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.

20. Darkest Nightmare: Part 2

Author's Note: Woof. Part 2 is here. And less than a year after the previous update. I didn't forget or give up on this story, but lots of things have happened since I posted the last chapter. I moved two more times and started two more jobs and quit one of them in addition to regular life things. And as I predicted, yes, this chapter is even longer than the previous part and current record holder for "longest chapter in this story" at 25,600+ words. I hope it's worth it, please don't hate me.

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Darkest Nightmare: Part 2

So far, so good. That was Vermouth's thought on the current state of things as she entered into the 'belly of the beast' of the Ferris wheel. Since the Ictinaetus Eagle – that was the new aircraft's as of yet unofficial name as a tribute to the Black Eagle represented on the Austrian coat of arms – didn't yet have the technology installed on it to make it camouflage with its surroundings, Vermouth had gone on ahead of Gin and the others in order to make sure that the theme park's power systems were shut down to douse the entire park in darkness and mask the Eagle's approach.

But that was hardly her only reason for coming to the Ferris wheel ahead of the others. Curaçao could not under any circumstances be allowed to return to the MiB with her memories intact. If she did, then her plans would be ruined, and she'd worked for too long to bring them to fruition for them to fail now.

"Nhlsm," she called within the Ferris wheel and she was answered by an eerie high-pitched trill.

A large, dark gray mass appeared from the opposite side of the axle and leapt over the top, then swooped low. Bat-like wings flared wide and flapped noisily as the tough-skinned, wide-mouthed, beady-eyed, large-pointy-eared being settled on the ground before Vermouth with a clattering of claws. It was easily over nine feet tall and though it wore no clothes, it appeared to have no recognizable external genitalia. Its physical appearance greatly resembled that of the gargoyles depicted in old European architecture, only giant. In fact, its species name was phonetically similar to 'gargoyle', though the same word when written and transcribed in the Roman alphabet looked more like gRg-oil.

"How are the preparations proceeding?" Vermouth asked the gargoyle.

It seemed unable to speak in any language other than its native tongue, but it emitted a series of trills ranging in both pitch and tempo, its tongue rattling non-stop against the back of its teeth like they were a harmonica, only less musical.

Vermouth however seemed to have no trouble understanding this odd type of vocal communication and said, "Excellent. Good work, Nhlsm. The bombs around the axle are most important, but finish installing the rest while I set up the theme park's power systems to short-circuit. Remember, the ideal scenario is that Curaçao will try to escape the rescue attempt in order to return to me, and you are to do what you can to block the others from stopping her. However, if she really has regained her memories and is no longer under my control, I'm counting on you to blow up this Ferris wheel and Curaçao along with it. It's essential that she not be allowed to return to the MiB alive."

()()()()()

"Geez, why do we have to go to the aquarium during Silver Week?" Kogoro griped not at all quietly as he pulled into the Touto Aquarium parking lot. "And what's more, I have to bring the brats along. Alright, we're here, now get out."

The kids all happily piled out. "Yay! Thanks for driving us!" they exclaimed and started running towards the entrance.

"Hold on guys, wait for me and no running in the parking lot!" Ran scolded as she too got out of the rental car.

"Yes, Ran!" they chorused and Ran turned back to her dad who reclined the seat back.

"What are you going to do, Dad?" she asked.

"I don't feel like going. Not in the mood. I'm gonna take a nap here, so go and have fun," he said grumpily with a dismissive wave.

"Sure thing, Dad," she said and joined up with the kids who were dancing impatiently, waiting for her.

As soon as she was with them, they looked left and right for incoming traffic and then crossed the parking lot to the ticket booths where they would wait for Sonoko. They made sure to stand off to the side so that they wouldn't be in the way of the other would-be visitors to the aquarium.

"Sonoko's still not here yet," Genta pointed out after they'd been waiting a while.

"I know, but I think she'll be here soon," Ran reassured him as a tall man in a green suit with spiky brown hair and oval-shaped glasses approached the ticket booth and asked to ride on the Ferris wheel.

She didn't mean to eavesdrop, but she overheard the woman in the booth inform him that they weren't selling anymore tickets for the Ferris wheel. However, as soon as the man said he was with the PSB and showed his badge, Ran's attention and curiosity was immediately drawn to the conversation. She was so engrossed that she was momentarily disoriented when she heard Sonoko's voice calling for her. She looked around for her friend and found her coming from around the corner of the ticket booths with one of the aquarium attendants.

"She finally came!" Ayumi said with relief.

"Hey Sonoko," Ran greeted.

"Yeah, sorry for the wait! It took me a while to arrange for this without much forewarning," Sonoko explained.

"That's great!" Genta exclaimed.

"As expected of the Suzuki heiress!" Mitsuhiko agreed.

"You kids be grateful, you hear?" Sonoko said sternly to the first graders and all three of them immediately thanked her for her hard work.

"Sorry for having you bother to do this," Ran said with an apologetic smile.

"Oh, don't mind it. You were also troubled, right?" Sonoko said, waving the apology aside, and then turned to the park attendant that had accompanied her. "The kids are all yours now."

"Of course, Miss," she said and bent down to speak to the children directly. "I'll lead you guys straight to the Ferris wheel, so follow me closely, okay?"

"Yes, ma'am!" they said, and followed after her, leaving Ran behind with Sonoko for company.

"Is it really okay to let them go off like that?" Ran asked, feeling like she should be a bit more responsible for their well-being.

"It's fine. She's one of the employees, so you needn't worry," Sonoko assured her and started walking back around to the front of the ticket booths, Ran following after her. "Anyway, are you sure you didn't want to invite Shinichi?"

"Huh? Why would I have done-?" Ran broke off her confused question when she happened to glance into the lighted ticket booth and saw a group of four serious-looking suited men she didn't recognize accompanied by a woman in civilian clothes.

She wasn't just any woman either, she looked like the same foreign woman from the photo Conan had sent her yesterday. Hadn't she been taken to the police hospital already? Why was she back here? And why again did she have the impression that she'd met this woman when she was younger? It had to have been a brief meeting, otherwise she doubted she would have forgotten such a unique-looking woman so easily.

"What's wrong? Someone you know?" Sonoko asked, noting the troubled look on her face.

"No, it's not that. I just feel like I've seen that woman who's with the PSB somewhere before," Ran said with a slight shake of her head.

"The PSB? Those guys are?" Sonoko said.

"I wonder if there was a case or something," Ran mused aloud, but then one of the officers came over and closed the shutters, so they couldn't see anything inside.

Sonoko scoffed, "Well, that was rude. Come on, let's go."

Sonoko stormed off in a huff and Ran started following her, but she just couldn't get her thoughts off of the woman, about what kind of situation she might be in, or her curiosity on how she knew her.

"I'm sorry, Sonoko, but I'm now interested in what's going on with them," she apologized.

Instead of looking resigned or disappointed though, Sonoko smiled smugly at her. "I see. So now you have a reason to ring him up, huh?" she said knowingly.

She got over her surprise at the allusion to Shinichi pretty quick and gave Sonoko a mildly miffed look. She could be curious about strange things for their own sake without needing to use them as a pretext to call that detective geek. It didn't stop her from pulling out her cellphone and doing just that though. He might be able to give her some pointers on what to look for.

()()()()()

What was she doing? It was the millionth time Haibara had asked herself that question this evening, but it hadn't stopped her from taking a taxi from the Professor's to wherever the tracking glasses told her to go, just as she'd done when Kudo and Jodie had tried to thwart Vermouth from killing her several months ago. She had no satisfactory answer for herself or anyone who asked her why she was doing this. All she knew was that staying put where it was safe when there was so much going on just didn't sit right with her.

Well… she hadn't just sat at home and done nothing. While she was in the taxi, she reflected on how after Kudo had left presumably for good for the evening, she'd revealed to Dr. Agasa that the amnesiac woman was Curaçao. The news had surprised him, and then she'd shocked him further by informing him she had probably been under the sway of a mind control serum, hence the major accident on the bridge the prior evening. Then she completely blew his mind when she presented the sample of the same serum, though probably now an older prototype, that she'd extracted from the dead dazzlefly she'd brought home with her what felt like a lifetime ago. She set him with the ground-breaking task of trying to reverse-engineer the mind control drug into an antidote. She didn't know if it was possible, how long it would take, or if it would even work at all on newer versions of the mind control serum, but if she had to trust anyone besides herself to give it a shot, it would be the Professor. Maybe Curaçao didn't need an antidote anymore since she clearly wasn't under the influence of the drug when they first met her, but Haibara had no doubt that this mind control drug would keep being used until Pandora was stopped, and that meant the Organization needed some kind of counter to it, even if the antidote wasn't a perfect cure. It would be her and the Professor's contribution to the fight.

When Haibara looked up from her solemn contemplation staring down at her lap, she was surprised to see the insanely colorful lights and screen design of the Touto Aquarium and the Ferris wheel. She quickly double-checked the tracking glasses, but no, she was going in the right direction. Kudo was at the aquarium for some reason. Although, she supposed it made a sort of poetic sense in hindsight that everything might be coming to a head at the place where everything started. She did not expect to see all the sirens and blaring red lights present when the taxi dropped her off in the parking lot and it did nothing to calm her unease.

"Kudo, where are you?" she muttered under her breath as she scanned the aquarium grounds with the glasses until at last, they centered on the Ferris wheel. Not the ground next to it or the gondolas along the edge, but the center of it. "Don't tell me you're inside it!" she exclaimed in dismay.

The kids and Dr. Agasa liked it, sure, but that wasn't reason enough to come back here, especially since Curaçao was still at the police hospital. Was he trying to investigate something related to her seizure? Gin hadn't made any comment about it when she spoke to him yesterday other than that he already knew about it from Vermouth.

"Kudo, you're going to make me go gray early at this rate and I'm not even twenty yet," Haibara grumbled as she entered the aquarium grounds and started running towards the Ferris wheel.

()()()()()

"Oooh, this bird handles well!" Chianti crowed happily, as she had been doing basic some aerial maneuvers on their way to the aquarium to test out the new prototype aircraft while waiting for Vermouth to call back in to confirm Curaçao's presence on the Ferris wheel.

"No rollovers or loop-the-loops," Korn said immediately following Chianti's declaration.

"You're no fun," she pouted, but she obeyed, but probably only because Gin was standing and Vodka's chair at the computer screen operating the Ictinaetus Eagle's special tech had no seatbelt.

At last, Gin got the call he'd been waiting for from Vermouth on his headset. "I've confirmed Curaçao on a gondola. One of the PSB is riding with her. They'll reach the top in about ten minutes."

"Ten minutes, huh? How does it look, Vodka?" the last question was directed to his partner. Vodka'd been checking over all of the special tech currently present on the Eagle and familiarizing himself with the user interface to make sure everything that was available was also updated and working correctly.

"So far, so good. We can go at any time," Vodka answered positively.

He liked hearing good news. He returned his attention back to Vermouth. "What about the other PSB members?" he asked.

"It seems like there are several positioned at each section, but given your chosen method of retrieval, that won't interfere with our plans, right?" she said condescendingly.

Gin snorted and said, "We'll wait for your signal."

"Roger that," she answered and hung up.

After the communication ended, Gin released a deep breath. Ten minutes. Just ten more minutes and then he would have his sister back and this nightmare would be one step closer to being over.

()()()()()

Said sister was currently sitting in one of the gondolas traveling upward towards the top of the Ferris wheel with her left wrist handcuffed to one of the horizontal bars along the edge and a gun pointed at her head by the PSB officer named Kazami accompanying her.

"Woman, you really don't remember me?" he said snidely.

"No, I don't," she said, feeling particularly irritated with him.

Maybe it was his superior attitude that rubbed her wrong even back in the police hospital or the fact that she'd been interrogated about things she may or may not have done all day, but what part of 'I can't remember anything' did he not understand? She hoped he wasn't someone she knew because she kinda wanted to punch him in the face and kick him off his high horse. She wondered if that was a normal reaction for her, or if it was just him making her feel that way.

Kazami smirked. "Well, whatever. Once you regain your memories, I'll apply plenty of pain to have you confess the NOC list's location and give us plenty of information about the Organization."

There were two things about that sentence that the amnesiac woman instantly disliked. One, that he was planning on torturing her for information, high and mighty better-than-thou supposed paragon of justice though he was. Two, he mentioned these things like she was supposed to know what he was talking about. Funnily enough, the idea of an organization did seem to gel with her somewhat. Just as when she'd been instinctively terrified of having her picture taken yesterday, his mentioning of an organization made her feel safe and comfortable. Whatever kind of group it was, it was a good place she belonged to. She had absolutely no emotional reaction to the NOC list he mentioned though, so it couldn't have been that important.

She was definitely going to punch this guy in the face if she got the chance though, memories or no.

()()()()()

Elsewhere on the Ferris wheel near its current apex, Bourbon grabbed the ladder and swung up on top, looking around with gritted teeth. Where was he? That guy had a headstart on him and there was no way he wouldn't show up, but he wasn't in the interior of the Ferris wheel, so he had to be up here somewhere! A strong gust of wind threatened to blow him over until he tightened up his core and crouched down a bit, but the hat he was wearing was whisked off his head. He watched it go with the same interest one watches falling leaves which turned out to be a good thing, because it whizzed right past the very man he'd been searching the Ferris wheel for: Shuichi Akai.

"So, you came!" he shouted into the wind as he ripped off the aquarium maintenance staff jacket he'd worn as a lowkey disguise to get into the Ferris wheel's inner workings. The wind was so strong up on top of the Ferris wheel that it even took the jacket and sent that flying off into the air in Akai's direction.

"Looks like you managed to escape successfully," Akai said casually with a slight twitch of his lips into a smirk.

"If you're here, then that means, as I suspected…" and that Gin had suspected. "… you shot the light to drop it on the light stand and blinded them. You realized I was still inside the warehouse and couldn't get away, so you tricked them into thinking I'd run outside by kicking the door open. Thanks to that, I was able to hide in the shadows and learn what they planned to do."

At least that's how it would have gone down if he was actually still a NOC trying to infiltrate a criminal Organization like Akai believed and wasn't just told the plan straight out. As mad as he was at Gin still for threatening his and Kir's lives the way he had, none of them had known Akai had been in the vicinity, and as best as he could remember from the grueling minute-long interrogation, Gin hadn't said anything that would be damning if overheard by ignorant eavesdroppers.

