Disclaimer: I don't own DCMK

Midnight White

25: Bait and Baited

When the alert came, Yamada Koji had grabbed his bike and headed straight for Beika Park. It wasn't the closest of the hot spots to his house, but it was the one with the fewest lights. With his supernaturally keen night vision, he figured that would be where he would be of the most use.

Wheeling so sharply into the park entrance that his bike nearly tipped over, he leapt off the vehicle and sprinted in the direction of the shouting. Halfway there he saw two officers lying sprawled out on the ground. His pulse quickened and he dropped down beside them, shaking fingers grasping for their wrists. They both had pulses, but they were weak. They also appeared to be sopping wet.

Cursing silently, he fumbled his phone out of his pocket and called an ambulance before setting off again.

At the heart of the park lay a large, open field. On days when the weather was good people often used the field for soccer games and other recreational sports or simply as a nice place for a family picnic. Now however it looked like a war zone.

Black figures surged back and forth beneath the night sky. To anyone else it would have been impossible to say more about the situation than that, but to the aspiring reporter the darkness was no hindrance.

There was water everywhere. But it wasn't lying on the ground in pools, soaking into the earth like it should be. No, it was writhing and leaping like a living thing—several living things—translucent and almost silent yet clearly not harmless. Like hungry beasts, the water lunged and caught its victims, wrapping them in its watery embrace until lack of air left them limp and helpless in its grasp. Even as Yamada arrived the air cracked with the sound of gunfire as one police officer fired twice at the watery form rushing at him. It was useless.

The reporter spared a moment to wonder how in the world the situation had turned into this. On the other hand, the how didn't seem very important at the moment. Later it would be important, he knew, but right now it was the least of their concerns.

The center of the commotion was a tall man the reporter recognized from photos he'd seen of Yamaki Ryo. The water manipulator, he recalled, not that he couldn't tell just by looking at this point. Strewn around the rest of the field were what looked like just about all the police who'd responded to the call. A handful of non-police were scattered among the victims, some of them more familiar than others. The only person still left standing was the woman who had first dialed in the alarm.

Mia was squared off now against the water manipulator. Yamada couldn't stop himself from gaping for a moment. The woman's entire body was glowing as she crackled with electricity. Her hair was a wild mane around her head, the sparks dancing through it making it look bizarrely like she was wearing a thundercloud. The sparks turned to thin serpents of electricity that wove through her clothes and danced across her skin in eerie patterns.

Her eyes narrowed as she braced her feet and raised her right hand.

Lightning flashed across the field, momentarily turning the night to day, but instead of striking Yamaki, it encountered a whirling wall of water and was promptly absorbed. The water swirled around its wielder, forming a spinning dome of protection that, unlike the watery prisons he had used upon the police, was hollow inside. His flat, expressionless eyes locked with Mia's through the water and she braced herself, calling again to the crackling, buzzing energy that was now coursing through her veins.

"I'm gonna blast you right out of your bubble," she announced as she gathered more and more power into her hands. Before she could finish however the remaining water prisons abandoned their captives to twine together into a single, rushing torrent that roared towards her—a tidal wave on dry land.

There was no way she was going to outrun it, and she hadn't gathered enough power to obliterate it. Gritting her teeth, she squeezed her eyes shut and braced for impact. Instead of the overwhelming, unstoppable pressure of fast running water however, she felt a sudden chill wash over her. It came so quickly and so suddenly that it felt like a physical wave as tangible as the watery one she'd expected to be crushed by. Her entire body went numb with it and for a single heartbeat she wondered if this was what it felt like to die. But then the feeling was gone and the night air rushed back in to wrap her in its comparative warmth.

Cautiously, she opened her eyes. For a moment all she could see was a frosted white. Tilting her head back, she realized that she was looking up at the very wave that had been about to crush her, only it was now frozen solid. She could feel the chill emanating from it to compliment the frost that now covered the ground. Even as she stood there she could see small flakes of snow beginning to fall. Closer towards the man who'd assaulted her, the ground grew thick with snow, an island of winter in the middle of the field. Stepping around the wave, she saw that the dome of water that had been shielding the man was now just as solid as said wave. And standing next to the glittering, frosted dome was a familiar teenager tugging his jacket closer about himself as he eyed the man now testing the insides of the frozen dome. Satisfied that the guy wasn't getting out any time soon, he turned to survey the rest of the field.

"Are you all right?" he asked, spotting Mia.

"Yes, thank you," she replied, curiosity making her trudge closer to get a better look at the dome. The fact that it had been caught mid swirling motion had left rather beautiful patterns in its surface. As she approached however the air grew steadily colder. In her T-shirt and jeans, it got unbearable pretty quick and she stopped still some distance away.

