Part Ten
"Ahou! How was I s'pposed t' know all cell phones were t'be turned off durin' the landing? ... No, I did not do it 'n purpose, fer cryin' out loud! ... Oh, get over yerself, ahou!"
Heiji flipped his phone closed just for spite, right when Kazuha's particular shriek started to announce itself, and growled as he stuffed the object back in his pocket, muttering to himself. "Take the time t' wait 'til she's better, give'r advanced notice I'm visitn' Kudo even before he calls, but noooo, I need t'call as soon as I land, 'n' if I'm three seconds late boom! Pushy, bossy, swelled up..."
Shaking the irritation off, Heiji tugged at his pack, shifting the weight from one shoulder to another. A few changes of clothes was one thing, but something was sitting wrong in his gut, and he'd brought his sword, carefully wrapped and boxed, to satisfy a nervous sense he'd developed since learning about Kudo's... small problem.
His gut instinct had only gone from bad to worse when he'd visited the Mouri apartment. No one was there, and at seven in the morning that was unheard of. Even if Ran and Kudo had gone off to school early, Mouri would still be there, working off his most recent hangover so he could open his next can of beer. The door was locked, but the doormat was askew, as if someone had slid on it in his or her rush out the door, and Mouri's car wasn't anywhere to be found. It just didn't feel right, and any number of possibilities were floating through Heiji's head, each darker than the last.
It didn't take much for someone in the know to recognize the Black Organization's influence in recent events. Kazuha's illness - no, poisoning - in combination of other high school students in month intervals would only have made him wonder if it wasn't for the sick kids in Beika. Kudo was probably caught between being worried out of his mind and scared out of his mind, all the while chasing after the bastards. Heiji wondered what kind of shape he'd find his best friend in.
Turning the corner, Hattori slowed as he reached the gate of the Kudo household. First glance showed no signs of life, but Heiji, like Kudo, saw a lot more on first glance than other people. He eyed the recent wear on the doorknob, the scuffmarks on the mat, a dark brown hair. Frowning, Hattori rang the doorbell, hoping to narrow down the possible reasons for the extra hair.
Imagine his surprise, then, when Kudo answered the door. Not Conan, Kudo, seventeen years old, in dark wash jeans and a collared shirt unbuttoned at the top.
"Kudo?!" he blurted out in surprise. "What're y'doing big? What happened t' make ya take a pill?"
Even more surprising, Kudo's eyes blinked in blank incomprehension before there was a low whistle. "Follow me," he said without ceremony, turning around.
The behavior was unusual for Kudo, but Heiji followed anyway, hoping to find more clues. He saw Kudo's and Conan's shoes on the genkan as he pulled off his own, and there was recent activity in the kitchen - take out bags and an open microwave - and as Heiji was led upstairs he wondered what these clues were leading him too.
"I think the one you want to talk to is in there," Kudo said, twisting a doorknob open before stepping aside to let the Osakajin in. He gave Kudo a long, hard stare, not quite trusting something about his old friend. But the only way to learn anything was to go into Kudo's bedroom, and so he stepped in.
To find Conan sprawled on the bed, a jacket draped over his tiny form as a blanket.
"Kudo?!" Then who--
Heiji spun around and stepped back into the hall. "Who the hell're y--"
But there was only a puff of smoke where the fake Kudo was.
Head swiveling around, Heiji could find no immediate signs of either the imposter or his escape. His first urge was to try and follow, but his brain was still back on the image of Kudo on the bed; his face half covered by the jacket, no motion whatsoever, body limp... If he was dead...
Spinning another hundred-eighty degrees he stomped back into Kudo's room. "Kudo? Kudo!! Hey, open yer eyes!"
A bleary blue eye responded to the shaking. "... Hattori?" a disturbingly young voice murmured.
The green-eyed detective breathed an enormous sigh of relief. "Geez, Kudo, y'really know how t' scare a guy."
