File Twenty: The Little Scientist
Conan was restless, and there was little reason not to. There was a missing person and probably those mysterious men in black were behind it. Toshiya had mentioned another two men hanging around the woman, and he couldn't help but remember Gin and Vodka's faces every time he thought about it.
He guessed that Toshiya's brother had been kidnapped to use his drawing skills to fabricate counterfeit money. He had seen a suspicious man using fake money to buy a pack of cigarettes after all.
There was something he was completely certain of, however. He had seen what these men were capable of ─ Hirota Masami's bloody death still haunted him to this day ─ and he certainly didn't want his friends around. If something happened to them...
He stopped his thought there. Conan didn't want to think about it.
So, he convinced them to go home because it was getting late, and that he would catch up with them.
Soon, after following the man's trail he reached Daitoma, and decided to check out an estate agency he had passed by to ask for any warehouses they had lent at the edge of the city.
Not such a luck.
"You're hindering my work," the man on charge patted his head, which annoyed him a lot. "Take your friends and go home already."
"... Friends?"
Turning around, he winced under the glares that Mitsuhiko, Ayumi and Genta were sending his way, faces pressed against the window while sliding out his sight. Toshiya and Haibara were also there. The boy had a pretty confused expression while the girl... Well, he couldn't really figure out what she was thinking about.
"We're not going to fall for your tricks all the time!" Genta yelled.
"Sneaking out to go on your own is your number one move," Mitsuhiko accused him.
"H-How did you find me?" Conan blinked.
"We were told by Haibara-san and followed you here," Mitsuhiko pointed at the girl in question, who was glancing at the magazines in the corner of the room.
"She said that you were planning to get rid of us to go investigate on your own," Ayumi added.
The two exchanged a grin, yet Conan couldn't help but stare at the strange girl, before his eyebrow twitched. That girl...
Not only she was unsettlingly creepy, but it looked like she could easily see through his lies. Now he really didn't want her around, he decided.
There was nothing he could do about it, though.
"Umm..." Toshiya went to the man. "Is there any novelist living around here?"
"Novelist?" Conan turned to him. "What does it have to do with anything?
"After my brother disappeared, he did call home once."
What?!
"Why didn't you tell us that earlier?!" the other three were suddenly at their side, looking as shocked as him.
"The one who picked up the phone was our grandmother, but she's got a bad ear, and my brother was talking fast, so she couldn't tell what he was saying," Toshiya tried to explain himself. "The only words she got was that he was with a bunch of people like Soseki."
Conan thought it over, but didn't quite understand what that meant. Toshiya then said that his brother's voice had been quivering at the time, and that he had hung up suddenly ─ probably after being discovered, Conan supposed.
"Come to think of it," the man said. "There's a person like Soseki living close by. He's the owner of a bookstore around the corner."
Even if they went to that bookstore, they didn't really find anything suspicious. While terribly bad tempered, the owner didn't seem to be related at all with Toshiya's brother's disappearance.
"I checked the books and its storage," Conan explained to his group. "But there weren't any machines used for printing counterfeit money."
"Speaking of printers," the man commented. "The newspaper company in front of the station was putting in a new one recently."
True to his words, a newspaper building stood in front of them, right in front of the police station. He didn't think much about it, until he asked how were the people working in there.
The man answered that the president was a woman, wearing a black hat and dressed in black. After that he left, not without telling them to drop it because there was absolutely no way someone would print counterfeit money right in front of the police.
Now, what does it all have to do with Soseki?
"What are you doing, Conan?" he recalled his brother asking when he was four years old.
"Reading."
"A dictionary?" Shinichi had blinked, when his younger brother had shrugged. "Why?"
"I read a strange word recently," the child had explained. "And I found a lot of other interesting words in here, so..."
Shinichi had chuckled at his weird behaviour, which was pretty unusual for a little kid of his age. He had said at the time that he couldn't think of another child that would spend his time reading a dictionary just to know a few more words.
Conan also remembered him saying something else back then:
"Rinse thy mouth with rocks," the child mumbled, deep in thought. "And pillow thy head upon the flow."
"Eh?" the other children didn't understand.
"It's a famous quote of Soseki, that means being eccentric," he explained. "So, usually when you want to make counterfeits, you'd want to avoid attention and be at the edge of the city, but these people..."