"I suspected that if you're the one who did that, you'd end up showing up here. However, why don't you tell me, Akai? What motivated you to help us out?" Bourbon demanded, his 'us' referring to the PSB in this instance. "You could've easily listened in on them and gotten the information without having to risk yourself, so why didn't you?!"

"Did you really come all this way to talk?" Akai asked as infuriatingly calm and composed as ever.

"Yes, I came to tell the FBI to back off and that we PSB will get our hands on Curaçao!" he declared, and even though he claimed it was on behalf of the PSB, right now, he was speaking on behalf of the MiB.

He had come here to talk, but he had, in not so many words, also been given permission to use more than words if he couldn't stop Akai that way. Bourbon already knew that words alone wouldn't sway Akai.

"And if I said 'No'?" Akai posited.

That was the exact answer he was hoping for. "Then I'll steal her by force! Retreat, Shuichi Akai!" he yelled and ran towards him, making a running leap that sent him high into the air and diving straight at his hated rival.

()()()()()

Haibara was making good headway but when she was nearly at the Ferris wheel itself, she noticed something odd. Not sure what it was, she turned on the glasses' magnification and scanning function to get a better look. For some reason, all of the gondolas on her side were empty of riders despite the massive amount of people still in the park. In her visual perusal, she spotted Curaçao in one of the gondolas and gasped in shock. Why wasn't she back at the hospital and who was that guy with her? Was that why Kudo had come here? For Curaçao? No, he couldn't! Curaçao needed to go back home!

She was about to turn the glasses back off and head into the Ferris wheel to try and stop him, when she saw something else that nearly made her heart stop. "No way! Why are those kids up there?!" she exclaimed hysterically.

This was bad! If Curaçao was here and if the Organization had somehow figured out she would be here, then she had to get to the kids and somehow get them out of this whole mess before they got caught in the crossfire as innocent, unknown bystanders. Kudo could at least take care of himself, but those kids were actually seven!

"Kudo, don't do anything stupid!" she begged as she resumed running towards the Ferris wheel just as the fireworks started going off in the sky above, but now with the goal of trying to rescue the kids instead of chasing after Kudo.

()()()()()

A solid punch to the gut from Akai sent Bourbon colliding painfully against a metal rail, and he started falling backwards when Akai grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him up.

"Stop it already!" Akai said with an audible trace of annoyance.

Like hell he would! Bourbon kicked Akai in the stomach in retaliation and sent the FBI agent stumbling backwards with a grimace.

"Already giving up?!" Bourbon taunted, even as he wiped away the blood dripping down his face from where Akai had kicked him in the head earlier. With nothing in mind other than finally beating Akai's sorry ass, he lifted his fists to chest level and said, "Come on, let's go for Round Two."

Akai tsked in irritation, but just as he settled into a battle-ready stance, they both heard the voice of a familiar young boy calling for Akai. "Mr. Akai! Where are you?! We're in trouble and I need your help! If they fail to retrieve Curaçao, they intend to blow up everything along with this Ferris wheel!"

Bourbon stilled, his thoughts spinning in confusion. Blow up? What in the world- Who exactly was supposed to be blowing up the Ferris wheel again? The Organization?

"Please, if you're there, could you lend a hand? We have to disarm the bombs before they detonate them or else we're all done for!" Conan continued shouting while Akai shook his head at Bourbon. Now wasn't the time to continue fighting like this.

"Is that true, Conan?" Bourbon demanded of the boy as he stuck his head over the railing and found him almost directly below.

"Mr. Amuro? How did you get here?" Conan exclaimed in surprise.

"Explanations can wait," he shot back. "More importantly, where are these bombs?"

"There are a lot of them set in the gap between the axle and the wheel. I don't know when they intend to remotely trigger them, but we need to disarm them immediately!" Conan said urgently.

Damn right they did, because while this was something Conan and Akai would expect the Organization to do, Bourbon had no friggin' clue why there were bombs in the Ferris wheel because they were definitely not part of Gin's plan. He glanced over his shoulder back at Akai who nodded in silent agreement. Nothing had been resolved from their fight, but it would have to wait another day.

"Got it! I'm coming down soon with the FBI!" Bourbon called down to Conan and then started navigating his way down the twisting stairs to the lower levels along with Akai.

There were way too many goddamned stairs.

Once they got down to the same level Conan was on, they both turned in different directions, Akai towards a ladder near the axle and Bourbon after Conan who led him to a fire extinguisher.

"This is where all the wires seem to be leading to. I was able to peer into the box from the side since I was worried that the front door might be booby-trapped," Conan explained.

"Well, let's take a look and see what we've got going on here," Bourbon said as he knelt down in front of the fire extinguisher and pulled out his pocket knife. He could definitely see something wedged into the door's opening, so he started to carefully work at it.

"How is it, Mr. Amuro?" Conan asked after a while.

"Just a little more," Bourbon answered vaguely just as there was a sharp click-like snap and he paused, wondering if he'd screwed up.

Nothing happened though and as he moved his hands, the metal piece he'd been working at breaking free slid easily away from the fire extinguisher. When he turned it around, there was a device with a glowing red light attached to a wire extending from the fire extinguisher box.

"Looks like removing this part should be enough," he said reassuringly to Conan after examining what was in his hands and making sure it was disabled.

Conan sighed in relief, "So it really was a trap after all."

"Yeah, you did good by not carelessly opening it," Bourbon praised just as Akai landed next to them in a full crouch.

"Mr. Akai, you saw the explosives?" Conan asked.

"Yeah, and as I thought, they're C4s and set up in a very professional manner. If they all simultaneously explode, the axle won't be able to withstand the stress and will cause a chain collapse," Akai said.

So the bombs really were set up to destroy the Ferris wheel, which only made Bourbon question again both who had set them up and why. The obvious answer for 'why' was that someone was trying to sabotage their effort to retrieve Curaçao and maybe even kill her since the bombs would destroy the Ferris wheel, but that only made the question of 'who' even more difficult to answer because while Bourbon was sure there were plenty of criminals that would like to see Curaçao dead because of her high rank in the Organization as Rum's confidante, how they would have both figured out where Curaçao would be and gotten to the Ferris wheel so quickly to set up the bombs before even Akai arrived would have been impossible unless they'd been close by and started setting up the bombs around the time everyone was leaving the warehouse to go their separate ways. In other words, it wasn't possible, but Bourbon didn't have time to deal with that contradiction right now because the bombs were already here and live, and it was his assignment from Gin to make sure nothing interfered with Curaçao's rescue. He was pretty damn sure bombs blowing up the Ferris wheel counted as interference.

"I see. It doesn't look like we have time to waste then," Bourbon said as he opened up the fire extinguisher and parted the hose to find a black box with a single black antenna and a screen reading 'Standby' in red letters. "So, this is it?"

"Well, do you think you can defuse it?" Conan asked.

"No problem," Bourbon said confidently as he started removing the fire extinguisher hose from the rack so he'd have more space to work with. "It's a commonly found type. I know how to disarm it."

While it meant he would be successful in making sure they didn't all blow up and die, the bomb being a common human-made bomb unfortunately didn't narrow down the possibilities of who could have planted it. Even if it was a common alien-type bomb, that would give him something to work with, but since humans were the dominant sentient species on this planet, it meant even aliens were just as likely to use and make them as humans.

"Wow, you sure know a lot about bombs, don't you, Mr. Amuro?" Conan said, sounding very impressed.

"I was taught by a friend when I was in the police academy who eventually went on to become the ace of the bomb disposal team…" Bourbon answered, thinking about Matsuda and how he'd taken the knowledge he'd learned from his friend to learn about alien bombs once he was inducted into the MiB. "… but he ended up dying when he was defusing a bomb in a Ferris wheel."

And he was in a Ferris wheel right now about to try and defuse a bomb. God, he hoped that irony wasn't about to smite him just for the hell of it. He finished extracting the firehose and started working on removing the cover of the bomb so he could disable it. He wasn't getting very far with just his pocket knife, but it was the only tool he had on hand.

"During a bomb defusal on a Ferris wheel…?" Conan repeated quietly.

Crap, now he'd gone and scared the kid. "Don't worry. His skills were perfect, and I'll prove it to you," he reassured him.

"Here, use this," Akai said and kicked his rifle bag over to where Bourbon and Conan were standing. "You'll have all the necessary tools in there. Take care of the defusal."

"Wait, Mr. Akai, where are you going?" Conan inquired.

"If they set up bombs here, that means they will strike this Ferris wheel and the only route to get Curaçao back without having to worry about the explosion is-"

"-From the sky!" Conan exclaimed in sudden comprehension while Bourbon frowned.

With so little information, Akai was able to deduce that much, just like he was somehow able to figure out they would be returning to the Ferris wheel to get Curaçao without having heard that information directly. Gin had been similarly intuitive earlier this evening when he both guessed the PSB would be taking Curaçao back to the aquarium and that Akai would be there waiting for them. It was downright eerie how freakishly similar Akai and Gin were to each other in their ability to anticipate the other's moves, like two sides of the same coin.

"Exactly," Akai said with a nod. "I'm going back to where I was to stall for time. You just make sure to disarm the bombs." And with those pleasant parting words, he took off with sniper rifle in hand back up the stairs to the upper levels.

"Hmph. Easier said than done," Bourbon scoffed.

"Here you go, Mr. Amuro," Conan said as he offered the toolkit he found from Akai's rifle bag.

"Thanks…" Bourbon said as he took the toolkit from Conan and glanced worriedly at the bomb. "… the only concern left is how much time I have to disable it."

Well, he'd better get started. The bomb certainly wasn't going to defuse itself, and since he didn't know if the bomb had an automatic timer or when the one who'd set this up might want to remotely detonate it, he couldn't waste even a second to try calling Gin and let him know there were live bombs set up in the Ferris wheel that hadn't been accounted for in the plan.

()()()()()

Kazami stared hard at the silver-haired woman for so long that she actually quirked a questioning eyebrow at him. That only made his expression more confused as he looked back out the gondola and the woman took her eyes off him to gaze out the window too, finding that view much more pleasant to look at.

"What does this mean? We're almost halfway. If it wasn't those previous fireworks, does that mean Mr. Furuya's information was wrong?" Kazami muttered under his breath, but the woman ignored him.

The fireworks earlier had been gorgeous, they were at the highest point of the Ferris wheel and the multi-colored spotlights were pretty waving about as they were. She hadn't been able to see them as well during the fireworks show, but now they were perfectly clear, and it looked like all five of them were going to cross. As they started to though, the woman heard a high-pitched electric-like ringing sound in her ear that began softly, but then started growing louder and there was a painful building pressure in her head behind her eyes. It felt just like earlier when she had collapsed on the Ferris wheel with the kids present.

She grimaced and tried to bear through it, not wanting to fall unconscious in the company of this particular officer, but as soon as the five colored lights finished crossing, the pain sharpened in intensity and acuteness, and the ringing sound became unbearably loud. The woman grabbed at her head with her one free hand while her left hand remained cuffed to the gondola. It chafed her wrist as she jerked around moaning and whimpering in agony, and there were tears in her eyes as the pain mounted. Her skull felt like it was going to break in two and she screamed. It was coming from deep in the center of her brain where she couldn't reach! It felt like something bent was twisting about trying to straighten itself out, but if it didn't stop, it was going to break!

The woman thrashed about violently, unaware of either the cutting pressure on her wrist from the metal handcuff or the panicked PSB officer in front of her, only the blinding, ringing pain in her head until at last, she felt a snap and she screamed, her vision suddenly going white…

Everything was white. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, most of the furniture, even the door she couldn't see the outline of, but knew was there. Everything was white except for her. Her, her black body suit, and the black table in the middle of the room. It was just a regular four-legged table, but it constantly drew her eyes, the only source of color in this whitewashed room that wasn't a part of her. She didn't know how long she'd been here… how long it had been since she was first escorted here after it was shockingly discovered that the neuralyzers didn't work on her. She hadn't meant to learn about 'that person's' secrets or memorize them, but it didn't matter, and that wasn't the issue right now. The Organization was more alarmed at how she'd been able to withstand the effects of the neuralyzer, something that had shocked her too. That was also the last time she had seen her brother, with her being led calmly away by Mr. Hondou and Edward screaming at him to let her go while being held back by Tequila and Irish.

She hadn't been in her cell the whole time though. She'd left it to be escorted to the Headquarters Medical ward where they conducted an extensive medical exam that included several diagnostic tests such as x-rays, bloodwork, and an MRI scan. She was told nothing about what was going on, why they were doing this, or how her brother was faring. They just ignored her questions as if they couldn't hear her and then once they were done, she was shepherded back to her holding cell where she'd been waiting ever since. She had no idea how long she'd been in here since then either and with nothing to do to occupy her mind, she spent most of her time laying on the bed, staring blankly up at the ceiling. Like she was now. While occasionally glancing over at the black table.

Then something different happened that shocked her out of her monotonous boredom. The silver bracelet that had been strapped to her wrist right before she'd been thrown in here beeped twice and a green light on it glowed like a jewel.

Then a voice spoke, seemingly from the bracelet, and it was one she recognized intimately. "Curaçao, please stand next to the table. I'm coming in," it requested.

"Okay," she said and got up off the bed to stand next to the table.

The invisible, seamless door slid aside soundlessly and a tall man stood framed by the doorway. He wore a black kimono and dark-striped hakama as usual, but his long, curly brown hair that was usually worn up in a high ponytail was currently down, draped across his shoulders. His neutral expression was best described as serene, but now he looked full on stoic, which was generally not considered to be a good sign from the Second-in-Command of the Men in Black.

"Rum," she said politely, albeit a bit nervous as he entered into the room.

She had slept with him before a few times after she turned twenty, but she wasn't worried that he was here to take advantage of her. He had a strong code of honor not easily broken. No, it was about what his presence and grave expression might mean for her that had her concerned. Curaçao knew why she was in holding – or at least she had a good idea why – but she didn't know the full breadth of what had been discussed between him and 'that person'. If she was no longer allowed to be an agent for the MiB, but they couldn't neuralyze her memories away, then what would become of her?

Rum stopped before he reached the center of the room, his brown eyes fixed on her as he gestured to the bed in the corner. "You may sit if you like," he offered.

Curaçao remained standing and he did not draw closer.

