A/N: About the chapter title…I love the Task Force, but, well…I had to. And it is the actual answer to the riddle at the end of the chapter, so…
If you've only seen MK 1412, now would be the time to read the manga chapters or watch the OVA of the heist with Nightmare, because Hakuba's actions after the heist in those versions of canon are important to this chapter. That goes double if you've never seen the Nightmare heist at all—I refuse to be the one to spoil it. If you have to be spoiled for that heist by a fic I recommend Ocianne's Promenade—if you mentally edit out the presence of Riku from Kingdom Hearts it follows canon for that heist really well.
This chapter includes an OC, a Task Force member I've named and given a personality, for the sake of giving a Task Force perspective other than Nakamori's on Hakuba. Again, you don't have to worry about him becoming the main character or anything. Because said OC is not necessarily polite, he at one point makes a reference to Amida Buddha that is slightly less than respectful (not profane, but more casual than a devout observant would do), and also less than accurate to real Japanese usage. I will explain further in the endnote, but for now I ask you to please just go with it.
Finally, for anyone unfamiliar with my fic, I do asterisk-out profanity. This is solely for my own comfort and has nothing to do with whether I think you can figure out what the other letters of the word are. Hopefully no one minds too much—but it's kind of relevant, in a chapter with Nakamori featured prominently.
Chapter 3: None, because they were all going the other direction
Inspector Nakamori Ginzou liked Hakuba, completely despite himself.
When the kid had showed up in Japan, he hadn't wanted anything to do with him. He'd heard about the chaos that Megure had to deal with over in Division Two because of Kudou—they'd modified a property damage form for soccer-ball-inflicted-damage while in pursuit of criminals, it sounded like a nightmare—and then he'd actually had to deal with Kudou for a heist. The kid was right almost all the time but he didn't have to be so d*** smug about it. If that was what all high school detectives were like, Ginzou did not want one, thank you.
But, the thing was, while there were a tiny handful of ways to subtly ensure an officer the Superintendent-General had hand-placed on your squad would be moved, there was pretty much no way to worm out of it when he clasped your shoulder and told you, "Please take care of my son." His son. Yep, no way out of that.
And, naturally, Hakuba was twice as much of a smug, arrogant b****** as Ginzou had expected. Well, at least at first. A few heists loosened him up to the point where he was almost tolerable…which was naturally when he had to go and accuse Toichi and Chikage's boy of being KID.
Superintendent-General's kid or not, Ginzou almost kicked him out of Tokyo, never mind the police, for that d*** stunt. And again, when, even after Kaito proved he wasn't KID, Hakuba stuck to his guns like he had an actual leg to stand on.
Ginzou wanted to just plain hate him—but the truth was, he had to admire the tenacity there, too. It reminded him of himself, standing firm against the rest of the police department and insisting, "KID will come back," even when no one believed him. Of course, the difference was that he'd been right and Hakuba was laughably wrong, but the persistence was still admirable, on principle.
Ginzou had to wonder exactly where he'd learned that kind of persistence. Because, the thing was, when it came to Hakuba's skills on heists, he had a lot more questions than answers. For an untrained kid, Hakuba's reflexes were amazing—he'd probably saved Yoshida's life by pulling him behind that building during a heist that a sniper had shown up to. (Ginzou still had no idea who was gunning for KID but he intended to find out.) His instincts were pretty good too, since he'd lied, straight-faced, and told Yoshida he'd thought he'd seen a sniper, not that there had actually been a bullet—because Yoshida was not a coolheaded sort and they were still under fire. Speaking of his ability to lie—the only other person that good at it who Ginzou knew was Kaito, and even he could only manage that level of deception while performing—or at least Ginzou hoped so, otherwise who knew what the teenager was hiding from him?
Hakuba could also scale nearly-flat surfaces, hide nearly anywhere, search and disarm a suspect in less than five minutes, and, most confusingly, pick locks. He refused to explain any of these skills, even when pressed.
The only real clue to where Hakuba might have learned any of it came after a heist during which KID had taken advantage of a relatively sane jewel owner and no sniper to go a little crazy on the pranks. Okay, crazy to the point of bordering on sadistic. Ginzou felt bad for Hakuba, what with his midterms in a few days, but the kid almost looked like he'd been expecting something like this to happen.