It took hours for Kudo to wake up after that; whatever the imposter had drugged him with was still in his system. The Detective of the West let the teen trapped as a child sleep, instead busying himself about the house, laying down his pack in a spare room (but not before pulling out his sword, he was going to be armed at all times and damn that he was right to bring it) and doing a more thorough inventory of the kitchen. Hattori didn't trust the take out, but he found some instant coffee for when Kudo awoke.
There were also the calls. He left a message on the Mouri answering service, letting them know he was there and crashing at Kudo's, that Conan was there and sleeping, and he faltered after that, not knowing what else to say. The fake Kudo surely would have been there to pick up the real one, and knew that Kudo was Kudo and not Conan, but what could he say to it? So he just didn't bring it up.
Later he pulled out the phonebook for take out (he didn't dare leave the house with Kudo alone) that he did trust, and was soon filling the fridge with foods he recalled his best friend liked, along with unearthing a box of tea on top of the instant coffee, and two boxes of crackers. The house had been virtually abandoned, leaving little else in the kitchen that was salvageable. Wandering the house, however, Heiji saw that Kudo somehow found time to stop in occasionally to clean it. Dust was a fine layer covering everything, but it was not the thick layer one would expect of a location that had been left all but derelict.
His primary occupation, however, was trying to discover how the imposter had disappeared (literally) from right under his nose in a puff of smoke. It didn't take long to find a small capsule, broken open, that no doubt held the puff of smoke - a visual distraction while the imposter made his getaway. Heiji examined the residue - he couldn't be a hundred percent, but he was pretty sure it was a potassium chloride and sodium bicarbonate mixture. Rather than being pressurized, it appeared as thought the chemicals were stored in separate compartments of the small pellet, mixed when broken and the moisture of the air in the house did the rest to generate the smoke. Simple in proof but clearly delicately handled in execution; Heiji couldn't help but admire the craftsmanship of the smoke capsule's remains.
Frowning, he moved on to look for other evidence. Going back to the front door, Heiji needed his microscope to look for traces of the lock being picked; only there was none. In point of fact, the keys were left in the living room. That made sense, Heiji realized, because they were Kudo's keys. There was no need to pick the lock if the seven year old you were dragging around actually had a set. But wait, did Kudo really carry his house keys around? He didn't visit often, there would be no need to keep them on his person; and this was belying the way Kudo went out of his way to keep his identity secret - that would include having house keys of "Shinichi-nii-chan" on his person for no reason.
It was a barb then, a blatant statement of, "I can get in whenever I want." That irked Heiji to the extreme, and he resolved to tell Kudo to change the locks - he'd pay for it, if necessary.
It was early afternoon by the time his one-time rival and best friend padded down the stairs. Heiji wordlessly heated up a cup of coffee, and the small detective was soon nursing his second cup, much more alert if no less exhausted.
"Y'look like hell, Kudo," Hattori offered finally. "What happened?"
And it all boiled down to one sentence: "Ran was poisoned."
"... Shit," was about all Heiji could offer. "How'd it happen?"
For the next hour the shrunken Shinichi explained what had been happening for the past three weeks, starting with the discovery of Genta's arrival to the hospital and Ayumi's terrible hallucinations to the overabundance of legwork and painful assembly of clues, starting with a detailed list of symptoms to the states of the sick children's rooms to a timeline of who got sick when. Heiji whistled at the level of detail he heard.
"You don't keep a notebook anymore, right?"
"Ah."
"Kudo, y'never cease t' impress me; t' keep track of all this! Even fer people as detail oriented as us, y'can't help but be impressed."
The pint-sized detective frowned, shrugging his shoulder. "Details don't do a detective much good if he can't put it together." That was when he explained Haibara's discoveries when she analyzed the blood sample Kudo had managed to get, the tropane alkaloid compound and who (really, who else?) could deliberately poison children.
"They're testing the effectiveness of the drugs, and likely its side effects and duration and other things. Whoever's distributing this likely has at the very least rudimentary medical training and a connection to the hospital to track the results. Either that or there are people working in tandem."
