I have been having a bad week. I write under such circumstances, though I'm pretty sure some of it ends up being rather maudlin. ANYWAY. Have a chapter.

Cut: To separate out an individual from a herd or group, to forcibly isolate.

(14)
Cut

Tokyo was more fun than Osaka, Kaito thought to himself as he bounced into Division Two's Ekoda headquarters behind one Nakamori Aoko in order to deliver lunch to her father. He distance-dyed Hakuba's hair a dull red (he had to do something, but decided to be somewhat merciful on what) as soon as he spotted him, though Hakuba hadn't noticed them yet and Aoko clearly hadn't noticed Hakuba.

He considered the results—from this angle, it made it hard to recognize the British consultant, as the color looked natural, but it wasn't quite as uniform as he would have liked. It wasn't too noticeable, but he got more uniformity from working in close quarters. Clearly his long-distance dye-jobs required more practice. He was lucky it had left the bangs untouched, which would have it take longer for Hakuba to notice.

He hadn't used smoke, wanting to be subtle, and he'd used a quick-dry; so when Hakuba reached up to scrub his fingers through his hair, those fingers came down unstained. So, partial success, and Aoko didn't recognize their old high-school classmate from behind with his hair the wrong color, so didn't call a greeting as he was obviously busy. Kaito grinned and left it at that, wondering how long his favorite prank-target would take to notice the change.

Ten minutes later, Aoko was scolding her dad for something language-related (Kaito wasn't listening with any kind of attentiveness, thoughts on Shinichi and what he might be doing) when Hakuba tapped at the door before entering without waiting for an invite.

Aoko turned and blinked, and Nakamori-keibu shook himself, "Hakuba-kun? Wasn't your hair blond earlier?"

Two sets of eyes slid to Kaito while Hakuba took a second to register the implication. He raised a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose and visibly counted to ten, "Kuroba, when did you get here?"

"We passed you when you were using the break room as an office," Kaito informed cheerily.

"As the only part of my hair I can see is still the right color… what did you do to the rest of it?"

Aoko dug a compact out of her purse and passed it over, "It's not that bad, Hakuba-kun."

Hakuba eyed his reflection for a few moments, then sighed. "I suppose it could be worse. Have I done anything in particular to have warranted this, Kuroba?"

Kaito shook his head, "No, I was just testing how well I could do that from a distance. It's not as even as I want it to be," he informed blandly. "I mean, it worked well in that you didn't notice the dye when it hit you, but it doesn't look all that natural, so… needs work."

Nakamori-keibu scowled in a scolding manner and Aoko huffed and put her hands on her hips. Hakuba only sighed and shook his head, "Will you tell me how to remove it, at least?"

Kaito grinned, "Conditioner, rinse, then shampoo."

Hakuba blinked, "That was suspiciously easy."

Kaito opened his mouth to respond and paused, cut off by his phone. He held up a finger as he checked the screen, then frowned. That was—that was Takagi-keiji's number. He'd seen it in Shinichi's phone.

He snapped it open, "Kuroba Kaito," he said, sharp and a little worried.

"Ano… Kuroba-san? I'm at Beika's holding cells. Kudo-san came along for a questioning of one of the three men who were arrested for murder a few weeks ago, but when he saw the man through the glass, he just froze. He's not responding to me and I don't like the way he's holding his head. Is there anything I can do about this, or…?"

"Kuso," he managed, harsh. "If you can, get him somewhere isolated—I'll be there in thirty minutes, Keiji-san," he was already moving, sweeping past a confused Hakuba before anyone in the room could ask. "Does he have his emergency supplies with him, or am I going to need to get creative?"

Aoko and Hakuba were trailing after him, but he wasn't going to stop and explain. It was probably the men who'd shot him, and he was probably faking a flashback, but—well, the 'faking' part was only 'probably'. He needed to know for sure.

"He left his bag on his desk, I think. That's a different sector of the building, but I could ask Shiratori-san to bring it by…"

"Do it. Will he let you get close to him?"

"Not close enough to touch, but he doesn't seem hostile."

Kaito snorted, lengthening his stride and ignoring Aoko's call for him to wait, "He's never going to seem hostile. He's shocked out avoiding people when something's triggered him, and that could kill him in a permanent manner. See if you can get him to take the phone."

"Right," Takagi agreed on the other end of the line, then his voice went tinny with distance from the receiver. "Kudo-san? Kuroba-san wants to talk to you. Can you take the phone?"

A pause, then the tik-tik sound of a finger brushing a microphone. "Kaito?"

Unsteady, rough. Shinichi was a good actor, though, even if it had taken some very intensively immersive 'lessons' for him to learn. So.

"Shinichi," he pitched his voice to something soothing. "What happened? Are you all right?"

"The man in the holding cell—I know him," and Takagi was right next to him, so of course he couldn't say too much, and Hakuba and Aoko weren't far behind Kaito, who couldn't run without not being able to talk.

"Know how?"

"I can't—it's—I remember being… surprised, I think, then—noise. Pain. It's not—it's not clear. It's—" a low, pained hiss. "Sorry. Can't think. Head hurts. Where… are you?"

"Leaving Division Two in Ekoda," he informed. "I can call a cab—"

"Okay. Okay. I—Takagi-keiji? Is there—somewhere without people?"

