AN: Okay. So I wrote myself into a bit of a corner last chapter. No worries. No biggie. I've got a plan. In the meantime, here's a cute little chapter that'll make you go "awww." Lots of KidxAoko fluff. Enjoy! 3
"Stay here!" Kudo yelled at Aoko as he ran to leave the aquarium.
"No way," Aoko said, chasing after him. "Kid could be hurt!"
"Then stay close to me," Kudo said to her, waiting for her to catch up. "He asked me to protect you and I can't do that if I lose you."
Kudo and Aoko booked it out of the aquarium and darted across the street, where the police blockade in front of the high-rise had been torn apart by swarms of frightened people running for their lives. Running into the building, they quickly realized the stairs were clogged up by people escaping the now-burning building and the elevators had been shut off. Fire alarms were sounding in the building, piercing their ears with their loud, high-pitched sounds.
"How do we get to the roof?" Aoko said, searching for any possible routes up. There were none.
"What makes you so sure he's still on the roof?" Kudo said, eyes scanning the lobby as well. "I know he's insane but I'm pretty sure he's not suicidal."
They stood in the lobby, bodies pushing against them as the crowd tried to evacuate. Aoko clutched onto Kudo, trying not to get lost in the crowd. Kudo right now was her best bet for keeping Kid safe, and she needed his full concentration on that task. She didn't need him wasting time trying to find her.
"There!" Kudo said, eyeing a door. They rushed into it.
It certainly wasn't the location Aoko would have thought to find Kid in. As a matter of fact, Kid wasn't there. It was the men's restroom. She looked over at Kudo with a questioning glance. He approached the first stall and threw the door open, explaining as he peered around inside, "Kid usually uses toilet stalls to change into his disguises."
"There's got to be at least a thousand restrooms in this building, though!" Surely Kudo wasn't grasping at straws at a critical moment like this?!
"Yes, but only one accessible by the lobby. He usually knocks his victim out before entering the room where his heist will take place, and then disguises as them to get past security." Kudo opened the last door and grinned. "Aha."
Aoko looked into the stall to see what Kudo was grinning at. It was a middle-aged balding man in an undershirt and boxers. His arms were bound to his torso with a thick cord of rope, his mouth was duct-taped shut, and he was looking at them with wide, scared eyes. Kudo peeled the tape off the man's mouth and untied his arms. "Who tied you up?"
"Kaitou Kid!" the man said. "He hit me over the head with something hard and heavy, and then tied me up and left me here. He stole my clothes."
"Who are you?"
"Juuzo Humizo. I'm a security guard on the basement level. Man, I did not sign up for this bullshi-"
Kudo appeared deep in thought. Aoko nudged him. "What's up, Kudo-kun?"
"Something's not adding up. Kid wouldn't have had a need to knock this guy up for a disguise because -"
Realization dawned as Aoko followed Kudo's train of logic. "- he's already disguised as you."
"Exactly. Which means the imposter is the one who knocked this guy out." Kudo looked back at the undressed security guard. "Can you remember anything about Kaitou Kid when he knocked you out?"
"It hurt like a bitch?"
"This guy is useless," Kudo said, already walking away. Then, calling over his shoulder, he began to leave the bathroom. "Nakamori-san, are you coming?"
Aoko looked back at the man who was still a little out of it. She felt for the guy, but also felt Kudo's exasperation. "Yes!"
Back in the lobby, screaming people were still trying to get out. Firefighters were now rushing past, trying to get into the stairwell to get to the top floor. Kudo grabbed Aoko's arm and began moving towards the line of firefighters going towards the stairwell. Confused, she asked, "I thought you said he wouldn't be on the roof?"
"We're not going to the roof," Kudo said simply.
Once in the stairwell, Kudo fought against the warm bodies of the people moving against them to wrench open a door that said Staff Only. Aoko looked through it, finding a descending staircase that presumably led to the basement. Following Kudo down the stairs, she heard the door shut behind her and the air become thick with silence and nothingness.
It felt calm for the first time in a little while, Aoko decided. A dim light was flickering intermittently above them, the laminate floor was covered in scuff marks and a few decades' worth of grime and filth, and a smell permeated through the walls of reminding her of something musty but not exactly terrible. A long, pasty green-bricked hallway stretched out in front of them. A sign hung above a door at the end of the hall, and if Aoko squinted she could read it. Security.
The pair made their way quickly down the hall, before Kudo motioned for her to hang back as he peered carefully through a window in the door. The expression on her face was all she needed to summon her inner Nakamori.
"He's in there, isn't he!" It wasn't a question. "Is he okay?"
Kudo hushed her, before whispering back in a pressed voice. "Yes, but he's not alone."
