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Chapter 20

"Miyano Akemi, huh?" Kaito tilted his head slightly, flicking playing cards through his fingers in restless patterns. He knew the name, of course, and the story. Shiho's sister, a death that Shinichi-as-Conan couldn't prevent (too small, too slow) and the reason Haibara Ai ever came to be.

Shinichi nodded tiredly, "Haibara... never got over that, not really. Not even when she decided to bury Shiho forever."

Kaito nodded, remembering the grief the girl had tried to hide those few times she'd spoken of her sister. "They set her up, right? They were planning to kill her whether she pulled off the robbery or not?"

Shinichi sighed, letting his head drop back against the couch cushions in the Kudo mansion's library. "Yeah, and with how widespread they are..."

"Getting them both out will be the easy part," Kaito agreed, knowing full well that even that would be tricky at best. "Keeping them safe afterwards..."

"If Ai's back, we could keep them together and get them out of the country. They might look for the Miyano sisters, but Shiho and Ai aren't even in the same age-group. If they also weren't in the same country, Akemi and Ai would have that chance for the lives they've always been denied."

"Akai would be able to get them somewhere safe and Akemi really did love him, from what I heard. She didn't care that he used her at first, because she understood that his reasons changed and he didn't want her in danger," Kaito mused, glancing at the detective from where he was leaning against one of the ludicrously huge and completely filled bookshelves.

"We'd have to find a way to let them know we want to help them, but that will be hard to do without someone like Gin catching on."

Kaito frowned. "... and Shiho doesn't have any reason to trust us, yet, especially not with a claim like 'the poison that's never failed on a human and leaves no traces won't kill you, but make you look about seven and give you a way out of this insane criminal syndicate you're in'."

"I'd think we'd lost our minds if I hadn't lived it," Shinichi agreed wryly. "It might be easier to approach Akemi with an offer of sanctuary and just have her tell her sister that we're who to come to if she needs help."

"If Shiho thought Akemi was dead... it's cruel, but things would probably work out in a similar way to how they'd happened last time. No guarantees, but..."

Shinichi nodded, pushing himself more upright. "It's the best option we have. It may not work, but we just don't have anything else to even try that isn't more likely to hurt than help."

That was an irritating realization. They knew so much about quite a few of the agents of just about every large-scale policing quality (FBI, CIA, Interpol, the Japanese Secret Police, MI6, the list went on) and the Organization as well as a bit about several smaller-scale criminal outfits (including one led by a crazy man who decided to fake a bioterrorism attack), but they didn't have the information they needed now.

It had been obsolete; there had been no reason to learn the specifics so long as they knew generally what had happened and why, and Haibara had been reluctant to talk about it for obvious reasons.

Who would have expected it to turn so important one day (not-passed)?

"We don't even know where Shiho's lab is to keep a eye on it," Shinichi murmured.

Kaito considered, "We can send out the troops with face-recognition software and hope for the best. Gin and Vodka went there pretty often, if what Haibara said was accurate." Hope for the best, indeed, because if losing a stranger had broken Shinichi as much as it had, losing Haibara would break him so much worse, maybe more than Kaito could put back together.

Failure was not an option, Kaito decided. Not this time.

xxxx

While doves were set to combing the city (Shinichi never asked why Kaito's were so much smarter than most and settled for being happy that they were) Shinichi and Kaito went through the motions of daily life. This started with seeing off Shinichi's parents at the airport so his dad would make his next large-scale book signing on time.

Yuusaku and Yukiko exchanged a glance before giving their farewells to the teens and the writer offered a smile, "We'll be back in three weeks."

Shinichi paused, eying his parents' expressions for a moment. "You don't have to do this."

Yukiko was the one to answer, uncharacteristically serious. "We want to."

Shinichi's head bowed almost of its own accord, and when he looked back up, a soft smile had eased some of the strain from around his eyes. "Thank you."

It was Yuusaku's turn to bow his head as Yukiko's shoulders dropped a bit. "We haven't been very good parents to you, Shinichi," the writer murmured, "Not if you're thanking us for coming home."

xxxx

"... I'm starting to think we should just hide out at the police station for the rest of eternity," Kaito mused, observing the gruesome scene of the latest case with weary detachment. It was the third one in less than seven hours, and Kaito had to wonder if whatever had determined that Shinichi had to see every case within a thousand kilometers of wherever he was staying at any given point in time had decided that break time was over.

