We Are the Men in Black

by Velgamidragon

AU inspired by DragonlordRynn's "Black". The Organization is secretly the Japanese branch of the Men in Black and APTX-4869 was intentionally made to shrink its victim. Kudo was shrunk for his own protection, and Sherry shrunk to protect Dr. Agasa and go into hiding. Vermouth was behaving suspiciously as of late, and Gin was determined to find out and expose her secret agenda.

11. Clash of Red and Black

Author's Note: Alright, back on track with the plot. Considering how long the 'Clash of Red and Black' episodes went on, I'm surprised this chapter has a word count only slightly higher than Vermouth's confrontation with Conan and the FBI.

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Clash of Red and Black

It was not quite dusk when Gin stepped out of the car and shoved his hands into his coat pockets as he made his way to the lopsided hovel of a house so drab and awful-smelling even from this distance that he would have naively wondered if it was intentional if he didn't already know the answer. Long strides carried him to the threshold and he closed his left hand around the grip of the Beretta he'd purposefully moved there for this reason.

"Rikumichi Kusuda, this is the Men in Black, and don't try pretending you're not home. I know otherwise and I've got an assignment for you and your family," Gin called out into the dark hallow.

An amused snicker echoed from within. "My, my, my, if my ears don't deceive me. Look smart and behave my dear children for the infamous Jynnan Tonnyx himself has appeared on our doorstep, and it must be important if he's using my legal Earth name instead of my birth name."

What sounded like twenty high-pitched little titters followed these words and from the doorway, stepping into the dimming half-light, was a fairly tall man, still shorter than himself, with overgrown, wild black hair and matching thick black stubble. His nose was long and pointed like an arrow and his eyes, as black as his hair, were wide, but narrow, and inherently shrewd. This was not an individual Gin cared to deal with at all, much less on a semi-regular basis, for reasons that had nothing to do with his unkempt appearance and dilapidated housing preferences. It was difficult not to be prejudiced, but Rikumichi Kusuda and his lot were not the only Cephosanguines he'd had to interact with during his time in the MiB, and he had not yet heard of one that wouldn't go after humans or other aliens if they thought they could get away with it. It disgusted him that his job required he cooperate with literal brain parasites, and confirmed criminals even.

"Have you come to perhaps offer up your delectable intellect to my humble abode and my offspring?" Kusuda asked with an airy laugh, but with a sinister, hungry look in his eyes that belied the playfulness of his suggestion.

Gin gave him a nasty glare. "That human clone is more than enough for someone of your wretched nature. Unfortunately, I have need of you and your family's unique abilities for a secret operation."

At the words 'secret operation', Kusuda's gaze became even more intensely predatory and the excited whisperings of his spawn still in the house flowed out of the open doorway. "A secret operation, you say? And who is this person, or group of people rather, that you wish for us to infect and enslave to your will?"

This was another reason he despised working with Cephosanguines. Because he was the fearsome Jynnan Tonnyx of the MiB, they borderline-revered him at the same time they constantly tried to undermine him. "Nothing so distasteful as that," he growled. "It's your ability to leave behind a proper corpse and still live to tell of it that I need to use."

Kusuda looked put out at being denied fresh brains, but not completely mutinous. "That's awfully specific of you, your silverness. Isn't it your job to prevent human bodies from turning up due to alien causes?"

"It is and I intend to keep it that way, but if the plan goes south, I want to have the option available to kill a human without sacrificing one of my comrades or leaving a body full of missing organs. Capture by the enemy is not an option here. A Cephosanguine is the only being capable of pulling it off and escaping alive," Gin said darkly.

"Alright, you have my interest. What's the nature of this job you would have me do?" Kusuda said with a malevolent gleam in his black eyes.

Gin snorted, but withheld any vocalization of further disdain. "You and whichever offspring you choose will infiltrate an assortment of hospitals I wish to have investigated. Only one Cephosanguine will visit each hospital and I want you to infiltrate Haido Central Hospital. You may damage your body in any way you see fit to gain admittance as long as it's not permanent, and while you're there, I want you to search the hospital for a woman named Rena Mizunashi. She fell into a coma when she got into a traffic accident and ended up being captured by the FBI."

"So you want me and my lot to find this woman for you?" Kusuda asked, his lip curling into a sneer.

His green eyes narrowed. "Yes, and I expect every single one of you to provide daily updates on your progress directly to Vodka and anything new or relevant to 'that person'. Do not do anything that might draw the FBI's attention to you. You are to find out which hospital she's located and which room if you can manage that, but nothing more. The Organization will take further steps once we know that much."

Kusuda laughed, "Come on now, Gin, you know what I'm capable of. Such a measly infiltration and information-gathering scheme like this seems hardly worth my talents. Still though…" his voice lowered into a tone of careful, calculated interest. "all this effort for one little woman and giving us direct email contact with your boss? This Rena Mizunashi lady wouldn't happen to be one of your codenamed agents, would she?"

Gin knew that look, but he also knew how to put Kusuda back in his place. He let a teeth-bearing grin widen his lips and brought his gun out of his coat to hold it at chest level. He didn't need to point it at Kusuda for the alien's eyes to widen and his slightly-tanned skin to pale at the sight of it.

"There is one good thing about your kind being obligate parasites, Rikumichi Kusuda," Gin said in a soft, dangerous murmur. "Parasites can't live for long without a host, and if I were to shoot this cloned body the Organization gifted to you, you would be forced to abandon it and face me out here in the open in your weak tentacled slug form. I wouldn't even need to waste a second bullet to snuff out your pathetic, miserable existence."

"Now, now, there's no need for that! I was too hasty, of course it doesn't matter who you want me to find!" Kusuda said hurriedly in an attempt at a placating manner, his words tripping over themselves to leave his mouth and stay Gin's hand.

Gin's grin widened, turning more feral. "You're right. It doesn't matter to you either way. As for this being a measly infiltration, I would rethink those words if I were you. Shuichi Akai has returned to Japan with the rest of his FBI cohort; I'm sure you remember him."

For once, Kusuda's jaw dropped and his eyes widened in unexpected fear. "Shuichi Akai is here?" he repeated.

"Ah, and you can bet that wherever Rena Mizunashi is, he's guarding her like the ferocious Cerberus standing at the gates of the Underworld," Gin said, internally smirking that he'd wrong-footed Rikumichi Kusuda with news of Akai's presence. "It's for this reason in particular that I'm requesting the assistance of Cephosanguines. I will not allow Shuichi Akai the opportunity to capture another member of the Organization."

Not looking nearly as confident now that he was aware of Shuichi Akai's involvement but trying to hide it, Kusuda said, "Is there a plan to guarantee mine or my children's safety if we find ourselves forced to commit suicide to avoid capture by Shuichi Akai and the FBI? As you said, we are brain parasites and cannot survive long outside of a body without glucose to feed on."

Satisfied that Kusuda had been put back in his place, Gin returned his beloved Beretta to his coat pocket. "Yes, there is a plan. Before you begin your infiltration, you will be given an appropriately-sized homing beacon and a container of emergency glucose reserves. If you are forced to commit suicide, do so and escape the brain at the first opportunity when no one is present, then hide yourself. Once you are hidden, activate the homing beacon and the Organization will send someone to retrieve you. If such drastic measures are required, the Organization will compensate your loss with a new cloned body for you to feed upon."

Kusuda cracked his neck sideways and rolled his shoulders in an effort to loosen them up. "Well, it sounds more interesting than what I've been up to recently. I'll take you up on your offer, Gin, and I enlist as many of my offspring as you need to accomplish your search."

Gin nodded once. "I'll need at least six of them."

Kusuda smirked. "No sooner said than done. When do you want us to begin?"

From his right pocket, Gin pulled out a silver phone and tossed it to Kusuda, who caught it deftly. "The only contacts in that phone are Vodka's phone number and email and 'that person's' email. I will return later with phones for the other six you choose. Once you have those, you can begin at any time once you have injured your bodies appropriately."

"I look forward to it, your silverness," Kusuda said with a mocking bow.

Gin turned on his heel away from the shabby home, but had walked not more than five paces when he stopped and frowned in thought, his brow creasing his forehead. He slowly glanced back over his shoulder and saw Kusuda still eying him hungrily from the doorway of his own home. "Rikumichi Kusuda, you have a reputation of being quite well-informed of what's going on within the alien populations on Earth and receiving the most recent news of the goings-on in space."

"I have been told that many times, yes," Kusuda preened unashamedly. "Are you interested in the recent weapons' deployments to your beloved Earth?"

