If you hadn't guessed by the noticeable lack of updates last week, I'm just coming back from spring break. Though since I didn't hear any complaints from anybody, maybe nobody cared?
This chapter keeps up with the Paint Man's next crime, shown from his POV at first before switching away. He also IDs a new set of antagonists that are also crossing over. They'll take a more active role in future chapters after what he does here.
Chapter Ten
"The heck is this?" someone shouted, waking Kazuha up from her sleep. She'd spent the night in Ran's room, as per usual, although having Conan in there as well was a change from normal. She opened her eyes and saw Ran staring at her phone with a look of rage.
"What's the matter, Ran-chan?" Kazuha asked as the door burst open and Kogoro and Heiji ran in.
Ran, fuming, showed her the phone. The text read, 'I don't suppose I have to explain where I was last night! ;)'
"It's the same sender?" Kazuha asked, staring at it.
Kogoro snatched it up and read it over. "What…it's just that girl again. Quit scaring us like that." He gave Ran the phone back and he and Heiji left the room. Conan tried to stay, but Kogoro pulled him out by the collar, growling, "You need to get to school."
Kyle poked his head around the door. "What's all the noise about?" he asked curiously, yawning.
"That…girl sent me another text!" Ran said through gritted teeth.
"May I see?" Kyle asked. Ran passed over the phone wordlessly. "Hmm…" he said. "If you'll let me borrow this until it's time for school, I can contact a friend of mine to try and trace the number."
"Oh, it just deleted itself again!" Ran said, annoyed.
"Maybe so, but I can still try," Kyle reassured her. "Will you let me?"
Ran had nothing to lose, so she passed it over. "You're Kyle-san, right?" Kazuha asked cheerfully. "I didn't get a chance to meet you yesterday! I'm Toyama Kazuha, Ran-chan's friend! Nice to meet you!"
"Uh, same here," said Kyle. "Aren't you visiting from out of town, though? Don't you have school?"
"Don't worry about that!" she said, brushing him off. "Ran-chan's stalker is a lot more important than that!" She'd also arranged for her friends to take notes for her, so she wasn't missing that much. She was also a good student, so there was no chance she'd be branded a delinquent, either. Although since she was here with Heiji, people might get the wrong idea, which might cause problems…
Kyle left while she was lost in thought. "So what are you going to do here, Kazuha-chan?" Ran asked.
"I'm helping Heiji, of course! You just can't trust him to do anything right without me!"
"Are you sure you just don't want some alone time with Hattori-kun?" Ran teased.
"Uh, maybe just a bit," Kazuha admitted.
XXX
The Paint Man put the finishing touches on his latest work. He didn't enjoy killing innocent people, but he had lucked out this time because this woman had turned out to be embezzling money from her office. He looked over her face, painted white with crisscrossing orange stripes.
The problem right now was that it was the middle of the day, and he couldn't afford to wait until that evening to place the corpse. After all, today was the last day of the month, and he wanted their meeting tomorrow to start off with a bang. He'd slipped into the girl's building early that morning after getting his supplies by raking his hands down the buzzer buttons until someone let him in without checking who he was. Then he'd camped out on the girl's floor until she emerged, at which point he'd used chloroform on her and dragged her inside.
See, he had a plan, and that involved the girl still being alive. So she wasn't dead…yet. He had other plans for her, which she'd find out as soon as she woke up.
As it happened, that time was now. The woman, who was tied to a chair in front of her desk, opened her eyes and glanced around anxiously.
"Hello, there," said the Paint Man, swiveling her chair around so he was staring at her. She looked at him fearfully, and probably would've started screaming if he hadn't duct taped her mouth shut. "We've never met, but I'm sure you've heard of me. The media has given me the moniker 'The Paint Man' because I paint people's faces. That's right, I painted your face. Care to see?" He reached into her purse, pulled out her makeup compact, and used its mirror to show her her face.
Satisfied, he snapped the compact shut and dropped it back in her purse. "Now, I'm going to give you some instructions, which you're going to follow to the letter. If you don't do it, I'll kill you immediately and find another poor girl to do it for me. So unless you want another girl to suffer this fate, you'd better do what I say. Comply, and who knows? I might not kill you!"
The Paint Man turned to the computer and began fiddling with it. "It'll be a little while until I'm ready, so here's something for you to do." He took a piece of paper from his pocket and taped it up in her line of sight. "Read through this and prepare to recite it. It's my ultimatum."
XXX
Heiji and Kazuha were at the park where the Paint Man's belongings had been dumped after he'd parachuted out of Touto Tower. "Yeah, I found the parachute on the grass over there," an employee told Heiji, pointing in the appropriate direction. The area in question was roped off with crime scene tape. Kogoro was investigating the case as well, but he'd gone off to do his own investigation somewhere else.
"Did you see anybody suspicious? Not just the criminal, but anybody at all?"
"Hmm…" the guy thought. "Well, the guy got out of his harness and jumped down about ten feet from the ground. I've never seen anything like it. He ran into the public restroom and never came out. Of course, the cops found a fat suit and latex mask in there, so he could've been anybody that came out after that. It was a nice day, so there was a lot of traffic. As for anyone else suspicious, I didn't see anybody. There were so many people gawking at the parachute that nobody really stood out."