The upswing of all of this was that they were all covered in about six layers of various shades of washable pink, purple, and blue dye, which together had settled into a pleasant lavender. And glitter. One of them had to remember to tell KID on the next heist that, washable or not, if you dyed something with the same dye enough times, it started to set in a little. All the white garments they were wearing were probably destined for the trash…but that left the problem of their skin, which varied along a spectrum light enough to at least show violet tinges, and Hakuba's hair, which was now a muddy purplish-brown.
There was nothing for it but to take over the showers down at headquarters and hope that Division One didn't get anything grisly tonight. They tended to get pissy when they walked into the showers covered in blood and found the Task Force washing off glitter—because that was something that had happened before. Sometimes Ginzou did hate his life a bit.
So, they all got in the showers—Hakuba being predictably shy about it. Ginzou got being a teenager and being nervous about this sort of thing, but it wasn't like Hakuba looked any different from the rest of them without clothes. So, eventually they all ended up in the showers, and it quickly became clear that the department's wholesale-ordered soap wasn't going to cut it against whatever was in the dye. It was slowly becoming slightly pinker, and the glitter was gone, but that was about it. Eventually, Miuta toweled off—ruining the towel—and got a few of the spare bottles of some sort of workman's soap that his cousin the farmer swore by from his locker. At this point, it was at least a half-hour after they'd started trying to get clean and everyone was desperate, so they all tried it without much protest, save Hakuba, who seemed a bit reluctant.
"So you want to go to school like that?" Miuta asked.
"Point," Hakuba said, accepting the soap.
Miracle of miracles, it worked—even on Hakuba's hair. Granted, the shower itself was now a pinkish, sparkly ruin, but Ginzou just assigned two rookies to bleach the place and then went to get some clean clothes on—keeping a change of clothes in your locker was the first thing you learned on the Task Force.
As he fastened his tie, he heard movement behind him and turned around to see Hakuba walking past, slightly hunched over himself, with his damp hair hanging over his face as he rapidly buttoned up the front of his shirt. His neck was still exposed, and on it, Ginzou saw what he at first thought was a leftover streak of pink. He was about to let Hakuba know that he'd missed a spot when he realized that the skin there looked shiny and stretched out. D***, where the heck did the kid get a scar that long and jagged? If it was surgical, it didn't look it—and it sure hadn't been in his personnel files.
"The f*** is that?" he asked.
"A spot I missed, according to Officer Kusakabe," Hakuba said humorlessly, without looking up.
"That isn't what I meant," Ginzou growled, annoyed. Honestly, after a night like this, he wanted to play word games?
"The reason I prefer collared shirts," Hakuba said, doing up the top button on his collar. "Good night, Inspector." With that, he turned to go, leaving Ginzou gaping at him.
"Where the h*** does a kid like you get a scar like that?" Ginzou asked, scrambling for words.
"Given your knowledge of my personal history, England would be the reasonable assumption," Hakuba said, without so much as pausing or turning around. "I would appreciate it if you were not to worry your daughter with this. Again, good night."
Cagey as h***, defensive, didn't so much as confirm that it had happened in England—all Hakuba's answer really told him was that the kid really didn't want to tell him. Which, for all that Hakuba was kinda private, was weird, because it wasn't like Ginzou couldn't go ask Superintendent-General Hakuba, if he really wanted to.
Unless not even Superintendent-General Hakuba knew about it, which was a little too weird for Ginzou to contemplate. For all that Hakuba could lie, he wasn't the type to misuse that skill, or use it all, really, unless he needed to. He wouldn't be going around doing dangerous s*** behind his old man's back and then lying about it unless some really big s*** was going on, and Ginzou was pretty sure he would've noticed by now if it was.
Then again, he hadn't noticed Hakuba wearing collared shirts all the time, beyond thinking the kid was too d*** formal. Come to think, he never wore short sleeves, either. What the h*** else was Ginzou missing?
Despite being Ginzou's best detective, Hakuba had long ago won the "second-biggest headache" prize (after KID), and he was gunning for "third-biggest mystery" (after KID and the snipers). And yet, Ginzou still liked him—probably because he had his priorities in order. He was arrogant, and baffling, but he cared about Aoko and he wanted to catch KID, and that was generally enough to get most people into Ginzou's good books.
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"I don't know what he did before he joined the Task Force, but I don't think it was 'solving a few murders here and there'," Ginzou said, leaning across his knees to look Chikage in the eyes.
"What makes you say that?" Chikage asked, intrigued.
"The kid can scale almost-vertical walls and pick locks," Ginzou said. "I didn't teach him any of that. Great reflexes, too, he's kept at least one of my officers alive with 'em. And he can lie with a straight face if he has to. Not sure if I approve of all of them, but it's not a bad collection of skills—for a guy in his twenties."