The problem with Kusuda was that he spoke so vaguely about information, unless you paid the right price for it, that it was difficult to know whether the information was new or outdated. Gin decided not to take the bait and would settle for believing that what Kusuda suggested was in fact, referring to the large gun smuggling operation he had just stopped, and so the information was old news. "Not at all, it's far less concrete than that."

Gin frowned further. Cracked, granite gray skin, a large, frog-like mouth, and a deep, booming voice like shockwaves flitted tauntingly through his memory. '… no such alien exists'.

"Do you know anything about an alien called Pandora?"

Kusuda's face contorted so briefly, Gin nearly missed it, but it had looked remarkably like fear. "Well now…" Kusuda said quietly, his expression closed and wary and all feigned playfulness gone. "I'm surprised you know that name."

Gin felt his unease take root in the face of Kusuda's serious response. "So you do know something," he confirmed aloud.

"And you're giving it serious consideration," Kusuda retorted in the same manner.

"The stories I've heard from the convicted would have me believe this Pandora belongs to a rare and powerful, but otherwise extinct, alien species, that it has lived on Earth for a hundred or so years, and that it has successfully evaded detection by MiB technology," Gin scoffed in disdain.

"Yet you're forced to acknowledge that there must be a reason the scum of the underworld are scrambling to obtain powerful plasma weapons, and this is your only lead to discovering why," Kusuda finished, his tone a little smug.

Gin scowled, but said nothing.

Kusuda smirked and gave a hapless shrug. "Unfortunately, the only information I know is as concrete as your question. There are rumors that abound, of course. There always are, and the rumors say much the same that the stories you've already heard indicate."

"I don't put much stock in rumors," Gin said, annoyed that he was wasting his time with this.

"No, but they can lead to some very interesting questions, I'd say," Kusuda said. "For example, there's one rumor I've heard that Pandora takes the form of a mermaid and whose flesh, once consumed, will grant immortality. There's another that says Pandora is a blood red gem residing dormant within one of the Big Jewels of the Earth. If this Big Jewel is held up to the moonlight when the Volley's Comet passes by the Earth, it will cry and those tears will grant immortality to the one who drinks them."

"Bullshit. Immortality is the foolishly-sought out pipe dream of mankind. It doesn't exist." If there was one thing that compromised his patient nature like no other, it was tales of the mythical and fantastic.

"So you don't find it curious that both these stories of Pandora, a supposedly ancient and long-lived species, possess the common thread of granting immortality?" Kusuda asked with a scathing sneer. "For someone as brilliant and intuitive as you, you're incredibly narrow-minded."

"I don't have to listen to this," Gin snarled and made to return to his car when Kusuda called out to him.

"Then I guess it wouldn't interest you to hear that there's a rumor Pandora has infiltrated into the highest levels of your precious Organization?"

Gin stilled then snapped his head back over his shoulder with a steely glint in his green eyes. "That's impossible. No alien can infiltrate the Men in Black without our knowing about it."

Kusuda's quiet snickers devolved into full-out laughter. "You really do think too simply sometimes, Gin, and your confidence is astounding! But ask yourself this: can your Organization look at two completely normal-looking, normal-response, healthy human cells and discern which one belongs to an alien?"

Gin continued to stare furiously at Kusuda. He was just messing with him, trying to sow the seeds of fear and doubt in his heart, but he would not let them take root. He knew the workings of the Organization inside and out and there was no way, no possible fucking way that such an alien existed, much less secretly infiltrated the Organization.

Though neither of the two men spoke as they stared at each other, the very air around them seemed to echo dully. It steadily grew louder and clearer and Gin found it sounded familiar even. It seemed to be speaking only one word. Just one word that kept repeating over and over. Eventually, he was able to make out what the voice was saying: Aniki.

"Aniki… Aniki…"

It was definitely Vodka's voice, but that made no sense. He hadn't brought Vodka with him, didn't see him anywhere, and his voice shouldn't be able to project from everywhere like this anyway.

"Aniki…!"

Vodka's voice was more insistent this time, and a little annoyed. Inexplicably, Gin felt a sudden heaviness settle in his bones and a lurch in his head. He felt groggy and stupid and when his eyes closed, everything around him seemed to disappear entirely.

When he opened them again, his vision was blurred, but he had no trouble making out Vodka's blunt, square-faced features staring at him.

Vodka smiled and retreated backward a bit. "There you are. I didn't think you would be so difficult to wake up. I half-expected you to attack me as soon as I touched your shoulder, but when you didn't respond, then I worried that I would have to resort to something a bit more drastic. You were out like a light."

Gin blinked his eyes slowly, hearing the words Vodka was saying, but his sluggish brain only comprehending half the words. He looked ahead and found bright afternoon sunlight glaring through the windshield of his car with pedestrians walking past Vodka's side along the sidewalk.

"I was asleep?" he blurted out and then instantly wished to take it back. It was perhaps the stupidest thing he'd ever said in his life while sober.

Luckily, Vodka decided not to poke fun at him for it. "Yeah, for a good thirty minutes or so at the very least. I think that's the first time you've ever fallen asleep on me while we've been driving on our way to an assignment. Are you feeling okay?"

Gin exhaled heavily and covered his eyes with his hand, massaging his forehead. "I haven't been sleeping well lately, but I didn't think it was so bad that I would end up taking a nap in the car like a little kid," he grumbled. "Vodka, remind me what day it is."

"Uh, Thursday, January 12th," Vodka said.

"I see…" Gin murmured, remembering his dream, the memory of what had occurred in mid-December. Rikumichi Kusuda had infiltrated Haido Central Hospital on December 19th shortly after that meeting and it had been twenty-four days since then. "Anything new about the search for Kir?"

Vodka shook his head. "No, none of the seven hospitals we're investigating have turned up anything interesting yet, but no homing beacons have been activated either, so the FBI's not onto us."

Gin gave a solemn nod. "I almost want the FBI to find them because then we'll know for sure which hospital Kir is being hidden in, but that's just not how we work."

"Nothing to do but wait, huh Aniki?"

"I'm tired of waiting all the time," Gin muttered to himself and pushed the memory of Kusuda and Pandora out of his head as he got out of the car to carry out his work for the day.

()()()()()

Haibara was convinced that the adults that came in contact with Conan on a semi-regular basis subconsciously ignored the fact that the person they were talking to was in fact a seven-year-old child. They seemed to forget that normal seven-year-old children were still learning how to read, write, form complex sentences, add, subtract, politely ask for things, and learn how caterpillars became butterflies. That was the only explanation she had for how and why even such smart, investigative people as Jodie Starling didn't question how a seven-year-old had the brain capacity to be able to reason with adults coherently.

Sometimes she half-heartedly hoped that one of these days Kudo would have a run-in with a psychologist or someone who specialized in child development, and they would make him sweat bullets when they pointed out, without a doubt, that his mental aptitude was not merely advanced for a child of his age, but impossible.

This was one of those times, while she was standing next to Dr. Agasa and Conan was having an impromptu meeting with Jodie Starling at their house about Eisuke Hondou's sudden appearance and subsequent disappearance at Haido Central Hospital where Kir was being held by the FBI.

"Um, what is this 'Company' you're talking about?" Dr. Agasa asked. "From listening to you, I gather that it's not the usual sort of company."

Since Kudo and the FBI had already taken the information this far and knew exactly who they were dealing with, there was no point in continuing to leave Dr. Agasa in the dark about this. "Just as the FBI is known as a 'Bureau', they are known as a 'Company'," she answered vaguely. "They gather intelligence in support of the policies of the United States and they are the intelligence service that carries out foreign activities under the direct control of the president."

"By that, you mean…?"

Haibara looked up and met his confused gaze with a blank stare. "The CIA."

"T-The CIA?" Agasa repeated.

"Yes. In other words, Eisuke's father is an American spy." She directed her blank expression to Jodie. "Isn't that what you meant?"

"Yeah, but that's just one possibility," Conan started to say.

"No, there's no doubt," Jodie retorted at once and Conan looked up at her in surprise.

Haibara wasn't surprised at all to hear Jodie's retelling of how she had confirmed the identity of Eisuke's father, Ethan Hondou, as a CIA agent. He had been the original CIA liaison for the Men in Black in Japan and in the process of training his daughter, Hidemi Hondou alias Rena Mizunashi, to take his place when he had been caught, killed, and replaced, and his alien replacement had gone after the man's daughter. She'd managed to turn the tables against her captor on her own, but was in a pitiful state when Gin found her. Gin had been very worried about the newly-christened Kir's mental state because of the torture inflicted on her by one who looked like her father and because she had never killed anyone before that moment. Haibara was ashamed to admit that her fourteen-year-old self, who had only recently started dating Gin at the time, had been more preoccupied with being jealous at how much time Gin was spending with Kir rather than the amount of trauma the woman had endured.

