Disclaimer: I don't own DCMK.
The Show Goes On
50: Pay to Play to Pay
"Ya know, I used to like carnival games," Hattori told the world at large. "This place really knows how to take the fun out of things."
"At least we're winning," Kaito replied, eyeing their small mountain of prizes with a critical eye. They had lost prizes too, but, overall, the losses had been minimal compared to the gains. They had won several baskets from the latest game, and he was helping Shinichi sort their other prizes by type and estimated value—estimated because none of them could really tell how anything was valued at this carnival except that living entities were worth the most—and that sort of went without saying as far as any of them were concerned. They had acquired quite the collection of baubles and trinkets, though they also had one large basketful of stuffed animals. Kaito frowned at the plush cat lying on the top of the pile. Had that been a trick of the eyes or had the fuzzy toy just moved?
He picked up the plush in question and turned it over, examining it from all sides. Then he gave it several good squeezes and a shake before lifting it up so he could stare into its round, plastic eyes.
Nothing.
"Uh, Kai?" Shinichi said a bit hesitantly from where he'd just filled the smallest basket with jewelry. "What are you doing?"
"Just checking something," the magician replied, returning the stuffed animal to its basket.
Shinichi glanced down at the cat plush then back up at Kaito, eyebrows raised. "What kind of something?"
But Kaito waved him away. "It's nothing really. It just looked off for a moment."
That comment, however, only made Shinichi frown. "Off how?"
Hearing the sudden tension in his partner's voice, Kaito offered him a reassuring smile. "It's nothing to worry about. I just thought I saw it move, so I was wondering if it might be somebody. But it's just a toy."
Shinichi's worried frown deepened. "Are you sure?" He picked up the cat plush they had been discussing and studied it closely from plastic nose to furry tail and back again. But the toy was light, soft, and completely unresponsive. Still, could they be sure?
With that disconcerting thought hanging in the air between them, Heiji returned from his last round at the dartboard to find Shinichi gazing deep into the plastic eyes of the plush cat while Kaito watched him.
The scarecrow detective looked from one friend to the other and back again then shook his head. "I don't even want to ask. Anyway, here. This is the last prize I think looks worth having from this game." He handed over an odd sort of leather bandoleer that had, for some odd reason, been made to carry a set of seven bells of different sizes. "There are a few more baubles though that we might be able to use for trade later. I'm going to see if I can win those before we move on."
That said, the scarecrow trouped back to where the clowns were collecting the used darts. It didn't take him long to get them to agree to set everything up for another round. The clowns, they had found, could be quite cooperative as long as you showed some enthusiasm for playing their games.
What games though! Shinichi had never really cared one way or another about carnival games, but some, he knew, could be fun. Here, however, fun was clearly one part of carnival games that this place wanted removed.
Oh, there were the usual, straight forward games they had been playing like the competition of strength with the ogre, darts, knocking down pyramids, shooting games—that sort of thing. But it was all just a little bit off.
Take the ring toss, for example. They had won quite a few good prizes from that one after they'd gotten the hang of it, but getting the hang of it had not been easy.
It was a ring toss that none of them would ever forget. The rings had been live snakes biting their tails that glared at you with evil yellow eyes and writhed in your grip. They didn't even need to try tossing one to know that it wouldn't cooperate. They ended up whacking each snake in the head with the butt of Hattori's light saber just hard enough to stun it before tossing it. They couldn't actually knock the unfriendly reptiles unconscious because they lost their grips on their tails when out cold and ended up rather more rope than ring. And apparently slinging an unconscious snake at a bottle in just the right way to make it end up wrapped around said bottle was against the rules.
Between the two of them, Kaito and Shinichi managed to clear out every prize from all the shooting games in a remarkably short time that had Heiji shaking his head.
But then came the next challenge, and they all knew that the easy run was about to get more difficult. Because the game, the mirrored clown twins inform them with the utmost glee, was a simple fishing game. They would get three scoops each and could keep whatever they managed to save.
"I don't think I like the way he worded that last bit," Shinichi said uneasily.
"I didn't like the first bit either," Kaito said dryly.
"You don't suppose the fish will be big enough to eat, do you?" Heiji asked hopefully.
Shinichi rolled his eyes. "Around here, we should just hope they're not big enough to eat us."
Ahead of them, the clowns came to a stop before what they were all surprised to see was an entirely ordinary bath tub—well, ordinary except that it was here anyway. As they drew closer, they could see that it was filled to the brim with water. What they could not see was any fish.
"This game can't possibly be about catching invisible fish, could it?" Shinichi wondered aloud.
Kaito snorted. "You never know."
They set their prize baskets down and crowded forward for a better look at the tub. The examination only confirmed the lack of any fish.
