SailorStar9: With Chapter 88 uploaded, this is Chapter 89 of this fic. (Sighs) Guys and girls, is it too hard for you to leave a review, instead of just putting this fic up on your favorited list and story alerts?
Disclaimers: I do not own Sailor Moon or Detective Conan, I only own this plotline and the pairing.
Pairing: Established!Furuya Rei/Mizuno Ami
Chapter 89: The Dark Mountain Route
Time passes...
"She's climbing up that cliff." Genta gushed, the Detective Boys, along with Professor Agasa, saw Ikeguchi Eiko scale up a cliff nearby.
"There's a river on this side." Conan peered down. "Someone's kayaking down it."
"It's a rare mountain plant." Haibara warned, she and Ayumi were looking at a cluster of white flowers. "Don't pick it."
"Aren't you going to take a panoramic shot of the city for your science project?" Professor Agasa reminded.
"That's enough!" Ashizuka Tokunori snapped in front of his group's rented log house. "Why do you always act like this? You show up late and demand we cook for you."
"Who cares." Yamakura Takemi scoffed. "Eiko-san said she'd cook for me."
"That's irrelevant." Ashizuka glared. "Takemi, you always do this."
"Calm down, Ashizuka-san." Hayashida Taro cut in.
"I'm going to let her have it." Ashizuka growled. "She's always inconveniencing the group with her selfishness."
"You're right." Yamakura agreed. "That's why Motoki-san is dead, too."
"You're wrong." Hayashida soothed. "That was an accident."
"I'm not sure." Yamakura swatted his hand away. "You think what happened three years ago was my fault, don't you?" without a word, she packed her backpack and headed down the cliff where there was a ledge for her to set up her tent.
As the sun began to set...
"Apparently, she's sleeping at the bottom of this cliff tonight." Haibara noted, using her binoculars to peer over the ledge.
"It seemed that they really hated each other." Genta noted.
"I'm sure they have their reasons." Professor Agasa surmised, stirring the curry pot.
"Sorry, guys." Hayashida apologized, carrying a helium gas tank.
"What's the accident from three years ago?" Conan inquired.
"We were part of the same club." Ikeguchi started. "Three years ago, one of our members had an accident."
"Takemi ran off by herself." Ashizuka added. "When Motoki went after her, he fell from the top of the cliff. Motoki was my childhood friend. We'd climbed several mountains together. We were going to keep climbing, too. Because of Takemi... damn it."
"So, we get together every year to commemorate his death." Hayashida explained.
"That's a research balloon, right?" Mitsuhiko asked excitedly, hearing Hayashida fill up a weather balloon with helium.
"Yeah." Hayashida nodded. "I'm sending it up to the stratosphere to collect meteorological data."
"Hayashida-san, you're a weather station employee." Conan guessed.
"That's right." Hayashida confirmed. "For the next ten days, I'm going to send my balloon up every day. I bought enough for the job." he looked at the opened box he brought along.
"Something smells weird." Ayumi sniffed the air.
"Each time we increase the power, it's coated with kerosene." Hayashida explained.
"Couldn't you use one of those to fly to the peak?" Genta wondered.
"That's impossible." Mitsuhiko refuted. "A single balloon can only carry five or six kilograms at most."
"There." Hayashida set the balloon loose.
Later that night...
"Ayumi-chan, what's wrong?" Conan spotted the sobbing Ayumi.
"I had a nightmare." Ayumi sniffled.
"Then, I'll cast a sleeping spell on you." Ikeguchi winked, and slept with Ayumi for the rest of the night.
The next morning...
Professor Agasa was frying sunny-side up eggs when Genta let out a frightened scream.
"What's wrong, Genta?" Conan hurried over.
"There..." Genta pointed down to the ledge.
"Takemi-san's on the ground." Conan informed the others, looking through the binoculars and seeing Yamakura lying in a pool of blood. "She's dead." he felt for a pulse some forty minutes later. "Look at this." he pointed to the compass under Yamakura's body.
"That's her hiking compass." Ashizuka explained.
After Megure's team was called in...
"Is that a drone?" Mitsuhiko gushed, Takagi was operating a mechanical drone.
"We're using it to search the mountains." Takagi nodded.
"Are the three of you the late Yamakura Takemi-san's acquaintances?" Megure questioned the three suspects. "We found a backpack in the forest three kilometers from the crime scene. We'd like you to confirm if it belonged to Yamakura-san."
"That's definitely it." Ikeguchi confirmed when a forensic officer held up a red backpack. "It's Takemi-san's."
"Inside were the knife we believe is the murder weapon and an empty wallet." Megure informed.
"The killer must've abandoned it." Ashizuka reasoned.
"Then, the killer fled down the mountain after killing Takemi-san at the bottom." Hayashida guessed.
"According to the mountain guard, he's been in the cottage at the entrance to the foot of the mountain since about 4 am." Takagi supplied. "But no one suspicious left the mountain."
"Someone may have left the bag in the forest to make it look as though an outsider killed her." Megure stated.
"Which means one of us did it." Hayashida realized.
"We couldn't have killed her." Ashizuka protested. "Takemi was alive until 3 am. You were there, too." he looked Conan.
"That's when Eiko-san called her on her phone." Conan nodded.
"The body was found around 5 am." Ashizuka argued. "In other words, the crime was committed during those two hours." he spread out a map. "No matter how much you hurry, it takes about forty minutes ti take the path down to the crime scene."
"Killing Takemi-san and leaving the bag in the forest three kilometers away would add another thirty to forty minutes." Professor Agasa calculated.