'No wonder they can't catch this guy; he's like a ghost,' Heiji thought. 'And he's crazy-prepared. Although if he had a parachute, why didn't he just jump off the top instead of climbing down through the tower? Was it his last resort or was he just that confident he wouldn't get caught?'
Kazuha had been busy conversing with Ran via texting and hadn't been paying them any attention. Out of the blue, she started saying, "Heiji, come look at this!" while tugging incessantly on his sleeve.
"What is it?" Heiji asked, turning to look at her.
"It's…it's him!" she said, showing him the screen. "I was talking to Ran-chan when it suddenly started playing this video!"
'Is this…a livestream?' Heiji thought, turning up the volume. In the upper left corner the words 'Paint Man Live' were written in English.
The girl on the video, whose face was painted white with orange stripes, began speaking. "My name is Ibiri Youka and I am here on behalf of the Paint Man, who has forced me to say these words without my consent. As I read the words on this paper, he would like me to tell some specific people who are watching that my face being painted like this is no coincidence. He knows who you are, and he does not approve of your methods. The Paint Man has hijacked every Internet-connected device in the Kanto region to deliver this message, so let him say it now. Provided that the specific people he mentioned earlier get their act together and stop messing with certain…VIPs, he will not commit any more murders. The Paint Man is fully aware that 99.76% of the viewers of this stream will have no idea what he is talking about. He appeals to them to riot in the streets so that the people in charge comply with his demands. Otherwise more people will die, painfully. The people in charge he is referring to is not the Japanese government, the Japanese police, secret or otherwise, or the Yakuza. You don't know them, but they know who they are. Stand against the Paint Man and watch your empire crumble. This is the Paint Man's ultimatum.'
The girl heaved a sigh of relief before glancing off camera. "Wait, what are you… No! Wait!" The sound of a gunshot rang through the feed as the girl was shot dead. Then the feed cut off and the texting menu reappeared.
"This guy…" said Heiji in a rage, tossing Kazuha's phone back at her and stalking off. "He's crossed the line this time! I'll find you for sure now!"
XXX
"This is the police! Everybody come out with your hands up!" Megure announced as the police burst into the apartment. It hadn't taken long for them to trace the signal and storm the building, but the Paint Man was already long gone.
After checking for intruders, they all put their guns away and examined the scene. "The victim is the apartment owner," Takagi confirmed, checking her wallet. "I think it's safe to say she was coerced into making the broadcast."
"Then look for evidence that guy was here!" Megure exclaimed. "He's already gotten away from us once!"
"Yes sir!" the cops said. They spent a while looking around, but all they found was a handkerchief and a bottle of chloroform in the trash, along with two paint cans and a couple of brushes. Then they found the holy grail: the receipt from when the paint was purchased. Chiba went off at once to the store to confirm it.
"Seems you've got your hands full here," a voice said from the door. Megure spun around and saw it was Heiji, which did not improve his mood.
"Just what are you doing here?" he asked in surprise. "Don't you have school?"
"Kudo asked me to help out with the case, so when I saw his broadcast, I figured I'd keep tabs on the cops to see if you'd track him down. And here you are. So I'll just take a quick look around. May I borrow some gloves?"
He sounded normal, but his tone and the look on his face proved he was deadly serious, moreso even than usual. His friend Kazuha, who was behind him, was also not her usual talkative self. Megure weighed his options, but figured 'why not?' At least he knew Heiji didn't have a grudge against the murderer, unlike that foreign girl. She'd given them a detailed story about how she'd encountered him, but couldn't explain why he was in Japan. They also hadn't been able to confirm her story with the Americans. Megure knew that her being in Tokyo at the same time as the Paint Man was likely no coincidence. About the only useful thing she'd given them was that the Paint Man was one of those crazy people that prepared for everything, no matter how ridiculous, and that was why he'd been able to escape: he'd planned for the slim chance he actually got caught.
"Yeah, you can poke around," he told Heiji. "Although I'm getting tired of teen detectives coming in here. This is the second time in a week."
"Oh? When was the first time?" Heiji asked curiously.
"One of the foreign girls at Ran-kun's school is a detective, so I had to deal with her nosing into things and the language barrier. That was no fun." Heiji gave him an affronted look, but Megure didn't particularly care; he was plenty stressed out and didn't care about being nice.
"Hold on, there's a footprint from the paint!" Heiji remarked. He pointed to a shadowed part of the floor, next to the desk with the computer and, sure enough, there was a footprint.
"Maybe we'll actually catch this guy this time." Megure said hopefully, looking at the footprint.
OK, now Heiji's mad. Actually, everybody's mad now. After being called out, the antagonists are going to start getting up in everybody's business, which calls for another new character to intervene. This character is also from The Search for the Scrolls, which I've recently retitled Trapped in Marisia, and hates the Paint Man even more than Hannah. And to top it off, she's an expert at both magic and fighting. Hannah cannot use magic. Don't worry, though; anything magical will happen away from the Conan characters, since magic would completely break the Conan series.
Hope you're still enjoying the story! Let me know what you think! :)