Heiji stuck his hand into the water and swished it around a bit before rounding on their guides. "Oi, Clowns, where are the fish?"
The clowns seemed to have been waiting for this question as they laughed and clapped their hands.
"Look beyond the mirror pool."
"To see that which the mirror pool mirrors."
On cue, a spotlight blinked on.
The three travelers realized belatedly that somehow, without their knowing, they had reached the edge of a precipice. The tub was perched just inches before the place where the unnaturally smooth ground fell sharply away to form one wall of an enormous, vaguely rectangular canyon filled to the halfway point with water. Suspended above the middle of that giant pool was a net filled with squirming figures. In the water below, dark shapes circled. A pair of triangular fins broke the surface for a moment before sinking back beneath the water.
A sudden sense of foreboding settled over all three travelers as they put two and two together.
For possibly the first time in his life, Kaito found himself wishing for fish.
"The mirror pools—"
"Are mirrored pools," the clowns explained. "Scoop from the tub—"
"To save your prizes from below."
"Place them in the safety pool."
Another spotlight blinked on, illuminating a giant, glass bucket off to their right. At the same time, a regular bucket materialized next to the small tub before them. Both buckets were filled halfway to the brim with water.
"There they shall stay in safety until the game is over."
"Now let us begin."
Each clown raised one hand and snapped his fingers.
The wiggling net over the pool split right up the middle. Flailing, yelling figures came tumbling out, their cries cut off abruptly by a series of loud splashes. Flowers of spray blossomed over roiling waters. Then the sharks began moving in.
"This is crazy!" Hattori took a step towards the canyon lip then rounded on the clowns, light saber burning bright in his hands. "Get them out of there!"
"Ah, ah, ah," they said, wagging their fingers at him like he was a naughty child. "That's your part of the game. Here."
They handed him three paper scoops before moving to hand Kaito and Shinichi three scoops each as well.
"We can't save them with these," Kaito half exclaimed, half snarled at the clowns as he shook the flimsy scoops in their faces. "No one could fit in these."
"We got a rope earlier," Shinichi said, diving at the prize baskets and beginning to search for the rope. "Maybe we could climb down and—"
"Into a shark tank?" Kaito demanded, incredulous. "You're not going down there, Shinichi. Just leave it to me. I can fly."
"But there're too many—"
"Time out!"
The roar came from the clowns, deep and commanding, and it rolled over the world. In its wake, everything went silent and still. Even the sprays of water displaced by falling bodies stayed hanging in the air, not daring to fall.
"Enter the prize pool and you forfeit yourselves," two painted faces boomed. "Do you forfeit? Or do you play?"
Shaken by the sudden display of power, it was a moment before any of them responded. For some, the moment was what they needed to calm themselves and remind each other that they couldn't afford to make mistakes.
Squaring his shoulders, Shinichi stepped forward. "We want to play. But your rules don't make sense. How can we scoop for prizes in the prize pool when the prizes are all so much bigger than our scoops and so far away to boot. An impossible game is not a game at all."
The clowns peered at him through their eternally grinning and crying yet utterly impassive faces. Then they extended their right arms towards the bathtub.
"You do not understand. So we shall show you."
With that, each clown produced one paper scoop and moved to stand beside the tub. It was only then that Shinichi noticed that the surface of the water in the tub wasn't smooth as it should be. Instead, it had little waves and flowers of spray frozen upon a roiling surface—all of which matched the shape of the as yet still frozen water in the prize pool. Then, as the clowns lowered their scoops into the tub, they all saw a pair of great, phantom scoops hundreds of times their size descend from the darkness above the prize pool and towards the water. The clowns withdrew their scoops before they made contact, and the giant scoops in the dark sky retreated as well.
"As we said, these pools are mirrored. This method was designed for your benefit as you do not need to worry about navigating around the larger prize pool."
"And so we can keep anyone we save."
"That is correct."
"Is there a time limit or any other restrictions?"
"You have until your scoops are no longer functional. Whatever prizes remain will belong to the sharks."
"You may also wish to note that we are invisible and inaudible to all within the greater pool," the second clown added. "Now, shall we begin?"
Kaito traded glances with his companions before turning back to the clowns. "We would like a few minutes to discuss amongst ourselves. Would that be acceptable?"
The clown twins performed their disturbing facial rotation trick again before bobbing their heads in unison. "Five minutes. Then time shall resume."
That said, they bowed and took three hopping steps back, presumably to afford their 'honored guests' the illusion of some privacy.
The travelers drew into a huddle anyway. None of them were keen on discussing game plans within earshot of their creepy guides.
"This is nuts," Hattori hissed. "Just look at these things! They're too flimsy to be any real use!"