Shinichi snorted, "You'd either make them the most open-minded and effective violent crimes force in the world or send them all to the psyche-ward within two weeks."

Takagi picked his way across the room towards them, grimacing as he sidestepped slowly drying blood-splatter and avoiding the body by wide margin. Once he was within polite range, he sighed at them, "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear any of that. What have you got for us this time, Kudo-san?"

Shinichi scanned the scene a fifth time, taking in clues that seemed too familiar, too easily read. Add in equally familiar faces... Shinichi shook his head and broke down the scene.

Kaito moved closer to him, fingers tapping lightly against his arm. 'Another repeat?'

A short nod and finger-flick replied, 'You heard Nakamori-keibu. I see almost all of them. The intentional ones, at least.'

Kaito sighed, 'Point,' he tapped back. 'Too many to keep track of, time-wise.'

Another nod, resigned. 'I just wish...'

'We'll do all we can,' Kaito assured. 'We can't save them all. Not even most. But... we can save some, when we see something coming.'

Shinichi nodded. 'Everyone we can.'

'Everyone we can,' Kaito agreed.

xxxx

"Everyone they could" included Miyano Akemi, if they played their cards right.

First, though, they had to make contact and make it look incidental. That was where Kaito came in.

Juggling multi-colored plastic balls while turning the corner at the side of Akemi's apartment building (timing provided by a well-trained dove) had Kaito bumping into the low-ranking member of the Organization and knocking her briefcase and his own colorful toys scattering.

The briefcase popped open as it hit the ground, sending papers out across the mostly-vacant sidewalk while the bright plastic continued rolling. Kaito squawked in surprise and started giving hasty apologies while Shinichi feigned a face-palm of exasperation. "Kaito, go get your balls. I'll help clean up the rest of your mess. Sorry about this, miss."

Akemi, forgiving as she was, smiled and waved off the apologies. "It's all right," she assured, kneeling to start gathering up undoubtedly scrambled sheets of paper.

Shinichi crouched down next to her, helping to corral printouts (filing away every little bit of information he could glean in those short moments with obviously encoded kanji) and tilted his head enough to hide his face if they had anyone watching through binoculars. The jammer that he'd switched on during the distraction of the colorful collision provided defense from anything electronic. "They're going to kill you," he said softly.

She froze for a brief moment, almost indiscernible, before shuffling a set of papers into a neat pile. "I don't know what you're talking about," she stated, voice calm and steady.

Shinichi noted that her fingertips were white where they pressed against paper and continued, still carefully soft, "Miyano Akemi, older sister to Miyano Shiho. A lesser member, easily ignored by those higher-ranked and kept only because of familial ties. Before you were used as an 'in' by an FBI infiltrator, that is. That infiltrator ended up regretting using you, entirely because he felt he'd placed you in danger. He has. The Organization has determined you a threat, if a minor one. You know how they handle threats."

From the slight tremor of her hands, she knew very well.

"The bank job is a setup. They want you to fail. The only reason they haven't killed you outright is that your sister said she'd stop working on their precious APTX if they did. If you fail or otherwise do anything to compromise the Organization, they would have an excuse, but they intend to kill you at the end whether you succeed or not. When they do, you sister will refuse to continue working on the drug. She knows what it's used for and she hates it, but she rates you above strangers. Without you in the picture, she would sooner take that drug herself than continue aiding them.

"We can help you if you let us. My name is Kudo Shinichi. If you refuse my aid yourself, at least tell your sister I will help if either of you ask for it. I won't contact you directly again; with the way they've been watching you it's too dangerous." He rose up out of his crouch, settling stacked papers into a neat pile. "I really am sorry about that," he said again, friendly and casual, handing back the printouts. "I hope things aren't too hard to get back in order."

It took her a moment to gather herself, but she let him pull her back to her feet. "Everything is numbered, it won't take long," she assured, falling into the fake conversation easily enough. "Well, have a good day," she dismissed politely and Shinichi nodded to her before going over to help Kaito locate the last of the colored plastic balls.

Kaito waved over at her and added his own slightly sheepish "Sorry!"

Akemi proved her training by merely smiling back and waving the apology off, "No harm done," she called back.

"All right, no more juggling today. You're grounded."

Kaito's mouth dropped open in a dramatic splutter, "But-but—Shin-chan!"

Around the edge of the building, still visibly making a fuss, and Shinichi offered the abbreviated gesture they'd long used for a generic 'objective accomplished'. The message had been delivered.

Now all they could do was wait.

xxxx