"We know about your brain's special ability to instantly store and recall information in your long-term memory if it's paired with a color," Rum stated. "We figured out how it works when we had the MRI scan done on you and the images of your brain showed the left side of your thalamus has an unusual arched shape that basically gives any memories you wish an instant shortcut straight to long-term storage. It appears to be a birth defect rather than a genetic mutation or a chemical or surgical modification that occurred later."

"That's important?" Curaçao asked.

"Very," Rum said seriously. "If it was a genetic mutation, then it would mean there are likely more people out there with that kind of mental defense and the Organization would have to find an alternative to neuralyzation for such individuals since that option wouldn't work on them. If it was due to a surgical or chemical modification though, then that could imply you were some kind of spy or double-agent sent by an agency, human or otherwise, to undermine the Organization's work."

Curaçao gaped at him, hardly believing what she was hearing. "Are you serious? My brother and I were homeless on the streets for five months before your boss found and offered us jobs, and you genuinely considered one or both of us to be double agents because my thalamus is abnormal?!" she yelled in outrage.

"If it makes you feel better, neither of us considered it a very plausible explanation, but we had to consider it as a possibility to make sure we were being thorough and not overlooking anything," Rum said grimly.

Curaçao glared and crossed her arms. Much as she didn't like the suggestion of distrust, she couldn't complain that they hadn't considered all options. Given the secrecy of the Organization's very existence, they couldn't afford to take chances and she could easily imagine how much it had scared them to learn that a person could be unaffected by the neuralyzers.

"You should have told us about this special memorization ability of yours from the beginning. Both you and Gin clearly already knew about it before you arrived, and you willfully kept it secret from the MiB all this time which is what led you to being in this position now. 'That person' and I have concluded that you are innocent of any wrongdoing related to your ability itself and are only guilty of an accidental circumstance regarding your stumbling upon Lord Karasuma's secrets, but how can we trust you with knowledge of something so important when you didn't trust us with this?" Rum posited with a stern frown.

She didn't answer him. No matter what it might mean for her, she wasn't about to grovel before him begging for forgiveness or trying to explain why he should trust her. She'd done enough begging for one lifetime just to survive and she'd vowed to herself the first night that Mr. Karasuma had taken her and Edward under his wing and put them up in a hotel room with heat, a real bed, and a bath that she would never stoop so low again. It had been her twin's idea that they not tell their new employer about her incredible memory. He had grown increasingly paranoid during the five months they'd been on the streets and while grateful that someone was willing to lend them a hand, he wasn't trusting, and she had agreed with his logic. She wasn't about to throw Gin under the bus now, even if it would save herself.

"If you execute me, then you lose Gin," Curaçao said, her voice strong and clear.

Rum looked taken aback by this statement. "Why on earth would we execute you?"

"If I can't be trusted and my memories can't be erased, then the only options you have are to either keep me locked up in a more permanent cell until I die or speed up the waiting process and terminate my life prematurely," Curaçao elaborated. "Either outcome results in my death and Gin will retaliate accordingly to avenge me, maybe even go so far as to betray the very Organization itself and-"

"-Woah, woah, woah, hold on a minute, Emma, I was only asking about the fairness of trusting you when you didn't trust us! I didn't mean to imply we actually didn't trust you anymore!" Rum exclaimed looking alarmed.

Curaçao tilted her head with a curious expression on her face. "Emma?" she asked.

Realizing his error, he blushed a bit and scratched the side of his jaw with one finger. "Sorry. Curaçao. But… as I was about to say, despite being given plenty of reason not to, 'that person' and I do still trust you, but you are still way too low in rank to know his secrets, so we are pulling you from the Intelligence Division and Vermouth's direct supervision and reassigning you as my secretary."

"… I'm what?" Curaçao said flatly. She was being downgraded to a desk-working pencil pusher.

Rum gave a nervous chuckle. "Yeah, I know it sounds bad and there is some desk work that you'll have to do, but being my secretary means you'll have a rank equivalent to that of an executive agent like Vermouth, or a director like Chardonnay. Also, there is much more that I need done besides paperwork. There are responsibilities that I have to 'that person' that are mine alone as his Second, but…"

His hand came up and covered the right side of his face. His left side remained uncovered and his eye visible, but it did him no good. He couldn't see with that eye because it was a prosthetic. So simple a gesture as covering one side of his face left him completely blind.

"I've managed to get by these past eleven years since I lost my eye… finding alternatives and creative solutions to solve the problems I would have handled differently before… relying on others to do the fieldwork I used to do myself…" Rum said solemnly. "I've gotten by Curaçao, but it's inefficient and 'that person' deserves better of his Second. Being my secretary is more than being an office assistant. Your work would be the extension of my will out in the field where I can no longer go. You're an amazing, highly-skilled woman in physical combat, both short-range and long, with incredible acrobatic prowess, terrifying street-racing quality driving skills, and with your unique memorization ability alongside your training and experience in Intelligence, you are absolutely perfect to fill the role."

"Fill the role of what exactly?" Curaçao asked cautiously.

Rum lowered his right hand, lifting his own self-inflicted blindness and gazed upon her. His prosthetic left eye seemed to bore straight through her own white-blue, transparent-looking right eye, and he extended his hand out to her. "I want you to be my senses and do for me and this Organization what I cannot. Please become my left eye and right hand, Curaçao."

The memory dissolved into white and the silver-haired woman came back to herself with a gasp, panting heavily. She remembered that day and she remembered who she was. She was Curaçao, former Intelligence Division agent and currently the only secretary and field agent to Rum, the Vice Chief and Second-in-Command of the secret organization known as the Men in Black. She was also Emma Kuroda, daughter of former Nagano police inspector Hyoe Kuroda and German-born Adele Norsreich, younger twin sister of Edward Kuroda codenamed Gin, and the exclusive lover of Taichi Asaka whom was also the father of her barely-existent child. She remembered everything up to and including the moment where she first lost her memories, and then everything that happened after that as well… and something was wrong.

"Hey, are you okay? Get a hold of yourself!" a man's voice yelled and his hand was shaking her shoulder.

Right. She wasn't alone. That PSB guy was still with her in the gondola. She remembered seeing him at the NPA Headquarters with Bourbon now, which did a lot to explain his hostility towards her, but surprise, surprise. Understanding his feelings didn't suddenly make her not want to punch him for how he'd been treating her the whole day since she'd been transferred to his custody.

"Good grief. Hang on, I'll call an ambulance now," Kazami said as he pulled out his phone.

"There will be no need for that," Curaçao muttered darkly.

Before Kazami could process her words and their implications, Curaçao grabbed the bar she was cuffed to with both hands, kicked both legs high up into the air and scissored Kazami's neck between her legs. She swung her legs about, dragging him along and disorienting him until he completely lost his balance and then she slammed his face hard into the side of the gondola. He fell unconscious at once and collapsed to the ground in an ungraceful heap. She leaned down and stretched her arm out to pull his body closer so she could frisk his coat pockets for the key to the handcuffs. She found it readily enough and the first thing she did was unlock herself from the bar. After that, Curaçao unloaded the gun that had flown from the officer's grasp when she knocked him unconscious and then picked up his phone that had also fallen to the ground.

She was in the middle of pondering whether she should call Rum or Gin first when… something odd happened. Her fingers were tapping out a number on the keypad all on their own when she hadn't even decided who she was going to call… and she realized with a horrified start that the number was Vermouth's! She was still being affected by that mind control drug!

"No, I don't want her!" Curaçao screamed uselessly at her moving fingers, which surprised her.

Earlier when she stole the NOC list, she hadn't even been able to say what she wanted and she'd been a prisoner of both body and mind. Now her mind was free, maybe due to the mental reset that took place when her amnesia was lifted, but the drug was still in her bloodstream and it was still forcing her to follow the last orders Vermouth had given her now that she remembered them. Her mind was hers again, but her body was still captive to another's will.

()()()()()

There was one minute left before the blackout was set to occur and thus enable Gin to move in with the Eagle and retrieve his sister – at least according to the plan he'd set – when Vermouth's cellphone started vibrating from where it was sitting next to the computer.

She didn't recognize the number at all when she looked at the screen, but she answered it anyway. "Who is this?" she said cautiously.

"You treacherous, back-stabbing bitch!" came the furious, but familiar voice of the very woman whose safe retrieval everyone had been so hung up on for the past two days, and Vermouth smiled.

"Ah, Curaçao, good to hear you're well, and it seems you have completely recovered your memories," she said pleasantly to the younger woman.

"No thanks to you!" Curaçao snarled. "I nearly died multiple times because of that damn drug you injected me with and when I get back to the Organization, I'll tell everyone what you did, and what you made me do! I won't let you get away with this!"

Vermouth chuckled softly. "Oh, you are adorable my sweet, naïve young Curaçao. I've been 'getting away with this' for over forty years now, and I'm still getting away with it, or you wouldn't have called me first. In fact…" her turquoise eyes narrowed and her smile widened maliciously. "… you wouldn't have called me at all, but either your dear brother or lover, so that means even though your tongue is now free to waggle, your body is still under the effects of the drug and will still respond to any commands I give you. I can work with this. I'm sorry, Curaçao, but…"

"No, please-!"

"Come to me, Angel of Music," Vermouth breathed in soft-spoken English.

Then the power failed and everything was cast in darkness.

()()()()()

Haibara was very nearly at the Ferris wheel when all the lights in the park suddenly went out, including the five spotlights and the Ferris wheel's big screen. Everything was off except for apparently the old aquarium which people started running to, but Haibara wasn't interested in that at all. In fact, it meant her path to the Ferris wheel was mostly clear and no one would be able to even see her, much less stop her from entering into the Ferris wheel's inner workings to be able to get up to the kids.

Unfortunately, the power outage meant that none of the gondolas were moving either, so the kids couldn't get out right now without her help, and there was no way such a widescale blackout on a clear night was accidental. It was even likely that the Organization itself had caused it as part of some plan to retrieve Curaçao if they were aware of her current location. She definitely couldn't waste time trying to find Kudo now, but Haibara hoped the Organization was able to get in and get out quickly.

()()()()()

Bourbon swore angrily, "Damn it. If everything's gone black like this, then it must mean Curaçao is at the top, but I can't analyze the circuitry anymore. Shit, I'm on the verge of disarming it, but I can't see now even though I'm at the most critical part of the process!"

He still had no idea what would cause this bomb to go off, but all he could see was the neon red 'Standby' scrolling sideways across the screen as if mocking his powerlessness in this situation.

()()()()()

"Aircraft control is all green," Chianti declared as she fine-tuned some of the dials on the dashboard. "Twenty meters to the target. Let's go!"

"Go ahead," Gin said with a nod and, not looking away from the measurements he was reading off the screen, he said to his partner, "Vodka, activate the arm's grasping function on my mark."

"Got it," Vodka answered and kept his eyes glued to his screen with his finger hovering over the appropriate key.

Gin watched carefully as the Ictinaetus Eagle dropped lower and lower in the sky until finally, "Now!"

Vodka punched the button and the arms contracted at once. Even through the aircraft, Gin felt the vibrations as the arms clamped down as tight as they could around the frame of the metal gondola.

"Chianti, take us up. Vodka, make sure the arms are locked so we don't lose the gondola while we're pulling it free from its moorings," Gin ordered and received two vocal confirmations. Metal shrieked in protest and the aircraft shuddered rather ominously, but everything held together without undue stress and at last, Curaçao's gondola was free of the Ferris wheel. "Alright, let's scram."

"Roger," Chianti said, but just as she was about to start their getaway, Korn spoke up.

"From 8 o'clock above the Ferris wheel, something was moving," he said quickly, still peering out his side window.

Gin's brow furrowed. "Was it the PSB officer?"

"Couldn't see," Korn said apologetically.

"Vodka, scan the gondola with the infrared system," Gin shot back over his shoulder.

"Roger," Vodka answered and typed on the keyboard. The imaging for the infrared system popped up on the computer screen and he gasped at what he saw. "T-This form is a male and the other belongs to a kid. Aniki, Curaçao's not in there!"

"What?!" Gin exclaimed, his green eyes wide with alarm as he stared at the very same screen Vodka was looking at. Two forms, a kid and an adult man, but no adult woman. "She's not, but where is she and why did she leave?! Drop the gondola!"

"But Aniki, there are still people-!"

"-I said drop it!" Gin snarled, his eyes flashing with rage and fear. "If Curaçao's not in that gondola, then I don't give a damn about anyone else in it!"

"Y-Yes, Aniki," Vodka stammered and sent the command for the arms to unlock and release the gondola while chewing worriedly on his bottom lip.

The momentum and the weight caused the heavy gondola to plummet rapidly through the Ferris wheel to deep within the interior at about the center. It made a lot of noise which surely drew the park attendees' attention towards the Ferris wheel, but Gin didn't care. They still couldn't see anything and that was all that mattered because his biggest concern was his missing twin.

The radio transmission clicked on in his ear over the headset and Vermouth's voice came through. "Gin, what's going on?!"

"Curaçao's run away from the gondola and I'm going down into the Ferris wheel to get her, so don't talk to me until I call you!" Gin snapped furiously as he cut the transmission and threw open a supply cabinet nearer to the back of the aircraft.

His declaration was met with shock from his colleagues. "Aniki, you can't go down there! Akai is still somewhere on this Ferris wheel and we've heard no word from Bourbon!" Vodka protested.

"I can, I will, and you can't stop me," he said as his eyes quickly scanned over the contents until he saw what he'd been hoping to find and lashed out to grab what appeared to be a power crossbow. It had a metal barbed torpedo-sized arrow already loaded and attached to a strong metal cable feeding from a coil of it at the base.

Gin carried the crossbow over to the emergency exit door, lifted the latch, and slid the door open with effort. The wind from outside blasted inward and nearly knocked his hat off, but he quickly grabbed it before it could fly away and shoved it tighter on his head. With his hat more secure, he took up a steady position at the entrance, and fired the crossbow at the Ferris wheel. The barbed arrow launched and bored into the outer rim of the wheel. He gave an experimental tug on the metal cable still attached to his crossbow, but it remained firm, so he unhooked the coil from the crossbow and wrapped it tightly around an anchoring bar just inside the door, then tied it so it wouldn't come loose.