"But isn't it strange?" Haibara said, inserting herself back into the conversation. "If that Eisuke kid is looking for Rena Mizunashi because she underwent plastic surgery to look like his sister, then shouldn't the CIA have stopped him?"

She didn't know where that Eisuke fellow had disappeared to, but if she could persuade Kudo to believe he'd joined up with one of his father's CIA colleagues, it might distract him long enough to prevent him from gaining any good traction on this case.

"That's true. Since the Organization is pursuing her whereabouts as well, he would be in danger if they noticed him," Agasa agreed. "He could also inadvertently hinder the CIA's operation as well. Moreover, if he's really their operative's son, there'd be no reason not to stop him."

"No, they probably did stop him from meeting Rena Mizunashi," Conan said. "He said he saw a colleague of his father's at Haido Central before winter break which was right before we lost contact with him.

Haibara could hardly believe her ears. Oh stars, please let this distraction work!

"Then the CIA stopped him?" Agasa asked.

"Yeah, they're probably protecting him now as they were requested to by his father," Conan said with a slight smile and Haibara felt her heart sink with a silent groan.

If Jodie had been thorough in her investigation, then she already knew that wasn't possible because Ethan Hondou had been dead for four years. Sure enough, she revealed just that and Haibara pretended to stare at her in wide-eyed shock like the other two.

"It was an abandoned warehouse in Yokohama. The eyewitness was a homeless man sleeping on the second floor," Jodie began and Haibara found her eyes widen even further as her pretend shock became real when she realized that Jodie was going to recount the day Hidemi murdered the alien who had replaced her father.

Gin had burned down that warehouse. There shouldn't have been any witnesses.

"After being awoken by a gunshot, he looked to the bottom floor and saw a woman crouching near the collapsed body of a man when two other men entered. Both were wearing black; one was tall with long hair and the other had a solid build and was wearing sunglasses."

A quick glance at Conan's expression, and she could read the anger boiling off him in the squint of his eyes and the grit of his teeth as he recognized the descriptions of the two men he hated most in the world.

"The kneeling woman explained to the two men in a feeble tone: 'I bit into his wrist, grabbed his gun, and shot him to death.' Then she said 'I didn't say anything. Listen to the MD the dead man is carrying and you'll know.' After a while, another man appeared. He rushed over and began calling out 'Hondou! Hondou! Hondou!'"

Haibara knew that what she was hearing was only the last quarter of the story and yet, even these details were unknown to her. Nobody had meant to keep her ignorant of what happened to Kir. She just hadn't wanted to hear about it, and then afterwards, she had completely forgotten about it.

"Then the man who rushed over was with the CIA also?" Agasa asked. His expression was troubled.

"But if he just called out his last name, how do you know it was really Ethan Hondou?" Conan pointed out.

"I showed him the picture of Eisuke's father that you sent me. When I showed it to him for confirmation, he said it was certain," Jodie answered.

"He?" Conan asked, and she was glad he had because she would have otherwise. For having taught high school English for a time, she had completely forgotten to identify the new noun before switching to a pronoun.

"Akai," she said, and Haibara's brow furrowed in concern for the briefest of seconds upon hearing the name. "He found conclusive evidence that Ethan Hondou was a CIA operative. I'm not sure how he got it, but his evidence has never proven wrong, not even once."

The only question Haibara had about that was if he had found this 'conclusive evidence' during or after his time in the Organization. Ethan Hondou had been with the Men in Black for twenty-two years (and five of those spent working as the highest rank a person could go before being codenamed) before Akai joined and then Ethan Hondou died a year later. If Akai had found such evidence after so short a length of time about a man who had been with the Organization as long as he had, then what other secrets had Akai managed to uncover while he had been with them?

"But I doubt they would leave a witness alive, much less two," Haibara quipped, wanting to direct the conversation from Akai as quickly as possible.

"Luckily they didn't realize the homeless man was there, but they did kill the man who rushed to the body from where they were hiding," Jodie continued.

That or the other fake CIA agent had committed suicide when he saw who was there waiting for him. Both were equally likely to Haibara.

"They burned down the warehouse as well. They must have expected anyone alive to go down with it, just like with me. Aside from that, the kneeling woman proved even more surprising. That homeless man, though he was scared to do so, finally responded: 'That kneeling woman there was the spitting image of that announcer, Rena Mizunashi."

"Then that means…" Dr. Agasa began.

"As we thought, Rena Mizunashi's not…" Conan trailed off.

"Yeah, it would seem she's not that Eisuke kid's sister," Jodie finished. "If she were, that would mean the daughter shot and killed her own father."

And that was apparently an impossible concept to them, but she wasn't going to let this opportunity pass up. "Thinking about it, she must have impersonated Ethan Hondou's daughter in order to get close to him. She was probably sounding out how much the CIA understood of the situation, but was found out and captured. I suppose that before he could make her talk, she fought back."

It was a reasonable conjecture and yet Conan still had that stiff expression that meant he was not convinced and would continue information-hunting until he'd reached a conclusion he was satisfied with. It frustrated her to no end.

Jodie huffed in exasperation. "I guess I'm stuck now. I was going to ask Eisuke for more details about his father and thought you could call him here, but now we can't contact him."

"At any rate, let's head over to Haido Central Hospital," Conan suggested.

"Eh, you too?"

"Yup! Since CIA members may be hiding there, I could prove useful since they don't know my face, right?" he said with a false, cutesy smile to Jodie that never failed to annoy Haibara.

It was like that smile turned on some magic charm to make people completely forget that he was a seven-year-old talking the way no seven-year-old should, even if he had been 'trained by Shinichi Kudo'. Perhaps what annoyed Haibara the most about it was that it seemed to work every single freaking time. She managed to hide her annoyance behind a cool mask of indifference as she walked the FBI agent and the shrunken detective walk out the front door and then promptly turned on her heel to head down the stairs.

"I'll be working in the basement for a while, so don't come down and bother me," she told Agasa by way of explanation before he could ask.

No sooner had she grabbed the phone off the desk did she flip it open and quickly dial a set of numbers before holding it to her ear and listening to the other end ring.

"Sherry? It's me, what do you need?" Gin answered, sounding startled.

Haibara frowned slightly. "Is this a bad time?"

"No, it's fine. I'm just a little out of it today," Gin sighed.

"He fell asleep in the car on the way to an assignment," Vodka's voice snickered in the background.

"Vodka, shut up!" Gin snapped, sounding both furious and mortified.

Despite Gin's embarrassment, it worried her to hear that. "It's not like you to fall asleep in the car like that. You're not coming down with something are you?"

"No, Sherry, as I already told Vodka, I just haven't been sleeping well lately and I guess it finally caught up with me in the car," Gin grumbled. "So, why are you calling?"

Haibara shrugged and crossed one of her arms. "I figured I'd better inform you of what Kudo knows now before you're blindsided later. He knows about Ethan Hondou."

"Ethan Hondou! How?! What does he know?" Gin demanded.

Haibara sniffed disdainfully. "Too much. He knows that Hondou was a CIA agent infiltrating the Black Organization and knows the circumstances surrounding his death four years ago, that he was killed by a woman who looked like Rena Mizunashi. Apparently there was a homeless person who witnessed everything from the moment of your arrival. The FBI knows all of this information now too."

"Sherry, this is…" Gin trailed off, sounding uncharacteristically worried for once.

"Kir's little brother, Eisuke, has been snooping around looking for Rena Mizunashi as well, but with a picture of his big sister from when she was younger. The only reason Kudo can't accept that Rena Mizunashi and Hidemi Hondou are the same person is because Hidemi apparently gave her brother a blood transfusion when he was little and he's Type O, while Rena Mizunashi is Type AB." She exhaled heavily through her nose and continued, "As it stands right now, he believes Kir underwent plastic surgery to look like Ethan Hondou's daughter in order to get close to him and discover how much the CIA knew about the Black Organization before killing him, but he's not convinced by that explanation. The idea of Kir working for the CIA has not yet crossed his mind, but it may if he can find a way around the blood type problem with Eisuke and Rena and can prove that Rena and Hidemi are one and the same."

"Thank you, Sherry. I know it's not easy for you to just stand there listening to them uncover the Organization's secrets like that, but I appreciate you keeping me informed of where he stands with us," Gin said.

Haibara half-smiled. "And how's the search for Kir coming along?"

"Still looking. I've sent spies into seven likely hospitals she may have been placed in, but there's been no news yet," he said with a tired sigh.