"I doubt that," Heiji interjected. "At least, not 'n one location."
Kudo's brain came to a full stop at that sentence, his eyes widening in horror as the full scope of what Heiji had divulged opened before him.
"I didn' get th' chance t' tell you Kudo," Heiji explained solemnly, "why I decided t' visit ya. Kazuha was poisoned jus' like yer kids 'n' Nee-chan were. Damn near broke m' arm when she started hallucinatin'. She just got outta the hospital 'couple days ago. After yer school got on th' news, I did some checkin'. Once a month, a high school kid'll show up with th' exact symptoms ya've been describin'. I'll bet money there's a middle school somewhere that's gettin' the same problem. The question's how come they got all overindulgent here? Poisonin' so many kids at once?"
"I don't know," Kudo replied, rubbing his chin in thought, his head dipping down. Absently he fingered his long empty cup of coffee.
"I still don't get why they got Nee-chan," Heiji ventured slowly.
"That's easy: it was meant for me." That brought about the explanation of Kudo's discovery on how the poison was introduced, a gift in the footlocker that was cut and opened, cutting the child. The boy's voice dropped even lower - sounding almost like his real voice - as he explained watching the freckled Mistuhiko get sick. And wasn't it convenient, Kudo explained, that it wasn't long after he made the discovery and passed it on to the doctors, that a plastic wrapped box of Holmes and Watson action figures "sent from Mama" appeared on his doorstep, that Ran had opened and placed on a dinner plate for him, not thinking much of the small cut she's received on her finger from trying to open the thick plastic.
"But how the heck'd they figure out it w's you? Y' let the cop take th' credit fer the discovery."
"I don't know," Kudo admitted, "And that's really bothering me."
A long silence fell between the two young men, both lost in their thoughts.
Heiji was about to change topics, instead bringing up the imposter (because if it was really Black Organization, his best friend would be dead now), when Kudo opened his mouth first.
"The only way to do this is to draw Them out." The mumble almost wasn't heard.
Heiji blinked. "What?"
"We need to draw Them out."
"............ What?!" Heiji became saucer-eyed as he stared at his shrunken best friend, the mini detective's eyes hidden both under his glasses and his hair, mouth obscured by the tiny hand that held his chin. "Are y' outta yer mind?!"
Kudo looked up, his blue eyes exhausted, haggard, and utterly lost; but under that was an expression Heiji knew all too well; one he often wore whenever looking at his father:
Defiance.
"They're too good at hiding," Kudo was explaining, Heiji still trying to process what he was hearing and getting over the shock of seeing that kind of expression on his friend's face. "There isn't enough evidence to deduce who's performing the distribution - something I never thought I'd say - and even if we did, They would just quietly (or not so quietly) replace him, leaving us back at square one: no clues. If we're going to catch Them and make Them pay, we have to lure them out into the open. The only way to do that is to get their attention, and the only way to do that is if I start dropping more hints that I know about them."
"Yuh've lost one t' many hours sleep, Kudo," Heiji exclaimed. "Listen to what y're saying: Y're deliber'tely puttin' yerself out 'n the open. Y're riskin' exposure! If it doesn't work, then They know abou'cha and boom! You die fer real!"
"If it does work we'll have one of Them in custody," Kudo responded, his eyes still defiant. "The Japanese government will know about them, and the noose will be a little bit tighter. Don't worry, I'll be careful. I'll make sure they only get me."
"It's suicide!!" Heiji shouted, banging his fist on the table. He wasn't expecting this. A worried, exhausted, even fragile Kudo was one thing, he'd seen all variations of that; even a desperate Kudo he'd seen, but never, never an irrational Kudo. "Let's jus' say it does work, They'll still know abou'cha! An' everyone'll be at risk! Izzat what ya want? Is catchin' 'em worth killin' Nee-chan?"