"They placed that place in front of the station!" Mitsuhiko realized, and Conan nodded at him. "I see... If they did that, they would avoid suspicion by the police."
Predictably so, the police had laughed at them and did not believe a single word, so he had decided to leave the children alone for a moment to call Inspector Megure, using his brother voice.
His surprise was big when the police then told him that his friends had gone inside the newspaper company, claiming that they would find proof.
"And you let them go alone?" Conan was furious. "When there's a slight possibility of dangerous criminals hanging around?!"
The policemen exchanged looks and shruggered, probably thinking that the little kid was just a tad paranoiac. The child just scowled at them and took off running.
"I'm making sure every single soul knows you ignored the testimony of a group of children and let them get in trouble!" he cried over his shoulder.
"W-Wait, kid!"
He didn't listen, just went inside the building and ran upstairs, as fast as he could, feeling as fear gripped his chest, which prompted him to go even faster. In less than a minute, the boy reached the top.
When he heard Genta's loud voice, Conan couldn't help but sigh, both due to relief and annoyment. Really, can't these guys keep it quiet for once...
Before he could enter the room to get them out, however, he felt a familiar coldness pressing on the back of his head.
"Your detective game has come to an end, young man."
Conan froze on his spot, slowly letting go of the door handle.
By the way Ayumi was crying his name now, Conan knew the other criminals were inside. He even heard a woman's voice telling his friends that he was dead, and them sobbing because of it.
To be fair, Conan was pretty much screwed so that statement wasn't that far from reality.
There was a click sound he knew very well. Slowly, his hand went to his wrist watch and the lid flipped open, making sure to hide his actions with his own body. Then, took a deep breath, before spinning around.
The criminal fell into the floor in a heap before he could pull the trigger, before cracking the door open and peeking inside. His eyes opened, widely, when he saw the woman in black pointing a gun at Ayumi's face.
So, he wasted no time and picked the gun from the fallen criminal before putting the security back on. Then activated his kicking shoes and aimed at the woman's hand.
She lost the grip on her weapon, causing it to fall a few feet away from her. "Who is there?!" angrily, she faced to the door.
His friend's expressions brightened when they saw him there, standing in the doorway, while sparks of electricity danced around his feet. The boy glanced at his friends, exchanging smiles for a moment, before he turned to the woman.
"Edogawa Conan," his tender smile turned into a confident smirk. "Just a detective."
"Impossible! Inuyama dealt with you earlier!"
"Oh, you mean that Inuyama?" he stepped aside, letting her see her partner lying on the ground, out cold. The woman growled.
The child simply walked to a box filled with several sealed buckets of paint. Then, grinning devilishly at her, he kicked a pair. Her partners suffered the same destiny as Inuyama.
Gritting her teeth, the woman rushed to the weapon she had dropped and stretched her hand, but she didn't get to pick it up.
She froze in place when she met icy cold, blue eyes, filled with murderous intent. The gun she had failed to take was now in front of her nose. Then, there was a loud bang.
The window shattered behind her.
And the entire room fell into an unsettling silence.
"H-Haibara... san...?" Conan muttered, still in shock, as the girl silently lowered the weapon.
Her expression hadn't changed a bit throughout the entire ordeal.
Unlike Conan, the other children recovered right away, and started cheering, praising Haibara for her coolness and bravery, when they saw the two police cops bursting into the room. They must have seen the window breaking due to the shot and rushed right over, or so Conan thought.
"Thank you for your hard work!" Genta grinned. "We've solved the case."
"These are the evidence fake bills," Mitsuhiko held the paper in front of him.
"And that is Toshiya-kun's brother who was kidnapped," Ayumi pointed at the teenager.
He could only laugh, awkwardly, in return.
"And for the record," Conan smirked. "We told you so."
The policemen that were just standing there, blinking, looked at the boy with glasses and grimaced, clearly remembering his promise from a while ago.
We are so fired... they thought, in unison.
Inspector Megure arrived at the scene roughly twenty minutes later and arrested the criminals on the spot. Toshiya's brother was released not long thereafter.
