Disclaimer: Nothing to report as this is a tame chapter. Well, there's the soft science nightmare that is the apotoxin, but that's less a warning and more glaringly obvious that I'm more versed in magic and mythology than chemistry. Oh and there's a cameo! Though I'll be shocked if anyone actually recognizes him.
.: Chapter 9 – Nocturne :.
"The truth is rarely pure, and never simple."
~ Oscar Wilde ~
.oOo.
Kuroba Chikage leaned back as the machine in front of her whirred to life. Over two weeks of work and she had to admit to herself it wasn't going well. Oh, she had researched the elixir; it was how she had gained access to the small store the Syndicate kept. And she was sure the poison that had been fed to her nephew was derived from attempts to synthesize it. What she didn't know was how it had been modified into the poison, and knowing that would help reverse the effects.
So far, all of her samples had ended in terminal necrosis, the expected reaction of further de-aging, or no reaction at all. What was truly baffling was that, even without the suspension of the elixir in liquid, it would take far more than the small pill that Shinichi had describe to decrease his age as much as it had. Something else was going on at the cellular level, and it was either his own genetics causing it, or a modification made to the original substance.
A soft scuff of a house slipper against the laboratory's tile floor pulled her from her frustrated musings. The professor's little houseguest was back. It wasn't a surprise, as the girl was a frequent visitor to the lab; she was highly intelligent and endlessly fascinated by the equipment. Professor Agasa had explained at one point that the girl's parents had been scientists and she had been left with him after their deaths.
The girl hovered many times, watching as Chikage worked, until she had beckoned the girl over and explained the experiments she was running. In a way she decided that little Haibara Ai reminded her of Kaito to some degree: well into the genius range and not to be left around potentially explosive compounds.
"Good afternoon, Ai." Ai stilled at her name, her small fist tightening around something she held in her palm. She huffed out a small breath and came up to Chikage, where she laid a red and white capsule on the table between them. Chikage picked the capsule up and held it up, examining it briefly before she looked down at the girl in curiosity.
"APTX 4869," Ai said. "That's one of the last of them, Kuroba-san. At least it's one of the last I have access to." Chikage put the capsule down slowly, dragging out a clean sample dish to place it in, and folded her hands in her lap. "My name is Miyano Shiho, but if we had known each other in the Organization, Absinthe, you would have called me Sherry."
The little girl's eyes looked suddenly far too old in a far too familiar fashion. It was the same sense of mismatched age she felt every time she looked at her nephew when he wasn't in public. "I see I wasn't the only one to vanish from my former life using this particular ploy. I am also going to assume Shinichi knows."
"He does," the girl nodded. She hesitated, looking torn for a moment before she took a breath and pointed at the capsule resting in the sample dish. "That is my creation. Kudou and I are in the same predicament."
"And you've been watching me work with possible solutions to it for weeks without saying anything," Chikage said, not bothering to keep the trace of amused laughter out of her voice. It was a deceptive laugh, designed to let her appear poised and unsurprised. She was surprised – shocked even – but she'd been an unofficial student of her husband, and Kaito wasn't the only one capable of using a Poker Face. Of course, she was curious too. "Has any of it been useful?"
Now Haibara allowed a small smile to show. "Yes. Though I wonder at some of your notes' conclusions, you're an impressive scientist, Absinthe."
"And you've created an impressive mess, Sherry," Chikage told her. "But since you've come forward with that, I assume you want to do more than lurk at the edges of my guesswork."
"It's not entirely guesswork," Ai told her. "You are simply more familiar with the natural state of the compound. It's …" she paused for a moment, clearly considering what to say before she took a breath and changed tactics. "I was working on an experimental formula to create immortality. I think I indirectly inherited your research through my father, who was assigned to the project before he died."
"Because the elixir grants a form of immortality," Chikage nodded, a true smile stealing over her face. "They probably had him continuing my research but didn't tell you what, exactly, you were working on."
"Recreating the Philosopher's Stone? " Ai said dryly. "If I had known, I would never have willingly agreed to the project at all. I'm a scientist, not an alchemist and I've never had the patience for magic."