Three words. That's all it would take for her to ease some of his burden. He wouldn't be able to stop her and he would be angry at her for revealing the location, but he wouldn't be able to pretend he hadn't heard her and he would still act on the information. Haibara grimaced and bit her lip. If she did that, then she would be found out as the traitor who gave away Kir's location to the Black Organization and Kudo would never trust her again. She needed that trust, not just because he often shared what he'd learned of the Organization with her, but because he was her friend, for better or worse.

"I hope you find her soon," she offered quietly.

"Yeah… me too… Please let me know if you hear anything new on your end, Sherry."

She smiled faintly. "I will. I love you, Gin."

A slight chuckle escaped him. "I'm not saying 'I love you too' back."

Her grin widened. "And yet, I believe you just did."

He laughed for real this time. "Thank you, Sherry."

Even after he hung up and she could no longer hear his voice in her ear, she still held the phone against her chest, closed her eyes, and sighed happily, his real laugh echoing in her head.

()()()()()

When Vodka first heard the quiet, but insistent beeping noise while he was filling the gas tank, he thought he was going insane until he realized it was coming from his phone. Curious and more than a little concerned, he pulled it out of his pocket and flipped it open. His eyebrows shot up to his hairline immediately as soon as the screen lit up and he understood perfectly why it was making that sound now.

One of the seven homing beacons had been set off, the one for Rikumichi Kusuda stationed at Haido Central Hospital. He'd already received the daily report from the seven Cephosanguines, so what could have happened already at this time of night to cause this? Vodka noticed there was a picture attached and he opened the file, but it was only a picture of the list of patients and their rooms taken at the nurse's station and a quick scan told him that Rena Mizunashi's name was not on there. If the picture was some kind of code meant to hint where she was, then he was clueless and would have to have Gin take a look at it.

Speaking of which… Vodka looked up from his phone at the back of his partner's head from where he was sitting in the passenger's seat. In truth, he was worried about him. Gin wasn't complaining and wouldn't say anything, but Vodka had been working with him for seven years and he could tell that the taller man was exhausted and drained, today's car nap being undeniable proof of that. Although Gin and Kir disagreed on many things, they had always gotten along well and Gin had been merciless towards himself for not having arrived to save Hidemi from her captor sooner. As ridiculous as it was, some part of him blamed himself for letting her get captured at all. He wondered if Gin blamed himself for letting her get captured this time too and that was why he was running himself into the ground trying to find her. Gin took his responsibility for his subordinates very seriously.

Vodka glanced down at his phone still showing the active homing beacon for Haido Central Hospital on the screen. This was the information Gin had been patiently waiting nearly a month for. His first instinct was to poke his head back into the car and tell him immediately, but what if he was wrong? What if the homing beacon was activated for some reason other than escaping capture by the FBI and Kir wasn't at Haido Central Hospital? It would waste invaluable time on a fruitless endeavor. It would be better to scope out the situation first before reporting his findings to Gin.

With his mind made up, Vodka dialed a few numbers on the keypad and waited for the call to go through. "Hatsuo, it's me. I got a buzz just now on the homing beacon for our guy at the Haido Central Hospital. I need you to send one of yours to go pick him up. Have them bring extra glucose reserves just in case. After that, I need you to send him over to Haido Central Hospital to scout out the situation. If it's the FBI, they'll be expecting us soon and they'll be swarming to reinforce their numbers in preparation. If your guy gives you the go ahead, report it back to me and send out the rest of your subordinates to the hospital as sniper cover." He smirked slightly. "No sense letting the FBI think they can sneak Rena Mizunashi out of the hospital without giving us the chance to retaliate properly. If you need extra personnel, you have my permission to enlist any other squad leaders of your rank or lower for this mission."

Vodka received an affirmative from the squad leader and hung up, sticking the phone back in his pocket. Belatedly, he realized the gas nozzle had already finished filling up the tank and he fumbled it back into its holder. Once he paid for the gas, he opened the door and slid back into the driver's seat.

"You sure took your time," Gin said quietly. His voice was carefully expressionless and his bangs were hiding his eyes again so Vodka couldn't easily tell how Gin was feeling.

"Ah, well, I was a bit distracted-"

"-Who were you talking with on the phone just now?" Gin cut him off sharply.

Vodka stiffened and glanced away quickly, not that it would do him any good. Some might consider it a virtue, but to him, his emotional honesty was a terrible fault he had never been able to overcome. "Err, I was… who I was talking with, that is to say… I mean, it wasn't anyone important."

He didn't look at his partner, but he knew without doing so that Gin had shifted his head just enough to glance at him out of the corner of his eyes and was slowly raising one of his ash-blond eyebrows in open disbelief. "Ohh?" he hummed.

"Y-Yeah," Vodka stammered, still not meeting his partner's gaze.

A tense silence settled between them as Gin stared at Vodka, and Vodka fidgeted nervously under the scrutiny. At last, Gin huffed and a puff of cigarette smoke escaped his lips in the process. "If you say so." He resettled himself against the seat and tipped his hat forward slightly.

For his part, Vodka was shocked that Gin had let him get away with such an obvious, bold-faced lie without any repercussions, but he didn't wish to press his luck. He turned the key in the ignition and pulled out of the gas station back onto the main road. Once he got the call from Hatsuo, then he would have a better understanding of the situation and could tell Gin accordingly. For Gin's sake, Vodka hoped that Hatsuo would be calling with good news.

()()()()()

The plan had been ready to be put into action from the very moment Gin had first sent the seven Cephosanguines undercover into the hospitals. He had only been waiting to hear which location Operation: Smoke Out required his efforts be directed towards. Everything after that was all a matter of timing.

"Good news, Aniki, our present for James Black from Rikumichi Kusuda is on its way," Vodka said as soon as he got off the phone.

Gin smirked. "Excellent. Call Nima again in fifteen minutes to have them drop off the rest of our gifts for the FBI." With those directions spoken, he pulled out his own phone and made three separate calls, saying the same thing each time: "It's me. Do it."

He hung up after the third call and leaned back in his seat, his heart pumping with anticipation. Nothing would be obvious so soon after his calls, but within a short ten minutes, James Black would receive the purple columbine flowers and Haido Central Hospital would be flooded with the innocent victims of a fire, a gaseous irritant, and the symptoms of food poisoning. The FBI wouldn't be able to perform security checks on such vast numbers of people before they burst into the hospital lobby. Just imagining their inevitable panic and confusion along with their growing fear as they desperately fought against a steadily worsening situation brought him a sense of vicious pleasure.

His phone rang this time and he answered with only a brief glance at the number. "Yeah, it's me."

Chianti's voice answered him. "Korn and I have arrived in the area."

'That makes two of you,' he thought bitterly. Vermouth still hadn't checked in yet. "Alright, meet me on Samoju Street just past the intersection at Karana Boulevard after the bookstore and I'll fill you in on the details and give you some important equipment."

"Roger that," Chianti said and hung up.

"Chianti and Korn will be here soon," Gin explained to Vodka.

"Still no word from Vermouth, huh?"

Gin's eyes narrowed. "No. She's still got time though…"

It wasn't much later that two black motorcycles pulled up alongside the Porsche and Gin and Vodka got out of the car to greet the two snipers.

"Alright, Gin, we're here, so what's the plan?" Chianti asked as she took off her helmet. Korn left his on.

Gin walked around to the back of the car, the other three following him, and opened up the trunk from which he removed three objects that looked like guns except that they had cylindrical barrels. He passed these to Vodka, Chianti, and Korn.

"These are infrared imaging scanners," he explained. "In a little over thirty minutes from now, the FBI will feel pressured to flee the hospital with Kir in tow, but they'll try and disguise which vehicle they're using to locate her. I expect they won't use more than three vans, so each of you will be assigned to follow one. You aim the barrel of the IIS at the front end of the van where you wish to scan and pull the trigger to begin. Make sure you hold it straight without turning it as you scan towards the back end of the van and release the trigger when you're done. You will see a preview of the image you just captured and you will forward it to me by pressing the red button at the top of the grip. I suggest you practice using them and familiarizing yourself with the area before getting into position."

Chianti examined it with curiosity. "Sounds interesting, so where are we going to position ourselves?"

"I want you on the rooftop observing the hospital's parking garage. Your job will be to count how many vans they're using to hide their transportation of Kir. If they use more than three, I'll have to come up with a new plan to account for the discrepancy."

"Roger," she said with a nod.

Gin looked to Korn standing next to her. "I want you groundside along the parking garage entrance's street. You'll be in a good position to follow your van quickly."

"Understood."

"Vodka, you'll wait with me near the hospital until the FBI makes its move," Gin said.

Vodka smiled slightly and nodded. "Copy that."