Aoko crept closer to the door and forced Kudo to allow her to peer through the window as well. At least a dozen security guards were on the ground; presumably, hopefully, they were knocked out - she was actively ignoring the red liquid pooling around the bodies, actively ignoring the sheer amount of liquid surrounding each body and the fact that they weren't moving. A flash of metal caught her eye. Kid was standing in full white regalia in the center of the room (how had she not seen him first?), aiming a gun at... Kid?
"We have to save Kid!" Aoko remarked in a hushed voice, looking to Kudo for ideas.
"How do you know we have to save Kid?" Kudo said, his cold, calculating eyes looking back at her. "For all we know, he could be the one with the gun. We have no way of telling who is who."
"Kudo-meitantei," Aoko seethed, letting extra venom sink into his title. "For your information, I know Kid very well and that is something he would never do."
"I want to believe that as well," Kudo said impartially. "But we have to consider every possibility. We can't rule possibilities out based on assumptions, no matter how impossible they may seem."
Aoko's jaw dropped with disbelief. Kudo was actually entertaining the thought that Kid - her Kid! - would point a gun at someone? She felt a pit in her stomach sink deeper and deeper until it finally exploded. "Then consider this possibility: get your third-rate detective ass out of my sight before I give you a reason to go missing for another couple of months, you thickheaded, birdbrained -"
Kudo seemed unbothered as she rattled off a few more choice words that came to mind from her colorful Nakamori vocabulary. He instead seemed to pick her up and move her to the side, out of the line of sight from the window, and put his hand on the doorknob. That movement left her speechless momentarily, before regaining her senses enough to ask. "Wait, what are you doing?"
"I want to hear what they're saying. So be quiet when I open the door, or you'll give us away."
The pair prayed as Kudo quietly opened the door a smidgen, hoping to high heavens that it wouldn't squeak. Finally they could hear what was being said.
The Kid with the gun had his back to them. The other Kid, across from them, had his hands up and a straight expression on his face. If Aoko didn't know better from growing up with Kaito and his remarks about magicians needing to keep a good Poker Face, she would have believed his calm demeanor. As it was, she didn't buy it.
"Why don't you put the gun down and we can talk about this," the Kid with his arms up was saying.
"No!" the Kid with the gun shrieked in a high voice, sounding hysterical. He sounded like he had been crying. "This is the only way you will ever notice me, Kid-sama!"
Aoko's mind raced. The Kid with the gun - who was quite clearly the imposter, Aoko knew - certainly had a high voice. It sounded almost - feminine? Was that Kid a girl?
"You have my full attention now," the real Kid said carefully, sounding like a hostage negotiator. "I'm listening."
The imposter's gun-wielding arm was shaking dangerously, still pointed directly at Kid. Aoko feared the gun would go off just by the random, jerking movements. The imposter spoke again. "Tell me you love me!"
"Tell you that I love you?" Kid asked incredulously. "I don't even know who you are!"
A bullet flew out wildly, whizzing past Kid and making a small hole through his cape. Aoko wasn't sure if that shot was missed on purpose. The imposter shouted, "I'm Kait0uKidsWife8795! From the website! The Kaitou Kid 1412 Fanclub Chat Room website! I messaged you every day and you never responded!"
Another bullet flew out, striking another spot in his cape. "I knew it was you, Kid-sama! But I know you're a busy guy, so I thought maybe you weren't checking your messages. So I hacked the site's servers and found your chat history. Do you know what I found?" Yet another bullet, this time whizzing through Kid's hat, letting a cloud of scarlet smoke puff out of the hole. "Do you know what I found?! I found you cheating on me! You were chatting with another girl!"
Kid backed up as he watched the gun steady in the imposter's arm, and aim more accurately at his chest. The bullet wasn't going to miss him the next time. His heels bumped into one of the bodies on the ground - the bodies, Aoko reminded herself, that were just sleeping, they were sound asleep, they would wake up at the end and laugh this all off -
A quiet sound brought Aoko back to where she was. She had been so entranced by the conversation that she had forgotten she was just feet away from where it was all happening. She looked over at Kudo, who had taken out his phone and was quickly tapping a message on his phone. He passed her the phone when he was done writing.
Do you have any idea what she's talking about?
Well, of course Aoko did. But she couldn't tell Kudo, could she? He was a detective, after all. And what she had done - her conversations, her meetings, her whole relationship with Kaitou Kid - was incredibly illegal. Telling Kudo would be the same as turning herself in to her father. But - at the same time - if she didn't say - and Kid was in so much danger -
Yes. That's where I started talking to Kid. I think they're talking about me.
She passed the phone back to Kudo, who read it with an indiscernible expression. If he was going to haul her off to jail after this, she had no way of knowing. He tapped another message on the phone and handed it back to her.