"Chianti, Korn, keep the Eagle steady while I zipline to the Ferris wheel," Gin ordered as he pulled out a collapsible metal rod that he kept on his person at all times. It was thin and looked easily breakable if put under too much stress, but it was deceptively stronger than it looked. "Vodka, use the infrared scanner to locate Curaçao and once I'm across, there's a cable cutter in this supply cabinet that you can use to cut the cable line free from the coil."

"Aniki, wait!" Vodka exclaimed.

"Don't even try and stop me, Vodka!" Gin shot back as he partially-extended the rod and hooked it over the cable.

"No, that's not it; I'm coming with you," Vodka corrected, already abandoning the computer station and pulling out his own collapsible metal baton.

"What? No, you're not. You need to stay at the computer and give tech support to Chianti and Korn," Gin pointed out.

"They can access the same stuff from the dashboard that I can from the console," Vodka said with a dismissive wave. "What's more important is you having someone down there to watch your back and support you."

"Fine. Korn, you'll have to use the cable cutter once we're off," Gin ordered.

"Yes, sir," the old sniper answered.

"And Vodka, be careful," Gin grumbled unhappily as he turned back around to face forward.

"Same to you," Vodka said, and Gin pushed forward out of the Eagle down the makeshift zipline towards the Ferris wheel, holding tightly onto the metal rod above him.

He couldn't hear Vodka due to the wind roaring in his ears, but he felt the slight change in tension with the additional weight added on. Right before he crashed into the wheel's outer rim that the barbed arrow had struck, he released one of his hands from the rod and his continued forward momentum sent him flying into the space between the gondolas where it suddenly dropped down into the interior. Gin continued falling forward and down right into one of the internal support structures that acted as a wall which he kicked off of at a downward angle. It took him directly to the opposite wall further down and he bounced off of that one too. It wasn't too big a drop and he was far enough down that he was able to rebound off the stair railing. He leapt off it at a more horizontal angle instead, tucking into a front flip midair and landing squarely on the ground without so much as a stumble. After he collapsed the baton and repocketed it, he looked up and saw Vodka up near the top perform the same trick of bouncing off the solid surfaces on the way down as if they were made of rubber. He didn't even attempt a flip and he stumbled a bit on the final landing, but he wasn't injured and that was all that mattered.

Gin nodded once at his partner and set off into the dark interior of the Ferris wheel. "Now, let's go find Curaçao."

Meanwhile, Akai had been up on top of the Ferris wheel trying to find a good place and angle to take aim at the aircraft and had seen Gin and Vodka's descent from it into the Ferris wheel. He was shocked, concerned, and didn't know what to make of it. Why had they left the safety of their giant bird to handle this matter personally? Not only that, but he himself was supposed to be dead, Bourbon was a current member and definitely not supposed to be here trying to stop them, and Conan was a child they wouldn't hesitate to eliminate if he got in their way which, knowing that boy, he most definitely would.

()()()()()

Full darkness did not mean deafness and the entire park could hardly fail to notice that something was going on over at the Ferris wheel. Vermouth was shocked. What was Gin doing?!

She called him over the earpiece, "Gin, what's going on?!"

"Curaçao's run away from the gondola and I'm going down into the Ferris wheel to get her, so don't talk to me until I call you!" Gin snapped and cut the connection with her.

Her first impulse was to be annoyed at his rudeness, but then she smiled and chuckled softly to herself. "So your baby sister's not following your plan, is she? It's so frustrating when siblings don't listen to you, especially when you're trying to help them," she mused as she picked up her phone and started dialing.

After she finished inputting it, she held it up to her ear and waited. The phone stopped ringing and there was a questioning chirp on the other end. Vermouth smirked.

"Nhlsm, it's me. Curaçao is in the Ferris wheel as is Gin. Find her and help her escape. Don't let Gin succeed in stopping her."

()()()()()

"I don't know what happened, but I can make use of this," Bourbon murmured to himself as he stared up at the giant hole that was now streaming evening light down into the black abyss that was the current interior of the Ferris wheel.

He looked back inside the fire hydrant box where the bomb was set, and the red 'Standby' sign was no longer the only thing he could see. He could make out the wires and even some of their colors.

"Alright, looks like I can figure out the wiring," he said quietly. "Focus, don't rush, act carefully… and hurry!"

Bourbon was about to make the next cut when he heard something crack and crumble beneath him him that startled him half to death. Was the level he was on about to collapse? He momentarily abandoned the bomb and looked down just in time to see a giant leathery-skinned gray monster with a wide, grotesque face and bat-like wings shake itself free of apparent dust then leap up into the air with a mighty downward thrust of its wings. It soared straight up towards Bourbon who immediately pulled back and flattened himself to the ground, hoping it hadn't seen him. The monster whooshed by, not noticing his presence at all, and made a beeline directly to the very hole that Bourbon was using to see the detonator's wires. Its dark form briefly obscured the opening and the fire hydrant box, then it vanished. Bourbon continued to stare in shock where it had disappeared.

"A gargoyle!" he breathed. "What- Why is there a gargoyle in here?! Shit, if that's the one who planted the detonator and all the bombs in here, then I gotta stop it now!"

Bourbon immediately scrambled back over to the fire hydrant and picked up the wire cutters again, but took a deep breath to calm himself down. Don't rush… don't rush… but don't dilly dally either!

()()()()()

"Hey, mister! Mister, are you okay?" Conan asked of the PSB officer after running to his side. The gondola had suffered so much damage dropping through the Ferris wheel that both him and the officer had fallen out of it with the force of the landing.

The man's eyes were closed but he was still breathing, and Conan felt the pulse in his wrist was strong. Conan gave a start when some debris fell from above and he heard metal creaking. He looked up and found the gondola positioned directly above them in such a way that if it continued falling, they would both be crushed. This was bad! He quickly grabbed the PSB officer under the armpits while the gondola slowly slid forward and down, and he hauled with all the power he possessed in his tiny body to move the much larger adult. It was a struggle and he just barely managed to move the officer's legs out of the way when the gondola finished crashing down into the very spot they had just vacated. The floor shook so much that the vibrations unbalanced Conan and made him fall over, but he exhaled in relief. At least they were out of the danger zone.

None too soon, he heard a fwooshing sound down below and tensed. What was that? He looked down just in time to see a massive humanoid-shaped something with giant wings launch upward, but then it hovered in midair long enough for Conan to get a good look at it. Conan's jaw dropped and his eyes widened. It had grainy gray skin like stone, had large pointed bat-like ears, and a wide gaping frog-like mouth full of pointed teeth. It was like something straight out of a movie, but unless he'd hit his head and was hallucinating, it was real. Those ears twitched and swiveled about momentarily and then it darted off flying level with the platform Conan was currently sitting on.

Conan barely registered that he jumped to his feet and started chasing after the thing. He left the PSB officer behind and he was running after something unknown with a mouth that looked large enough to swallow him whole if it was real. He was in the middle of a giant Ferris wheel with the Organization outside to retrieve their agent and the NOC list that would turn the tide of the information war in their favor, Curaçao was missing, there were bombs in said Ferris wheel that Amuro was defusing, and Akai was probably still up top trying to work out how to bring their aircraft down.

Yet, the only conscious thought running through Conan's mind right at that moment as he ran was, "What the hell was that?!"

()()()()()

Stumbling around in the dark interior of the Ferris wheel was definitely not the easiest thing to do when Haibara was trying to navigate her way to the gondolas, but finally she could see the large, oval pods from within. Getting to them though was still another matter entirely. Haibara reached yet another dead end, but saw a metal ladder-like support beam ascending upward towards the top of the Ferris wheel. Perhaps she could use that? If she could reach it that is. She wasn't even close to it just standing on the platform, but maybe… if she stood up on top of the railing, she'd be able to close the distance? It was the best chance she had, especially given her lack of success finding anything even remotely similar so far.

Haibara climbed up onto the smooth railing and took a deep breath, then – making sure her feet were planted on the two bars that made up the corner to give herself better balance – she carefully straightened up and extended her right arm outward to reach the pseudo ladder. It was a careful art of balance and timing and even at this height, her arms weren't quite long enough. She was about to let herself fall in a controlled forward motion to close the distance when she felt the weighty presence of eyes watching her from behind.

She turned around looking up, and gasped, "No way!" It was Curaçao, but what was she doing here?

Curaçao jumped over the railing on the high up ledge she was standing on and Haibara had forgotten her own precarious perch until she felt herself overbalance and start falling backward. She screamed, flailing her arms, but she couldn't get her footing back and there was nothing to grab onto! Curaçao was falling fast in her direction and Haibara had fallen completely off the railing when Curaçao landed on it with a clank of her shoes on the metal. Haibara's downward progress was abruptly halted by the other woman's hand grabbing her wrist, and she dangled there for a bit in momentary silence. Her heart was still pounding ferociously in her chest from the near fall, but she managed to shake it off.

"Curaçao! Why are you here? Aren't you supposed to be at the police hospital?" Haibara asked the older woman.

"Sherry…!" Curaçao murmured, looking surprised and Haibara gave a small start. She knew who she was now? "I was brought here by the PSB in the hopes that doing so would break my amnesia, and obviously it was successful. This is our first time meeting each other in person, and I wish it wasn't so."

"Huh? I don't understand. And what about Gin? Does he know you've regained your memories?" Haibara said.

Curaçao's hand tightened on her wrist and she grimaced. "He doesn't, but not for my lack of trying. He's here now, trying to retrieve me and bring me back to the Organization, but I can't go find him."

"What do you mean by that?" Haibara said with an anxious feeling in her gut as Curaçao suddenly hoisted her up and held her close.

Then the silvery-blonde woman stood up and stepped down off the railing, still carrying her as she walked. She did not let go. Even when Haibara pushed a bit at her arms, Curaçao didn't let go.

"Miss. Emma?" Haibara uttered quietly, her anxiousness deepening to dread.

"I'm so sorry, Sherry," Curaçao said sorrowfully while her hold was tight and her expression was so distressed, she was nearly in tears. "Vermouth injected the mind control serum into me the night before you and the kids found me on the bench. Losing my memories made me forget her orders, but once I remembered, the serum resumed its effect and is me making me act against my will again. My mind and my words are my own this time around, but I can't stop it. Vermouth won't let me return to the Organization and she's forcing me to bring you to her."

"No! No, you can't! Emma, you have to fight it! You can't let Vermouth win!" Haibara exclaimed in panic and tried to wriggle her way out of Curaçao's arms, but Curaçao only maneuvered her arms to pin her more firmly in her embrace.

"I'm trying Sherry! Please believe me, you have no idea how much I'm trying," Curaçao choked and now the tears started falling unbidden down her face.

()()()()()

"What's going on? Haven't you found Curaçao yet?!" Gin snarled angrily to Chianti and Korn through the radio earpiece on the channel that linked with the Eagle's intercom system.

"No, we haven't! There's a lot of people in that Ferris wheel apart from you two and it's difficult to figure out who's who with this infrared system!" Chianti snapped right back. "Who the hell is supposed to be in there again?"

Gin rolled his eyes as he continued stalking forward with Vodka hot on his heels and he said, "Bourbon, probably Akai, Curaçao, the PSB agent, the kid with the PSB agent…" he didn't bother mentioning that it was probably Kudo. "… myself, and Vodka. That's-"

"-Holy shit, what's that?!" Chianti suddenly yelled so loud, she nearly blew out his ear drums.

"OW! Shit, Chianti, what's what?!" Gin demanded irately.

It was Korn who answered instead. "There's a non-human-shaped thing that appeared near a body crouched down by the fire hydrant that's ascending through multiple levels."

"What?!" Vodka exclaimed in shock, hearing the radio transmission on his own earpiece that he'd put in after they landed inside the Ferris wheel.

"It passed by the PSB agent and it seems to be heading upward and across to your direction, or maybe towards the other body further past you and down," Korn informed them promptly.

Gin gave a start. "Curaçao!" he exclaimed. The non-human-shaped figure could only be an alien, and Curaçao had to be who the alien was after! He whirled on his partner who skidded to an abrupt halt to avoid bumping into him. "Vodka, continue to search for Curaçao. I'll intercept the alien and deal with it before it gets anywhere close to her."

"Understood," Vodka replied and took off straight ahead with more confidence now that they had a better idea of where Curaçao was located within this massive Ferris wheel.

Meanwhile, Gin backtracked a bit until he saw some stairs they'd just passed and descended down them by climbing onto the railing and sliding down. "Chianti, Korn, you know both my position and that of the incoming alien, so I need you to guide me through to make sure the bastard after my sister doesn't overshoot my location."

"Roger that," Chianti answered and then the radio fell silent.

Gin was livid, not at Chianti, but at this whole situation. It was just one god damned thing after the other obstructing the retrieval of his sister, and now there was an actual alien being thrown into the whole mess as well?! He was so done with this and he was quite looking forward to taking his frustrations out on his new target.

()()()()()

This position was no good either! Below, above, the double-rotor helicopter seemed to have no weak points that Akai could strike it down from with his sniper rifle. The back of the rotors themselves presented a possible target, but the helicopter was facing the Ferris wheel, not away from it, and that was the only weak point he could find.

And Akai had not forgotten that Gin and Vodka had abandoned the safety of the helicopter to descend into the body of the Ferris wheel itself.

This was the closest he had been to them both in a while with usually distance, landscape, and timing preventing him from being able to do more than just stare at them or get an occasional shot at them. Now, however, they were both in the Ferris wheel, same as him, with no tall skyscrapers or rocky winding cliffside roads separating them, and there was no easy way for them to escape the Ferris wheel either. Was this it? The chance he'd been waiting for to make amends for his failure to capture Gin the first time around? To rectify his mistake of being found out and causing Akemi to be considered a liability to the Organization, then be killed over it?

His path was clear

Akai leapt over the edge of the Ferris wheel where he'd positioned himself and dropped down into the belly of the beast, then started running towards the direction he had witnessed Gin and Vodka run off to. Something had clearly gone wrong in the attempt to retrieve Curaçao or they would not have left the helicopter as they did, but if she had run away from the Organization, it didn't make much sense in Akai's head for the Organization to be so determined to get her back. Their policy for dealing with traitors and NOCs was elimination with extreme prejudice and running away was definitely considered a form of treason. Maybe they planned to retrieve the NOC list from her first and then kill her?

