This KID-centric chappy is hereby dedicated to Kirite/Chocolaty Taste for her lovely, amazing reviews of detailed win and awesome~
"Alright, Jii-chan. You know the plan, right?"
"Completely and totally." Jii gave Kaito a confident, somewhat weary smile. "We've gone over it enough; I've started seeing the diagrams in my sleep. I'll follow them after we're done if I can find them, don't worry. I usually see at least one or two of those men dressed entirely in black hiding in a back alley close by during the heists." He paused as he turned his attention to Kaito, taking his eyes off the road briefly. "Although I really do wish you'd explain to me why you're paying them so much attention all of a sudden."
Jii let his sentence drift off unfinished (biting his tongue on the 'young master' he would have typically used- Kaito was in uniform after all and Jii didn't want to use the honorative during Kaito being Kid) when it was evident that Kaito didn't want to discuss whatever it was that had suddenly led him to spend so much time on the other side of town as of late. Granted that Jii understood Kaito's actions at least somewhat- the men in black always skulking about did look and behave an awful lot like the same group that had threatened Toichi, then staged his murder in the guise of a 'horrific accident,' but Kaito had never really shown any interest in openly pursuing them until this latest heist.
The magician merely nodded before he completed his costume by placing the familiar showy, large monocle over his right eye, Kaito's normally widely grinning face and boisterous personality both instantly slipping behind the eerily calm and emotionless mask of Kaitou Kid as the eyepiece's familiar weight settled on his cheek and bridge of his nose. Kaito wanted to track down his brother if it was possible, and he was hoping that with any luck the men in black Agasa-hakase had referred to were in cahoots the same black-clad gentlemen that had been steadily, quietly pursuing Kaito from the shadows since he'd brought his father's white-clad alter ego back from the dead to try and draw them out of hiding.
Of course if it did turn out to be that same group, the question would then turn to why his brother had decided to join up with that criminal gang, especially since Kaito had gotten the rather firm impression from his highly unpleasant past interactions with the other boy as Kaitou Kid that Kudo Shinichi was just as much of a straight-arrow Mr. Goody Two Shoes Meitantei as Kid's other irritant Hakuba Saguru. That fact was quite possibly going to lead to some...rather interesting discussions between the two of them down the road depending on how things played out, but Kaito had to find his brother first and fully assess the situation before firming up his plan of action.
"We're almost there. Nakamori-keibu sounds particularly irritated with you this evening, might I add" chuckled Jii as he flipped off the police-band radio that Kaito had on 'long-term loan' from an older squad car that had been headed for decommissioning and resale. "Pretty bold of you to announce another heist so close to the police's headquarters after that last one."
Well, the last time I scheduled one close to the place was when that strange woman left the note in the diamond's case and then deliberately ran into me on the street the next day, setting me down the path of finding out that Kudo Shinichi and I are brothers. Of course, Kaito had no concrete proof that the strange woman he'd run into on the street (and he was also certain that the case of 'mistaken identity' and the German story had both been a clever ruse on her part) was also the one that had left the note inside of the case, but his well-honed intuition was screaming at him that they were one and the same and Kaito was never one to ignore the internal voice that had saved him on more than one occasion.
"Not really so bold. We both know the police can't catch me." Kid's knowing, smug smile slowly spread across Kaito's face as he spoke in the colder, deeper voice that he was very careful to always use when in uniform. It would have actually spooked him more than slightly, the older man knew, if Toichi hadn't done an eerily similar personality change during his own times in that showy white uniform. Jii supposed that there was a need for Kaito to distance himself mentally as much as possible from the showy persona while he played the role for the crowds- and his adoptive father's ghost, but Jii did find himself wondering sometimes if it was the best thing for Kaito's mental health.
The rest of the twenty-minute ride passed in a somewhat tense silence, the pair finally arriving at the predesignated hidden parking spot four blocks away from the robbery before disguising the van and finalizing the plans for their entry into the mansion's well-secured wing that actually housed the large sapphire that they were after. (Nakamori-keibu had apparently decided to increase the radius that was sealed off after the last heist that had embarrassed the police so much, Kaito noted with a somewhat bemused inwardly turned smirk that he wouldn't allow to crack Kid's mask.)
"Here's the fire escape I told you about," whispered Jii exitedly as he approached an abandoned warehouse and pointed to a series of metal ladders and landings leading directly up the side of the building. "Leads right up to the roof of the place, make a few rooftop leaps and you'll be on the roof of the mansion's easternmost guard shack. Of course, how you're going to get from there and into the house itself is-"
"Already planned out. Of course." Kaito grabbed the bottom rungs of the fire escape and quickly leapt onto the ladder's rungs before making his rather slow, shaky way up what he rapidly discovered to be a very aged, rusted fire escape that should probably have been replaced about ten years ago if not sooner. He finished scaling up to the roof while writing a mental Stick-It note to remind Jii to please actually check the different stairs and things that he'd be climbing during robberies if Jii was having to plan the route out without Kaito being able to do that checking like he normally did.
"Now, let's see where they're at in their patrols..." Kaito grabbed a pair of small binoculars out of a hidden inner pocket in his jacket and scanned the route he'd planned across the rooftops leading towards the mansion, trying to decide when to time his leaps and movements so one of the searchlights in the area wouldn't catch him in it (there were a few more searchlights than normal, too, he noticed- Nakamori-keibu must have seriously gotten angry about that last heist.)
