KudoEdogawa presents...
"Everlasting"
***
Chapter 5::
The night is late and cold, gusts of chilling wind dominates the streets outside. The ordinary folks are all asleep at this ungodly hour, but no rest could be found in Agasa Hakase's house. Hakase could be found running around his laboratory with his goggles and a variety of tools and Haibara sat in front of the computer, typing up the code for some sort of program. Shinichi was pacing back and forth in Hakase's house and Heiji watched this all in the corner of the room.
"Can I ask what you guys are doing, exactly?" Heiji questioned at last.
"We're widening the range on the glasses' detections. We checked the glasses before you guys came and no signal could be found on it," Haibara said monotonously as she pressed enter. "Done."
Hakase removed his goggles and connected a PDA sort of thing to the computer. "Mine's done, too. We'll just have to install the program on the device."
"Oh," Heiji replied without showing any signs of amazement.
Shinichi watched over Hakase's shoulder as the green installation bar fills up... slowly... slowly... slowly...
A heart shaped diamond appeared before Shinichi's eyes... there was someone trapped in it...
"Ran!"
Ran's hands beated on the shell of the diamond, her face filled with fright and worry. "Shinichi!" She mouthed as a hole opened up in the ground and the diamond fell through. Shinichi ran towards the hole, but it closed before he could even get any close to it.
"Shinichi!! Shinichi!! Shinichi-kun!" Shinichi snapped back to reality to find him staring in Hakase's face. "Are you okay, Shin-kun?"
Shinichi found himself covered in sweat, he scanned the floor for signs of a hole, but he found none. "Yeah," he said absent-mindedly, "Yeah, I'm alright, what's up?"
Hakase delivered the PDA device to Shinichi, "It's finished. We installed a map in it so that the locations would be more precise and we strengthened the frequency levels, you should be able to find Hiro-chan now."
Shinichi turned the device on and navigated through it, and sure enough, several miles outside the city of Beika, a small dot blinked.
"Hiro-kun..." Shinichi whispered.
Heiji came up and slapped his back hardly, "Well, what are we waiting for?"
"For rest, of course!" A voice said behind them. They turned around to find Kazuha standing at the door, holding the three-year old Kaze in her arms. "You two are not going anywhere until you've had a good rest, especially you, Shinichi, you haven't slept at all since the fire, have you?"
"H-How did you find us?" Heiji said, rather surprised.
"I'm you're wife, what else do you expect?" Kazuha said matter-of-factly. Then she put Kaze into Heiji's arms and used her now-free hands to push Shinichi and Heiji out the lab, towards Shinichi's house.
Hakase blinked after the leaving figures, hearing a faint voice saying, "And you can't leave until you've had breakfast..."
Good luck, Kudo-kun. Haibara left and went to her room downstairs.
Morning arrived a few hours after and Shinichi and Heiji arose early in the morning to see Kazuha already making breakfast in the kitchen. Scents of food drifted throughout the house, though Shinichi showed no reaction to it. He ate hurriedly and headed with Heiji to the hospital, where Ran was still unconscious.
Shinichi walked slowly to the side of Ran's bed and picked up her hand, "Don't worry, Ran," he said softly, "I'll find our son... I'll find him and bring him back to us, I promise."
Still Ran remained fainted, Shinichi's face sorrowed, but he showed no signs of forfeit. He promised Ran to bring Hiroichi back, though he's had many promises before, and many of them were broken, this is one that he will keep no matter what.
Shinichi took out the device that Hakase gave him and turned it on, the small dot was still there, but further and much smaller.
"They're moving away from the city..., and moving fast..." Shinichi pressed several buttons on the machine and a map was called out. "They're in the Shinjitsu District... and leaving it," he groaned, "We'll never catch up with them at this rate."
"Not if you keep standing around," came a stern and serious voice behind them--Akai Shuichi and Jodie were there. "Come on, you've got an FBI helicopter waiting for you." He swung his head to motion them to leave and stepped out.
"You've helped us much, Kudo-kun," Jodie said, "Now let us help you. We have informed the HQ that the Organization might be behind this, they're allowing us to do whatever it takes to track down the kidnappers."
Shinichi nodded and followed Shuichi out the hospital.
~*~
The helicopter hovered over the city, which was unusually crowded and lively even though it's a work day. Shinichi watched the screen of the device as the the blinking dot that betokened his son got closer and closer to the larger dot that represented themselves.
"Here!" Shinichi exclaimed suddenly, still staring at the device. "We've overlapped the dot, they're right below us... and they don't seem to be moving."
Shuichi stared coldly down at below. "Shinjitsu Grand Hotel..." he informed them, "That's an interesting place to keep a hostage. Let's land."
"Land?!" Jodie exclaimed suddenly. "You're not going to land without informing the hotel, are you?"
"Jodie..." Shuichi said as he lowered the helicopter, "When have I ever done things according to the rules?" He smirked and landed.
The four of them hopped off the helicopter, Shuichi was examining the chopper, "Hmm... didn't land right in the center."