Then Akai heard several suspiciously familiar bangs and skidded to a halt to listen carefully. He heard it again and his avocado green eyes widened. Gunshots! The only people apart from him that had guns on their person were Gin and Vodka, and if one or both of them were shooting- Shit, they could have encountered either Conan or Amuro! He started running again straight in the direction the gunshots were coming from as he checked his own weapons' ammunition, all sense of caution abandoned on his part. He already had two personal deaths on his hands due to his inaction; he was not about to let the Organization add two more to that list.

()()()()()

"Only thing left is to cut these wires linked to the detonator and then the bomb will be disabled…" Bourbon muttered to himself as he first cut a yellow wire and then snipped a black one.

He waited with bated breath listening intently for any explosions, but he heard nothing, and then he saw a new message scrolling across the detonator's screen: 'Reception Off'. He'd done it. He collapsed with relief, exhausted from the mental stress. He'd bought some time now that the bombs couldn't be remotely detonated. Now he just had to try to gather them all up and get rid of them.

Bourbon abandoned the fire hydrant and the disabled detonator to climb the ladder up to the main axle of the Ferris wheel when he heard a familiar sound and perked up in alarm. Gunshots? Who was firing a gun inside the Ferris wheel? Akai was the only one with a gun, but the shots didn't sound like sniper rifle fire and they were spaced too close together. Akai might also have a pistol on hand that Bourbon didn't know about, but who would he be shooting at? The gargoyle?!

Damn it, this day just kept getting better and better with every passing minute!

()()()()()

Conan was still running, trying his best to chase down the… the thing he'd just seen fly by and understand what exactly it was he saw. It was giving him a headache, because he was trying to reach the solution by breaking down the problem logically, and his logic was failing him terribly in response to the fairy tale-looking monster he'd just seen. His attempt to rationalize it was interrupted by two bangs followed by an enraged shriek. Gunfire? Was that Akai or was someone else in here apart from that flying thing?

Wherever it was, it sounded close and coming from the level above him, so Conan ran to the nearest set of stairs and dashed up them. Once he was up on the same level, his eyes widened and he stared dumbstruck at the winged, stone-skinned monstrosity he'd observed several levels down. His gut reaction was 'This is real'! His immediate and more rational thought following that one was 'That's stupid; monsters, ghosts, and spirits aren't real'. The immediate internal counterargument was 'What possible trick could be used to create something like this?!'

This cognitive dissonance lasted in his head for mere seconds because that was enough time for the fiend to focus his large ears on the sound of Conan's footsteps and lunge straight at him.

"MOVE IT, BOY!" a male voice bellowed from above that made Conan give a start of shock, then flail and hastily fall backwards just as the bat-like humanoid creature swooped low with its arms outstretched.

Conan held his breath as the large claws at the ends of those hands passed mere inches away from his body, and another gunshot rang out just as the monster's bulk finished soaring over him. There was a cracking sound like chipping rock and an ear-splitting shriek from the monster nearly shattered Conan's eardrums, making him yelp and try to block the sound with his fingers. He had just managed to roll over onto his stomach and climb back up to his feet when a heavy thud next to him nearly shook him off balance again.

Then a large arm came around his middle and promptly yanked him off his feet with a rough "Don't just stand there in the open!", and he was carried off at a fast run down the walkway and up some stairs.

Two more shots had been fired over the shoulder during the run, one of which had been accompanied by another screech from the monster in question before Conan was finally set down on the ground at a corner where one of the support pillars met the wall.

"This should be good enough. Whatever you do, don't move at all unless you can make a loud auditory distraction at the same time because otherwise that gargoyle will hone right in on your location, and at your size, he'll have no trouble swallowing you whole," his rescuer muttered quickly, and Conan stared up at him with more terror than he felt towards that monster thing barreling down at him.

He hadn't heard wrong before… And he wasn't hearing wrong now… the man who'd saved him… was none other than Gin.

Then Gin turned slightly, his ice-cold green eyes glaring down at him, and he said with an exasperated huff, "You just can't leave well enough alone, can you Kudo?"

Conan felt a jolt of icy terror stab through him. They knew who he was! It was his worst nightmare come true!

()()()()()

Of course Kudo was here. Why wouldn't he be? He'd managed to work his way over to Tohto Tower when they didn't want him involved there either, so of course he'd somehow found his way to the heart of the Organization's operation to retrieve Curaçao when they had enough to worry about already. There was nothing Gin could do about Kudo now though. Curaçao was still missing which was a greater priority to him than Kudo, and there was also an unexpected gRg-oil alien hanging out in the Ferris wheel that he wasn't equipped to easily contain or combat against. That was why Gin decided to make the decision to reveal he knew Conan's true identity as Shinichi Kudo. He could always neuralyze him later after this mess was resolved, but having Kudo on his side and helping him – or at least not actively working against him – would reduce the number of conflicts Gin had to deal with right at that moment.

Except at this very moment, Kudo was shell-shocked both from seeing the charging swooping alien he couldn't wrap his logic-minded brain around and Gin revealing he knew who he was, that Shinichi Kudo was alive, and that he wasn't trying to kill him for it.

"Yes, I know you're really high school detective Shinichi Kudo, and you're supposed to be dead because I tried to poison you, but it didn't work and instead you shrunk into first-grader Conan Edogawa…" Gin summarized quickly as he reloaded his Beretta, practically seeing Kudo's brain exploding behind his eyes at this revelation. "… and there is way too much going on for me to even begin to explain all of the layers of deception we practiced on you, but the short of it is this: I won't kill you, but that big gray flying monster is an alien called a gargoyle and it will, so don't move from here unless I tell you to."

"A-Alien, what? They're not-" Conan spluttered in disbelief, finally animating a bit after his double shock.

"-Yes, they are," Gin cut him off. "Aliens are real and I deal with them on a daily basis as part of my real job, but even if they weren't, that gargoyle is no illusion, tricked-up device, or fancy magic trick."

"Your real-?"

"-Kudo, now really isn't the time for this!" Gin snapped a bit impatiently as he turned away from the boy and peered around their hiding place, listening and searching for the gargoyle. He knew Kudo was just asking him questions trying to make sense of what was happening after having his whole world turned upside down, but really… "There's a gargoyle nearby that would love to make an afternoon snack out of you and a three-course meal out of me, and I have no idea what it's doing here, but I cannot be distracted if we both want to make it out of this alive."

"But what about the bombs?" Conan asked with a perplexed frown.

Gin's brow furrowed a couple centimeters and his mind drew a blank. He looked back at Kudo. "What bombs?"

Conan stared at him hard and then said, "The bombs on the Ferris wheel's main axle? The ones all hooked up to the detonator in the fire extinguisher? Didn't you guys set that up?"

Gin's expression didn't change except for a barely perceptible narrowing of his sharp eyes. However, his voice was hollow and cool when he said, "We never rigged any bombs."

His words hung heavy in the air after the words left his lips along with the implications they portended.

Then abruptly, Gin resumed motion and looked over his shoulder back in the direction of the gargoyle as he spoke into the earphone, "Chianti, Korn, our non-human friend is a gargoyle. I have every reason to believe it rigged bombs on the axle of the Ferris wheel to stop us from rescuing Curaçao, and I don't have the firepower to take it down myself, so I need air support."

"Can do, but can you get away from the shooting site, so we don't accidentally hit you instead? Our accuracy on something at this distance with something we can't even directly see is absolute shit," Chianti said.

"Understood. I'll move," he said and ended the radio conversation. Then he promptly scooped up Kudo into his arms and bolted.

"H-Hey! Put me down!" the nearly eight-year-old boy by now squawked in protest and struggled against Gin's firm grip.

"Not on your life, Kudo," Gin retorted. "Not unless you want to be shot up with aerial assault rounds akin to those we used in the helicopter that you blew up at Tohto Tower."

"What?!" Conan exclaimed. His shock could have been due to his declaration that they were going to shoot the Ferris wheel, the knowledge Gin knew about the role Kudo had played at Tohto Tower, or both.

If Kudo had anything more to say though, his words were cut off by the automatic rounds from the IDSS tearing through metal and concrete like butter. Conan flinched and Gin's arms tightened protectively out of reflex. The cacophony of noise was deafening already, and his primary goal was to put as much distance between himself and the Eagle's gunfire, but he thought he faintly heard an inhuman shriek of pain and anger. As such, he wasn't paying much attention to what was ahead of him and just barely managed to avoid colliding with the figure that suddenly burst out from around a corner, forcing him to sidestep and spin on his heel to avoid falling over. He brought his gun up to bear and found himself staring down the long barrel of a sniper rifle being wielded by none other than Shuichi Akai, who looked just as surprised as Gin felt to be confronted so directly like this. Except that Akai was supposed to be dead at the hands of the Organization.

Damn it, Gin had the worst luck tonight! First Kudo, and now Akai.

Hearing the raucous behind him coming from the IDSS, Gin resigned himself to dealing with the consequences later of what he was about to do and said, with a tight smile through gritted teeth, "So, you managed to make your way here after all, Akai."

His words had an instant effect on both the child and the FBI agent. Conan stiffened and Akai's shoulders tensed, but the confusion was easy to read in Akai's green eyes. Gin's words implied he knew Akai was alive, but that was impossible because then Gin would have hunted down Akai to kill him again, and then killed Kir for not actually killing Akai the first time.

The silent moment of awkward tension was mercifully broken by Gin's earpiece radio going off and he heard Vodka's voice. "Aniki, are you there?"

Gin set Conan down and focused his attention on the earpiece. "I'm here, Vodka. What's up? Did you find Curaçao?"

"I found her alright. I saw her running, but when I called out to her, she didn't stop or pause or anything and just kept running away, and she's also got Sherry!"

"What? Sherry!" Gin shouted in alarm, heedless of the company he was currently keeping. "How- Why is she here?!"

()()()()()

Haibara suddenly perked up in Curaçao's tight hold. She knew that voice! She peered around Curaçao back behind her and- yes! It was Vodka! He was chasing after them as best he could, but his body wasn't built for speed and he was just barely managing to keep up.

"Vodka!" she shouted as loud as she could. "Can you hear me?!"

His voice was faint, but she could still hear it. "I can! Sherry, has Curaçao not regained her memories? Tell her to stop running away! Her brother's here too and we're trying to bring her back home!"

"I can't! Curaçao has her memories back, but she was poisoned by a mind control serum and her body's still being controlled by it even though her mind is free this time! She can't stop and her body's making her go back to Vermouth!" Sherry yelled.

Vodka swore loudly and then in a panicked tone, he said, "Curaçao, let go of Sherry! We can rescue you from Vermouth later, but if she gets her hands on Sherry, she'll kill her!"

"I know that!" Curaçao shot back, looking stricken, but her speed didn't slow down even a bit. "But I can't let go of her! My body won't let me! The only way I'll be able to is if my body is put into immediate life-threatening danger that I can only avoid if my mobility is unencumbered by the extra weight!"

"No, we can't do that!" Vodka protested in alarm.

"Vodka, it's the only thing that will work that will save Sherry! Vermouth needs me alive, so my body will do whatever it needs to in order to survive! You came here on a helicopter with a mounted gun, right? Use that and aim it in my direction! Please Vodka! None of us want Sherry dead and this is the only way!" Curaçao shouted back at him.

()()()()()

"Vodka? Vodka, what's going on?!" Gin demanded, trying desperately to hear what his sister was saying on Vodka's end, but he couldn't make it out and the last thing he heard Vodka say was 'No, we can't do that!' with panic in his voice.

At last, Vodka spoke into the radio again, and he sounded shaken. "A-Aniki, did you… did you hear anything Curaçao said? Or Sherry?"

"I didn't… Why…?" Gin said warily, not liking that question, not knowing why Sherry was in the Ferris wheel, and not understanding what had been said to prompt Vodka to yell that they could 'rescue Curaçao from Vermouth later'. He had confirmation that Vermouth was the one responsible for messing with his sister, and he was trying to rescue her now!

"She's being affected by the mind control serum. She can say what she wants to now, but she can't control her body, so she can't let go of Sherry. She said… She said that the only way that she could is if… if we put her body in immediate life-threatening danger such that she was forced to drop Sherry to survive," Vodka said shakily through heavy breaths because he was still running.

"No…" Gin breathed in horror.

"She suggested we use the IDSS on the Eagle and aim it kinda in her-"

"-No! No, we can't! We can't!" Gin retorted frantically, feeling a bone-deep chill starting to spread through him.

He was wrong. The spotlight configuration next to the Ferris wheel had enabled Curaçao to regain her memories as he'd hoped, but it hadn't protected her from the mind control serum. She was still being controlled by it and now she had Sherry who she was taking back to Vermouth against her will. Vermouth would kill Sherry in a heartbeat, there was no question of that, but the alternative? To aim the IDSS at his sister – his pregnant twin sister! – with the intention of shooting at her and hoping none of the bullets or debris hit either her or Sherry?! He couldn't do it! It was too dangerous a risk for him to take!

"Aniki, what do we do?" Vodka asked.

"We…" Gin started without knowing what he was going to say. He didn't know… He didn't know what to do. The lives of both his twin and his lover hung in the balance and he didn't know how to save them.

Faintly, as if through a tunnel across a great distance, Gin heard Curaçao's voice on the headset through the earpiece scream, "Big brother, please!"

Gin gritted his teeth and clenched his hands into fists, the left one tightening around his Beretta. After a prolonged internal struggle, his right hand shot up to the headset and he switched the radio call to the Eagle's intercom. "Chianti, Korn, I need you to shoot at Curaçao. She's the figure on the infrared that's running and holding a child. She's taken Sherry hostage and you need to shoot at her only long enough to make her drop Sherry."

The first voice Gin heard wasn't Chianti, but Korn's shocked, "What?!"

Chianti jumped in right after him. "Hell no; are you out of your fucking mind?! No fucking way! We're not shooting at your fucking sister with this damn bird!"

"We don't have a choice!" Gin snapped, and he was literally shaking. "Curaçao's body's being controlled by something else against her will. If she gets away from us, then Sherry's as good as dead, and she won't let go of Sherry for any reason short of an immediate threat to her life! She told me this and begged me herself to use the IDSS, so shut up and do what I told you!"

"Yes, sir…" Chianti grumbled mutinously.

Gin's mouth was a thin grim line as he switched his radio back to Vodka. "Vodka, Korn's going to use the Eagle's weaponryto aim at Curaçao's general direction just until she lets go of Sherry. Stay far enough back that you're not in the line of fire and retrieve Sherry at the first opportunity."

