Who ever said good old-fashioned detective work can't get you good results? :D
To the Anon who reviewed, I thank you for your honest feedback. It's always appreciated. ;) However, I will warn you that Nostrum and The Traveller aren't the smartest people around, and they make mistakes. Kyle in particular has issues with ego and pride. Nostrum's just a sociopath that doesn't think before he acts. And the Protectors are kind of multiverse police, but kind of not. They're pretty hands-off and don't get involved unless they really need to. There's actually a more in-depth reason concerning their actions, but that's a story for another day. I will talk more about the VIPs and how they're related to the Protectors later on in this story, though, since it'll be related to the plotline.
As for why they just spilled the beans so easily, Hannah thought the reasons for them not telling the Conan characters everything to begin with were stupid, so she orchestrated events so Conan would go investigate. Kyle realized he'd been had and just went with it. Nostrum was his former apprentice turned enemy, so he doesn't trust people very easily anymore.
If anybody has any more questions or wants clarification on something, feel free to ask!
Chapter Fourteen
Ai Haibara, the intrusive one, was preparing for another strike against Ran. She was trying, perhaps selfishly, to break Shinichi and Ran up permanently without being too mean to Ran. Ran would still be sad, of course, but she wanted the breakup to be Ran's decision. She was in her adult form currently, but in disguise. In her world, she had created a pill that negated the effects of the temporary cure immediately when taken, so you could control when someone transformed back. That was what she had used when she had barely escaped from Sera, and it was what she was planning to use later that day when her plans were done.
She entered the arcade and took off her sunglasses. As her eyes adjusted to the difference in lighting, she spotted what she was after – one of those print club machines. She walked over to the machine, brushing past the curtain, put in some money, and prepared to take the necessary picture.
Suddenly someone joined her in the booth, jamming her up against the back wall. It was a tight fit, and she couldn't even see the guy's face. "You're Ai Haibara, right?" the guy said.
Haibara was silent, trying to figure out how to escape. Then she felt a hand on her shoulder. "Yes, it seems you are who I'm looking for. I happened to get into a fight with someone that knew of your current fish-out-of-water status, so I thought I'd offer to help you. That's the correct expression, right?" He was quiet for a moment, seemingly thinking about it. "Yeah, it is. Pleasure to meet you." Haibara felt her hand being grabbed and pumped in a handshake.
"Who are you?" she demanded, slowly turning around to look at the guy. He looked like a twenty-something guy, good-looking to boot.
"I've had many names," he replied. "Emperor, Nostrum, the Paint Man, the list goes on."
Haibara jumped when she heard that. 'The Paint Man? That serial killer?' To him, she shouted, "Get out of here! Leave me alone!" Or at least she tried to. She'd barely gotten a word out before a hand got slapped over her mouth.
"Hey, let's not have any of that," he said firmly. "I tracked you down because I need a favor. So let's trade. I'll send you back to your boyfriend right now. In return, I ask you to hold onto something for me. I have a feeling I'm going to be caught in the next forty-eight hours, so I need to take precautions."
Haibara was surprised, but she didn't really have a say in the matter. The Paint Man dug around in a briefcase he'd brought and passed her an object wrapped in a cloth. It was large and surprisingly heavy. "What is it?"
"You'll know soon enough," the Paint Man replied. Then he put a hand on her temple. "Now, receive my power!"
Instantly, Haibara doubled over from sheer pain, radiating from the point on her temple where he'd touched her. He let go almost instantly, but it only got stronger from there.
"OK, my job is done," said the Paint Man, sliding back the curtain and heading out. "Keep ahold of that thing for me and we'll call it even, all right?"
Her head still pounding, Haibara stumbled out of the booth into the arcade. The light filtering in from the front door blinded her, so she covered her eyes as she stumbled into a wall.
"Hey, are you OK?" a patron asked.
"That guy that came out before me…grab him," Haibara got out, struggling for breath.
Considering she wasn't acting right, the patron had no doubt she wasn't lying. "Hey, get him!" he shouted. There was a pounding of feet on the tiled floor as nearby male patrons ran to her aid. Haibara's vision had cleared by now, and she saw the Paint Man effortlessly brushing off the attackers. Then the arcade door burst open and that Kyle guy burst in.
"NOSTRUM!" he bellowed. "What are you in here doing?"
The fight stopped instantly. "Well, look who it is," said Nostrum. "I had a feeling I'd run into you today." He brushed off the remainder of his attackers and approached Kyle. "I knew when I got confronted by that girl on the tower that you were someone around. Turns out I've met you before and didn't even know it! Good work on your disguise, since it fooled me completely."
"Come with me," said Kyle. "You're stirred the pot too much here. They were on the scene even before you made that broadcast. They had helicopters around the top of the tower in minutes after the murder, and they've been interrogating people about your whereabouts. They've been forgoing their usual memory-wiping methods."
"That serious, huh?" Nostrum grinned. "Well, I've always wanted to make a splash, and now I have."