"If you were using my research, then you didn't know what you were working with and you didn't have all of it." Chikage told her.
Ai blinked in puzzlement and Chikage answered by picking up a pencil from the table and dragging a notebook already half-filled with notes and equations toward her. Ai leaned closer and studied the chemical formulae and accompanying commentary for a moment before identifying them. "Your research notes. I've been following your progress by reading them in the evenings."
Chikage nodded and rummaged around in a drawer to her right for a red pen. Once she found one, she began adding things into them before turning the notebook so Ai could see it. "I don't leave completed notes on my work. Even if you'd been given every note and scribble I left on random bits of paper and tabletops, you wouldn't have been able to replicate my research. I habitually left out key aspects of it so that I was the only one that could interpret it. If you were using any part of my work, I'm not surprised you created a poison." The additions she'd made altered the information on the highlighted lines subtly, though without them the notes still looked viable.
"This … explains a great deal, Kuroba-san," Ai said, tracing her finger beneath the lines. A light cough pulled her attention back to the other scientist.
"Please, call me Chikage, Ai," she corrected. "And now that we're being honest with one another, I have a few things to show you. I'd like your opinion. I think you can tell me where I'm going wrong in my assumptions about your creation."
Haibara's stance remained tense, but she straightened and nodded briskly. "I believe I can, Chikage-san."
.oOo.
The scent of rain-washed concrete and laundry soap hung heavy in the air. Shinichi shouldered Ran's door open, balancing the smallest laundry basket in his arms and ignoring most of the contents. It was his own fault, of course. Rain beat against the windows of the detective agency, confining him indoors with a stack of books he had already read, and he had been bored out of his skull. His other option was going home and being confined indoors with Kaito and his parents, and that fate made him shudder. Even if he managed to avoid his parents, he was sure that being trapped indoors with Ran on laundry day was better than being trapped indoors with Kaito.
Shinichi wouldn't lay money down that his cousin had no time or energy to come up with some torment to spring on him even while embroiled in whatever preparations he was working on for the heist that night. He'd asked Ran if there was anything he could help her with, and she had looked so touched by the offer he couldn't very well back out. So, he had been pressed into service ferrying baskets of clean clothes to various rooms while she finished up other chores.
He set the basket down in front of Ran's closet. The door still stood partly open, either from her earlier collecting of laundry, or from the freshly pressed dresses that hung there now. Shinichi reached out to close the door, and stopped with a confused blink. He released the door and reached into Ran's closet, tugging one of the dresses out from between its fellows, and felt his eyes narrowing in suspicion. The dress was familiar, and was one of Ran's nicer ones, but had no place being right behind the dress she'd worn last weekend. The last time he'd seen Ran wear this dress had been the night Kaitou Kid went after the Black Star, and it hadn't been Ran wearing it.
Ran had kept the dress, mostly because Sonoko had pitched a fit at the mere mention of throwing away something Kid had used to impersonate her. For some reason, the fact that this dress wasn't ever worn by Kid (and since that dress had vanished mysteriously, Kaito probably had his very own copy lurking in a closet somewhere, which was disturbing on several levels now) was completely immaterial to Sonoko. Ran had settled for keeping the dress and banishing it to the back of her closet.
"I'll say Holmes … you'll say Lupin," Shinichi muttered.
Shinichi gave the dress a rough yank, trying to pull it off the hanger, and the shoulders slid off, dropping the dress on Shinichi's head. He struggled out from under the pile of fabric and dragged it into the room, then dashed to the door and poked his head out into the hall, trying to figure out where Ran was. He strained his ears and caught a snatch of humming coming from the direction of the kitchen. Perfect, he thought. She had started dinner, trusting him to finish ferrying the laundry baskets to the bedrooms. He had a few minutes to solve this small mystery before she called or came looking for him.
Shinichi laid the dress out across Ran's bed and started examining it for the next bit of the puzzle. The obvious reason for this dress to be out in more-or-less plain sight was that Kaito was up to something and had left the dress as a clue. Ran wouldn't have any reason to move it, and Kaito was too meticulous and professional to just put something back in the wrong place.
