The Vampire Detective 2 – Second Grace
Chapter Five – Nothing I Won't Give
I promise you I'd go everywhere I've been/ To find a way to make atonement for my sin/ And see... see your smiling face again. . .
– Vic Mignogna
-----
When he later got back home, having dropped Ran off back at her place, it was with a slam of the door and thunderous footsteps all the way to where he could tell the other three were packing up Kaito's things, since the thief was going to be returning to Ekoda as soon as they were done. He stopped in the doorway, attempted to calm himself with a couple of breaths that ended up being about as useful as they sounded, to a vampire. They didn't help in calming him down, at any rate.
"Damn it!"
A fist flew with unthinking accuracy to the frame of the door. . . an act which he immediately regretted when a throbbing pain blossomed there and didn't go away, a sure sign of a wood-related injury. Grimacing and now holding his hurt hand gingerly, he cursed some more.
"Ne, Tantei-kun – you all right?"
"What do you think?" came the snarled response.
"Me? I think it's probably just as well you hit the frame."
Shinichi was sure that if the others had not had their share of people looking at them in such a way for real, they would have called his expression murderous. As it was, Fritz – an American vampire whose fashion sense was retarded mostly back to the fifties, leaning towards a black biking leather jacket, white t-shirt and black jeans – smirked slightly, Mina – his sire, a vampire at least a century old – rolled her eyes, and Kuroba Kaito himself – recently discovered to be inadvertently Shinichi's first 'donor', and thus also seeming to take part mother hen responsibility of his near twin – only shrugged, not showing any response of a more reactive nature to his display.
"I was only saying," the thief said, smirking. "You do know that if you'd punched anywhere else, you'd have had to explain to the repair men how that hole happened to be fist shaped, don't you? Not to mention I don't think your parents would like it much if they found their home had been turned into a pock-marked frustration outlet."
His fist loosened, fell limp to his side once more.
". . . Damn it."
Kaito sighed into the silence.
"You know, if it's serious and you feel the need to talk..."
"Don't you start, too," Shinichi groaned, putting his still hurting hand up to his forehead. "The numbers of times I've been told that today-!"
"You ever stopped to think that maybe that's because they actually – wow! – care about you, Kudo?"
A short and slightly more effectual glare was sent the biker-leather clad vampire's way, and he put his hands up in mock surrender.
"When it's anyone other than police officers trying – and failing – to be subtle, then no, I think that I just might have listened to that guy instinct of mine that was saying that was saying that they were simply trying to wheedle information out of me."
"Why would they be trying to do that?"
"Apparently, Takagi-keiji and Satou-keiji know me a little too well on a subconscious level. They realised that something was off about my statement," he said, aiming the last at Kaito. "Now, they won't say anything to me about the case, convinced I'm holding back from them." He laughed once, cynically. "Of course, it doesn't help that I am."
"But didn't you tell them that it's not the kind of thing that'd get in the way of the case, and that we're covering all of those bases?"
"Yes." Shinichi started to pace, rather than vent his frustration like he had before. "But Kaito, you're not a detective – you don't know what it's like. You have to have all of the information, not just some of it. It's always the thing that everyone else thinks is inconsequential that ends up being what catches the criminal. If I was the one in their situation, then I wouldn't simply go by my word that what I was hiding was unimportant enough not to be investigated. I'd follow down any lead that came to me, no matter what it was."
"I can believe that," the thief said, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. "Most of the time when you nearly caught me, it'd be because of something so small even I'd looked over."
The detective paused in his pacing with a brief smirk on his face.
"Is that your way of saying that you're as close to perfect as you can be, or that I've simply always been better than you?"
"Pass," the thief said smoothly. "But I think I get what you're saying, in any case."
"So. . . does this mean that you are going to tell them, at some point?"
Shinichi and Kaito both looked at the female vampire with incredulity, not believing their ears. Even Fritz snorted.
"Sheesh, even now you're as naive as a bat when it comes to stuff like this," said the New Yorker. He pointed at Kaito. "Thief." He pointed at himself, Mina and Shinichi in turn. "Vampires. You want to break their minds first, or do I get to be the one who gets to see 'em faint?"