"Since the return trip up the mountain is uphill, it took more than sixty minutes." Conan pondered.
"All together, that's over 120 minutes." Mitsuhiko made a mental calculation. "It couldn't have been done within two hours. They were sleeping in the cottage with us."
"Eiko and I couldn't have done it." Ashizuka reasoned. "Hayashida, on the other hand..."
"I was surveying another mountain." Hayashida objected.
"Could we ask you a few questions about the late Yamakura-san?" Megure requested.
"Mud?" Conan frowned, running to the back of the cottage and seeing a dislodged wooden panel. Hayashida's helium gas tank was leaning against a shed and had mud caked at the bottom. "This is it." he spotted a round mark underneath a tree. "Rope marks?" he looked up and saw the branch above him had marks around it,
"Conan-kun, what's wrong?" Ayumi asked when she and Haibara approached Conan.
"What's this?" Conan pluck a horse thistle from Ayumi's coat.
"There's something going on at the cottage." Genta shouted.
"Detective Takagi." Conan voiced, after seeing a hawk take to the air. "Stop it there." he instructed, having Takagi fly the drone down the cliff. "I knew it." he looked at the monitor. "Wait a minute, Inspector." he used the Voice-Changing Bowtie to take on Professor Agasa's voice. "There are a few things I'm wondering about. Hayashida-san, did oyu wipe your hands and body thoroughly yesterday?"
"Yes, I did." Hayashida blinked.
"That's why you don't smell of kerosene." Conan remarked. "It's used to increase the strength of rubber balloons. If anyone used the balloons, the smell will remain on them. Even if Hayashida-san did it, he barely had two hours. Did he have that kind of time? There's something I'd like you all to see. This plank is designed to come off." he had Professor Agasa show the group the broken off plank. There's something else. Detective Takagi, could you search the shed behind me for balloons?"
"There's three left." Takagi reported.
"Hayashida-san, how many balloons were supposed to be there?" Conan asked.
"Nine." Hayashida replied
"Then, six are missing." Conan concluded. "The killer used those balloons. The killer left the cottage before 3 am and when everyone had fallen asleep and prepared six of the balloons. Inflating them makes a lot of noise: that's why they had to move away from the cottage. I found evidence of their activities. After 3 am, they offered a silent prayer to Motoki-san, waited for everyone to fall back to sleep, left the cottage, retrieved the six balloons they had prepared and leapt off from the top of the cliff."
"That's impossible." Hayashida objected. "Only six balloons aren't enough for a person to fly."
"That's the key to this trick." Conan responded. "They won't make a person fly, but it's enough to reduce their falling speed, like a bird spreading their wings to decelerate. They reduced their speed by landing on the rocks partway down the cliff, before jumping the rest of the way down. They reached the crime scene quickly this way."
"Look at this." Haibara showed the group a photo from the I-pad. "It's a photo of the rocks in the middle of the cliff. There are some strange footprints pointing towards the edge."
"Ikeguchi Eiko-san, you killed her." Conan named the culprit.
"It wasn't her." Ayumi defended.
"No," Conan corrected. "After reaching the bottom of the cliff, you released five of the six balloons. The balloons floated north on the wind to the lake where no one would find them. You deflated the remaining balloon, cut it, and kept it with you. You killed Takemi-san left Motoki-san's compass at the crime scene, and headed north with Takemi-san's bag and wallet. At the forest three kilometers away, you left the bag and beyond that, you left the deflated balloon. Once you returned, you put the surveying equipment with Takemi-san's blood in Hayashida-san's bag."
"You're wrong." Ikeguchi growled. "i didn't do it."
"Onee-san, you smell like kerosene." Conan spoke up. "Now that I think about it, there was meaning behind all of your actions. You caused that fight and called her phone, so Takemi-san would head to the bottom of the cliff and you could confirm she was alive at 3 am."
"Don't be stupid." Ikeguchi rebuked. "I was sleeping with Ayumi-chan when she was killed."
"You planned that, too." Haibara cut in. "You wanted Yoshida-san to verify your alibi. We found this, too." she revealed the horse thistle. "It's a species of horse thistle. Around here, it only grows in that forest. It was on Yoshida-san's pants. It probably came from you while you were sleeping together."
"You did go to the forest." Conan pointed out the horse thistle stuck on Ikeguchi's pants. "After going to the forest, you came right below here. All you had to do was return. Using the mountain path might leave more evidence; that's why you began climbing back up this cliff. You were in such a hurry, you made a mistake at the very end."
"This is blood." Megure spotted the line of blood at the cliff's edge.
"Excuse me." Takagi pried open Ikeguchi's hand. "This mark must have been left by the balloons' rope." he pulled back Ikeguchi's sleeve to reveal the burnt mark.
"Motoki-san and I were secretly dating." Ikeguchi sobbed. "I couldn't forgive Takemi-san for forcing him into that accident."
"Then, why did you frame Hayashida?" Hayashida was confused.
"Hayashida-san, you knew about us." Ikeguchi barked. "You were always jealous. That's why you didn't tell Motoki-san he was heading towards a dangerous cliff."
That evening...
Amuro had located his seat in the performance hall of the Suntory Hall; Ami had given him tickets to the joint concert of her, Tenoh Haruka and Kaioh Michiru.
The audience broke into polite applause when the trio entered the stage, before quietening down when Haruka started the performance on the piano, with Ami following on the standing harp and Michiru on the violin subsequently.
SailorStar9: Any OOC-ness is regretted. *Sighs* Don't you just hate plot bunnies sometimes? Read and review.