There wasn't anything out of the ordinary on the surface of the dress, so Shinichi moved on to running his fingers along the seams. He'd gotten the chance to check out Kid's jacket a few days ago, when Kaito had returned home long enough to retrieve it before the heist. It was, after all, tradition for Kaitou Kid to put in an appearance when his name was being used without his permission. The jacket had myriad pockets tucked away in every seam. Kaito's explanation for that had been that seams were the easiest place to put pockets without ruining the cut of the suit, and image was important, but he needed a lot of pockets for his gear.
A triumphant grin snuck over Shinichi's face as his finger vanished into the fabric of the skirt, and he pulled the hidden pocket open. A flash from the depths of the pocket caught his attention and he reached inside. Clean edges met his fingers and when he pulled his hand free, Pandora sat in his palm, the swirls of crimson overtaking the clear depths as he watched.
The doorbell rang suddenly, startling him out of admiration of his discovery and Shinichi looked towards the sound.
"Conan, can you get the door, please?" Ran called from the kitchen, and Shinichi scrambled to fold the dress up haphazardly before dropping it in with the other clothes. Ran would find that weird, but hopefully she'd just assume he pulled the dress down by accident and could read the hanger to hang it back up. That was true enough, as he couldn't reach the hanger without a stool or a chair.
"Yes, Ran-neechan!" he called back, padding down the hallway and across the living room to the front door, sliding Pandora into a pocket of his jeans. Shinichi reached up, stretching to catch the doorknob, and yanked hard to swing it open.
"Yo, Kudou," a voice greeted as Shinichi released the knob, and poked his head around the door. A wiry figure leaned right outside, baseball cap pulled low over his face, shadowing his eyes.
"Hattori!" Shinichi yelped, and scrambled out of the way as the taller teenager pushed himself away from the wall and stepped inside.
Once clear, Hattori pushed the door closed behind him and his laid-back grin twisted into something more wicked and mischievous. "Close enough, Detective."
Kuroba. Shinichi folded his arms and rolled his eyes. "Aren't you a little early? The sun's not even down yet."
"Yeah, but it's a fairly long trip out there and ..."
"And you were driving everyone crazy back at the house, weren't you?" Shinichi kept his voice down, and smothered the urge to snort at the image of Kaito being tossed out and told to go play outside.
Kaito chuckled quietly. "Maybe. A bit. I think your dad was getting tired of random doves nesting in his hair and stealing his glasses. And mom threatened me with fi … a mop."
Kaito stumbled over the last word, and Shinichi cast him an odd look. "A mop? Isn't that Aoko's threat?"
"Mom knows all about it," Kaito said ruefully, rubbing the back of his neck and pushing his cap and hair up.
"Knows about what?" Ran's voice broke in right before she stepped into the room from the direction of the kitchen. "Hello, Hattori-kun!"
"Hey, Nee-chan," Kaito answered easily in an Osakan drawl. "I thought I'd swing by a bit early and get Conan-kun for Kid's heist. Kudou got tied up in something and said he'd have to meet us there."
Ran looked worried at that and bit her lip. "Is he still in Tokyo?"
"Eh?" Kaito blinked then glanced sidewise at Shinichi and shrugged. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure he's still close by. He just got called in on a couple of things, and said he'd catch up." Ran chewed her lip a bit more, and didn't look at either of them, but nodded. Shinichi fidgeted uncomfortably and Kaito looked between them and shook his head. "Tell ya what, Ran, if he acts like he's going to dash on ya again, I'll drag him back. If he doesn't show up tonight, I'll go after him. Either way, he's coming back to you. Deal?"
Ran looked up at him, startled and blushing faintly in embarrassment. She started stammering out a denial, stopped and nodded with a relieved smile. "Thank you, Hattori-kun. And it's not that I don't trust Shinichi …"
"You just still don't quite believe he's really here," Kaito finished for her, sounding dryly amused. "We'll work on that."
.oOo.