It didn't go as smoothly as Conan had expected, however. It turned out that the woman in black had absolutely nothing to do with the organization that Shinichi was running away from. Apparently, the woman was a famous wanted criminal that went by the name of The Silver Fox and was deeply involved with counterfeit money making.
As impressive as it was, however, she still wasn't involved with the Black Organization. At all.
It was such a disappointment.
One look at his right, though, and it all went away. The sight of Toshiya's radiant smile and tears of happiness as he hugged his older brother, tightly, caused Conan to smile, without meaning to.
I'm happy for you, Nakada.
He was glad that those two brothers, separated by ruthless criminals in order to accomplish their shady objectives, got a happy ending at the end.
I wonder... Conan's smile dropped a tiny bit. I wonder if there's a good ending for us two as well, Oniichan.
"But this time, you'll be charged for kidnapping, illegal gun possession and firing," he was brought out of his thoughts by Megure, who was talking to the Silver Fox. "It looks like you will be gone for a long time."
"I'm not the one that fired," she motioned to Haibara, who stood silently behind them. "It was that little girl."
Haibara didn't bat an eye.
Yet Megure certainly did.
"What?!" the next second, the inspector was rushing up to her, a stern and equally terrified expression on his face. "Why did you do such a dangerous thing?!"
For the first time in an entire day, the girl's plain expression shifted. Her eyes had opened slightly when she was reprimanded, then started to water.
"But..." she sobbed. "... But..."
Megure panicked, fussing over the child when she burst out crying, apologizing for his scary approach over and over again. He probably thought he had gone overboard ─ this could clearly be a case of a traumatized child that thought firing a gun could the only way out.
Conan's eyes narrowed however, shifting his gaze to the hole in the broken window.
Luckily they let them go home not long thereafter. Ayumi and the rest were hovering over a still crying Haibara as they walked, not having the sightless clue of how to comfort their new classmate. Conan did not say anything, though, at least until Ayumi ─ the other two had gone home already at this point ─ had to part ways.
"Will you be okay on your own, Haibara-san?" asked the girl, concern filling her voice.
"Don't worry," the boy reassured her, with a comforting smile. "I'll take her home."
"Are you sure, Conan-kun? Your house is in the other way."
"Yeah, just go home, Ayumi-chan. I'll take it from here."
With a hesitant nod and one last look at Haibara, the girl turned around and disappeared inside the building, immediately climbing up the stairs to her apartment. It wasn't until she was halfway towards her room, that she realized it.
Did Conan-kun just call me by my name?
Smiling a little to herself, the kid left her bag on the floor and went to the kitchen. She wondered what she would have for dinner.
The pair continued to walk. Not a word had been exchanged between them, and they kept at it for a few blocks, letting Haibara's sobs fill the uncomfortable silence. Then, Conan stopped on his tracks, not bothering to look at the girl behind her.
"Now that we're alone, you can stop pretending," the boy said, with a very serious expression. "Your acting is pretty convincing, but I can't believe it coming from someone who is definitely used to firing guns."
Haibara stopped crying instantly, and Conan didn't need to turn around to know that she now had a very menacing smile plastered on her face. "How did you know?" she asked.
"Your stance and incredible accuracy," he explained, before finally turning around to examine her with his sharp gaze. "You didn't miss her head by an inch just by chance. You were aiming for that spot."
The way the girl giggled sent a chill running down his spine.
"Impressive as expected, child detective, Kudo Conan-kun."
His breath caught on his throat at that sentence, then took a deep breath. He hoped his shock hadn't shown on his face, but the widening smirk on Haibara's face told him that it just had.
"Just... Who are you, really, Haibara-san?"
Her hand raised and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Sherry," Conan paled at that name. "That's my codename."
The child was paralyzed, stuck on his spot while staring at the girl, mouth suddenly going dry.
Sherry?! How is that even possible?
Now he could see that, even if a bit different, this girl definitely resembled the one he had briefly seen months ago. Her hair was different ─ a wig? ─ but the shape of her face and her overall physical complexion was exactly the same.
Not to mention her gelid, icy blue stare.
"Well, are you surprised?" her evil smile widened. "It has been a long while since we last saw each other, hasn't it, Kudo-kun?"
Conan took a step back, sweating bullets but didn't let his gaze stray away from her form. "Why didn't you say anything?" he did an abysmal effort not to let his fear show on his face, however. "Back then, you said I was just a rat."