Shinichi ran his fingers around the paper scoop with a frown. Though the, for lack of a better word, 'net' was made of paper that would no doubt soften into the consistency of wet tissue paper after a few dips in the water, the outer frame to which the paper net was attached was actually a very thin loop of plastic with a small, flat nub on one side to serve as a grip. The plastic was thin and soft and would likely break with a sharp tug, but it would still outlast the net if only they could get the people in the shark tank to grab on. If they could just get the message across then they could save multiple prizes at a time by having them grab onto the ring and maybe each other, though they would have to take care not to break the paper net as that would disqualify the scoop.
"I know what you're thinking," Kaito said, frowning. "But remember, once this time out is over, those people down there are going to be pretty scared."
"Be more worried if they weren't scared," Hattori muttered. "Do you think it would be against the rules if I threw one of them my saber?"
"Only your scoops may enter the mirrored pools," a clown growled, suddenly right behind him, making Hattori jump. But when he spun around to complain about the invasion of his personal space, the clown was already back with his twin, standing like they had never moved.
Shivering, he forced his attention back onto the problem at hand.
"If anyone's got a pen, maybe we could write something like GET ON onto the scoops."
"If I was down there, I'd find that a bit fishy," Shinichi mused then sighed. "But I'd also choose to take the risk over getting almost certainly eaten by sharks."
"What if we scooped out all the sharks?" Kaito suggested. "If we could manage it without breaking all our scoops, we could then take the time to rescue everybody else. And we'd have sharks to trade with afterward."
Shinichi bit his lip as he thought. Eventually, he shook his head. "That would only work if they give us another bucket for the people we scoop out, which I'm guessing they won't. As it is, we'd still end up having to drop the people in with the sharks. It would make more sense to dedicate one of us to keeping the sharks away from the prize people while we try to save them."
"How would we do that?" asked Heiji.
Three pairs of eyes swiveled to the shark tank, picking out the dorsal fins where they broke the water's surface. Judging from the size of those fins, each shark was about one and a half times as long as a grown man was tall. In other words, they couldn't swallow anyone whole, but they weren't small either. Still…
"Our scoops would be pretty big, compared to everything in the tank," Shinichi said slowly, holding up his scoop. "We could use them to sweep the sharks to one side and the people to the other and just—keep doing it."
"The paper would stand up to too much sweeping," Kaito replied. "It would make more sense to use the edge."
"No, wait, the handle," Hattori interjected, lighting up. "It's short from our perspective, but it'll be a hell of a lot longer to them. And it's pointy. The person or people on shark duty can use it to spear."
"I'd say it's too soft and too blunt to be a spear," Kaito said with a wry grin. "But the concept has merit. And once the people see our scoops bop a few shark heads, they'll probably realize we're here to help."
"We should still write a message on each scoop though." Shinichi fished a pen from one of his pockets and quickly wrote 'Grab on' on both sides of each scoop. He signed the message with his full name in the hopes that anyone who recognized it might feel more inclined to take the advice. "All right. So who's on shark duty?"
"Me, me!" Heiji exclaimed, flashing them a grin that looked just a little too excited. "Besides, I won't bleed if my fingers get bitten. The last thing we need is blood in the water to get the sharks more stirred up."
With the three of them in agreement on their somewhat haphazard plan, they took up positions on the left, right, and behind the tub so that they could all look up and over into the actual shark tank.
"Are you ready to begin?" the clown twins inquired, leaning so far forward that Shinichi was half afraid they would fall on him (had they been so tall before? He would have sworn they had been slightly shorter than he was earlier but now they were a head taller than Kaito. But that couldn't be right. Not that it mattered at the moment. He would think about it later).
Three pairs of determined eyes met and three heads nodded.
"We're ready," they chorused.
The last syllable had yet to fade from the air when the world erupted once again into one of splashing, shouting, and terrified screams.
Shinichi held his first scoop over the tub, watching as its enormous replica appeared over the shark tank with its message displayed for all below to see. Not that many of the people in the tank were paying much attention to the writing in the sky because all their focus was on the dorsal fins circling closer and closer. But then an enormous, white pillar descended from the sky and smashed down upon one shark's head as it rose up out of the water, jaws gaping wide. The pillar shoved the shark, gaping maw and all, right back down deep into the water then poked it again when it tried to make another lunge for its prey.
Said prey, a young woman with horns gazed in shocked wonder as the plastic pillar bashed the shark down over and over before poking another shark in the gills, forcing it to reel away. Then her gaze swept up the strange, white pillar and was drawn to another white shape in the sky. An oval on which were written the words "Grab on".
She didn't have to think twice.
"Everyone!" she shouted, using all her voice training to project her words over the splashes and screams all around them. "Grab onto the plastic ring things. I think someone's trying to help pull us out!"
And then the frenzy started in earnest.
TBC
A.N: Happy Halloween!