"Sorry, it's radial," the detective apologized, waving a hand vaguely to indicate his personal winter-scape. "I have to be at the middle. You might want to get everyone away from that wave over there. It's going to melt soon and that's a lot of water."

"Already done, and everyone's breathing," another voice called out and they both turned to see Yamada waving at them from where he had just dragged the last of the unconscious bodies out of harm's way. "I think he took all the water away when he went for that final assault, so no one's going to drown," he continued. Suddenly his expression turned to one of alarm. "There's someone else in there!"

Confused, the detective and the linguistics student followed the direction of his gaze to the frosted dome still standing beside the former. From where she stood, Mia couldn't see a thing, but Shinichi stiffened. The shadow of Yamaki Ryo had been joined inside his dome by a second, smaller one. But even as he guessed who it was, both shadows vanished.

His breath left him in an irritated sigh as he let his mental grip on the surrounding universe go and the temperature returned to normal. The ice dome immediately began to glisten then slough away to become a large, muddy splotch on the field.

"I guess we should have expected that," he muttered to himself before turning back to the field at large. "so who here knows what happened?"

X

Kaito did not like the idea of leaving—he wanted to be where he could keep an eye on his (rather accident prone) detective—but the alarm from Ekoda had been sent from Aoko's phone.

"Don't worry about me, I'll be fine," Shinichi had insisted, correctly interpreting his hesitation. "You have to go. You're better equipped to deal with most of what they could be up against than they are."

"The Uchimura girl could be there," he'd pointed out.

"And she might not. You'll regret it if you don't go."

And damnit but Shinichi was right. If something happened to Aoko because he hadn't been there when he could have helped, he'd never forgive himself. But the same held true for Shinichi. Still, Shinichi was more accustomed to dealing with criminals than Aoko was. Hell, the Beika police were rather more used to dealing with these kinds of things than most. So he had opened his glider and headed for Ekoda, hoping he was making the right choice.

The Ekoda hot spot was the sprawling parking lot outside of a plot that was supposed to become a shopping center. Construction had yet to begin however and the place was both spacious and empty almost all around the clock. With no obstacles, Kaito had a clear view of the entire area as he flew over it.

The first thought that crossed his mind was a momentary confusion as to whether he could have gone to the wrong place. But he had a pretty good sense of direction and he was pretty sure this was the place. So when had all the trees moved in? They were all the same height too, and practically the same shape.

On second thought, they didn't really look like trees. A closer inspection revealed that they were moving, grappling with figures that Kaito recognized as police. Every last one of the things looked like a duplicate of the one that had attacked Hattori in the park. He had thought it looked like some kind of tree bark covered stick monster that time too. It had never occurred to him to think that there might be twenty of them though. He'd assumed originally that it was a particularly unfortunate victim of the blue smoke, but that theory looked in need of revision.

The thing was, if they were all the same… Narrowing his eyes, he made another circuit over the lot. Each of the creatures was engaged in grappling with a different non-creature. However though the stick creatures were apparently much stronger than their fragile appearance suggested, their movements were clumsy. So while they were doing a fairly decent job keeping everyone's hands occupied, they weren't making all that much headway in doing any more than that. The three stick creatures on the eastern edge of the parking lot however were an entirely different story. These three had ganged up on two officers Kaito recognized from his task force. One, he knew, had a black belt in Taekwondo. The other was Kimura, the officer who could walk through walls. These three had obviously learned the merits of teamwork. They were circling the two officers, forcing them away from the rest of the melee. The policemen in question had their backs to each other, eyeing the creatures' claw-like fingers with wary eyes.

Tracing the path in which the two were being herded, Kaito spotted the low wall that ran along the lot's eastern border. Indigo eyes had just picked out the form of a person crouched behind that wall when the world vibrated.

The entire city of Tokyo shook as the night sky over the city blazed like the sun had decided on a whim to make an appearance off schedule. When the blaze of brilliance died down to the simmer of flames and the black film of smoke, the city lay in breathless shock around the blackened remains of what had once been the Maruoki Laboratory, one of the newest and largest medical research facilities in the city. The entire building had dissolved, leaving behind it a deep, smoldering crator rather reminiscent of cartoon depictions of a meteor landing site.

In the parking lot in Ekoda, everyone stood frozen, their heads turned in the direction of the explosion. The silence hung thick around them, breathless and stunned as the rest of them. It wasn't until several minutes later that people realized that the bark monsters were gone. Kaito noted with chagrin that the person he was sure had been controlling them had similarly vanished.

Well, no help for it now.

He landed lightly in the parking lot next to a slightly scratched up Nakamori-keibu who was busy inspecting his daughter for any signs of injury. The girl herself was pale but Kaito was relieved to see that that seemed to be it.