"Roger that," Vodka confirmed, sounding worried, but Gin ignored it. Given their current circumstances, there was nothing else they could do.

"What. the. hell is going on?"

Oh, yeah. As if Gin didn't have enough to deal with already, he also had Akai and Kudo staring at him with matching expressions of confusion and shock on their faces. He knew they couldn't hear the other halves of his radio conversations, but what had he said that had them looking at him like some kind of alien? Ah, right, he wasn't supposed to know that Sherry was still alive - but he did - and he knew that she was inside the Ferris wheel, shrunken, and he was trying to save her from one of the Organization's own. Yes, he supposed that would be enough to baffle them.

"That is unfortunately a very long and complicated explanation that I don't have time for right now, but all you need to know for the moment is that I have no intention of killing anyone other than that gargoyle monstrosity that's here to steal Curaçao and blow up the Ferris wheel afterward with the bombs that Kudo says you guys found planted around the axle," Gin said succinctly. "Speaking of which…"

As if right on cue, the nearby gunfire from the aircraft started to grow distant, and now the gargoyle, somehow apparently still alive but sounding pained-hopefully-injured made a furious screech. Gin was already diving out of his hiding place and firing at it with his reloaded gun as he sprinted closer to the next bit of cover.

"Kudo, you stay out of the way so you don't get picked off, and Akai, if you don't want that thing to get a free chance to blow up the Ferris wheel with us in it, then do something useful and help me shoot that thing out of the air, or at least keep it focused on us if you can't do that much!" Gin ordered, firing another shot at the gargoyle.

Akai didn't answer with words, but a blast from the sniper rifle in his hands.

()()()()()

Curaçao could hear it, the sound of the gunfire from the aircraft her brother had arrived in drawing closer.

"Curaçao…?" Sherry said worriedly.

It took everything Curaçao had not to let herself tighten her grip on Sherry, even just protectively. "It'll be alright, Sherry," she said.

She could feel her heart racing, but her mind was calm. She was running fast and her body was moving in line with her wishes. Even the heels she was wearing weren't slowing down her speed, but running while carrying something, especially with your arms in the front, was awkward and inefficient. It wasn't enough though. She was still outpacing the gun's rounds. Then she saw it up ahead: the platform she was running on fell away and widened out into a gaping maw. She physically couldn't keep holding on to Sherry anymore if she wanted to have any chance of making that jump alive.

"Take care, Sherry," Curaçao said loud enough for the shrunken scientist to hear her over the ruckus, and then let her go.

()()()()()

"Korn!" Chianti yelled as soon as she saw the small body fall away from the running big one.

"I see it!" he shouted back and immediately released the trigger on the gun turret to stop firing.

()()()()()

Sherry tumbled from Curaçao's arms to the ground and Vodka snapped her up in a protective forward roll that kept her close and narrowly avoided some falling debris.

"It's okay, Sherry; I've got ya," he murmured reassuringly and then spoke into the radio mic on his earpiece. "Aniki, I've got Sherry! She's safe!"

()()()()()

Gin heard him loud and clear. "Chianti, do you copy?" he asked, taking a very brief reprieve from shooting at the gargoyle to reload and double-check Kudo was still safe. The boy was staring at him intently, likely trying to puzzle out what was happening over the Organization's radios between the different members.

"Yes, we saw! We just stopped- No! Fuck!"

That screech wasn't Chianti's normal loud mouthing! "What happened?!" Gin demanded.

"She jumped!" Chianti screamed. "She fucking jumped and the infrared visual system lost track of her!"

()()()()()

Unencumbered by the extra weight, Curaçao did jump. She launched herself into the black abyss and fell through the air. Her blue eyes swept the unyielding landscape around her, looking for any little thing she could use for her exit strategy when pain suddenly bloomed violent and sharp from her back through her stomach and blood splattered her cheek.

Korn had stopped actively firing, but the gun hadn't finished releasing the last rounds.

The pain blinded and disoriented her and she didn't see the oncoming obstacle directly in front of her. She crashed stomach-first into the metal platform and blood from her mouth and her new gut wound splashed all over it as she tumbled head first over the top. She banged into lots of things on the way down that would leave her with nasty bruises all over later, but that was nothing compared to the intense cramping in her lower abdomen. The pain was so crippling, she couldn't even catch herself enough to break her fall and she crumpled to the ground in a heap.

She hit her back flat and it knocked the wind out of her chest. She couldn't breathe, and the force stunned her temporarily so she couldn't move either. When she could, the first thing she did was curl up into a ball and wrap her arms around her midsection. Her breathing was fast and shallow, and her face was screwed up shut while agonized whimpers punctuated the air from between her gritted teeth while her stomach clenched like a death vice. Oh please, please no! Don't let it… Not a miscarriage, not her baby!

But she had an open gut wound and had hit her abdomen very hard. Even for a pregnancy further along, such a hit would have been detrimental if not deadly, but for a fragile, barely-existent embryo, there was no way… no chance at all that it could survive such an impact.

()()()()()

Vermouth sat a little straighter and her brow furrowed. It was gone. Just like when she could feel the link between her and Karasuma weakening, the one between her and Curaçao was gone. Even with the increased potency of the drug she used on Curaçao compared to the original one she'd been using on Karasuma ever since she entered the MiB, it still felt like nothing more than a blip on the periphery of her awareness and its disappearance was as quick and sudden as squishing an ant. That could only mean one of two things: either Curaçao was dead or the mind control drug had lost its hold on her for some reason. It was a problem either way, but if she was alive, she would find her brother in that Ferris wheel and ruin everything. She couldn't let that happen.

She picked up her phone and called the gargoyle again, "Nhlsm, Curaçao's missing. If she's dead, then just get out of there, but if not or if you are unable to escape, then destroy the Ferris wheel's axle."

()()()()()

"What do you mean the infrared visual system lost track of her?!" Gin all but shouted into the mic.

"I mean we can't see her anywhere!" Chianti shouted back. "I see Sherry and Vodka, you near two other people, one of them a kid, the PSB guy, and another guy down near the axle. There are no adult women showing up on this thing!"

"Well keep looking! She's in the Ferris wheel somewhere!" Gin exclaimed as he felt panic trying to claw its way into his chest.

"I am looking, but I'm telling you, I don't see her! There's a lot of debris that we shot up, so maybe all that stuff is blocking her heat signature from showing up," Chianti suggested.

Gin breathed heavily through his nose and then bit out sharply, "Just find her."

Chianti didn't add any more to the conversation after that and Gin prayed, though his prayers were meant for no one, that Chianti's explanation was indeed the case and that his sister was alright. That she wasn't…

His worried thoughts were abruptly interrupted by a female voice over the headset, but it wasn't Chianti this time. "Gin, it's me!"

"Sherry?"

"Yes, I'm safe and borrowing Vodka's mic for the moment. I heard what Chianti said, and there's also a group of kids on the Ferris wheel that haven't been accounted for," she said.

"There's what?!" Gin exclaimed, completely thrown by this new piece of info.

"It's my friends; they're in one of the gondolas past the apex on the descending side of the wheel. That's why I came in here in the first place; I need to go find them and make sure they're all safe," she explained.

Gin thought it over and then nodded minutely. "Alright, but be careful, and if Vodka can't hear me, pass on the message that he's to stay with you and help you in protecting the kids."

"Got it, Aniki," Vodka answered directly and then the radio feed fell silent again.

… And Gin was once more confronted by the fact that Kudo and Akai were both gaping at him like he was some bizarre alien life form (which was ironic given that they had both just seen their first one this evening). Even cool-as-a-cucumber unflappable Akai seemed at a loss for words on how to begin this conversation.

"What…?" Conan started, but he was interrupted by a screech that sounded unmistakably like fury to Gin's experienced ears.

He whirled around to see a brief flap of wings taking off in about the same direction as it had before towards Curaçao's last known location. Gin swore under his breath and quickly checked the ammunition in his gun – he was low – before he ran after the thing and it wasn't long before the sound of two pairs of feet pounding hard and fast on metal accompanied his own hammering stride.

"Gin, what's going on?! How do you know about me and Haibara and Akai, why haven't you tried to kill either of us and sound like you're protecting Sherry, and what is that thing we're chasing after?!" Conan yelled after him.

Gin huffed as he reloaded his gun. Of course they wanted answers, which was understandable but annoying. "Korn, the gargoyle's moving. Track its progress. It might be trying to find Curaçao or it may have something else planned," Gin directed first to his coworker before he decided how best to tackle the questions Kudo raised.

They didn't have time for a full debrief, and it would be pointless to do so seeing as how both of them would have their memories of this erased afterward.

"For starters, the crime syndicate we refer to as the Organization does not exist as you know it. The idea of it being a crime syndicate is in fact an elaborate fabrication designed to mask the Organization's true identity which is a secret organization that monitors and polices alien lifeforms coming to and living on this planet, and that is the true organization that I work for. Every evidence of criminal activity you both have witnessed was either a deliberate falsehood crafted from the beginning to perpetuate the lie of the syndicate or masked some significant details that hid the true extraterrestrial nature of our work. Yes, even with you and your undercover infiltration, Akai. We knew who you really were within the first year you met Akemi, and Kudo? Even our very first meeting was an intentional ruse that we set up to meet you and protect you with minimal effort on our part."

"Protect me?!" Conan spluttered.

"That's why Sherry shrunk too. We discovered she wasn't safe either, so we sent her into hiding just as we had done with you and we hoped that maybe her presence would be enough to both encourage you in your quest, but also caution you to be less risky. Obviously, the latter part never held up," Gin remarked rather bitterly on that last point. "As I mentioned earlier, the extent of the deceptions the Organization played upon you both to make you believe we were a valid crime syndicate are too numerous to explain right now, but that's the gist of it, and I will explain more after this is all over."

The last part was a lie, of course, but it would hopefully keep them from pestering him until after this was over.

"As for what the thing is that we're fighting, it's an alien species called a gRg-oil," Gin said to answer Kudo's last question. "They're nocturnal flying hunters with great hearing and are sensitive to light with a limited sense of smell. They're big, but they're surprisingly agile and fast for their size, and their skin is armor-hard, as tough and hardy as stone."

The species name was an odd word to say. The 'r' was heavily emphasized and spoken from the back of the throat, and there was a slight pause after the second 'g' instead of right after the 'r'. That was the correct way to pronounce it, but it was easier to simply call it a gargoyle.

()()()()()

Despite it being September, the wind on top of the Ferris wheel made it quite chilly for the shrunken eighteen-year-old, and it was also fairly strong. The wind buffeted her more than she liked and one particularly strong gust actually unbalanced her enough that she started falling. She shrieked in alarm, but she didn't go far because Vodka caught her quickly and helped her steady herself back up on her own two feet.

"Are you sure you don't want me to continue carrying you?" Vodka asked loud enough for her to be able to hear him over the whistling wind.

"No, I'm fine," Haibara assured him and kept walking, though more carefully, down the Ferris wheel looking for the gondola the kids were riding in.

They eventually got to the point where they couldn't walk along the outside of the Ferris wheel anymore and had to resort to climbing. They were at about the three-quarters mark when at last:

"I think they're in this one," Haibara said, pointing at the next one slightly below her while she held on to the outer metal frame of the Ferris wheel.

Vodka was just above her and she waited for him to climb down to her level to get a better angle and a bit of a closer view. His brow furrowed deeply and she guessed he was squinting his eyes. How he could see anything in the dark while still wearing sunglasses continued to remain a mystery to her, but he didn't remove them and eventually the crease in his brow eased.

"Yeah, I think you're right. I see movement in there," Vodka agreed and jumped onto the gondola in question.

He made a loud thump when he landed, and Haibara was sure the sound startled the kids. Had they heard the gunfire rounds too, or had they been too far from the action to take notice? She hoped it was the latter. She could only imagine how terrified they were to begin with without hearing gunshots as well. Once Vodka had solid footing, he stretched his arms out and opened them wide to her, indicating that he would catch her when she jumped.

Her instinctive reaction was to refuse his help on principle, but after a quick mental calculation of the distance from the wheel to the safe flat part of the gondola, her own small body size, and the unpredictable wind gusts plus the very long fall to the ground… she decided it was better to be safe than sorry and being caught like a child jumping into a parent's arms in a pool was decidedly less embarrassing than other things. The time her yarn dress unraveled and left her in just an undershirt and her underwear while she, Conan, and the kids were all stuck in the refrigerated delivery van with a dead body was one such situation that came to mind.

Haibara widened her stance, bent her knees, and leaped. She flew through the air directly towards Vodka. His hands caught her under the armpits and she still collided with his chest. His arms held her there for a bit before he lowered her to the ground. As soon as she was stable, Vodka walked over to the emergency safety hatch on top of the gondola and pulled the lever. Since Vodka was with her, Haibara didn't have to worry about it, but she wondered briefly if she would have been strong enough to open it in her child body if she'd been alone. The hatch opened and Haibara peered inside. She saw three children below and all three pairs of eyes fixed on her.

"Haibara!" Mitsuhiko exclaimed in mixed surprise and relief.

She jumped down and Mitsuhiko and Genta both caught her before she landed. "Is everyone okay?" she asked, looking everyone in the eyes and making sure they weren't lying as they all nodded. They were scared and confused, but otherwise unharmed.

"How's it look, Sh- Ai?" Vodka asked, correcting himself just in time with her name.

All three of the kids gave a small startled shout of alarm and stared warily up at the big intimidating-looking figure above them. They all huddled around Haibara and also looked to her for her reaction.

"Everyone's okay… Mr. Juubei," Haibara answered, remembering the name of the adult mama bear with the missing eye whose cub had been killed to bait her into a trap, and she and Mitsuhiko had protected the other cub. The name would do for the moment. She hoped the kids remembered it and would maybe associate their positive feelings of the mama bear with Vodka so he would seem less scary.

On Vodka's part, he mouthed the name in confusion, but said nothing about it. "Alright, I'm coming down then. Move over, kids."

They did so along with Haibara and Vodka lowered himself through the hole, the smooth edge his only handhold as he extended his body into a straight line and then dropped down. The gondola still echoed with the thud of his weight when he landed, but it wasn't as loud or heavy as it might have been otherwise. At the very least, Vodka's presence now meant Sherry had to officially introduce him.