A sharp grin adorned his face, and Mina shook her head.
"Very well, I'll take that as a no. Then do you have any idea of what you are going to be doing about the situation?"
The two almost-twins shared the exact same look. It was one of a sort of understanding. A stubborn sort of refusal to despair, to keep on going even if it seems like you aren't actually getting anywhere.
They looked away, and Shinichi shook his head.
"Not a clue. I've always done better to be able to see the crime scene, though – maybe once things have settled down at the station today I can sneak in somehow." He sighed in resignation and frustration. "Like as not, anything I might have been able to pick up is probably long gone by now. But I'd still like to have a look. There might be something..."
"O-oi, you want company? Might be interesting to actually work together for once, you know, right?"
Shinichi threw the thief a crooked smirk.
"Thanks. Might be fun. You do know that place is probably going to be swarming with police still once we get there, don't you?"
Kaito's face paled minutely as he made a comical face.
"Erk?"
"You said you would," Shinichi threw back as he went off into the hallways of his home once more, "so you can't go back on your word, Kuroba."
"I-idiot! Why would I want to do that? I've been in far larger crowds of police before!"
Shinichi snorted, still able to hear the other clearly.
"Yeah, right. In dog-piles and in disguise, maybe."
"Aoko's dad's a policeman, so we both know people in the station, idiot! We still go over there every so often, too!"
"...You're saying that you're friends with the people who're trying to catch you. . . am I right? 'Cause I'm sure that I'm supposed to be wrong."
Recognising Fritz's voice, Shinichi gave out a snort of half disbelieving laughter himself.
"You're forgetting, Fritz-san," he called back. "This is Kuroba we're talking about. That Task Force is just as much his as he is theirs, you know."
-----
Despite his earlier, slightly brash words, Kaito was ever so slightly unsettled once he reached the part of the park that had been cordoned off to the general public. It wasn't exactly the fact that there were so many police there. Not really. It was more the fact of which division they belonged to, and that also meant why they were here.
They were division one. The branch of the Japanese police dedicated to solving the serious crimes, such as murder. The kind of thing that Kudo had been dealing with perfectly well long before he had ever got in contact with the detective, and yet here they were, walking onto a crime scene, Kudo's face in a cold approximation of a vampire-version Poker Face, due to the fact that it was more than likely that just about everyone there thought that he had been the one who'd done it.
Which was, Kaito and the others knew, not true. Although there were certain discrepancies in the evidence, the one thing that was definite was that Kudo Shinichi, great detective and saviour of the police force, wasn't the culprit.
That part of the park was a part of the track that the joggers and cyclists had often used; he remembered the route well from his brief jaunt as 'Katie', the American girl who had liked to watch and watch over Kudo, usually from a safe distance. Now, of course, there were no people running or cycling or kicking around footballs and generally just relaxing. The feel of the place was so taut with tension that Kaito could probably have been able to cut it with a blunt spoon.
When he looked closer, his estimate of how many police there actually were was found to be slightly off; there were simply a few in each place, talking, going over evidence, searching, just simply being there – there was more than one group where an officer was to be seen slacking off, reading or staring at the others.
Then again, it had been nearly a week since all of this had started.
Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Shinichi begin to stride purposefully and unerringly towards one particular park bench. Not, he thought, coincidental to the fact that there were more police keeping watch over that area than there were on any of the others. Undoubtedly it was the place where it had happened, though they used the normal park track-come-road to get there. There was probably still the reek of blood and death in the area; it was hard enough to get out of a place for human noses, but for vampiric ones in a place where everything had been kept as close to how things had been when the graveyard shift had found the scene, it was probably just this side of unbearable. Put that together with the fact that it was Shinichi's own place of mental trauma, and. . .
He spared the detective a concerned sideways glance.
"Oi, you are all right, yeah?"
Shinichi paused for a moment, looked at him, nodded and continued as if nothing had passed between them.