The estate of Kakunoshin Niitsu rested against the side of a wooded hill. The trees were artfully placed to cloak the true size of the building, which had grown ever more massive over the decades of the last century in order to house the artwork and workspace of its string of reclusive artists. The sun was setting now, hovering over the western horizon as it died in a silent explosion of pinks and gold. It would be gone within an hour, bringing twilight and the rising of the moon.
Hakuba Saguru could hear the yelling as the inspector ordered his task force into position as soon as he stepped out of the car. The darkness flashed with the lights of squad cars and rumbled with the rotary blades of police helicopters, which added their own glaring spotlights to the estate's muted and elegant lighting. Hakuba's shoes crunched on the gravel as he walked what was left of the drive to the house proper, where he was met by a uniformed officer who nodded in recognition and waved him through.
Kakunoshin's decorations ran towards pottery and archaic weapons lining the walls and lurking in strategic corners. It forced the intruding officers to step carefully and not back into any rooms or hallways that looked clear for fear of shattering something worth more than their annual salary.
Nakamori was inside, still shouting orders to his officers, and pestering Kakunoshin Niitsu, the owner of the night's target jewel, with a gamut of questions. Kakunoshin answered curtly, his deep voice booming and his arms folded, fingers tapping against one thick forearm in impatience. From the man's arrogant behavior at the first Kid heist, Hakuba presumed it would only be a short matter of time before Kakunoshin swept from the room and ignored the police until the actual time set for the thief's arrival.
Or rather the imposter's arrival, Hakuba thought darkly. Fake heist notes made him twitchy and he usually just didn't bother to come. He let the police do their job, faced with an unimaginative criminal and an identity-protective phantom thief. However, Kid himself had been absent from Japan for months and Hakuba wondered if the elusive thief would put in an appearance. Either way, Hakuba had every intention of delivering tonight's Kaitou Kid to the police.
.oOo.
A brief touch on his shoulder pulled Shinichi's attention to his cousin. Kaito stood as the bus they were riding lurched to a stop and Shinichi slid off the seat, looking suspiciously puzzled as he followed the other boy down the aisle. They were still two stops away from the stop closest to the heist and the sun was starting to set.
"Change of plans," Kaito said as the bus pulled away, leaving them stranded on a deserted sidewalk. The rain had cleared up momentarily, leaving them enveloped in the sharp scent of wet stone and plants and cooling air. "We're not doing things your way tonight."
"What does that mean?!" Shinichi demanded, scrambling to keep up as Kaito started off without him. "Hey!"
Kaito turned back and a familiar grin flashed from under the shadows of Hattori's baseball cap. Then he sobered and dropped down so he was eyelevel with his diminutive cousin. "They're up there waiting for us… well, for me. They shouldn't know about you yet. But, even Snake isn't stupid enough to not check out a second heist where I found Pandora. I can become Hattori any time, but I'm not in the mood to just be a critic and wait for things to happen. If this is some idiot that figured using Kid's name would help him get away with something, we need to stop him before they shoot him."
"So walking the last few kilometers will keep us under their radar?" Shinichi asked dubiously as Kaito straightened, forcing the smaller boy to look up.
"Not being seen will keep us under their radar," Kaito corrected and started walking along the side of the road and stuffing his hands in his pockets in a show of nonchalance. "You never see me until I want you to."
Shinichi started to protest, but lapsed into a grumpy silence and folded his arms. "So we're going to trek through the underbrush instead of walking up the drive like normal people?"
"Yep!" Kaito answered brightly with only a hint of a wicked grin. "Try to keep up." He took another step and vanished, only a tell-tale rustle from the leaves and a crack from a handful of broken twigs told Shinichi where Kaito had stepped off the road.
This was familiar, Shinichi reflected with a glower. Still, he found himself smiling and dove into the foliage after the thief, spotting the rare partial footprint or snapped twig to keep him on the trail until he reached the estate's tall fence. That's when he caught sight of Kaito again, still dressed as Hattori, but now with the addition of Kid's gloves covering his hands. He held out one of them, silently offering Shinichi help over the wall that towered over them both.