"So, Gin, what's this brilliant plan you've got that makes you so certain the FBI will try to move Kir after thirty minutes?" Chianti asked.

Gin chuckled darkly. "Just a steady series of unfortunate events designed to cloud their judgment and slowly strangle them with a noose of their own making. They'll reveal the location of Kir's room and then happily bring her to us of their own accord."

He knew he was being uncharacteristically blood-thirsty towards other humans, but he could hardly bring himself to care. He was having too much fun shoving that irksome organization's nose to the metaphorical grindstone. The distant sound of a fire truck alarm drew his focus back to the outside world and he smirked to himself. It was almost time.

"Vodka, go ahead and call Nima and have him send the rest of our gifts," he said.

"Yes, Aniki," Vodka replied and called the squad leader back to relay the instructions.

While Vodka was doing that, Gin turned back to the two snipers. "I suggest you stay off the main roads leading to the hospital while you're scoping the area if you can. There's about to be a lot of heavy traffic in that direction."

"Oi, oi, what did you do?" Chianti demanded.

"Nothing too life-threatening if that's what you're worried about," he said with a relaxed shrug. "I merely arranged for three incidents to incapacitate large numbers of people severely enough for them to come to this hospital and overwhelm the already high-strung FBI agents sitting in their trenches waiting for our attack from across No Man's Land."

"You're one sick son of a bitch," Chianti muttered.

Gin let her insult slide off him like water. He was used to her rude mouth. "Just make sure that you're at your assigned position in thirty minutes and inform me over your radios when you've arrived."

"Yeah, yeah, I hear ya," Chianti griped and started walking back to her motorcycle. Korn silently followed after her to his.

Vodka had just finished his phone call. "The rest of the bombs are being sent now," he said.

"Good, so far everything is running smoothly. Right now, I need to keep an eye on the transmitter of the first bomb we sent and then the others so I know when they arrive at the hospital and can choose the proper time to stream the edited video of Kir."

"Do you really think Akai will be the one to take the first bomb away from the hospital?"

Gin frowned. "I'm hoping so. He's that kind of person and the FBI views him as their trump card against us, so he will most likely be either with his boss who holds the potted bomb or in close contact with him. He will know immediately when the bomb's ticking becomes loud enough to hear. There's a garbage dump seven kilometers away from the hospital that they can take it to. The more than thirty minutes available on the timer will be enough to get it there in time. However, it will be too far away to have returned to the hospital in time to witness the video streaming of Kir and prevent his colleagues from going to her room to check if she really is still unconscious."

"And if Akai isn't the one to take the first bomb away?"

"Then I'll just have to hope that he figures out the bombs' true purpose too late to stop his colleagues from reaching Kir's room," Gin sighed.

()()()()()

"One… two… three… Three vans, just like you said, Gin," Chianti informed him over the radio.

"Good." He loved being right. "Chianti, you follow the first van and Korn, you're on the second one. Once you catch up with your target, scan the interior and I'll decide which one is the correct van," Gin said. He got two affirmatives and glanced over at his partner putting on his helmet. "Vodka, you're going after the third one."

"Gotcha. Hey, did Vermouth or our informant in the hospital ever get back to you?"

Gin scowled. "No, I haven't heard from either of them. Well, according to 'that person', the informant is only there for insurance, but I never intended to rely on that plan anyway. As for Vermouth, we can still pull this off without her and she'll be the one to explain to 'that person' why she wasn't here."

Vodka nodded absent-mindedly and drove out from under the overpass where Gin had parked his car.

Despite having to descend from the roof of a tall building first, Chianti was still the first to reach her target.

"Gin, I'm at the first vehicle."

"How does it look?" he asked.

"I can't see anything with the side windows tinted," she said with a huff.

Gin had expected as much. It would be stupid of the FBI not to try and hide their cargo, but it was a useless gesture. "Strip it down."

"Roger… Photography complete, forwarding now."

He shifted his attention from the radio in his hands to the open laptop sitting on his thighs as a new window opened on the screen and the picture loaded from left to right. "The thermograph shows nine bodies and I can see our bomb transmitters on nearly all of them."

"You see it, right? There's one lying down on the back seat. Isn't that Rena Mizunashi? It's the only one that doesn't have a transmitter."

Gin gave a noncommittal hum in the back of his throat. He needed to see what the other two looked like first, but he strongly doubted the FBI- no, that Shuichi Akai would have let the FBI place Kir in the van in such an obvious way.

"Mine's taken. Forwarding it now," Korn said, and a second window with a second thermograph appeared on the screen.

"I'm seeing nine bodies in the second van, but with no transmitters," he informed them.

"Mine's done as well," Vodka said and the last thermograph loaded onto the screen.

It was obvious at a quick glance that Vodka's van was different from the other two. "I'm seeing two bodies in the third van and both of them have transmitters."

The presence of the transmitters on the various members in the three vans had no doubt been Shuichi Akai's last-minute suggestion to add a distracting factor and throw another layer of deception over which van contained their captured comrade. Kir was unconscious, so it would make sense for her to be in one of the first two vans. And yet, his eyes kept being drawn back to the thermograph of the third…

"Hurry up, Gin! Following them for so long is making me want to take my rifle and shoot out the tires," Chianti complained.

"Well, it seems like there's no reason to follow mine," Vodka said. "With the transmitters and heat signatures, we've only got two FBI agents here. Besides, if this keeps up, we'll end up right back at the hospital. It'd be a perfect decoy, right?"

'A perfect decoy, huh?' Gin wondered when another woman's voice interrupted his musings over the radio.

"Sorry for the wait, Gin. I've finally found it: Shuichi Akai's Chevrolet."

Was that what that irksome woman had been up to this whole time? "You're late, Vermouth. 'That person' directly ordered you to do this, right?"

As much as it irritated him, as long as 'that person' was aware of her movements and she wasn't acting out on her own again, he didn't have any reason to harass her for leaving him in the dark about her whereabouts.

"You'll have to forgive me," Vermouth said with a playful edge. "He expected this and parked a kilometer away."

That sounded like Akai. "And? Where is he?"

"We just left Haido Park and entered Beika city limits," Vermouth said. "The closest van to him is Korn's."

Gin pressed a few keys on the laptop and shifted from the thermograph displays to a map of the streets with four moving purple triangles, the vehicle tags for the four motorcycles they were using in this operation. He focused on the two that were moving in the same direction. One of them was Korn, the other was Vermouth, and in-between them unmarked was Akai.

"So he's about 200 meters back?" he guessed based on the relative positions of the two moving triangles on the screen.

"Then isn't our target Korn's car since that guy is following it?" Chianti demanded angrily.

Before Gin could give any further orders for their plan of attack, Vermouth's voice came back on the radio, "Amazing, he's actually speeding up! He'll catch the second van in less than a minute. He must have noticed Korn has marked it."

"So it's the second one!" Chianti said decisively. "I'll change course and join Korn in pursuit!"

No, that was a feint.

"Then I'll head for Korn's car as well," Vodka said, "Following bait like this won't help at all."

He was even more certain than before.

"If he comes, I'll fire."

"Hold it, Korn. Take a side road and change course," Gin ordered.

His words were predictably met with Chianti's outrage. "What now?! Are you giving up and running from Akai?!"

"No, what we should be following is the third van Vodka's tailing. That's where Kir is," he said, a victorious smirk twerking the corner of his lips.

"Eh? Why?" Vermouth asked in surprise.

"Akai believes we're part of a secret criminal organization. He isn't going to screw up and draw our attention to the car he's escorting by pulling out in such an obvious way. He's luring us into a trap," he said.

"A trap, huh?" Vermouth repeated.

"But Aniki, the back seat of the van I'm on is empty and only has two FBI guys in the front," Vodka pointed out.

"Hmph, while the driver is probably with the FBI, the one sitting in the passenger seat must be Kir. They expected us to assume the unconscious Kir would be placed on a stretcher in the back of the van, so they put a transmitter on her and put her in the passenger seat to make her look like an FBI agent," Gin explained.

"But isn't the third van going back to the hospital?" Chianti asked, sounding annoyed.

"That's another decisive clue," he agreed, refocusing the map on Vodka's position and observing his direction. "Even though they realized we had found out Kir was in that hospital, the FBI hadn't moved her because they had nowhere else to take her in this situation." His smirk widened and he closed the laptop, tossing it off to the side. "Basically, they're making it seem like they're moving her when they're brazenly returning to the same hospital, thinking we wouldn't check it a second time. So, everyone regroup at Vodka's position."

"Okay, Vodka, where are you!?" Chianti shouted.