Something in Kudo's face changed; it darkened like Heiji had only ever glimpsed before, the pain much more raw, as if the last hint of self restraint had sapped out of the diminutive detective.
Heiji's tone dropped, his face grave as he tried to drive the fact home. "Hurting yourself won't make Nee-chan's suffering any better," he said in clear, standard tones.
A small, ironic and loathing smile flitted across Kudo's face. "Maybe being rid of me and all the danger that follows me is for the best," he said quietly. Then he snapped open his wristwatch, Heiji dumbfounded as the tranquilizer needle pricked into his neck.
"Kudo--what--" But the dart was already doing its job, adding weight to his limbs, closing his eyes for him. He'd never tried to stop Kudo from doing anything, he had no idea how to do it, and now it was too late. His head banged on the table before he collapsed across the kitchen floor. "K... Kudo..."
But he fell asleep.
"Kaito? Kaito?"
The high schooler jumped, whipping around and simultaneously pulling out his earpiece and pocketing it into a hidden seam he'd sewn into his jacket for just such a purpose.
Aoko glared at him. "What did you do now?" she demanded, hands on her hips.
"Do?" he retorted, "What makes you think I've done anything?"
"You always jump like that when you have your hand in a prank or a magic trick," she responded, shaking a finger at him, "And not long after Dad is being chased by doves, or the principal is suddenly walking around with pink hair." She rolled her eyes at the memory before returning to glaring at him. "So what did you do?"
When in doubt: feint. "Oh, nothing much," Kaito responded, walking past her, but not before eliciting a time worn -fwip!- that created the desired reaction.
"Kaito you pervert!!" And the mop Aoko had been holding swung at twenty meters per second for his head, which he ducked by bending over backwards without needing to catch himself with his hands. The chase began, the students in the class knowing by now to just duck and cover while the two danced around each other. Kaito hid behind Keiko and her pigtails before performing a quick-change and looking like the school's local karate champion, allowing the mop to thwack him square in the face.
"Ah! Minagami-senpai! I'm so sorry!" Aoko said quickly, abashedly trying to hide the mop behind her in guilt.
Kaito let himself grin, leaning forward, "Kiss my 'sister' Junko and we'll call it even," he said in sweet and decidedly un-Minagami-like tones.
Aoko turned scarlet while the real Minagami looked irate. "Kaito you--" her epitaph was cut off as the school bell rang, and with a smoke pellet the Phantom Thief disappeared in a puff of smoke, completely unaware of how that small moment would affect his future.
Once outside the school grounds, however, he dropped his playful exterior in favor of a more thoughtful expression. Honestly, he should have bugged Kudo's derelict house more often, he couldn't believe how much information he'd gotten in the last hour and a half. Kudo and Hattori were nothing if not thorough - kind of refreshing, actually, to know that there were other people out there like him.
But that was currently beside the point. The bugs weren't going to tell him where the teen toddler had run off to, and with the Osakan out of the picture, Kaito decided he was the only person capable of stopping his best critic.
Sigh, the price of being a gentleman thief.
Kaito was emphatically not the deductive powerhouse like Kudo and Hattori were, but he had what the others did not: psychology. One didn't become good enough to imitate people well enough to fool loved ones without understanding how to do it. It was more than copying mannerisms, it was understanding why the mannerisms were performed and what precipitated them. He researched the people he impersonated thoroughly, and having played Kudo more than once on top of his observations of the tiny critic, he had a good idea of the Detective of the East's headspace. He also had the added advantage of having watched (at least partway) Kudo throughout the investigation. With this, Kaito had the following knowledge in his arsenal:
Item: Since the start of his "small" problem he'd been under constant emotional strain.
Item: Kudo was fiercely protective over the people he cared for. More than once he risked personal injury in order to protect them, and had no sense of self-preservation.
Item: One by one the people he felt responsible for were placed "under attack" from the person or group of persons that had shrunk him.
Item: The most important person in Kudo's life, Mouri Ran, had been poisoned; most likely (in Kudo's mind) because he had made a discovery about the case.