Hakuba was the first to notice KID's arrival. "Were you able to see what caused that explosion?"

"I don't have binoculars for eyes, Tantei-san," the magician quipped. "I see you lot do not appear to have had a very successful night."

"There were too damned many of 'em," an officer nearby muttered. "What the hell were they even after?"

"They weren't trying to kill us," Hakuba replied, moving to stand beside Aoko. "It seemed to me that they were stalling us. Keeping us here."

"So we've been used." Nakamori cast another glance in the direction of the explosion, his fists clenching. The sound of a phone ringing made everyone jump. He answered it, turning away from the rest of them as he talked. Kaito was mildly surprised by his discretion. Then again, he supposed even Nakamori Ginzo had to feel a bit subdued at this point.

In the meantime he watched as Aoko turned to Hakuba and began fussing over the cuts and scratches he'd gathered over the course of the night's events and he, in turn, looked her over for any injuries. It still irked him that she was fussing so much over Hakuba and yet she hadn't even asked him how he was—except of course that she didn't know it was him behind the monocle. It made him wonder though if it would make a difference if she did. It was something he wondered on and off, though now that he thought about it the matter hadn't been on his mind half as much these days as it used to.

"Everyone who can is heading over to the Beika station," Nakamori announced as he returned, voice gruff. "Is everyone going or does anyone need a ride home?"

Five officers were sent to escort a few of the younger people present to their homes as the rest of them separated into smaller groups to goard the squad cars.

That settled, Nakamori turned to eye KID before grudgingly opening his mouth. "Are you coming?"

"I'll fly," the thief replied, smirking. It really was funny watching the older man struggling to be civil. No need to push him.

Besides, KID was not riding inside a police car (unless he was driving, he amended, that would be okay, but he doubted any of the officers would willingly lend him their keys. Maybe some other day). It was the principle of the thing.

X

"So Yamaki approached Miss Salinger at the library and asked to talk. At the same time Nakamori Aoko notices that she is being followed," Megure-keibu ticked off on his fingers. "And, again at miraculously almost the same time, someone grabs Aizawa Erika's bag and runs off with it. When she goes after them, it turns out the purse-snatcher's got some unusual friends. Then while we're all busy, someone demolishes an entire research facility. And of course by the time we get there there's nothing left and the best we can say is at least no one got killed!" Though they'd still had to send people down there to evacuate the immediate area while they determined if any dangerous chemicals had been unleashed.

"They most likely took something before they destroyed it," Shinichi said grimly. "But now we'll never know what."

"A—and Mitsuki-san's gone," Erika spoke up from where she had been huddled on a chair in the corner of the briefing room, her face pale. "He pushed me out of the way when one of them tried to grab me and she got him instead and then they just both disappeared."

There was a beat of uneasy silence.

"That was probably Uchimura Yui, the girl who can teleport," KID said finally, regarding them all from behind an impassive face as he perched on the sill of the room's only window. "I doubt they would hurt him. Although I suspect we will now need to keep an eye out as he may not be all that friendly next time we meet."

"So basically they knew what we were up to, used it to distract us, probably so they could steal something," Yamada summarized, "and then destroy the lab they stole from?"

"The damned bastards are taunting us!" Nakamori exploded.

Shinichi would have liked to be able to tell him he was wrong, but he knew it was the truest thing that anyone had said that night. No one had mentioned the worst part yet though. He waited as murmurs of unrest raced around the room. As he waited for someone to bring it up, he catalogued the faces around the room. That was odd. Where were Satou and Takagi? Ran wasn't here either, though if he remembered correctly she was supposed to be sleeping over at Sonoko's—in one of her family's vacation homes, not the one in the city, so he supposed it would have been stranger if she had shown up.

"What bothers me," Hakuba said as the din began to simmer down, "is that this means these people knew exactly what we had set up."

And there it was. Shinichi watched the way people's faces changed at that. Shock, horror, suspicion, concern... All expected enough. The reactions all looked genuine to him, and he had pretty good instincts about these things (his slightly excessive amount of experience didn't hurt), but maybe he should consult Kaito later just to be safe. There were definitely advantages to having allies who knew how to step into other people's skins. Kaito was better at reading people than anyone he'd ever met (and certainly better at it than most people probably liked him to be).

The Detective of the East pinched the bridge of his nose as the room abruptly erupted back into a frenzy of voices. This, he thought ruefully, was going to be a long night.

TBC

A.N: On a side note, Shalyr and I are putting together a website called Phantom Destinies archiving our DCMK fics and art. It's not completely done yet, but you're all welcome to visit ^_^ The address is: https:/sites(dot)google(dot)com/site/phantomdestinies/