"I'm at-"

While Vodka was busy communicating his position to the others over the radio, Gin turned the engine over and drove out from under the overpass onto the main road. Since the van was returning back to the hospital, it didn't take long for him to reach the van and for the others to join him. It was an impressive escort: one vintage Porsche and four motorcycles following behind a single navy-blue van. It definitely sent a strong, clear message: We've figured you out. Gin was curious how the driver would respond to this statement. He was outnumbered, outvehicled, and outgunned. The FBI driver only had two things on his side: Kir, and the fact that they didn't actually want to kill him.

The driver's first response to their presence left Gin feeling both baffled and suspicious. The driver increased his speed, but then shifted over from the fast lane into the slow left lane. They were approaching a long stretch of riverbank on the left; was that intentional or was the timing just coincidence? Then out of nowhere, the van started fish-tailing wildly, its brakes screaming. Gin hastily backed off and watched the careening car with apprehension from a further distance. It wavered and spun so far to the left that its right front end crashed into the outer barrier with a metallic crunch where the road was starting to swing right. It skidded that way for several meters, metal screeching against metal, until the front right wheel finally caught on the end of the barrier and jerked the van to a full-stop.

Gin and the others stopped just before the scene of the accident. He got out of the car and was just starting to wonder if he (ironically) needed to call for one of the Organization's medical teams when the passenger door opened and a conscious, very-much-awake Kir tumbled to the ground, smiling gratefully up at them.

"Kir…!" Chianti gasped, voicing the shock and confusion that everyone was feeling as she staggered forward, holding her right arm in pain.

"What's the meaning of this? Why did the van stop?" he demanded, because as glad as he was to see her alive, and awake even, the circumstances by which this reunion had been allowed were a little too convenient for his liking.

"I heard on that FBI agent's radio that you were coming to rescue me. I saw my chance and hit him with the bomb case they gave me, then pulled the hand brake," Kir said, glancing back at the unconscious driver.

"Then, even though the FBI had you hospitalized, you were conscious?" Vermouth asked with a note of skepticism.

"Yeah. I only came to two or three days ago, but the FBI thought I was in a coma the whole time."

"I guess that means we've recovered Kir safely without getting caught, huh Aniki?" Vodka said in faint relief.

"Yeah…" Gin muttered distractedly. There was something about the way Kir was speaking that made him think there was more to this than she was letting on. Not taking his eyes off her, he said, "They left such an important task to just one man. Let's dispose of this foolish FBI agent."

She gave him the slightest of nods.

Withholding a frustrated sigh, he turned to face the others, put a finger to his lips in a shushing gesture and jerked his head back at the apparently not-unconscious FBI driver. Everyone stiffened in mild alarm with the news, but none of them said a word to let on otherwise. Gin silently pointed at Chianti and Korn, and Korn immediately pointed at Chianti. Chianti rolled her eyes, but pulled out her sniper rifle anyway.

"Do it, Chianti," he ordered as she steadied her weapon and took aim. He wasn't sure what Kir was expecting to happen, only that she knew the driver would be able to get away from them without suspicion and he decided to trust this secret plan of hers.

"Roger that," she said and then giggled to herself. "If you must blame someone, blame your FBI partners who came up with this stupid strat-"

Her words were interrupted by a flash of light and an explosion that rent the air and completely consumed the van in fierce orange flames and black smoke.

"An explosion?" Vodka said, his tone both confused and horrified as he stared at the wreckage. The flames were so thick they couldn't have even begun to determine if there was a body still inside.

"Don't tell me that guy left a live bomb in his pocket!" Chianti exclaimed, looking dumbstruck.

"Could the fuse have been triggered by the force of the car crash?" Kir suggested, sounding remarkably calm for having just witnessed someone being blown to smithereens.

Well, Gin couldn't argue that death by explosion was about as non-suspicious as you could get under ordinary circumstances. Unfortunately, the flaming vehicle was drawing a lot of attention from passersby stopping to do what ordinary civilians typically do and call for a police or ambulance.

"Lots of curious onlookers," Vodka muttered under his breath.

"Kir, you're in my car. Let's move out," he ordered.

Everyone jumped to obey and they sped out of there away from the scene of the accident.

Once they were safely out of the danger zone, Gin got back on the radio. "Alright, everyone, we've successfully retrieved Kir from the FBI, but Akai might still try something to get her back, so be wary, but otherwise we're done and you're free to go off wherever you wish."

However, immediately after he ended the radio call, Kir said, "Akai won't try anything to retrieve me. That would be counterproductive to his plan."

Gin's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

Kir crossed her arms and groaned unhappily, her expression one of bitter frustration. "Gin, I don't know how, but they – Akai and Conan – know about me. They know I'm a CIA agent, they know I'm Ethan Hondou's daughter, they know how I killed my father, and they even came up with a fake version to explain how he could have committed suicide by making it look like I murdered him to protect me from being found out. They never said my real name to my face, but they have contact with my little brother, so they could get it from him if they really wanted to. At this point, I am honestly surprised they still haven't figured out the Organization deals with aliens."

Gin had gone slack-jawed as he listened to Kir relay all the information that had been revealed about her. That was not where Kudo had stood with regards to his information about Kir yesterday, according to Sherry. How was it possible for him to have discovered so much more in less than twenty-four hours that it completely turned his thinking around and delivered him to the truth?

"I'm sorry," he apologized. "From what Sherry told me, your brother has been poking his nose into Detective Mouri's business trying to find you, so Kudo had access to a wellspring of information that he shouldn't have. We should have done something about young Eisuke to prevent that, but it didn't even cross my mind."

"I understand. I imagine you were a bit more preoccupied with finding me rather than managing my clumsy kid brother," Kir said with a kind smile. "Thank you for finding me though, and I'm glad it's in a much better condition than the last time."

Gin gave a dismissive snort. "The chances of that happening to you again are incredibly unlikely. So, what were you saying earlier about how retrieving you from us would be counterproductive to Akai's plan?"

Kir hesitated. "While I never saw Shuichi Akai in action while he was part of the Organization, I'm familiar with his reputation, and I saw a bit of what you meant about Conan Edogawa's intelligence when I first met him several months ago. They're frighteningly perceptive on their own, but working together… they're something else. Together, they may be able to do what one of them alone could not."

"Kir, you're not making any sense right now," he told her, and if his tone was a little snappish, it was because hers was making him feel uneasy.

"Together, they've concocted a plan... a detailed, convoluted, far-reaching plan that, so far, has gone exactly as they outlined it would when they explained it to me last night after they caught me awake. It's a plan to give me safely back to the Organization without anyone getting killed, no matter what suspicious points may have cropped up upon retrieval," she said.

"Go on," he encouraged when she stopped.

"In the event that the FBI felt the need to move me, or at least pretend to, Akai and Conan knew they were going to use three vans with two of them being decoys-"

Gin sniffed. "It was a predictable move. Anyone could have foreseen that."

"-and they predicted that you would see through which of the vans were fake and correctly identify the one I was in."

His jaw tightened.

Kir continued, "Once you were tailing us, they told me to hit the driver with the bomb I had been given, though I don't think he expected it – I suppose it was to make it sound more realistic over the radio. The driver intentionally crashed the van in the position that he did, at the location he did, so that he would be able to escape the van through the gap in the barrier when the bomb exploded without you being any the wiser to his survival."

"And why does Shuichi Akai want you back in the Organization?" he asked, though he felt he knew the answer.

"Information. Since I'm a current member that hasn't been discovered as a NOC, he wants me to be a fishing line for the FBI. I imagine their information sources has been cut quite drastically since Akai was exiled from the Organization. I warned him that my primary mission was to the CIA, even if it became inconvenient for the FBI, but he didn't seem to mind."

"So it was intentionally too easy to get you back," Gin growled through gritted teeth.

"They expect you to be suspicious about that too."

His eyes widened and he actually took them off the road for a moment to stare at her. "What?"

Kir nodded grimly. "I told you their plan is far-reaching. It's still not finished yet. They predicted you would be suspicious about how easy it was to retrieve me and that you'll require I do… something to prove beyond a doubt my loyalty to the Organization." She took a deep breath. "They predicted you would order me to call out Shuichi Akai with the promise of information to escape the Organization where I'm being treated like a black sheep for getting caught… and that you would order me – while I'm wearing a portable video camera and an audio feed – to kill him at Raiha Pass… with a bullet to the head."

Heavy silence followed Kir's final words as Gin processed them. "How do they intend to pull that off?" he asked woodenly.