Conclusion: Kudo didn't want to see Hattori, another person he cared for, get hurt. Hence the sleeping dart.
Conclusion: With Ran in the hospital "because" of him, Kudo would try to protect her by staying far away from her. That ruled out the hospital.
Conclusion: With Mouri in a state and the estranged wife milling about, the agency was out.
Conclusion: With so many loved ones under attack, he'd want to verify their safety.
Kaito smiled. Take that, Great Detectives! Maybe he could be called the Great Detective of the Underworld. Nah, that sounded corny. Great Detective of the Gentlemanly Phantom Thieves; yes, that sounded much better.
The blue-eyed teenager by now was on the roof of an office building, looking out over the city and the skyscrapers overpowering the horizon. Let's see, the nearest location was... that way!
The first apartment was a bust, nobody was home, but that assured Kaito that he was guaranteed a hit on the next location, and sure enough, he found his best critic sulking on a park bench not three blocks away from the little girl's apartment. Gleefully proud of himself for his "detecting," Kaito flipped through the costume selection he'd brought for the day. The idea of disguising as himself, or even as Kudo himself, was tempting, but he decided that this was probably a time for tact over teasing (... must... resist... urge...) as he decided on his costume.
Uniform replaced with a business suit, tinted glasses and a few hair extensions to make his hair chin length, a few age lines here and there, and the faintest hint of a beard around his chin, Kaito became thirty-something Ishimura, trendy but decidedly middle-management music producer. Bobbing his head to some current J-Pop music, he strolled through the park a few times before shamelessly taking a seat next to his detective.
"When I said you were breaking, I sure didn't think you'd snap completely," Ishimura said in his rich baritone voice, speech as rhythmic as the music humming from his earphones.
The teen turned shrimp stiffened before giving the sigh of the oppressed. "Do you ever mind your own business?" he asked in an accusatory tone.
"That's like asking if I'm sane," Ishimura replied, an easy if slightly crooked grin on his face. "It depends entirely on who you're talking to."
"Go away," Kudo moaned, his rimmed eyes disappearing into his hands.
"Can't do that either, tantei-kun," Ishimura said in his more normal form of speech. "Talented critics like you are hard to come by, and I'd miss our little sparing matches if you went and decided to off yourself. Besides, Nobody Gets Hurt," he added in much more solemn tones.
Kudo didn't even bother to reply.
Kaito inwardly sighed. He could all too easily picture where the shrunken detective's mind was; he'd gone there once or twice when he looked, really looked, at the possible consequences of the decisions he'd made. Eyes unfocused as he made up his own scenarios, he decided to do what he did best: push buttons. Not in the Hattori foot-in-mouth fashion, but a true and proper button-pushing event, with all the bells and whistles.
Ishimura put that crooked grin back on his face and chuckled. "Oh, how the mighty have fallen," he said with a contented sigh.
"What does that mean?" Kudo asked in low tones.
"Just that you sure ain't what you're cracked up to be. All that hype, the stories in the newspapers, and all those beautiful heists, that intellectual foreplay and fun we had, and now I discover my best critic is a freakin' wuss," Kaito drawled, watching the boy's reaction from his peripheral vision.
Kudo winced but said nothing. One song finished in his ears and another came on. "'Oh, woe is me!'" he said in Conan's voice, perfect as always in intonation, "'My girlfriend got hurt and now I have to wallow in self-pity and misery! But no! Even that isn't enough; I have to be so filled with angst that I can't even use my ever-lovin' brain! My only recourse is to throw myself to the wolves and beg forgiveness for my numerous and completely imagined sins!'"
"There's nothing imagined about this," Kudo growled, his head sharply turning to Kaito's mockery of him. The thief internally winced slightly at the fierceness of the gaze but kept his Poker Face firmly in place.
"No," he drawled, back in Ishimura's voice. "Of course it isn't imagined. But I happen to know that the difference between a cardinal and a mortal sin is entirely based on perspective."