"Because, you know," and they were getting nearer and nearer to that bench, which didn't really look all that inviting, "if you ever felt anything like, um, less than a hundred percent, then that's why I came, you know. So you could- "
Shinichi's fists – or at least, the one that he could see – clenched tightly.
" –talk. I was gonna say talk, Kudo." The fists released themselves, but a slight amount of the tension stayed on as a sort of flinch. Kaito sighed inside, but didn't show the reaction on his face. He was going to be patient. He was.
As they came closer to the site though, one of the officers nudged the other, and they both began to surreptitiously watch the two coming down the path towards them. At first it almost seemed as though they might be welcoming, but Kaito's heart and hopes fell once he was able to see their faces. Discomfort, a slight bit of sadness, mistrust, fear, pity, professionalism. Those weren't the faces of policemen who would likely be willing to let Shinichi have a wander around his own crime scene for even the guy's state of mind.
Nevertheless, he didn't let any of this show on his face. He plastered a bight, prankster's grin on his face and bounded forward to meet the two long faced men, so that they met in his territory, not theirs.
"Ne, keibu-tachi – keibu-tachi!"
The two detectives looked over at them, startled. Obviously, they hadn't been expecting either one of the 'amateurs' to draw attention to themselves at all. Definitely not anyone who's ever been in the Task Force, then, he mused, humour lacing his thoughts. Anyone from the Task Force would have noticed and at least tried to head off a distraction ploy when they saw one. He could say that much at least for Nakamori's men. These two. . . hadn't even noticed his detective friend slipping around them while they had their attention on the grinning idiot in front of them. Though that might have had something to do with the fact that Kudo was a vampire, it still didn't entirely excuse them.
He could only distract them for so long, however, and while Kudo was a bit more capable of processing a lot of information very quickly, it was still the middle of the afternoon, which didn't allow him full mental ability to process whatever he saw or figured out. By the time one of them thought to look back around, there wasn't actually much more either of them could do, and the look on Shinichi's face was enough to say that there wasn't anything more to find, either.
Tantei-kun was looking every bit the person with the storm cloud following them, or a black dog on their shoulder, if they liked that analogy better. Head bowed and face mostly hidden by a baseball cap he presumed the other had bought weeks ago with the name of a local team on it, hands firmly thrust into blazer pockets and strides short and tense, the vampire was the picture of someone on the very edge of their patience.
Kaito sighed and lightly hinted at a different route, one that would catch more shade as they walked under tall bushes, trees and picture-postcard scenery and structures. Admittedly it was a route usually frequented by lovers and spies, but he was sure that if he could get over the embarrassment, then Shinichi certainly could. Especially since it was because of him that they were taking it in the first place.
". . . Oi, Shinichi. You even find anything back there?"
The detective started slightly at the sound of his own name, and someone asking him something. He shook his head, probably to clear it of cobwebs.
"No. . . or at least, I don't think so. There was a whiff of something I think was familiar, but it might as well have been anyone I've met before. Nearly any of the officers, but not Takagi, Satou, Megure or the others. I come across them too often to mistake them for anyone else. They have been there, though."
Kaito nodded silently. He'd thought as much.
"Anything else?"
Shinichi's hand reached up scratch at his head before encountering the hat, apparently forgotten up until that moment.
"Well, one thing I know for sure is that the victim was the only one that bled." He shook his head again, but this time in puzzlement and irritation. Not to mention no small amount of guilt. "There can't have been any struggle whatsoever. With me so nearby, there was no way I would have been able to miss something like that. . ."
Kaito snorted, annoyed at the direction that the conversation was going – yet again.
"Yeah, yeah – you would've been able to stop it from happening if you'd don this, you'd have been able to have caught the guy by now if only you could remember. I've heard you say all this before, and I'll say it again – you aren't perfect, so don't try and kid yourself you are."
Shinichi shot him a long-suffering look, so Kaito backed away in mock surrender.
"Fine, fine! How about we don't talk about that for a while, then?"
The detective sighed.
"All right. Then what do we talk about?"
Kaito collapsed gracefully to the slightly damp – all right, more than just slightly, it was October – ground.
