher heights just as easily."

Takagi twitched. "Well, that explains why a witness claimed seeing a young man falling from the balcony."

A faint titter of laughter echoed in the waiting room, but the group then fell silent and the officers left to finish cleaning up the mess and question the captured snipers.

An hour passed before anyone spoke again, but only because the waiting room door almost slammed open.

Shinichi and Conan looked up and gasped in shocked relief. "Mordio-sensei!"

The tall man swept into the room, looking rather disheveled as his suit jacket was quite rumpled and his face a bit pinched, but he was bright and alert.

"Shinichi-kun, Conan-kun, I got here as soon as I could when I heard the news! Is Kaito-kun alright?"

"Still in surgery, but why are you in the country?"

Mordio took a moment to straighten his jacket and tie. "I couldn't trust your medications to shipments or a courier Shinichi-kun." he said sternly, holding up his briefcase.

Shinichi's eyes widened, he'd completely forgotten about his poisonous blood! Conan no longer had to worry about that problem, but the teen could possibly suffer very dramatic setbacks if the toxins in his blood weren't regulated, like the incident the previous week at the gala. He'd been prescribed the suppressant the month before, but the doctor had to finish formulating it to his particular strand of apotoxin.

"Oh, I forgot about that..."

Mordio laughed, gave Shinichi a bottle of his pills, then stalked off through the hospital, muttering about paperwork.

Aoko, having watched the exchange silently, spoke up. "Who was that?"

Conan piped up. "That's Mordio-sensei! He's our family doctor now since Nii-chan got sick, he's really good!"

Ran looked interested. "Really? But why did you ask why he was in the country?"

"He's a diagnostician in England, one of the best. He specializes in unusual cases, so he was the only one that figured out what was wrong with me." said Shinichi. "He looks after Kaito too, just because he's so strong and fast, makes a great case study."

He fell silent once again, and no one dared speak until the 'operation in progress' light finally went out and the doors opened. Multiple nurses wheeled the gurney down the hall, keeping very close watch on Kaito's vitals as they took him to the ICU for post-surgery observation.

Mordio greeted them in the ICU room, taking over the procedure with an expert hand and taking stock of Kaito's vitals for himself. The nurses and the head surgeon were worried that Kaito's heart was beating so slowly, even for sedation, but Mordio's professional presence soothed that worry.

"Kaito-kun is in far better shape that most athletes." he said mildly, feeling the teen's pulse. "As you know, a strong heart has to beat a great deal less often to circulate blood, so his resting heart rate is considerably slower than the average teen's. Now, how did the surgery go?"

"As smoothly as such an emergency procedure for a bullet in the stomach could go, but the bullet itself has me concerned." said the surgeon. "I was concerned that such a high caliber round was lodged in the back of his abdominal cavity, but it appears it was a hollow-point round. I'm having it sent to the labs for analysis."

Mordio and Shinichi's eyes widened in shock, then fear, and Shinichi began to swear.

The surgeon and nurses were taken aback at the explosive outburst. "My word, is something wrong?"

Conan clung to his brother's leg, eyes large in childish panic. "Those bad men were aiming for Kid, they know normal bullets don't faze him!" he squeaked. "Nii-chan thinks they put poison in the bullet!"

Mordio was also at the point of cursing. "How well did you flush out the wound?" he demanded.

"As thoroughly as possible, we were worried about infection."

"Good, bring me that bullet, I know what sort of poisons these scum like to use. Meanwhile, I have an antitoxin serum that I was bringing Shinichi-kun, we need to get it to Kaito immediately." he ordered, snapping open his briefcase and plucking a large vial of translucent yellow-white serum from the temperature-controlled and foam-lined case.

Shinichi recognized it instantly as Alhelios Tincture, but he played along. "Sensei, are you sure it's safe?"

"Positive." Mordio snapped, filling a small syringe with the serum and flicking it to dislodge any bubbles. "It won't hurt him, even if there is no poison for it to fight."

Before anyone could stop him he plunged the needle into the base of Kaito's IV line and pushed the antitoxin into the teen's blood. That done, he disposed of the syringe in the appropriate box for needles and swept off to the hospital's labs, barking orders to get the sniper round to him at once.

With the doctors gone save for two nurses running checks, the room went quiet, and Aoko was finally allowed to sit at her boyfriend's side.

She sniffed, fighting tears. "Is...is he going to be alright?" she asked desperately.

Shinichi gave her a loose hug. "Don't worry, he'll be up and pestering you again in no time, but only as long as you're there for him."

She smiled gratefully. "I will be."

-xXx

The bullet tested positive for apotoxin, but Mordio's preventive measures in administering the Tincture proved to be the right move. The antitoxin properties of the venom flushed Kaito's body of the deadly poison, and he was conscious again in thirty hours, Plume (still in kitten mode) draped on his good shoulder. The nurses had tried their best to remove the cat, but after three bites and five hours of hunting the ball of fluff around the hospital, they acquiesced and allowed him to remain with his master as long as he behaved.

With Mordio's treatments, Kaito's naturally rapid healing, and a good magical boost, the magician was released from the hospital in record time, and back in school only two days after that.

When Kaito came back to school, his left arm in a sling to protect his damaged shoulder and his lower torso wrapped in a brace he was the talk of the campus. After all, not everyone can say that their classmate survived a sniper attack.

He got many, many get well cards and candy boxes from his fans, so many that he had to beg Aoko to help him carry them. His girlfriend wasn't too pleased, but relented when he told her he wanted to pass the candy onto Conan and his friends, and use the cards for fire starters.

The day after the failed heist a notice from Kid appeared in the police station, a letter expressing his anger at the snipers' actions, his well-wishes for the injured teen to recover swiftly, and a notice that he will be postponing his activities until further notice. Shinichi had drafted the letter while Kaito was unconscious and had one of his cousin's doves deliver it. Thankfully no one bothered to notice the ever-so-slightly different handwriting, Shinichi just couldn't finesse a quill the way Kaito could.

Things slowed down awhile for the thief while Kaito recovered, but Shinichi tore into the fray concerning the captured Chianti and Koln with a near violent energy. Gathering evidence collected by his ghosts he managed to alert the FBI to the presence of the syndicate without revealing his involvement, and the information 'somehow' was leaked to the press.

The Black Syndicate was now exposed, and no single assassination could silence the public's awareness. It wasn't the best outcome from the heist they could have gotten, but the Druid was pleased at the progress.

Now, to take on the rest of them!

-xXx

A.N. I apologize for not updating recently, but the holidays are a busy time for me and I had several paintings to finish for Christmas commissions.

On the other hand, some of you asked for an explanation on the mechanics of the magic system I use here, and I will include it in the next chapter.

Happy New Year everyone!