"Mr. Juubei, these are my friends Genta Kojima, Mitsuhiko Tsubaraya, and Ayumi Yoshida. Everyone, this is Mr. Kumajirou Juubei. He's…" she paused uncertainly, not because Vodka was giving her a 'really?' look for calling him 'bear second son' despite how much it fit with his bear-like physique and him being the second son in his family, but because she wasn't sure how to explain his connection to her. She settled with, "He's a friend of my sister's."

"Ai, what's going on?" Ayumi asked fearfully, clutching her hands tightly.

"I'm not sure exactly, but it will probably be safest if we stay here," Haibara answered.

With Vodka's help, she had no doubt that they'd be able to get the kids back to the ground safely, but at least in the gondola, they were in a contained space on the periphery of where all the action was taking place. And… and her getting in the way once already had resulted in Curaçao going missing. She wasn't eager for a repeat occurrence.

()()()()()

Gin and company were still tearing off after the gargoyle when a familiar voice called out, "Gin! What the hell are you doing in here?! And did you see the gargoyle?"

Gin stopped abruptly and looked up. "Bourbon! Curaçao fled the gondola and I saw the gargoyle; we're chasing after it now. I think it's here for-"

That was as far as Gin got before a loud screechy "Fuck!" blew out his ears over the radio mic and the Eagle started firing again.

"Chianti, Korn, what are you doing?!" he demanded harshly.

"The gargoyle flew out of one of the holes we made in the wheel when we shot through it and is trying to fly straight at us!" Chianti yelled.

"It was looking for an open escape route," Gin snarled angrily to himself and peered out of one of the newly-formed holes in the Ferris wheel's interior to see outside. He could make out where the Eagle was shooting from based on the gunfire but couldn't see the gargoyle at all.

"Hey, hey! Whichever one of them is firing, tell them to stop it or they'll end up hitting bombs still embedded in the axle and cause the whole wheel to collapse and kill us!" Bourbon shouted from the upper floor.

"The bombs!" Gin exclaimed. He'd forgotten about those! He gritted his teeth and rounded on Akai. "You're an expert sniper; are you going to use that rifle or not?"

Akai was visibly surprised to be addressed by Gin, but answered calmly, "The night scope was damaged and all I've got is this regular one. Without visibility, I might as well be shooting blind."

"I can light up the area to give Mr. Akai the light he needs…" Conan piped up. "… but without knowing the gargoyle's position, I don't know where to aim my soccer ball."

Right at that moment, Chianti violently swore in something that sounded suspiciously like Gaelic and then shouted, "The bastard's on us! Feels like he collided with one of the wings; we can't shake him!"

"Well, keep firing the IDSS so we can see where you are at least," Gin ordered and then for his companions' benefits, he explained what Chianti had just relayed to him.

"We still have the problem of not knowing where to aim!" Conan pointed out afterward, sounding just as frustrated as Gin felt.

"You just need to be able to see the aircraft's general outline, right?" Bourbon called down from a level high above them.

"Yeah! Mr. Amuro, you have an idea?" Conan asked hopefully.

"I do, just make it count!"

Something large, long, and dark fell fast through the air down past their lower level opening to the outside. Only a couple seconds later, there was a giant fiery orange explosion that lit up the darkness and all of them could see the shape of the shadowy black aircraft.

"I can see it!" Conan exclaimed.

He reached down to turn the heel knob of his right sneaker and the whole shoe sparked with color and light. A soccer ball popped out from his belt and he kicked it hard and fast into the air. It shot off like a rocket crackling with energy and struck the Ictinaetus Eagle head on, bouncing off the hull straight up into the sky and then exploding like a firework. It was blindingly bright and colorful, and the Eagle spun and drifted in the air while Chianti swore in Gin's ear over the radio. Unfortunately, the aircraft was also plainly visible to everyone present at the theme park. Despite the aerial swerving, they could also now see the gargoyle as a big lump clinging to the right wing near the spinning helicopter blades.

"Go down," Akai murmured and fired his sniper rifle at the gargoyle in question.

His aim would have been true were it not for the Eagle's haphazard flight pattern and maybe the gargoyle's own movements. Gin heard a screech like that of metal shearing and saw a brief flash of orange fire near the end of the wing. The Eagle suddenly dipped and swerved with a plume of dark smoke emanating from the propeller as the light from the soccer ball dispersed and dimmed, but he saw the gargoyle's body fall away from the wing. It didn't plummet, so it wasn't dead, but its flight wasn't smooth either. Wherever Akai had actually hit it had done some serious damage. This was their chance.

"Chianti, what's your status?" Gin asked, turning on the radio mic to the Eagle again.

"It's bad! Really bad! We'll crash if we don't get control back!" she yelled in a worried panic.

()()()()()

Vermouth was still sitting at her booth in the restaurant where she'd first set everything up after she had left the Ferris wheel and Nhlsm with his instructions, and she had been witness to the same strange light display everyone else had, only she knew what she was looking at when she saw the black helicopter-airplane-looking hybrid aircraft outlined in the sky. As a result, her surprise and confusion was minimal by comparison to that of others and as the bright light faded, cloaking the aircraft back in darkness, she noticed the dark winged object fall away from the aircraft and hover shakily.

She narrowed her turquoise eyes and they glinted sharply, almost glowing in the descending darkness. The gRg-oil's presence outside the Ferris wheel meant Curaçao was dead and he'd tried to escape, but he wouldn't be able to with an injury like that. And if he couldn't escape, then he only had one option left to him in this scenario… It was time for her to leave.

()()()()()

Gin heard Chianti's words as well as the background warning beeps in his ear, but he also saw the shadowy form of the gargoyle bearing down on them. It wasn't even attempting evasive maneuvers to make itself less of a target, just beelining straight for the opening into the interior.

"Everyone, scatter! Now!" Gin ordered Akai, Kudo, and Bourbon before he darted away from the opening himself, running as fast as he could as he shouted into the headset, "Korn, shoot the damn thing out of the air while Chianti, you hold your position steady for him as long as you can and then get out of here!"

"Yes, sir!" Korn and Chianti echoed.

He didn't look back and he didn't stop running, but he heard glass and metal shattering, breaking, collapsing as the IDSS rounds pierced through the Ferris wheel chasing after the gargoyle that had launched itself back inside. Gin never heard the gargoyle's death keel before it was obliterated under the hail of bullets, but the low rumble he felt beneath his feet halted his movement. He stared down at the ground with a furrowed brow and suddenly lurched when another stronger vibration shook the entire wheel. He flailed and grabbed the closest thing, one of the metal support pillars, to stabilize himself, but… now somehow, the Ferris wheel seemed to be in motion when it shouldn't- no! The axle! In finally destroying the gargoyle, they had accidentally blown up the rest of the bombs in the Ferris wheel's axle!

Right on the heels of this horrible revelation, Gin's headset went off again and it was Sherry's voice that spoke this time, "Edward, what's going on?! The entire Ferris wheel is groaning and shaking!"

Gin shook off his momentary surprise at her calling him by his first name and summarized, "The Ferris wheel's axle was accidentally destroyed in the process of eliminating an alien that was after Curaçao. Where are you and Vodka right now?"

"We safely made it to the kids and are currently inside the gondola," Sherry answered nervously, not questioning the alien part of the summary.

He let out a short sigh of relief. At least they weren't still in the main body of the Ferris wheel. "Good, stay there and brace yourselves. The wheel's too unstable now that it's off its axle and it might start moving."

"Be careful, Edward!" she said quickly, and he mentally promised he would.

()()()()()

It felt like forever, but at last, the pain subsided enough for Curaçao to be able to move again. She had recovered her normal breathing easily enough, but her abdomen was still tight, sore, and bleeding. Her mind felt clearer than it had been the past couple days and when she experimentally tried to move her hand in front of her face to see her fingers make a fist, her body didn't resist her will. Somehow, she was wholly herself again, though… not without loss. Curaçao couldn't dwell too long on the likely fate of her barely-existent pregnancy though because something big was happening to the Ferris wheel. She could feel it in the vibrations through the floor and she could hear it in the way the metal strained and creaked loudly all around her. She had to move.

Curaçao brought her arms underneath her body and gritted her teeth as she pulled in her knees and pushed up onto them, then staggered to her feet. She winced at the pain that lanced through her and heard the Ferris wheel creaking ominously above, but now there were pieces starting to fall around her. First, they were little fragments and dust, but those pieces were quickly getting bigger as she stumbled forward holding her abdomen. She had no idea where she was in the Ferris wheel or how to get out. Her only goal was to not be crushed. At this point, even that much seemed like it would be a miracle.

She kept walking forward, looking up frequently to adjust her direction, but her speed was hampered by her injury and she suffered several near misses. She found herself brought up short when she came upon a break in the path. It was completely blown out and the other side was too far to jump, especially not in her current condition. Just as she was trying to figure out how to navigate this obstacle, the Ferris wheel gave a violent shudder and Curaçao was thrown off balance at the same time she saw something moving in her peripheral vision. She turned her attention fully and witnessed a steel construction pillar peeling away from the wall, spinning out and down around the gaping hole that took up more than half of the pillar's width. It was falling too fast and if it didn't land directly on her, it was heavy enough to completely break the walkway she was standing on. There was only one option for survival. She jumped and once again found herself in freefall with no initial landing in sight.

The uncertainty of her landing point didn't last as soon as she cleared the dark body of the Ferris wheel and found herself in the open air heading straight for the ground, though it was littered with large chunks of metal and concrete debris. Curaçao tried to angle her fall toward the clearest spot among the rubble and landed on her feet in a deep crouch. Water splashed up around her and she gasped in pain. Not from the impact, but from the penetration of a short metal rebar through the middle of her stomach. She would have likely remained there indefinitely, paralyzed with agony if she hadn't seen one of the giant wheels start to turn and roll off its axle away from the Ferris wheel.

She watched it in stunned disbelief, momentarily distracted from her predicament, but not enough to stop her from looking past the wheel along its current trajectory to its final destination. Her heart just about stopped. It was heading straight to the aquarium! She leapt to her feet and wobbled but did not fall down. The short rebar was still imbedded in her stomach and every step she took was torture but removing it would only make her bleed out that much faster, and she couldn't afford to die here when she had a job to do. The mind control drug Vermouth had given her was no longer working, her will was her own, and she was Curaçao: a proud and loyal agent of the Men in Black dedicated to protecting Earth and its inhabitants. She needed to find a way to stop the runaway wheel by any means necessary.

()()()()()

"What's happening?!" Genta yelled in panic.

"Why's everything shaking?!" Mitsuhiko added as he looked around at the walls, just as alarmed.

"I'm scared!" Ayumi cried, clinging tightly to Haibara and burying her face fearfully in her shirt.

"Come here kids!" Vodka said, but he didn't wait for them to respond before he was moving to them.

He wrapped one arm around Genta and the other around Mitsuhiko and Haibara holding Ayumi, then bearhugged all four of them to his chest as he sat down on the floor with his back against one of the walls of the gondola.

"Hold on tight, everyone. This ride might get a little bumpier than you expected, but big brother will protect you," Vodka told them all, and he felt the three kids instinctively wiggle closer against his bulky frame.

That they did so didn't surprise him nearly as much as how familiar it was. It had been nearly a decade since he'd been in a position where kids this young had relied on him for protection. His youngest sister, Naomi… she'd just turned seventeen two weeks ago, but she was the same age as these kids when he had given up on the idea of going to high school and instead found himself a job at fifteen that turned out to be one of the many subtle entry points into the Men in Black.

The gondola gave another violent shake, and they all flinched. Genta let out a soft whimper. Vodka's arms tightened instinctively in response and he tucked his chin down. There was very little else he could do, but if he needed to be a larger force's punching bag again to keep these children safe, then so be it.

()()()()()

"This is bad! If it keeps going straight, at this rate, it'll end up crashing into the aquarium," Conan breathed out loud as she watched one of the wheels start to roll away from the rest of the main structure. He had to stop it!

With the nimbleness of a monkey, he navigated his way to the center of the wheel where he found half the axle still mostly intact. Mr. Amuro must have recovered the bombs from this part after he disabled the detonator. That was lucky because he had a plan for how to stop the rolling wheel and it would have been more difficult without a strong anchor point. Conan removed his suspenders and pressed the button to extend them, then wrapped two ends of the suspenders around two large pieces of former support columns on opposite sides of the axle. From on top of the axle itself, he pushed the button again and the straps tightened, but fortunately didn't break. He jumped to the ground and bolted straight for the Ferris wheel's outer rim where he saw the other one descending down the hill ahead.

"Crap! The slope is making it speed up!" he swore.

"Conan!"

Conan glanced over his shoulder and saw Amuro come up on his left side. "Mr. Amuro!"

"Can you stop that thing?!" Amuro asked without pretense.

"I don't know, but there's no choice!" Conan said truthfully.

"Then we have to move faster," Amuro said.

Without warning, Conan found himself scooped off his feet mid-stride and Amuro put on a quick burst of speed. They were approaching the end of the path still traveling at a breakneck pace, and Amuro wasn't slowing down. He jumped up and kicked off the guardrail, launching them forward through the air over a gondola. Conan watched with bated breath as the horizontal bar connecting the two outermost rims came closer. Would they clear it? They did! But just barely; Amuro landed on the gondola and one of his feet slipped out from under him, making his ankle twist the wrong way and he let out a brief yelp.

"Are you okay?!" Conan yelled worriedly over the rushing wind in his ears.

"I'm fine, now focus!" Amuro deflected and Conan quickly brought his attention back to the suspenders in his hand. If he lost his grip, he lost their only chance of stopping the rogue wheel.

They fell quickly and after hardly any time at all it seemed, Amuro swung himself inward and landed firmly on top of another gondola.

"You ready?" Amuro asked.

"Yeah!"

"Then go!" Amuro said as he spun and launched Conan into the air like a rocket.

Conan's body flew through the air like he weighed nothing and he reached the peak of the throw at about midway between the two Ferris wheels before he started plummeting towards the part of the circle with the shortest distance to the wheel he'd just been on.

"Just a little further!" Conan exclaimed, stretching his fingers out as far as he could and willing them to grasp one of the wheel's rim bars.

But he kept falling and he couldn't get any closer. Then the distance started slowly widening and dread started to take hold. He was falling… And there was nothing between him and the ground except if he activated the suspenders right now, but what if he-?