Shinichi swung the backpack he was wearing around in front of him and dug through the front pocket before pulling out another set of gloves and slipping them on. The iron bars of the ornamental fence were just wide enough for a child to squeeze through. Shinichi wedged his backpack between two of them and gave it a push, forcing it through to the other side before following it with a sideways wiggle. He caught a quiet huff of laughter from Kaito before the other boy latched onto the top of the fence and swung himself up and over it, landing in a crouch on the other side before smoothly standing and brushing off a bit of imaginary dust.
"Show off," Shinichi snorted at him and earned a sketched bow in reply.
Now that they were inside, the underlying tension between them ratcheted up another few notches. Inside the estate were higher security and more unknowns. Kaito scanned their surroundings quickly before picking a direction and setting off in it. Shinichi followed silently as the forest gave way to more-cultured wildness of a large formal garden. Now they had to step carefully, keeping to the edges of the gravel and stone paths, where the moss was thickest and the crunchy gravel thinnest. It also let them duck into cover as periodic policemen roamed by, keeping watch for elusive thieves.
"You do this for every heist?" Shinichi questioned, keeping his voice a notch above a whisper as they crouched on top of an outbuilding roof. They had found it had a good view of the gallery Kakunoshin originally kept the jeweled swords in.
"Watch everyone running around trying to figure out what shadow I'm planning to leap out of? Or hide on top of things? I do both. People never think to look up," Kaito answered as he fished a pair of binoculars out Shinichi's backpack and trained them on the milling police below. The tall glass windows and skylights gave Kakunoshin's gallery plenty of natural light during the day, and plenty of watch points for them now. "Except for you. You have an uncanny habit of looking up and spotting me."
"That's because you're always trying to make people look everywhere you're not. It's all just smoke and mirrors."
"Oh you're just very, very used to looking up to see anything, pipsqueak."
"Kuroba …" Shinichi growled, trailing off as Kaito held up a hand to signal him into silence and pointed below them with the hand holding the binoculars.
"Looks like Hakuba came to join the fun," Kaito whispered.
"Oh great," Shinichi snorted, grabbing the binoculars from Kaito's hand and training them on the gathering below them. "I'm glad Heiji's not actually here."
"Really?" Kaito pulled his legs underneath himself and settled into an easy crouch. "I think watching those two stuck on a case together would be fun."
"They spend the entire time trying to one up the other," Shinichi muttered. "The entire time. And they both think they're right."
That brought a grin to Kaito's lips and he reached over to lightly cuff his cousin. "And that doesn't sound at all familiar, does it, Detective?"
Shinichi blinked and chuckled softly, turning his attention from the thief back to the police and detectives in the gallery below them. "How do you plan to spot this imposter?" he finally asked. "We're not exactly in the thick of things up here."
"Patience, Detective," Kaitou Kid admonished, and Shinichi very much saw Kid's eyes looking through the mask of Heiji's face right then, "we're just on stake out and we'll just stay here until something interesting happens." He held out his hand, curling his fingers into his palm expectantly. "And unless you can read lips, hand those binoculars back. I want to know what they're chattering about in there."
Shinichi passed them back to his cousin without complaint, and turned his attention back to what he could see below them. "We should have brought two sets."
.oOo.
"What exactly do you want, Kakunoshin-san?" Nakamori asked in a tone that said he would gladly order the man out of the room if he thought he could get away with it, or that Kakunoshin would listen.
"For this entire circus to get out of my house."
Nakamori bit down hard on his unlit pipe and sketched a quick bow in the man's direction. "We'll leave as soon as we're sure you and your art are safe from the clutches of this thief. But until then, we need to be here."
"And underfoot," Kakunoshin grunted before sweeping away from the inspector. Hakuba kept himself conspicuously out of Nakamori's vision as the inspector glared daggers after the arrogant artist and checked his watch. The thief was nearly late. In fact, he would be late in another two minutes, and the tension of the officers was ratcheting up with each second of expectant stillness.