"I shoot blanks and he manually bursts some blood pods in sync with my shots so you don't question the lack of blood. Around that time, some police officers will be on the road on their way to a supposed accident which will cause you to turn off the feed and leave the area posthaste. Then together, we swap his 'dead' body for the real one in the back seat that belongs to Rikumichi Kusuda who also has a bullet wound to the head, making sure to keep his right hand in his pants pocket to protect the fingerprints from burning away when I dispose of the body with one of the bombs. Akai makes his escape and I drive away, leaving the unwary police to witness the explosion and discover the body so badly damaged, nobody can identify it," Kir explained. "But the FBI will identify it as him because Akai and Conan staged a scene at the hospital where Akai made a great show of grabbing Conan's phone with his non-dominant right hand because Rikumichi Kusuda had held Conan's phone with that hand earlier, but the police will not find Akai's fingerprints. He had put glue on the tips of his fingertips long before grabbing the phone."

When she had finished speaking, Gin sat frozen stiff, only vaguely seeing the road ahead of him. Kir's words unnerved him far more than he cared to admit, even to himself. In fact, their plan unnerved him even more than how much information they'd been able to dig up about Kir, because from their perspective of him being a cautious, psychopathic murderer, it was accurate. He would do exactly as Kir had just outlined. They had planned for this very course of action since last night down to the last step he would take – because nothing was more certain than death – and had prepared to conduct a body swap from the outset, one so perfect that even the FBI would be fooled into believing it. Akai had proven himself capable of reading his motions and even predicting them to an extent whereas Kudo had shown some planning ability against Vermouth, but was rather lacking in foresight and only luck had saved him when his plans went south. Shinichi Kudo had never ever once been able to anticipate his movements, so where was this sudden long-term strategic scheming ability between the two coming from? If they could get this far working together, then how was he supposed to stay ahead of them in making sure they didn't discover the Men in Black?

Gin didn't think he'd ever liked Akai, even before the questionable business with Scotch and his proven untrustworthiness later. He'd respected his skills the same way he respected Bourbon's or Vermouth's, but he'd never liked him. Only some of that was due in part to the fact that Akai had used Akemi without any regard for her feelings in order to get close to Sherry and wriggle his way into the Organization. Now however, only Vermouth ranked higher in his hatred for him.

"Since they seem so confident in their ability to read me, perhaps we should go along with it," he growled.

"Eh? But Gin, if you want to throw them off-track, then wouldn't it be better to not do what they expect?" Kir asked.

"As much as I would love to knock their egos down a few pegs, it's to my advantage to let this plan occur," Gin said and a cruel smile started curling his lips. "An escaped Akai in hiding from the Organization and his FBI colleagues is little better off than a dead Akai. Even if we don't know how he will disguise himself, his options will be limited to the vicinity of the one person who knows his secret and helped him plan his death. He won't stray too far and once Sherry finds him, I'll know exactly where he is."

It still wouldn't be a complete win for him because he wouldn't have the excuse to look for him if he was dead and until Sherry discovered his new identity, he wouldn't know who to look for in future encounters. He would take what he could get out of this situation though.

"Gin, are you going to let Vodka in the car, or are you just going to have him follow behind us the whole time?"

Without even glancing at the rearview mirror, he said, "We're dropping off the motorcycle at one of the storage depots first. No sense leaving it around for someone to steal and I want you to stay close to me until this whole business with Akai is finally over. Maybe our informant at the hospital can offer us some insight on when would be a good time to call Akai out to Raiha Pass."

()()()()()

Haibara couldn't believe she'd been separated from Conan for less than twenty-four hours and not only had he proven Hidemi Hondou and Rena Mizunashi were the same person, but he had figured out she was also a CIA agent like her late father and concocted a plan with Akai to send her back to Gin without letting it look like they were just giving her away.

"With her now back in the Black Organization again, at last their destruction is in sight," Conan said with the same arrogance he always experienced whenever he encountered the Organization and got something new out of them.

After the number of times he'd been sent frantically back-pedaling because he pushed too far, Haibara had no idea where this never-ending fountain of confidence came from. "Well, you're already well aware, but don't underestimate them, especially Gin," she warned.

"Yeah, I understand," Conan said off-handedly and started messing around with the soccer ball.

"Do you really understand?" she snapped in annoyance. Honestly, why did she even bother?

Maybe he'd sensed she was displeased with his quick dismissal because he caught the soccer ball in his hands and looked at her somewhat apologetically.

"And? Did they say if that Eisuke kid went into the witness protection program?" she asked, deciding to shift the topic of conversation.

"No, I heard he didn't like the idea," Conan answered. "It seems the FBI is still trying to persuade him though."

Haibara averted her eyes and dropped her gaze to the sidewalk below. "No surprise," she muttered. "I refused as well." Though her reasons for doing so were much different from Eisuke's.

"Well, they give you a new name and nationality. The system makes you someone else entirely, so I guess it can't be helped," Conan sighed as he resumed kicking the ball into the air with his head and feet, then caught it with his hands again. "Actually, I think he'll reject the program and become an ally, just as you did. He's pretty clumsy, but he has a sharp mind."

That wasn't much of a compliment. "But are you sure it's alright? Unlike me, that guy seems to be excessively reckless." About as reckless as Kudo, come to think of it.

"It's fine, he's with Ms. Jodie and Mr. Akai now," Conan said reassuringly.

Speaking of Akai, if he had really worked together with Kudo on their plan to give Kir back to the Organization, then he must already know there was more to him than a brilliant seven-year-old. Kudo was too transparent about his true identity and Akai was too smart to not pick up on the strangeness, even if he had no idea Conan Edogawa was actually seventeen. It was almost worth trying to get back in contact with him and then she could erase his memory of the meeting afterward.

"This Akai person, I would like to meet him at least once," she said.

Conan jumped, looking bewildered. "Eh? Why?"

"No matter what you really are, you still look like a first-year elementary school student," Haibara reminded him. "A smart and capable FBI agent listening to the ramblings of a child, doesn't that interest you?"

"Ah… well… see…" Conan stuttered and looked away nervously.

Haibara's brow furrowed. "What? Is there a reason I shouldn't meet him?"

"Uh, n-no…" he said uneasily and looked away again.

"… Hey," she said, trying to get his attention again, but he didn't even seem to hear her. Then he glanced out of the corner of his eyes at her with that familiar narrow-eyed expression. Wait a minute… he hadn't…

"Could he be… Could that guy be…?" she started in alarm and watched Conan's expression jump from uncomfortable to panicked. He did know! Haibara quickly switched tracks. "Is he a lolicon by any chance?" Conan looked away in relief, but she chose to misinterpret it. "I was right?!"

"That's stupid!" he shot back while she crossed her arms and glared at him.

Damn it all, he'd somehow learned about her sister's relationship with Akai too. How had he even found out about it? That wasn't information Akai would have just readily volunteered, especially not to a stranger and a seven-year-old at that.

"Ah! You two are whispering to each other again!" Ayumi accused, drawing the attention of the other kids onto them.

Well, if what Kudo had told her was true, then Kir also knew everything that he had discussed with her and was probably informing Gin of the intended deception right this moment. He wouldn't be caught off-guard by them this time. It might interest him to know that Kudo was aware of Akai's and Akemi's relationship, but it was hardly critical, mission-threatening information. She supposed she should just try to enjoy this hotel buffet they were visiting for lunch and not worry about it.

()()()()()

Shuichi Akai's navy Chevrolet truck appeared not from the right but the left, even though that meant the driver's side of the foreign car was on the far side, away from Rena Mizunashi. It was not an ideal position for someone who wanted to make a quick getaway. The white headlights turned off and the man of the hour slid to the other side and stepped out, leaning against the frame with his left arm, his right hand shoved into his pants pocket.

Rena Mizunashi walked closer, her heels clicking with every step upon the black asphalt. "Is something wrong?" she asked. "You came from the opposite direction." The farther direction.

Akai inclined his head. "I arrived ahead of you so I could scout out the area."

Rena stopped halfway across the pitch-black road. "I see. And were the results correct? That I really did come alone?"

His sharp avocado green eyes narrowed and flicked left, then right. "Yeah… it seems so," he said slowly.

Gin observed all of this with Vodka through the video stream from his car lurking on a road higher up and further back than the bend where Kir and Akai were currently meeting.

"So, as for your offer in exchange for help escaping, let me hear what information you have," Akai said.

"Yeah, as for what I can offer you…" Kir said quietly.

The blast of a gunshot echoed through the video and reached them from outside the car. A couple seconds later – maybe a couple too long – Akai's eyes widened and blood trickled out of the right corner of his mouth. He groaned and backed up into his truck, pressing his left hand to the right side of his chest. Then he looked over his right shoulder, almost directly behind him.

On the video screen, he stared in that direction for a while, and Gin knew he was looking at them. Akai knew that they were nearby.