"Which isn't too far from reality, is it?" she chuckled to herself, before continuing. "I needed time. I had to make sure you weren't just an unfortunate homeless child that lived inside Kudo Shinichi's house and were, in fact, actually related to him."
Sherry clasped her hands behind her back, giving out the false impression of a cute little girl, but Conan did not feel at ease with it.
"I made a background check. My surprise was big when I came into the conclusion that Kudo Shinichi's little brother wasn't away in America, but back in Japan with a different last name," she explained to him, quietly and calmly, as if it meant nothing. Probably because it actually meant nothing to her. "The Organization had come into the decision to eliminate every single soul that was related with that high school detective."
"So, are you going to kill me?" he smirked, yet in reality he was cursing his fate. The anesthetic needle had already been used on the criminal a few hours ago, leaving him completely defenseless against a sudden attack.
"Not only you, but also his friends, your friends. That includes Kudo Shinichi's dear girlfriend and her father, who you are living with... And of course, the previous owner of the house I'm currently living at, who we have already taken care of."
Conan's eyes opened, widely. 22 Beika Block, Second Street, it dawned to him, and then he couldn't hide his horror. Why haven't I realized it before?!
"Why don't you go and take a look, if you don't believe me?" Conan's eyes narrowed at that. "Don't worry, I won't move from this spot. You can go if you truly want to."
Now Conan didn't want to turn his back on her, fearing it was a vile trap, yet on the other hand he couldn't bear the thought of Professor Agasa's body lying still on the floor, growing colder at every passing second while a pool of blood began forming beneath.
He gave a hesitant step ahead, then started to ran, and paused right before going around the corner. Looking over his shoulder he saw Haibara, standing on her place with her arms behind her back and a very disturbing smile curving her lips, still as a statue.
Hoping he wouldn't regret his decision later, the child took off running.
At the end, he did regret it, but for another reason altogether.
"Oh, Conan," Agasa smiled, unaware of what had happened to the young boy in front of him. "What are you doing here so late?
Conan blinked, and then blinked again for good measure. The professor didn't disappear and just stood there, waiting for him to speak. He never did.
Because the door opened.
"I'm home," the familiar girl walked inside, as if she had lived in there for ages, then sat on the couch.
"Welcome home, Ai-kun."
Conan was rendered speechless at the scene developing in front of him. Agasa was casually chatting with Haibara, like a father would with his daughter ─ grandfather and granddaughter? ─ after a long day of school.
"I take you already met Ai-kun, right?"
It took Conan's brain a few seconds more than it should to process the fact that this girl had taken him for a fool, and when it did, the boy glared at Haibara. The child in question just smirked back at him, which irritated him even more.
Agasa laughed loudly when he was told everything that had happened on their way home. Conan's eyebrow was twitching at this point.
"So, this means it was all a big lie?" the boy asked, annoyment sipping on his voice. "Every single thing?"
Haibara flipped a page of her magazine. "Only the part where I was going to kill everyone," she replied, as if it was matter of fact. "I'm not part of the assassination division."
"So you...?" his eyes widened behind his glasses.
"I was the head scientist and worked for the Organization."
The boy gave her a weird look, taking on her appearance. No matter how hard he looked, this girl simply couldn't be older than eight. So what...?
"I'm a prodigy," she explained, clearly noticing his confusion, with a smug smirk. "Or so they say. At any rate, they raised me to develop a certain drug for them," with a pause, the child shifted her gaze to the boy, before continuing. "The same one your older brother, Kudo Shinichi, ingested. Apotoxin-4869."
Conan took a sharp breath and his eyes narrowed. "What does it do?" quietly, he asked.
"Inhibition in the cardiovascular system, a decrease of heartbeats in one person over time," she explained to him. "Side effects include occasional severe chest pains, shortness of breath, fatigue and death."
"... Death...?"
"Most of the rats died right after taking it. The only one that didn't only survived two weeks."
The silence was deafening, Agasa noticed as he watched the young child take on this new information. To be honest, the old professor couldn't tell what was going through the kid's mind, since the light refracting on his glasses was hiding his eyes from plain view.