Kid heists were tense, of course. Everyone involved, with the possible exception of the showboating thief, spent the entire time strung high and jumping at shadows. Usually it was the tension that comes from knowing you're about to get embarrassed, again. Like walking into school and knowing that the moment the girl you like walks around the corner, that football player's going to shove you in your locker and she'll have to let you out. Kid had an unnerving tendency to unravel the most carefully thought-out defenses and leave the defenders scrambling like a flurry of ants in a rainstorm.
But tonight's tension was of a whole different sort. Now, Hakuba could see the other members of the Task Force were worried. There were flak vests bulking up uniforms and a few of them are actually carrying firearms. Nakamori himself was attempting to bite through his pipe stem, and his dark eyes never strayed from the mantle clock for more than a handful of seconds between his shouted last-minute preparations.
The officers were staying in small clumps, and one flashed her light through the windows, letting the light arc through the glass and sweep the shadows beyond the house lights. Nothing stirred. No telling flutter of white or flash of glass set in ivory, and the officer turned away.
.oOo.
The door cracked open, revealing a petite form that stepped into the light and looked around in puzzlement. "Why is it so dark in here?" Aoko asked, shutting the door and being careful not to let the wrapped box in her hand be caught and crushed.
The officers looked at one another, not sure whether to relax at the relatively familiar face, or worry further. It wouldn't be the first time Kaitou Kid had impersonated the inspector's daughter.
Hakuba stepped forward cautiously, opening his mouth to speak until the inspector cut him off.
"Aoko, what are you doing here?" he demanded, the surliness from earlier softened slightly for his daughter.
She hefted the wrapped box in explanation. "You forgot your dinner. And I know better than to ask any 'helpful passing officer' to drop it off for you. It would end up being Kaitou Kid, and he'd put a miniature tank of goldfish or something that exploded and coated the room in pink glitter when you opened it."
There were a few subdued snickers from the Task Force in earshot, but those were quickly quelled by twin glares from Nakamori and his daughter.
"Well, you're here, but this wacko's due to show up any minute," Nakamori grunted. "I'll have someone take you home. Hakuba can go with you if you want."
Hakuba opened his mouth to protest being asked to leave when the house clocks struck the hour … and half of the lights flickered out, plunging the room into semi-darkness and putting every officer present on twitchy high alert. Kakunoshin grumbled and folded his arms expectantly.
Aoko squeaked a bit at the sudden loss of illumination, shrinking back towards Hakuba and her father. Hakuba caught her shoulders and tightened his grip reassuringly as his eyes scanned the shadowy half-light. Everyone waited, torn between expecting the ghostly laughter of the phantom thief and one of his flashy entrances, or a scream heralding the murder that so often accompanies a false Kid heist.
After a handful of tense minutes listening to one another fidget and breathe, Nakamori started swearing under his breath. "Damn thief's screwing with us," Nakamori grumbled, biting at his pipe stem.
Kat's Notes:
Formatting should officially be fixed! Maybe ... assuming the kami like me. I checked in the preview thing, but here's hoping I caught it all.
Things you might not know if you haven't read the Magic Kaito manga are that Snake is the guy that killed Kaito's dad, and then thought he'd missed when Kaito started stealing things as Kid. Also, Kaito is terrified of fish, far more than he fears Aoko's mop. His mother and Aoko know this, but Shinichi doesn't yet.
Sorry for the delay in general. I ended up going on vacation and there is a distinct lack of laptops in the land of the Kat. That, and I had to do a lot of rewriting this time around. This entire chapter, and the next one, had to be rebuilt from the ground up when I realized my first draft with Kaito going to the heist as Shinichi wasn't going to work - unless he wanted to get killed off early - and wouldn't you know it, Shinichi and Heiji are different people, and their dynamic next to Hakuba is completely different. Sad for me, honestly, Hakuba's lots of fun around Shinichi. Oh well. Maybe I can turn those pages into a one-shot or something.
So thank you for slogging through this far! I'm going to stop apologizing now, and go write chapter 10... or Blood Ties... or about chirpy teenage necromancers or something. Ta!