"They won't reform, Nostrum," said Kyle. "It's not in their nature. There are other ways of making the Protectors pay for their cruel practices. Purposely riling them up like this was incredibly irresponsible and stupid."
"Oh, but you don't know my full plan yet!" Nostrum said in a sing-song voice. "I don't have any intention of telling you, either, or of letting you interfere, so I guess I need to get you out of the way. This isn't personal, so don't take it that way." Then he leaped at Kyle, starting a fight.
"Don't do this!" Kyle exclaimed as he was pushed out of the arcade by the ferocity of Nostrum's attacks. He appeared to be using karate on Kyle. Kyle seemed to be unwilling to fight him, which probably meant he was going to eventually lose.
It was then that Haibara lost consciousness, tumbling to the ground as the onlookers still stared out the door.
XXX
"And that's why you're the culprit!" Conan announced through the bowtie, imitating Sonoko's voice.
The criminal broke down. "He found out I had sold substandard property and was blackmailing me over it. He wanted thousands of yen a month, and it kept going up! I was about to go broke!" With a gesture, Megure motioned for Takagi to take the culprit away, leaving his two coworkers in a state of shock.
'Ugh, that was exhausting,' Conan thought. The trick had involved the force of a toilet flush, some fishing line, and a katana, among other things. Thinking about it made it sound even more outlandish.
Sonoko yawned loudly as Ran congratulated her for solving the case. 'Now, back to the Paint Man case,' Conan thought, mentally switching gears.
They'd been on their way to the fight scene again to look for clues when they'd been distracted by the case. A friend of Kogoro's had recognized Ran and asked for assistance with something unrelated when the corpse had been found nearby.
The three left the building and headed for the fight scene. It looked the same as before, but the entire street was cordoned off while the police investigated. The case was being handled by another division since it was just a fight and not a major crime or a murder. Conan had heard that Sera had been interrogated by the police about it, but all she'd said was that she and that Elsa girl had been tracking the Paint Man and gotten into an argument with him. The girls got trapped in the crowd, so Conan used it to slip away and get inside the scene.
To his surprise, he saw Heiji there, alone. He was busy studying a drain. "Oh, Kudo!" Heiji exclaimed. "I thought you were busy with those weird students."
"I solved that mystery," said Conan. "They're on our side, as far as I can tell. What've we got?"
That made Heiji smirk. "It seems our friend the Paint Man dropped something in his haste to get away. I asked some taxi companies, and one of their drivers remembered having picked up a businessman around that time yesterday one street over." He pointed in the appropriate direction. "Since he bolted that way, I thought I'd look for clues between here and there, and I found somethin' good!" He reached into his pocket, took out a handkerchief, and unfolded it.
'This is-' Conan thought in surprise.
"Yep," said Heiji, still smirking. "It's a coin locker key. It even has a sticker saying what station the locker's at. There was a crack in the pavement, so I'm guessin' he tripped over it and it came out of his pocket. So, what do you think? Care to check it out?"
Now Conan smirked. "You'd better believe it."
XXX
Later that evening, the two detectives were at the station, staking out the locker. The locker had had a bunch of latex masks and other disguise stuff in it, which confirmed they were on the right track. The most surprising thing was a picture of a small Buddha statue owned by Beika Temple, which had recently been stolen. "Wow, so that guy Kyle is actually some fictional character named Georath that travels between worlds? Like alternate worlds?" Heiji said, having just heard Conan's explanation.
"Yep. Hannah-san had a book that explained a lot of it. Apparently they're here to capture Nostrum, aka the Paint Man. They have access to a lot of futuristic technology, which to us would look like magic. The ship they used to come here is parked on the roof of the detective agency, but it's invisible."
"Geez, you aren't making this up, are you?" said Heiji, rubbing his head in confusion. "And those guys that jumped me and Kazuha, they're called Protectors?"
"Supposedly they keep order through any means necessary."
"Jerks," Heiji muttered. They ended their conversation abruptly when they saw someone heading for the coin locker they were watching. "Oh, now who's this?" Heiji asked.
The guy searched his pocket for a key, but when he didn't find it, he put one hand on the handle, one foot on the wall of lockers, and ripped the door right off its hinges.
'Whoa,' Heiji breathed. The suspect grabbed his stuff and hightailed it out of the station, with Conan and Heiji following his every move.
As they hit the street, the suspect began walking at a more normal pace. After walking for half a block, he detoured into an alleyway. Heiji and Conan made to follow him, but as they turned the corner, Heiji was suddenly clotheslined by the suspect's outstretched arm. "You two are following me," said the suspect in an annoyed tone. "Just great."
Heiji rubbed his head where it had hit the guy's arm. "Yeah, you dropped your key, so we tracked you down."
"I can see that." The Paint Man shrugged. "Pity it won't help you catch me."
"Your friend 'Kyle' explained everything," said Conan. "So we're going to take you to him."