"But for a teenager…"
"It's creepy," Ginzou finished. "Where the h*** did he learn all that? Why did he learn it?"
Chikage's son knew how to do everything Ginzou mentioned, but she sincerely doubted Hakuba's reasons were the same as Kaito's.
"He's got a big, pink scar, right about here," Ginzou added, drawing a jagged line across the left side of his neck. "Won't talk about it at all. I don't know what his deal is, but I sure hope the Superintendent-General knows. Someone ought to."
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Hakuba Saguru was not someone who should be allowed on the Kaitou KID Task Force, and no one would believe Kusakabe Ren when he tried to tell them about it.
Ren wasn't a veteran of the original Task Force, but he wasn't new, either, he'd been here before Hakuba had shown up, and they'd been doing just fine without the British smartaleck, thanks, but the Superintendent-General had insisted that his son be allowed to work with them. So suddenly they were stuck with an arrogant, grandstanding showoff in an Inverness coat, who occasionally brought his hawk to heists. Who did that?
Inspector Nakamori was too used to his crazy neighbor-kid and his doves to realize how weird it was. But, for the love of everything, they were hunting a criminal, not rabbits and other small game in the British countryside!
Okay, sure, the kid was a good detective. He seemed to know what he was doing. But he was kind of preoccupied with the "game" he seemed to think he and KID were playing. He was treating it like some type of contest, with rules. The only "rule" was KID's "No One Gets Hurt" and that left the thief a lot of room to get creative. If Hakuba was trying to abide by some kind of chivalry and missing chances to arrest KID because of it, or straight out giving up chances to arrest KID when it wasn't sporting, Ren might actually strangle him.
Kudou would probably show up out of his mysterious disappearance and solve the case. Amida save him from teenage detectives.
So, the thing was, Kudou was kind of the reason he was on the Task Force. He'd interviewed to get into Ekoda's Division One the day after the kid had come over from Beika and solved a case. The hiring officer had rejected him on the grounds that he wasn't up to standards, which Ren suspected actually meant, wasn't Kudou. So he interviewed with Thefts, which was, at the time, blessedly free of high school detectives, and got in. But it was like being trapped in a perdition of bicycle thefts and giving directions to tourists, so when the Task Force reformed, he was the third volunteer. He figured at least this way, he'd see some action.
He saw action, all right. And a friggin' high school detective, only a few months into the job. Hakuba was just as terrifying in his own way as Kudou, but he fortunately stuck to KID exclusively, so he wasn't about to actually get Ren fired. The kid was arrogant, generally a jerk, and preternaturally certain in every theory he came up with. But there were jerks everywhere and Ren might've eventually learned to live with it. If only the kid did his job like he was supposed to. Except he didn't. And Ren caught him at it.
The Dark Night Heist sucked for everyone, and no mistake. Nobody likes to see a dead cop, and Ren could've gone forever without seeing a dead cop with his kid crying over him. Which made it all the more disgusting to see Hakuba kneeling down beside the body, picking up something white that had to be evidence, and slipping it into the pocket of his suit-jacket.
Ren cornered him in the locker room when they were both back at the precinct.
"I know you took something off the scene," he announced.
Immediately, Hakuba's expression went from dead-eyed exhaustion to something that Ren was tempted to call dangerous, even on a teenager—particularly on a teenager with a good deal of height on him, hand-to-hand combat skills, and a trained hawk at home.
"I did," Hakuba said. "It's KID's glove."
"Why the heck did you do that?" Ren said. "Is this part of your game? What? It wouldn't be sporting to catch him after a heist like that? He's a criminal, get it through your head, Hakuba-kun!"
"I felt it would be wrong to catch him based on an item he lost trying to save Connery-san," Hakuba said. The phrasing was stiff, but the tone was pure steel.
Ren stared.
"Oh, come now, Officer Kusakabe, you're smart enough to figure something like this out yourself," Hakuba said, almost chidingly. "The way Connery-san was positioned, the location of the beams—he didn't fall right away. KID tried to preserve No One Gets Hurt, but Connery-san was too large for him to hold up by himself."
"And where was Nightmare during all of this?" Ren asked. "Watching passively? Hakuba-kun, if KID was still here when Nightmare killed Connery-san, and is still alive, he was either in the process of running or acting as an accessory. You know as well as I do that Nightmare doesn't leave accomplices alive."