Blood started to ooze from the spot where his left hand lay and Akai faced fully forward. His breathing was shallow and every ragged intake of air seemed to cause him great pain.

"What's wrong Kir? Hurry and finish him off," Gin told her through the earpiece. He told her so because that was what Akai expected. He was ruthless and efficient and there was no more permanent solution than death.

"But I shot out his lung," Kir said. "Even if we leave him, he won't last thirty minutes."

It was too long. Too much would be left up to chance. Anything could happen in thirty minutes. "The head. Drive a bullet right into his head, that way we can be sure that his life has come to an end."

"Roger," she said solemnly.

She walked forward, her heels clicking once more. Through his pained breathing, Akai noticed her approach and she stopped just in front of him, her handgun raised to the center of his forehead.

A half-chuckle escaped Akai's blood-stained lips and he met Kir's eyes. "To think you'd go this far…" he whispered, but not quietly enough to not be heard.

"I'm surprised myself…" said Kir, less quietly still. "that it's worked out this well."

Another gunshot, accompanied by a burst of light from the muzzle, blasted through the canyon and the video. Akai lurched backward and collapsed onto the truck bench. His blood spurted everywhere and stained the truck's interior as he fell, more of it pooling around his head. Not even a minute later, the wail of sirens could be heard and were growing louder.

"The police…" Gin murmured, watching the flashing, spinning red lights coming from the same direction that Akai had come from.

"Just as Kir said," Vodka agreed.

He nodded and picked up the radio. "Kir, clean up and get away quickly," he ordered.

"Roger," she said and pulled out a small plastic bomb, the same type that had been sent to Haido Central Hospital earlier that day.

Satisfied as best he could be in this situation, Gin then cut the video connection as Vodka started the engine and drove away. He was not supposed to witness the body swap between Akai and Rikumichi Kusuda and he didn't want to. Even knowing it was fake, he had still taken a particularly savage pleasure in watching Akai 'die' before his very eyes.

However, reality was unfortunately much less pleasant. Taking out his phone, he sent two text messages. One was to 'that person' quickly confirming Akai's current fake KIA status. The other was to Sherry. She still didn't like him contacting her, but if Akai and Kudo had put in this much effort to fool even the FBI, then Kudo would never tell her about the plan to fake Akai's death, and this was something she needed to know.

Remember to delete this after you read it. Kir is safe. Kudo and Akai conspired to fake Akai's death. Keep a lookout for any suspicious people that show up near Kudo sometime soon and inform me. That will be Akai.

- Gin

He sent the message, knowing she would appreciate the warning even if she still scolded him for it, and snapped his phone shut, ready for this long, unlucky day to be over.

Haibara read the text message that evening once she got home, so when Jodie Starling gave Conan his phone back – or rather, a new phone – and he called out to her, but didn't say anything, Haibara cast her accusing gaze on the back of his bowed head, knowing exactly what he had done.

()()()()()

The latest case Haibara had gotten involved in had brought her, Kudo, and the rest of the kids into contact with an engineering graduate student that Ayumi had decided to introduce to the Professor. All of them had quickly grown bored after they dropped him off, so that was how she was left in the house with only Conan and Agasa with her in the company of a stranger who had initially given off the same black pressure that Vermouth emitted when she was the focus of all of her hatred and ill will.

"So someday, you'll earn your doctorate and become my professional rival, eh?" Agasa said somewhat teasingly to Subaru Okiya.

"No, nothing like that," the fair-haired man deflected. "But what a big house you have. Is it just the two of you here? You and the child?"

"Yeah."

"Well, it doesn't seem there would be any problem adding another," Okiya said.

"Eh?"

Haibara gasped and her fists tightened on Dr. Agasa's shirt. No, not that. There was no way she was allowing this man – and one who had given off that aura of dark intentions, no matter how brief – to stay in the same house as her.

"The thing is, the apartment building where I was living burned down. If it's alright, could you let me stay here until I find another place to live?" Okiya asked. "Of course, when I have free time, I'll do anything you need to help with your research."

"Ah, well, I don't mind as long as it's okay with this kid," Agasa said, looking down at her.

Haibara very quickly and vehemently shook her head. Bad idea. Bad idea.

Conan suddenly piped up, "Say, how about using Shinichi's house?"

"Shinichi's house?" Okiya repeated.

"Yeah, there's nobody living there right now. Look, it's that house next door. He's left the keys with me," he said, pointing out Dr. Agasa's window.

Haibara's mouth fell open in shock. What… what was he doing? Had he lost his mind?

"Oh, what a splendid western-style house," Okiya said appreciatively. "Is this okay?"

"Yup!"

"Hold on," she said and grabbed his shoulder, dragging him backward. Conan flailed for a moment, but regained his balance quickly. "What are you thinking?" she hissed into his ear. "You're renting your house to a person whose background we don't know. What will you do if he finds out your secret?"

"It's alright," Conan said.

How? How was this alright? She removed her hand and waited for his reason.

"There's no way a Holmes fan could be a bad person!"

"… Huh?" was all she could say. Her brain was thrown off by his carefree, irresponsible answer.

While she was still trying to wrap her head around what Kudo (who was usually as suspicious about strangers as she was) had so blithely disregarded, Conan handed his keys over to Okiya. "Here, these are the keys to the house."

"Are you sure this is okay?" Okiya repeated as he took the offered keys. "That Shinichi won't mind?"

"Yeah, I'll email him later," Conan reassured him.

Why? Why was Kudo so trusting of this guy? They had only just met today and it was as a detective to a suspect in a fire arson case. He should know better than to let some strange person live in his empty house. Suddenly, as if she'd been struck by lightning, the words from Gin's last text leaped out at her: Keep a lookout for any suspicious people that show up near Kudo sometime soon and inform me. That will be Akai. Haibara looked at Okiya more carefully. Was that it? Was this Akai and that was why Kudo was being so uncharacteristically blasé, because he knew he was safe even if Akai figured out his identity?

"Thank you, you've really helped me," Okiya said with a grateful smile.

Conan smiled, and it wasn't his little kid smile, but the serious one he got when he solved a case. "In exchange, guard the house while he's away."

'Guard' the house, huh?. An unusual choice of words for an unknown freeloader.

"Yes, of course," Okiya said.

Although the voice was completely different, Haibara was half-convinced that the speech pattern was still Akai's. This Subaru Okiya had to be Shuichi Akai. No other explanation made sense. Taking a chance, she discretely slipped her phone out of her back pocket and secretly took a picture of Okiya while he and Conan were still staring at each other, then hid it again. After that, Conan offered to take 'Okiya' on a tour of the house and they left together, leaving just her and Agasa alone in the room.

Once they were gone, Haibara rounded on the professor she'd been hiding behind. "You knew," she accused. "You knew that was Akai, didn't you?"

Agasa spluttered. "A-Ai, what are you talking about?"

Her blue-green eyes narrowed. "You and Kudo are both rotten liars. Shuichi Akai had to get the technology to change his voice somehow and who better than the one who had originally created the voice-changing bowtie? Did you think I didn't know that Akai had faked his death?" Agasa startled and she crossed her arms. "Did you think I didn't need to know that? Or was that all Kudo's idea? I may not be an active member with the Men in Black right now, but I'm not so cut off as that."

"I'm sorry, Ai. It was Shinichi's idea not to tell you. He figured the less people who knew, the more successful his death would be perceived," Agasa said apologetically.

Haibara huffed. "I understand. Kudo can be pretty convincing when he wants to. I'm not mad. I'm annoyed, but I'm not mad... at least not at you."

She pulled her phone out once more and opened up the text message box, inputting Gin's number. She attached the picture to the message and typed only two words: Subaru Okiya. Haibara smirked and pressed 'send'.

---

'cepho' means head/brain and 'sang' means blood, hence 'brain blood'. I decided I wanted to be clever with the alien name for Rikumichi Kusuda instead of just throwing a bunch of syllables together and calling it a name like I usually do.

I completely did not intend to fill in the altered details of Kir's and Ethan Hondou's backstory; that happened all on its own. However, rewatching the Clash of Red and Black episodes again, I have to wonder if Aoyama-sama has forgotten that he left a Black Organization informant at Haido Central Hospital close enough to the FBI (if not an actual FBI agent) to receive word about Agent Camel being caught up in the midst of a murder case...

The last part of this chapter includes the first half of the 'W Code' episode that finishes off the Red, White, and Yellow case where Subaru Okiya is first introduced.

Next chapter features the thirteenth movie, Raven Chaser. Yes, I intentionally skipped the fifth movie, Countdown to Heaven, because I couldn't think of anything to do with it that would be interesting. It'll probably take a while, I'm still working on the chapter outline.