When he began to shake, the old professor seriously worried about the child detective. Hesitation filling his features, he tried to place a comforting hand on top of his shoulder, but it was whisked away when the boy suddenly turned around to face him.
"... Why?" he said in a whisper, before shifting. The light on his lenses was gone and now he could see the tear-filled, furious look on his young eyes. "Why is she living on your house?! Can't you see she's part of the men in black?!"
She had poisoned her brother.
This girl had created a poison that was slowly killing him.
And she had said that, so coldly and indifferently, like it meant nothing to her. It only made Conan angry ─ angrier than he had ever felt before.
Then why...? Why...?!
"He took me in," the boy paused when he heard her voice. "When he found me laying on the ground in the rain in front of your house," then, she turned to look at him and smiled, for the first time since he had met her. "That Professor right there."
Conan said nothing, yet his anger didn't leave right away.
"Your brother was supposed to die anyway, so he should consider himself lucky he was forced to take that experimental drug instead of a bullet in the head," she explained, easily holding his fiery gaze. "Out of the individuals who took that drug, his death was not confirmed. I changed his data, so shouldn't be a problem anymore."
Haibara turned back to her magazine.
"Well, once they realize I'm not dead and that it was me, a traitor, who wrote the data, he will be in trouble."
Traitor? the fury had now somewhat receded, and confusion took hold. "Why did you do that?"
Something flickered behind her eyes, and he saw her hands tensing a little bit around the magazine. Whatever it was, she managed to keep it inside.
"I have many reasons," finally, she told him. "But the biggest reason was my older sister."
"Your sister?"
"She was killed by the members of the Organization," she told him. "No matter how much I demanded, the Organization didn't tell me the reason behind it."
Her eyes narrowed, and her grip on the magazine tightened.
"Then, I decided to stop working on the development of that drug until I received an answer," she continued. "Of course I, who went against the organization, was confined to a small room in the lab and was to wait for the decision from above. I thought that since I was going to get killed anyway, I would take the Apotoxin-4869 which I secretly held."
Conan truthfully hadn't expected that. He hadn't thought anyone in their right mind would willingly take a poisonous drug, and such a violent one at that. She must have been desperate, he realized.
"And how did you escape?"
"Once ingested, the drug makes the victim enter a death-like state for a while, between twenty to thirty minutes," she explained. "When they entered the room, it looked like I had committed suicide."
The girl then finally left her spot and walked over the bookshelf, where the professor had left the newspaper, and took it. She held it in front of her to let them see the cover:
Drug company burned to the ground.
"They decided to get rid of my body, and anything possibly related to me, by setting the lab on fire, probably afraid I had left any clue behind that could incriminate them. I managed to escape, yet everything else was destroyed," Haibara told them, calmly as always. "Including all the drug's data stored in there."
Both the girl and the old man stared at Conan, waiting for his reaction. The boy, in turn, was quiet for a moment, as he took all this information in, before he frowned. There still was anger behind his eyes, but it had dimmed a bit somehow.
He was mostly determined now, though.
"You still can make an antidote, right?" Conan asked, his eyes meeting hers. "Even if you don't have the data."
"I have never tried to remember all of iy," at her words, the boy visually tensed. The girl noticed this, paused briefly, then let a smirk cross her face again. "But I guess I still need to try. My life goes with it as well."
Behind his glasses, his eyes lighted up. Haibara couldn't help but stare, thoroughly amused, at the look of hope that now was painting his face, even if his fists had yet to stop clenching.
Hope, huh? she couldn't remember the last time she had experienced it herself.
A/N:
SapphireRuby24: Shiho and Haibara will probably just be the same person. She will be an actual child this time around, though.
ajjr12: I think he won't, he probably is going to remain as Edogawa Conan even as the Kid Killer.
Dy: It wasn't just coincidence, what I tried to say was that, as soon as he heard the news about the bomb, he got on the train then called Conan. I hope it makes sense and sorry for the dissapointing answer lol. About what you asked about Kobayashi... In my country homeroom teachers work just like in yours, but before writing that I had tried to research and by what I understood (I wouldn't be surprised if I just got it all wrong and messed up badly) students in Japan usually have the same homeroom teacher during their entire life, that's why I supposed that Conan and his friends would still have Kobayashi as their teacher even if they already were in second grade.