"So says the thief."
"No," Kaito said, with Kudo's voice, Kudo's tones, Kudo's words. "But I'm willing to stay alive long enough to see my goals accomplished."
The teen turned boy gasped, not expecting to hear his voice, opening his mouth to say something, but no words came out, realization of what Kaito was saying slowly sinking into his decidedly thick skull. The silence stretched out, Kaito watching as thought after thought flitted across the child's face. How on earth did he manage to fool the girlfriend, Kaito wondered. Everything showed on his face.
"... 'm tired..."
The voice was so small Kaito wasn't sure he heard it. He refocused on Kudo. The small boy's head was bent down, hiding his face, hunched over himself as if he were trying to shield himself from the world. Which, Kaito noted absently, was true to a large extent.
"I try and try and try, and she still got hurt. All I ever do is hurt her, and I can't stop it. What good... what good am I?"
The memory of the Mouri girl's tears on the phone as he called when the freckled kid got sick, Kaito decided, was not nearly as squirm worthy as listening to his best critic break into little pieces. He suddenly felt the intense need to be somewhere else, away from such a private thought process, while at the same time coming to terms with the surprising urge to reach out and put his hand on the kid's shoulder. Unsure what to do, he stood up, adjusting his tinted glasses to try and expend his suddenly nervous energy. And damn if there was no Aoko-skirt to flip for a distraction.
Then he heard a faint, "Kudo!"
Spinning his head around, he saw the other detective, Hattori, skidding to a halt, looking around to find his friend.
A soft smile that looked almost envious crossed his lips, and Kaito, Ishimura, turned around and looked at the seeming seven year old curled up on the bench.
"You know," he said, "For a guy that isn't much good, you sure have a lot of people who worry about you. I wonder what's wrong with them, unless they see something you don't?"
"Kudooo!"
Walking away, Kaito didn't need to turn to picture the teen toddler lifting his head up in shock as Hattori ran up to him, panting and out of breath.
"Don'cha.... pant.... evah..... huff, huff..... do that..... gulp.... again.... Ahou!"
"Hattori..."
"Ahou! ... Stupid thick headed... ahou! I oughta hit cha! Ya think yer're th' only one involved in this? Ya think I'd jus' stan' aside 'n' let cha get yerself killed? Ahou! Yer're better 'n 'at!"
Kaito grinned as he disappeared.
Hattori continued to pant and catch his breath, Shinichi staring at his best friend, wide eyed. The tall Osakan kept muttering "ahou" under his breath.
He remembered Ran, in her hallucinations, being so grateful that he'd returned to her, been with her all the time; and then he looked at Hattori, having run likely half the city to the ground to try and find him. And Kaitou Kid, in his own whimsical way, making sure Everybody's Safe. To expend so much effort for him, over him, after everything he'd done...
He gave a soft, tired smile, one that made Hattori pause in his panting tirade.
"Sorry, Hattori," Shinichi said in low tones. "I guess... I guess I lost my head."
"Damn straight!" Hattori shouted, but there was no malice in it, as he straightened and wiped the sweat from his chin. " 'm gonna have a welt th' size o' riceball thanks t' that sleep dart."
Shinichi grinned and shrugged his shoulders, putting his hands in his pockets. "I don't know," he offered, "We can hope it's an improvement."
Author's Notes: Poor Conan-kun. He's doing a little better, but he's still not going to be up to 100 percent for a few chapters. Here at least, he hit rock bottom and can only go up. We once again explain that Hattori's accent is purely our attempt to make him sound "Osakan" without having a specific region in mind when writing it.
Just out of curiosity, the manga doesn't do a good job with the translations of a Kansaiben. Do Heiji-kun's parents have the Osakan drawl?
In any event, hopefully we haven't dropped into "melodrama" too much. We're trying really hard to avoid it with this story, but Conan keeps racing right for it. We try to pull him back, but Conan can be quite stubborn.
Next time: Investigation type stuff.