Oh, definitely. You probably shouldn't be seen by them, then.
Kudo was right - that'd make the imposter go off the rails if she saw Aoko... well, more off the rails than she was currently. That imposter seemed to have booked a one way ticket aboard the Crazy Train to Crazy Town. Aoko tapped a message and gave the phone back to Kudo.
What can we do?
Kudo looked at the message for a moment, thinking. Aoko knew their options were limited. They didn't have any way to attack the imposter besides their bare hands and whatever Kudo might have on him (which was probably nothing, Aoko assumed). Although - even if they had something, she wasn't so sure it would be a good idea to startle the imposter right now. After all, a bullet was only one finger twitch away from lodging itself in Kid's chest. And as for letting the police handle the situation... this was too urgent to risk waiting for trained police to show up and defuse the situation. And she couldn't risk Kid getting caught, either, as much as it pained her to admit that.
Kudo put his phone away and motioned for her to get back into the hallway even more. She obliged, but only because she knew the consequences of the imposter seeing her. Confused by what Kudo was planning, she watched him silently. Please let him have a good plan and please let that plan work.
He swung open the door, and with all the obliviousness in the world, said, "Oh, um, excuse me, I was looking for the men's restroom."
God dammit, Kudo-kun, you fucking idiot.
The world seemed to stop as Aoko stood pin-straight against the wall, unable to see what was happening in the room. She heard the imposter's voice choke out a confused "What?" followed by some scuffling footsteps, and then an even louder dense sound of commotion. Kudo had rushed into the room at this point, and was now out of her vantage point. More commotion ensued.
She felt, rather than heard, the unmistakeable vibration of a gun going off within the room.
Clamping her hands against her ears, she almost betrayed herself to look in the room. But she couldn't do that, she promised she wouldn't, but Kid could be hurt, or Kudo, or -
She shook her head, eyes welling up, and watched a trickle of crimson liquid run out of the doorway. No no no no. She couldn't think about that. She slunk down against the wall and held her head between her legs. She didn't want to be in that hallway anymore. She wished that she hadn't decided to attend the heist that night. She wished that she hadn't decided to go on that stupid website. She wanted everything to be gone. She wanted to be gone.
A hand on her shoulder startled her, and she peered upwards, not sure what to expect. The barrel of a gun in her face, perhaps?
Instead it was Kudo Shinichi's friendly face. "Come on, Nakamori-san. Let's get you out of here."
"But what about -" Her voice was choked. She felt like she was suffocating. "What about Kid?"
"He's alright. Let's just get you out of here," Kudo repeated. He helped her up and wrapped his arms around her, strong enough to keep her from looking in the room. Her eyes caught sight of his hands, which were stained with something dark red.
"Why won't you let me see?" Aoko asked, before landing on a horrible conclusion. "You're lying! He's -"
She couldn't bring herself to say it. She didn't want to believe it. She broke away from Kudo's grip, her stubborn Nakamori strength overpowering him. She ran to the doorway and looked in.
Kid was in the middle of the room, lying face down in a pool of blood. He looked like he had been crumpled and tossed aside. His suit was stained a horrible color, like he had swam through a sea of sangria. Her eyes found the gun, resting in the murky ocean of red, right beside his hat, right beside his red-stained hat that was floating in the liquid.
"No," she said. "No, no no -"
"Nakamori-san -" Kudo said from her left side, arms around her. "Kid is fine."
Her eyes landed on the bullet hole on the side of his head, still pouring out blood like a faucet.
"I'm right here," a calm voice came from her right side. "I'm alright."
She turned her head to see Kid standing beside her. Then, taking a step back as if she had seen a ghost, she swung her head between the two Kids. Both were wearing bloodied suits, both were missing their hats, both were -
"Aoko," Kid said. "Look at me."
She did. His face was covered in blood. His gloves, his monocle, his shoes, his pants, his knees especially - all blood-soaked and drenched. He smelled like he had bathed in a silverware drawer, or - or had been hanging out in a basement filled with iron pipes. It made her stomach flip over.
"Aoko," Kid repeated. "Aoko, I'm safe. It's over. I'm here. I'm safe. Aoko. It's okay."
She tore away from Kudo and grabbed Kid's jacket. Burrowing her face into his chest, she sobbed fiercely. "I was so scared for you!"
He froze for a moment, and Aoko felt her world stop. Her blood ran cold. What now?
She felt him wrap his arms around her protectively. He was warm. Wet with blood, but warm. "We're safe, Aoko."
AN: Did I say this was gonna be a cute chapter? Oh? I did? Well whoops, I guess I lied! Sorry!
Anyway, please drop a review or two if you want. They always brighten up my day!