"Right, him," said the Paint Man darkly. "I got in a fight with him earlier, so I'm not exactly at full strength right now. And besides, you don't want to try and capture me anyways." The Paint Man smirked evilly at this. "When I was out doing some reconnaissance earlier, I happened across a friend of yours. I think you call her 'Haibara.' It turns out her memories got swapped out with another version of herself in another world, so I stepped in to fix it. The problem is that I got interrupted partway through by your friend Kyle. So the memory swap isn't complete. Your friend is now currently walking around with two sets of memories in her head. Or maybe it's just partial memories, or just fragments. In any case, only I can fix her back to normal, so you really don't want to arrest me."
"Kyle-san or Elsa-san will fix the problem," Conan told him.
"Oh. Right," the Paint Man said. "I'd almost forgotten she was here. Your friend Kyle won't fix it because he doesn't want to admit it caused more problems than it solved. But she will, won't she? Well, there goes that trump card." He took on a fighting stance. "How about this? The three of us have some old fashioned fisticuffs, with no magic or technology. I think I can manage that."
Conan raised his watch and fired a tranq dart, but nothing happened. 'Crap, I used it up on the deduction earlier!' he thought. Then he went to Plan B. He popped out a soccer ball, turned on his shoes, and kicked it at the man's face as hard as he could. The ball slammed into him, but ricocheted off of him and went high into the sky, out of sight.
"Ow," said the Paint Man sarcastically. Then Heiji got involved, picking up a metal pipe like a kendo stick and waving it threateningly. "Oh, are you accepting my challenge?" the criminal smirked.
"You'd better believe it," Heiji growled.
The Paint Man picked up another pipe. "Oh, I'm going to enjoy this. Hey, fake kid!" he addressed Conan. "Stand back unless you want to get hurt!" Conan wisely stood back as the two began circling each other.
Heiji struck first. He suddenly dashed forward and took a swing at the guy's leg. The pipe glanced off like the ball had before. "Hey! What about makin' this a fair fight?" Heiji complained.
"If you insist," he replied, waving his hand. Then he attacked Heiji, forcing Heiji to block his assault. Conan, seeing that Heiji was pretty evenly matched, quickly sent a text to Ran to tell her what was going on. He couldn't contact Kyle directly due to not having his number, so it was his best bet. Normally he would've just gone to the police, but he couldn't trust them now with those black-suited guys sniffing around. The suits would just as easily arrest him as they would the criminal, and he didn't really need that.
Heiji got away from the assault, sidestepped another attack, and pressed his advantage. Nostrum countered, but the pipe did graze his arm, drawing blood. The blood was a sickening greenish color.
"Now that's not nice," said Nostrum, taking a step back before charging forward with the pipe swinging crazily. He backed Heiji into a wall and leaned over him, their pipes locked in an X.
That was when the cavalry arrived. Kyle, Elsa, and Hannah raced in from the street, took stock of the situation, and got to work. Elsa raced forward and grabbed Nostrum in a headlock from behind, forcing him to let Heiji go as he tried to pry her off. Hannah quickly got Heiji and Conan to a safe distance. Kyle, meanwhile, was busy fiddling with what looked like a tablet. "All right, hold him still," he told Elsa.
"Easy for you to say!" she shouted. She put her palms over his eyes, muttered something in an undertone, and bright light erupted from her palms and into his eyes.
"Aargh!" Nostrum screamed, now dancing like crazy trying to throw her off. Blinded, he stumbled into a wall and a couple of trash cans. Since he knew where the wall was now, he backed into it as fast as he could over and over, squashing Elsa between him and wall. She visibly winced as he kept it up before finally dropping off of him and retreating to a safe distance, clutching her ribs and wincing from pain.
"You OK?" Hannah asked Elsa concernedly.
Elsa checked herself over. "I've had worse. You remember the time I got thrown fifty feet into that freezing lake?"
"You got thrown into a lake?" Hannah asked. Elsa's face took on an 'oh crap' look, which led Conan to believe she'd let something slip she shouldn't have.
With Elsa in the clear, Kyle acted. He pushed something on the tablet and large metal strips suddenly emerged from the ground, quickly weaving themselves around Nostrum until they formed a cage.
Nostrum tried to escape, but he wasn't quick enough. "Oh, all right; I give up," he said, sitting down cross-legged.
"You've actually got him?" Heiji asked Kyle. Wordlessly, Kyle hit a button and Nostrum and the cage vanished into thin air.
"Yep," he said, smirking. "He's not going anywhere anytime soon. At least, I hope not. Knowing him, he could very easily have prepared for this."
It seemed a little too easy, but Conan wasn't about to say anything else, not after what he'd just seen. How had Elsa shone that light into his eyes anyways? She hadn't had any flashlights or anything.
Guess what? The Haibara subplot wasn't actually a subplot at all! It was setting up for all this! Nostrum might be caged, but that doesn't mean the story is over. The next big case is the theft of something important! I wonder what it is...
Oh, and I have exams this week, so updates might be more sporadic than normal. Of course, I've been updating more and more infrequently lately anyways, so that's not saying much. :P