He made the first flying leap a few moments later, hoping that the roof of the abandoned warehouse he was landing on was a solid as it seemed during his visual inspection. Kaito was happy when he managed to stick his landing right behind one of the massive steel pipes jutting up from the roof, exactly where he had wanted to wind up at. He allowed himself a single impatient huff while he waited for the spotlights to finish their sweep of the area before making his second jump, scrambling a bit to recatch his balance thanks to a distinctly un-Kidlike moment of nearly missing the ledge he'd headed for. Did I really misjudge the distance that badly?
It was after a few highly puzzled moments of pondering the question and studying the kump he'd just made that Kaito realized he hadn't misjudged the distance after all...it almost seemed like the edge of the building itself had moved back a bit in between his initial assessment of the gap and the leap. OK, wait. What? A building doesn't move like that... Kaito began inspecting the rooftop that he was on more carefully, so intent on trying to figure out what was going on that the faint grinding sounds issuing beneath him took a few moments longer to register than they normally would have even to his currently adrenaline-enhanced senses.
He began looking around for possible escape routes after his eyes caught sight of a very interestingly unmarked black helicopter that seemed to be headed for a landing on the roof of the very building he was on at the moment. Only one possible course of action led to him not exposing himself to either the searchlights or the approaching chopper, so he hopped into one of the large metal vent pipes on the roof and put its large 'lid' back into place, hoping that whatever was going on wouldn't take too long so he'd still be on time to the heist.
Kaito had to admit to himself while he readjusted his hat after he finished settling in to his hiding spot that an unmarked helicopter flying so close to a currently cordoned off police zone that at least seemed to have none of those said police questioning its presence was making him rather curious in spite of the fact that he really should have been focusing on the heist that would be going down shortly. Well, going down shortly if this strange helicopter didn't wind up causing him a considerable delay, he though darkly with a considerable amount of annoyance that made him carefully restrain a frown.
The overly loud buzz of the metal pipe vibrating around him thanks to the artificially generated wind generated by the landing chopper made him feel like hornets were surrounding him in the near-total darkness as the helicopter finished its landing. Kaito noticed that the noise seemed to grow slightly fainter after a couple of minutes, and he decided to risk taking off his hat momentarily so he could look around by pressing his head up against the top of the the metal pipe so that he could try and look out the small gap he had to try and see what was going on. He almost go knocked off balance again as he realized that the building was shaking a bit under him- so that explained the mystery of the moving building, it was probably designed to shift a bit to make sure that the helicopter had a little 'buffer room' in order to ensure a safe landing.
Kudo Shinichi had been the very last person thing that Kaito had ever expected to see at that moment through his admittedly narrow field of vision, but it was definitely the missing meitantei who was scrambling to slip the large hood he'd been wearing back into place after a gust blew the hood backwards.
"Tell me, Vermouth, are you making any real progress tracking...the subject down?"
Vermouth quickly suppressed a slight tic that had actually threatened to fully coalesce into a knowing smile. He was always so very cutely worried about his grandsons now that they'd decided to track them down and bring them into the fold, though of course He would never openly admit that blood relationship in order to curtail any chance of a coup d'etat attempted through exploiting that relationship.
"The visit to the hospital was most informative, yes." Vermouth wasn't going to reveal exactly how informative, not unless He asked directly. Besides, part of her wanted to see what sort of game the other silver bullet would play now that she'd pulled the trigger. "I've tracked down the man who arranged the adoption. I'll contact him very soon. I haven't talked to him yet because I'm still trying to come up with a plausible cover story for approaching him about the adoption." She wouldn't, of course, tell him that she'd already found his grandson and even contacted Kuroba Kaito face to face.
"Good. As you know, correcting that woman's mistake is at the top of my priority list." He let out a single cough before adding "Although I do have to say that I'm still not quite sure about this idea of yours. Bringing those others in like you have. Then again, I suppose since you were partially to blame for certain events you felt it necessary."
"It made the most logical sense at the time, and I still believe it does." Vermouth decided to display just enough indignation that the emotion would be perceived as real. "Would you rather they still be running around in their former occupations? Perhaps eventually deciding to dig around into some of our shell corporations and contacts in the process?"
"Of course not. Far better to have that intelligence of theirs working for us. But there are several of our named members who are...questioning of their loyalty to us. And rightfully so, I think upon further reflection. It's not as if they were raised within the Organization like Grenadine was."
Vermouth knew that this conversation had just turned very serious; Grenadine was very seldom mentioned even by his code name as per His instructions. Vermouth suspected that she was an exemption to the rule because she had helped raise Grenadine to an extent. The somewhat unwelcome but not unexpected news that the brain trust wasn't exactly trusted by senior members didn't shock Vermouth in the slightest- being in the Organization for any length of time tended to instill one with that sort of paranoia. "You know, perhaps it would interest Quinine to meet Grenadine, and vice versa." Vermouth left the reason unspoken since they both knew exactly why she was proposing the idea.
"No. Absolutely not." This was accompanied by a firm head shake and the familiar dismissive tone that told Vermouth in no uncertain terms that the meeting was over and the subject was not up for further deliberation. "Not until Quinine has proven himself enough to the Organization."
Vermouth nodded her head, then exited the room while wondering how best to make that meeting happen.