His thoughts were abruptly interrupted by the grip on his outstretched arm followed by the dislocatingly-painful jerk on his shoulder. He took a couple steadying breaths and once he was sure that his shoulder wasn't actually dislocated, he looked up at his savior.

"Mr. Akai?!" Conan exclaimed with relief at the sight of the FBI agent's familiar, friendly face.

"You have some kind of plan, right?" he asked with a knowing smile. Akai didn't even wait for him to answer before he lifted him up and put him on his back. "Hold on to my neck," he instructed, and then started to climb back up the wheel, his ascent assisted by the wheel's forward rotation.

He stopped when they were at the vertical halfway point and Conan clambered down. Akai helped him wrap the two remaining ends of his suspenders around the rims of the wheel and Conan snapped them together.

"There we go!" he said and pushed the button to take up the slack.

The suspenders snapped tight like a tape measure, but still the wheel continued to move. The suspenders weren't breaking, but neither were they pulling back enough on the wheel to stop it.

"This isn't enough to halt it!" Akai said as he followed after the shrunken teenager who had leapt to his feet and started running as soon as he saw the suspenders alone weren't cutting it.

"Don't worry, I've still got another plan!" Conan shot back over his shoulder but didn't dare take his eyes off the path ahead.

Since he was running in the same direction the Ferris wheel was traveling, he was moving very quickly across the rim to the other side where he needed to be, but it still wasn't fast enough!

"Damn it, at this rate, I won't make it!" Conan swore and started sliding down the side instead.

"Stop, don't rush!" Akai shouted after him, but his warning came too late and Conan found himself sliding too far, too fast with no way to stop.

"Mr. Akai!" Conan yelled, reaching back for the older man.

Akai slid down after him and managed to grab his wrist, but they were still falling despite Akai's best efforts to grab a handhold. Conan unfortunately knew the exact moment he was successful because he felt a painful jerk on his shoulder and suddenly, he was airborne. The force of the abrupt stop had caused his wrist to slip out of Akai's grip and he was falling again, this time with nothing to hold or grab onto to stop his plummet.

"Kudo!"

Conan jumped and whipped his head around looking for the source when something closed on his ankle and he just narrowly avoided hitting his head on the center ladder stretching out below him. He looked up and his heart gave an instinctive jolt.

"Gin?!" Conan gasped. Gin had saved him?!

"You sure like making me work for my paygrade, don't you, Kudo?" Gin griped as he lifted him up high enough to grab his shirt collar and turned him right side up. "This is for saving Sherry on the Mystery Train. We're even now.'

Gin knew about the Mystery Train too? Conan wasn't aware that Gin had felt indebted to him, but he had more pressing things to focus on right now.

"Conan, are you alright?!" Akai shouted worriedly.

"Yeah, I'm fine!" Conan answered.

Gin steadied him with his hands on his shoulders while Conan removed his belt and turned the knob to maximum inflation, then released the soccer ball.

"Please let this work!" he prayed desperately as he watched the ball quickly inflate. "Fill up! Fill up faster! Get bigger!" he yelled frantically, but it wasn't going fast enough.

"It's not stopping…!" Gin voiced aloud in a horrified whisper exactly what he was thinking.

A loud, nasally-sounding horn grabbed his attention and Conan quickly looked right to see a yellow construction crane plowing through a wooden fence barreling straight towards the Ferris wheel at high speed. It slammed the front end hard enough that Conan even felt the vibrations from where he was standing. Who was driving that thing?!

()()()()()

Curaçao had the gas pedal of the crane slammed all the way down to the floor and didn't let up on it even a little as she rammed the front end of the Ferris wheel hard. The pushback jolted through her and she grimaced in pain when the rebar through her gut pushed against the back of the seat. Her foot had also lifted off the gas pedal a fraction, so she ignored the pain and pushed back on the pedal, pumping it to try and use the acceleration for extra force. She was entirely focused on getting the Ferris wheel to stop when she noticed something in the lowest hanging gondola and gasped.

Sherry!

Sherry was looking out the window over the rim and could see her too. And the back of the black fedora next to her looked like Vodka's! The wheel trembled mightily which caused Vodka to stagger sideways, and Curaçao saw the scared faces of the three children who'd befriended: Ayumi, Genta, and Mitsuhiko!

"No…!" she gasped and stared transfixed for a moment before she bared her teeth and slammed her foot back on the pedal with a vengeance. She was not going to let them or anyone else get hurt!

The engine revved and the wheels spun in protest, but they eventually gave in to the unrelenting force and pushed forward. A loud thud struck the roof and made her jump with a fearful hiss. Curaçao could see it slowly caving in. The cockpit was now stuck under one of the rims and it would crush her if she didn't get out now.

But if she got out… then the wheel might not stop… and everyone in that stadium, and Sherry, Vodka, and those kids would all be either killed or severely injured. There was no choice… She needed to be in the crane to continue applying force to the wheel at a perpendicular angle in order to counter the wheel's forward momentum in order to save everyone... even if it killed her.

There's a saying that your life flashes before your eyes right before you're about to die. For the woman with the unique brain deformity and the heterochromatic eyes, this could not have been more literal if not orderly…

Playing in a mountain river with Edward looking for crayfish and splashing each other in the warm summer months.

Sitting on her papa's lap on the porch outside while he comforted her about the kids making fun of her being an 'odd eye'.

Vermouth giving her a hot water bottle and the day off without her even asking despite trying to hide how much pain she was in from her menstrual cramps.

Walking into the landlord's apartment and seeing Edward pinning the man to the ground with his hands on his neck trying to strangle him with a wild glint in his eyes.

Feeling her mama's fingers combing gently through her hair and watching her do the same to Edward who pretended not to enjoy it while she sang softly in German.

A little brown-haired girl wrapping her pink scarf gently around Emma's neck right outside the Nagano police hospital.

Pure disgust and contempt for her brother and revolted that she was related to him the moment she discovered he was sleeping around with a not-quite-sixteen-year-old girl.

The sting of the dart that stuck her in the neck and the betrayal she felt when she saw and realized it was Vermouth who'd done it.

The first time she kissed a boy, her biggest crush, Yosashi Teibana, when she was in middle school and how disappointed she had been at the lack of feeling during the kiss.

Screaming when she walked into the kitchen and saw her mama sprawled limp on the floor with her long ash-blond hair askew and staring ahead with dead, unseeing eyes.

Seeing half her papa's face wrapped in bandages and the horrified déjà vu of his body being just as prone and lifeless as her mama nearly a decade earlier while he lay in the hospital bed in a coma.

Being determined but nervous at the same time when she first told Rum that she was interested in a sexual relationship with him, but did not want to be exclusive with him nor expect him to be so for her, and how understandingly he had smiled at her then. "If that's what you want, then I'm more than happy and willing to accommodate you."

There were many more life moments that flashed before her, most of which were too quick to recognize, but there was one, one of the last memories she saw, that stood out in great detail.

Curaçao had just finished up her daily workout routine and was very satisfied with her performance. She was about to head into the locker rooms to shower and change into clean, dry clothes when she heard Gin's voice call out to her, only he didn't call her by either her name or codename.

"Oi, good job there, Kleine!"

Immediately, Curaçao's good mood soured and she rounded on her brother, stalking over to where he was standing. "Big brother! How many times do I have to tell you not to call me 'Kleine'?!"

"But you are. You're both younger and shorter than me, so you're the 'little one'…" Gin said with an insufferable grin on his face even as he reached out and placed his hand on top of her head. "… and as your big brother, it's my job to both look after and tease my favorite little twin sister."

"Idiot. I'm your only sister, period," Curaçao grumbled, though her irritation eased somewhat hearing her brother's affectionate remarks.

Gin had never been all that emotional to begin with even when they were children, but he'd become less so as they'd gotten older and their life experiences had hardened him. She was one of very few people that got to see this particular side of him and she couldn't deny that she loved it: both the privilege and actually seeing it.

That was the last memory that flashed into Curaçao's mind. No special day, no unusual circumstances, just her and her twin sharing a small moment together. They came into this world together, but she was going to be leaving it first.

"Avenge me, Edward," she murmured as the roof finally collapsed under the weight of Ferris wheel. She experienced only about a second's worth of blinding, world-ending agony, and in the next second, it was over.

()()()()()

An enormous fireball erupted beneath the Ferris wheel and it stopped moving with a final shuddering rumble, like a great, dying beast collapsing at last.

"It's… it's stopped, hasn't it?" Mitsuhiko asked hopefully as he looked around.

"It seems like it…" Vodka said in an uncertain tone.

"Yes! It stopped!" Genta cheered happily and tumbled out of Vodka's arms, which caused him to lose his hold on the rest of them.

Haibara was the only one still clinging to Vodka, staring in silent horror through the smoke-obscured glass at the last place she saw Curaçao. At the place where she saw the crane…

"Hey, Sherry, it's okay; you can let go now," Vodka murmured under his breath low enough the kids wouldn't hear him say her codename.

His words seemed to distantly reach her after traveling through a very long tunnel, but she eventually released her grip on his jacket, and he set her down on the ground.

Just as he did so, Haibara noticed him perk up a little and he touched the earpiece of his headset. "Aniki?" Haibara stiffened and listened intently. Gin… "Yeah, the kids, Sherry, and I are still in the gondola. We're all safe and mostly fine, just a little bruised from the rolling."

There was a long silent pause on Vodka's end of the conversation and Sherry guessed Gin was debriefing him on everyone else's status and giving orders.

After a while, Vodka nodded. "Gotcha. After I'm done neuralyzing the kids, I'll come help you look for her."

Haibara stiffened and her eyes went wide. They were talking about Curaçao! But she was… She glanced back out the window where the crushed, blackened remains of the crane still resided. There was… There was no way she could have survived that.

Haibara grabbed the hem of Vodka's jacket and tugged on it firmly. "Vodka… Curaçao, she… I saw her in the crane," she said quietly.

Vodka tilted his head slightly with a puzzled frown. "What crane?"

Her hands shook and she silently pointed out the window. The smoke was clearing now, and she could see it. Vodka moved over to the edge of the gondola and she watched his neck steadily incline forward. Haibara knew the moment he saw it when she heard his sharp intake of breath and he mouthed the word 'No', his expression horrified.

"Aniki…" he croaked uneasily, his voice a barely audible whisper. "… did you happen to hear what Sherry said just a little bit ago?"

A brief silent pause, but Haibara could tell from the way Vodka's brow furrowed, how he bit his lip and swallowed nervously while glancing back out the window at the crane that Gin had not heard her. Which meant Vodka had to be the one to tell his best friend and partner what had happened to his twin sister.

()()()()()

Gin was furious. Enraged even. They were wrong. Both of them. They were either mistaken or lying because there was no way… no way at all for his sister to be dead. She wasn't in that crane; she couldn't be. It was someone else. It had to be someone else! Akai and Kudo were hot on his tail following after him, but he was ignoring them. If he'd been paying attention, he would have seen Sherry and Vodka approaching in his peripheral vision, but he didn't see them. He was very narrowly focused on stalking his way through the police cars blocking his way to the medical vans stationed near the scene of the incident.

"Hey, you! Stop right there a moment!" Gin bellowed at the medics standing next to a stretcher and a sheet covering it. They looked bewildered at being addressed, and then alarmed when they saw who was doing the addressing, but Gin didn't care and he glared down at them as he pointed at the stretcher. "I need to confirm the identity of this corpse now."

"Ah, well, we wouldn't mind, but… as you can see, it's unrecognizable," one of the medics said nervously as he lifted up one edge of the sheet.

Gin hissed and Akai and Vodka on either side of him gasped in unison. Unrecognizable was an understatement. Black-charred and mutilated, it didn't even look human except in a vague outline kind of way.

"I see…" Gin said through gritted teeth and let the medics wheel the stretcher away. There was no proof at all that this was his sister's corpse. It could have been anyone in that crane.

He didn't notice a small black object fall from the stretcher nor Kudo stoop down to pick it up, but Sherry did and she sidled up next to him to look at it. It was her voice that drew Gin's attention to them. "Hey, isn't this…?"

"Yeah, it looks like the dolphin keychain the kids gave to her," Conan said.

Gin stiffened and his blood ran cold. "… What keychain?"

Conan looked up at him and his expression was sympathetic as he offered the keychain to Gin. "Yesterday when we were all here, Curaçao won dolphin keychains as prizes from the darts game and this one was hers."

Gin's gaze fixated on the burnt keychain and his mind reeled. He felt dizzy, like the entire world was spinning around, flipping upside down, and at the center of it all was that keychain. This keychain that was…

"Emma…" he murmured as he stretched a trembling hand out toward the keychain. His fingers closed around it and he lifted it from Conan's upraised hands to cradle it in his own.

"Emma…" She had held this. Possessed this small trinket.

"Emma… Emma…!" His breathing was coming in short, frantic gasps and his fingers convulsed, clenching tightly around the tiny object.

"Emma! Emma! EMMA! No, god damn it, NO! NO!" His voice had gone from a whisper to screaming full of denial as the tears started welling up in his eyes and he pressed his face into the keychain. Emma – his little sister, his twin – she was gone! Dead, gone!

A sudden touch upon his shoulder made him abruptly stiffen and whip around with a low snarl in his throat. "Don't touch me!"

Vodka immediately took a step back from him and raised his hands in the air, looking worried, but Gin took no notice. With shoulders hunched and head bent forward with the keychain held protectively to his chest, he whirled around and departed at a brisk walk, leaving everyone behind while the tears flowed like rivers unseen in the dark.

---

There have been many things that have grown and changed about this story once I decided to make it an actual story, but this ending scene for this chapter? That was not one of them. That was one of the major plot points I had in the original outline.

Also, it's official now. As of this point onward, everything I write will be completely original. There will be no more chapters based on the canon source material, so everything canon in the series that happens after Darkest Nightmare was released in theaters is irrelevant to this story. As such, I have no idea how many more chapters there are to go or how long it will take me to finish it, but I will finish it. I've come too far to not do so.

I did make one minor change. Darkest Nightmare apparently takes place during Golden Week which is in April I think and despite the impossible nature of pinning down a consistent timeline in DC/CC, I decided to move it to the Silver Week which is... sometime in late summer or early fall, I don't remember which, but that meshes with my attempt at a timeline better. *shrugs* It doesn't really matter though since the timeline's all jacked up anyway.