Kaito couldn't make out the response, but Shinichi managed to give him an idea with his next words. "He says he's coming from the Ekoda precinct building." Another pause, then Shinichi was addressing him again, "Kaito, I'm giving the phone back to Takagi-keiji," there was reluctance there, and Kaito was starting to worry that part of the acting... wasn't.

"Okay. Just—are you all right, Shinichi?"

"I will be. Here," Kaito heard the phone change hands again, and decided to take Shinichi at his word. 'Will be' wasn't 'yes', but it wasn't as bad as it could be, either. Partial flashback, maybe, or possibly the not unheard-of forgetting to take care of himself. Shinichi was a bit… well. Careless, when it came to his own health.

"Kuroba-san? I'm going to use the landline to ask one of the Ekoda officers give you a ride. It'll be faster than a cab, and I think that whatever triggered this is important. I've already called the office; Shiratori said he'd bring Kudo-san's bag down when I said it had his medication in it. I think he's the only one in the division who hasn't noticed…"

Kaito made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh and stopped, "Right. I'm in the lobby of the Ekoda headquarters. I'll wait."

"Thank you," Takagi sounded relieved. "I'll give my phone back to Kudo-san—he was calmer when you were talking to him. Give me three minutes to get the call through."

"Okay. Thanks," a second later, it was Shinichi again. "Shinichi, talk to me. Um… weirdest non-fatality case you've solved. Go."

A pause, then a shaky laugh. "Weirdest non-fatality case…? Ah, you won't like that one, it involved sea life. But there was the one where a little girl arranged her own kidnapping…"

Kaito tapped a Morse message against the side of his phone, and a hesitation in the relating of the case—that poor kid must have been really lonely to pull something like that just to get her dad's attention—let him know Shinichi had gotten it. He then pretended to mute his end of the line and turned an impatient glower on Aoko and Hakuba, both looking confused and worried, though Hakuba's was touched with something closer to alarm.

"Kuroba, what…?"

"Can the interrogation wait? This is kind of important, you know," he snapped back, deliberately focusing on the worry that Shinichi wasn't entirely acting with his shaky voice. Letting that kind of snappiness show was something Kaito generally only did when truly and terribly stressed, and both of the people in front of him would know it.

"Kuroba-san?" one of the Ekoda Division One officers jogged into the room, not quite out of breath but obviously hurried.

Saved by the officer. How novel. "That's me," Kaito stepped sideways into the man's line of sight.

"I'm Hajime Keichi. Beika's Takagi-keiji called, said they need you in a hurry?"

Kaito nodded, already moving towards the officer, "They do. It's not dangerous yet, but…"

Hajime-san nodded sharply, already turning, "Right. This way—I'll give you a lift. We can be there in twelve minutes if we push it."

Kaito waved harshly in the general direction of the two who clearly wanted to question him, the gesture an obvious 'leave it', and took off at a jog to match the officer's.

Behind him, he heard Aoko's worried voice, "Wasn't he from Division One?"

xxxx

Eighteen minutes of phone time where Kaito kept Shinichi relating cases to him—a believable distraction method, considering this part of the building had more cameras than most, and Kaito opened the door to the viewing room Shinichi had been led to (it was overlooking a currently unused interrogation room), snapping his phone shut as he entered.

"Had your lunch, yet?"

Shinichi shook his head, relaxing a bit. "No. Shiratori hasn't been down, but I made sure to stay on top of it this morning. I'm okay for a while yet."

Kaito nodded, accepting that, and crossed the room to give Shinichi an up-close once-over. Shinichi sighed, but tolerated the obvious examination, letting Kaito catch hold of his chin and thumb up his eyelids in what was probably a show for the camera in the corner. "Kaito. I'm fine."

"Are not. Start talking."

Shinichi sighed, tipping his head forward to bang lightly off Kaito's shoulder, the dulled shimmer of the no-longer-luminescent blue runes catching the glare from the door window. The overheads were on, but the viewing rooms had purposefully low lighting so as to not disrupt the two-way mirror. "Get Takagi in here. I don't want to do this twice."

He had to tell partial truths, with the cameras. Might as well not have to repeat himself. Kaito knew the real story, anyway.

Kaito paused, then nodded and pulled away. "Fair enough. Sit down; I'll be back in a minute."

Well. This was going to be fun. The man he'd seen in the interrogation room hadn't been a surprise—he'd known he and the other two had been arrested for the murder they'd been planning, apparently not having stuck to the plan after he'd been shot—but it had somehow felt a bit like a shock, anyway. It had been the one who'd shot him, the one whose face he'd seen over him as his vision had darkened. The other two, he couldn't remember as clearly, visually, though he remembered their voices well enough.

Still, standard procedure was to not let the suspects (they'd been caught leaving, not quite in the act, and hadn't confessed or been convicted, thus the interrogation) see or speak to each other so they couldn't collaborate stories. The fact that it was the one he recognized the easiest would probably turn out to be a good thing, when it came to being able to scare a confession.

Now he only needed to 'explain' to Takagi when Kaito brought him back.

xxxx

I feel like this was an awkward place to leave off, somehow, but I wanted to post anyway. So, here I have left it, and it has been posted. I'll get the next chapter up soon, anyway, as I have both the time and the inclination to write at the moment.