The ghost of a smile flitted across Hakuba's face, but the expression was bitter. "I suppose, from a certain perspective, Nightmare did kill Connery-san," he said.
"Of course he did, you agreed with Nakamori that he did—" Ren started.
"Because Kenta-kun was still present," Hakuba interrupted. "And is still present. There are times when a small falsehood hurts no one, but the truth could do untold damage."
"What are you talking about?" Ren said.
"There were only ever two people in that warehouse, before we arrived," Hakuba said. "Kaitou KID. And an Interpol agent who died with Nightmare's mask inches from his head and a suspiciously vast amount of money in the accounts dedicated to his son's brain surgery. Kenta-kun can never know."
Ren swore. "And you haven't told Inspector Nakamori?"
"I don't believe it's necessary for me to make his choices any more difficult right now," Hakuba said. "And…if Nightmare's identity were to be discovered, the money for Kenta's surgery would be seized as evidence by Interpol. Kenta was promised an end to his pain; he doesn't understand what was done to guarantee him that and I don't think he should have to. Not yet."
"What gives you the right to decide something like that?" Ren demanded.
Hakuba gave him a thin smile. "I had enough information to do so," he said. "You, Inspector Nakamori, even KID…none of you really know all the facts of the situation. I do, and so I chose. I'll take responsibility."
"You—you can't just—and return that glove! It's evidence!"
"I'm afraid if you want the glove you will have to take it from me by force," Hakuba said. "And by tomorrow, you will have the challenge of convincing everyone else it exists. No one else saw me."
"But I did, and you didn't notice," Ren pointed out.
"I noticed," Hakuba replied. "I just felt allowing you to notice was an acceptable amount of risk."
Ren stared at him.
"I am sorry to have involved you in all of this," Hakuba said. "I do appreciate your contributions to the Task Force, Officer Kusakabe. Good night."
And with that, he left, without so much as swearing Ren to secrecy. But—he'd probably known it wasn't really necessary. Ren wasn't enough of a lowlife to rob a kid of a lifesaving surgery so he could drag his dead father through the coals, so telling anybody about Nightmare was right out. And he had no desire to take Hakuba's place as the Task Force crackpot (Kuroba was KID? Honestly?) by making a fuss over the glove, so he didn't do that.
Honestly, Ren hated Hakuba Saguru and didn't really trust the kid any farther than he could throw him. Someone willing to flout rules like that was frickin' dangerous and needed to be watched. Well, Ren was willing to do the watching—but he wasn't actually sure he could stop Hakuba from doing anything, if it came down to it.
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"Yeah I know him, I wish I didn't, bug off, lady."
"I think you're assuming that I like him," Chikage said. "I don't, particularly, and if you have gossip, I'd love to hear it."
"You'd never believe me," Kusakabe replied. "I've got reports to submit by five. Get outta here."
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As I was going to St. Ives,
I met a man with seven wives,
Each wife had seven sacks,
Each sack had seven cats,
Each cat had seven kits:
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,
How many were there going to St. Ives?
None, they were all going in the other direction.
—Traditional English Riddle
A/N: Things in this chapter that I know are not canon:
1.The Task Force having noticed that there's a sniper
2.Snake showing up fairly frequently (not confirmed, but, to be fair, Gosho never says it doesn't happen during heists we aren't shown, either)
3.The frequent practical jokes from KID
But, I like fanon, and this stuff is pretty common. Also, in case you haven't noticed, I did take full advantage of the fact that canon strongly implies that there are at least a few heists in between the ones we as the audience are shown. It makes the timeline make more sense and lets me have a bit more freedom as a writer. Though, Chikage's interviews are taking place after the Kaito Corbeau chapter, which means I have free reign (and that it'll be ret-conned, but, really, this fic isn't gonna end up close enough to canon for that to matter anyhow).
Regarding Kusakabe's use of Amida Buddha's name: The way I phrased this idiom is probably not a real Japanese usage—while the name is at least accurate in the sense that it's a Buddha that a lapsed Japanese Buddhist would be likely to name (yes, there's more than one Buddha, it's a complex religion, please research yourself if you weren't aware and are interested), the way the phrase is constructed probably doesn't reflect actual usage in Japanese. However, none of my Japanese acquaintances know I write fanfiction and if I want to keep their respect that's how it has to stay, so this is the most accurate I can be.
As always, I'm on tumblr as ninthfeather, and updates on the fic can be found in the "riddle in reverse" tag. You can also throw random questions into my askbox there, if you're so inclined. Thanks for reading!