"Oh, please!" Jodie said and stared at him disapprovingly.
"Well, how are we going to find Hiro-kun now?" Heiji asked.
"They're not on the roof, certainly," Shinichi said, still examining the device. "I've minimized the range, he's somewhere towards the north side of the building."
"Then what are we waiting for?" Shuichi asked and headed for the stairwell.
Heiji stared after him and blinked. "He's not going to search floor by floor by floor, is he?"
"Probably," said Jodie as she followed after Shuichi.
"But... there's gosh-knows-how-many floors here!" Heiji exclaimed.
"Well," Shinichi said, following after Jodie's footsteps, "You wanted to come."
"Fine!" Heiji said and left the roof.
They started out with the ground floor, asking all the security guards and employees to see if any suspicious men were found, but none has seen such men of the sort with a boy that was like what Shinichi had described Hiroichi was like.
"They must've disguised themselves to not attract attention," Heiji concluded. The other agreed with him and they began searching the building, but to they're disappointment, there's nothing but elevators on the north of the building.
"Dammit, but the device says it's here!" Shinichi cursed.
Heiji wandered towards the center of the lobby and stared at the floor guide that was there since many office buildings were built into the hotel as well. An expression of shock came upon his face as he read, "Hey, Kudo..." he called. "There's a basement... a swimming pool and gym in the basement accessible only by the stairs."
"They must be there!" Shinichi said and dashed off towards the stairs. Shuichi and Jodie followed, but Heiji stayed.
Why do I think this is going too perfectly for us? He wondered. I have a bad feeling about this... He clutched the omamori that hung around his neck, then, realizing that the others have gone, he proceeded towards the basement.
It was loud and noisy in the basement, many were there to swim or work out, water splashed everywhere and benches were set up around the area. Heiji found Shinichi, Shuichi, and Jodie standing in a corner, observing the guests.
"What's wrong?" Heiji asked.
Shinichi pointed towards a muscled man not to far from them. The man wore a pair of sunglasses and red swim trunks, he seemed too muscular to be just a regular guest, and yet, there was a woman next to him which looks like to be his wife... creating an illusion of a family.
"According to the device, it should be right where that man is..." Shinichi said, "But he looks like he's on vacation with that woman next to him, and Hiro-kun is nowhere to be found."
Just as they were pondering what to do next, Jodie gasped. "Look!" She pointed at them; the woman had stood up, revealing a black tattoo in the shape of an eagle spreading its wings. "Vermouth told you that they had tattoos of eagles, right?" Jodie asked, but Shinichi had already approached the woman and grabbed her wrist.
"Where is my son?" He said menacingly.
"What are you talking about?" The woman said and shook herself free. "My son... the boy that your organization had kidnapped a few nights ago, after burning the Mouri Detective Agency."
"I've no clue what you're talking about," said the woman.
"Don't lie!" Shinichi almost shouted. "He had a badge with him, and we tracked it down to here."
"Oh," the man spoke suddenly as he, too, got off his seat and turned his back towards Shinichi, revealing a tattoo of an eagle as well. He reached for a bag that was behind and took out something small from it, something yellow with words imprinted on it.
"'Detective Boys,'" the man repeated the words on the badge, "A very nice design, isn't it?" He said and grinned.
"We happened to found out that there was some sort of radar built into this," the man continued. "We knew you'd track it down to find him, so we created... hmmm, how would you say it... a diversion? Your son is far away from Tokyo as we speak."
He laughed, and the woman smirked. Rage built up in Shinichi as he balled his hand into fists and punched, with all the strength and anger that he could muster at the moment, the man in the face. The man was sent to his knees, tumbling next to his bag.
"Not bad," he said, wiping the blood that was trickling out of his lips. "But these muscles..." he flexed, "Are not for display..." He dashed towards Shinichi and punched him, with force that Shinichi had never felt before. Shinichi was blown backwards and fell into the pool. Many people screamed and ran frantically out of the place.
Click!
The man and the woman turned to see Jodie there, holding a gun, "Don't move! FBI!"
"Ooh," the woman said, "The American lady has a gun, what do you think we should do, Latte?"
The man named Latte walked towards his bag and reached for something.
"I said don't move!" Jodie shouted.
"What do we do?" Latte repeated. Boom! "Shoot her before she gets us, of course." He said. He had straightened up, holding a gun as well. "You see... we came prepared."
Jodie cursed as she fell to the ground; her shoulder has been hit.
"That bastard!" Heiji cursed as he helped Shinichi out of the water.
Boom!
Shuichi had stepped out from the corner, a gun in his hand also. The bullet had scratched Latte's face, leaving a brown burn and a trace of blood. The rest of the people has escaped the area at the second gunshot.
"Tell us where the boy is, or I won't miss next time," Shuichi threatened coldly.
The two men stared at each other perilously.
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This chapter took a while to write because I didn't want them to find Hiroichi so soon. I'm beginning to like Shuichi more and more, he's a really cool character to work with. Please review!