"How about we talk about you for a change?" At Shinichi's wary look, he further explained. "It's just. . . how do I put this? You've been teetering between looking as though you want to kill those guys and wanting to trust them ever since they got here yesterday. Care to explain why?"
For one terrifying instant, Shinichi seemed to simply just shut down, not the same way that he had seen the guy back at the station, but a simple act of locking himself in and everybody else out. For that instant, Kaito was scared that the simple – and obviously not so simple and straightforward – question had cut him off from the guy, a step too far. Then, appearing to have made his decision, Kudo sat himself down on the ground not too far away from Kaito himself.
"You want to know why it is that I don't know what to do with them?" Kaito nodded, not trusting himself not to say a wrong word. "It's really been bugging you that much?"
Kaito snorted softly.
"Eh, it's been bugging me, sure. . . but not enough that I'd have asked otherwise. I only asked because it's been looking like it's been bugging you, and like I said earlier – I'm here if you want to talk. Actually, even if you don't want to – I think you need it, Kudo."
"Well, I don't want to talk about it."
Kaito laughed.
"I thought you'd had it with acting like a seven year old, Kudo. Maybe you were more affected by that drug than you let on."
"Don't push it, Kuroba," came the irritated retort. "I don't have to tell anyone anything if I don't want to."
A snort. "Yeah, right. If you really didn't want to let it all out, you wouldn't even still be here now. Right?" When Shinichi didn't say or do anything to disprove his theory, Kaito sighed. "How long've you been bottling it all up for, anyway?"
Shinichi turned his face away to look into the distance, and when he looked back there was a dark expression hidden there.
"One month, two weeks and anywhere up to two days more. If you're talking about Conan, add a year or so."
Kaito whistled softly.
"Sheesh. You've been hanging around Hakuba too long."
A twitch of the mouth broke Shinichi's dour look.
"At least he has the right appreciation for Holmes, unlike some people I could mention."
"Excuse me! I do appreciate Holmes. I just don't want to be him."
The two laughed, and Shinichi raised a hand to his forehead, a smile on his face.
"I dread to think how Aoko-kun would react if you suddenly did. Probably angrily, and with a mop, knowing her. For someone who still goes off to heists with a 'Kid go home' sign, she's pretty fond of both your identities, nowadays."
"Heh. You're telling me? When I first told her, I thought I was gonna get pounded to a pulp, later on. I still don't think I've gotten over the fact that I didn't."
Shinichi looked away again, smile fading.
"Ran. . . didn't take my secret so well. Then again, she didn't find out in the kindest of ways. I wouldn't have like to have found out that way, when I was only just experiencing things for the first time, too. . . But then again, maybe it was for the best."
Kaito stared but didn't say anything. This wasn't what he had been expecting.
"She overheard," the detective was saying softly. "Overheard me arguing with Agasa and Ai over the probability of my current existence. Haibara was certain that this was only temporary, that I'd told Ran that I'd be able to stay when it was a lie. I got angry. . . told them that Conan was dead. I saw Ran outside moments later when I ran out, and she was in tears. I was a coward and scared, Kuroba. I ran."
"O-oi, that's all right. I mean, no, it isn't. But I don't blame you. I would've run if it'd been me. I mean, if Aoko'd somohow been able to listen in on me talking to mom or Jii back before she knew..."
"Yeah, but at least you would've still been a person to her. You wouldn't have had to be afraid that she was going to be afraid of you simply because of what you are. I mean, Kid's still human. At least Aoko'd still be able to beat you up."
Oi, oi. . . thought Kaito, his face going slightly slack, a twitch developing at one of his eyes. What's that supposed to mean, anyway?
"She still went back to you, though," he thought to point out.
"Yeah," Shinichi said, voice distant. "Yeah, she did."
"And I mean," said Kaito, struggling to piece things together from what he had heard and learned, "you didn't exactly choose all this, did you?"
Silence.
Okay. Stop freaking me out here, Kudo. Tell me, damn it!
"Did you?"
Please. Please tell me. . . I don't know. Something. Help me out here, will you. . ?
"I . . ."
Shinichi's voice cracked, and a part of Kaito's heart clenched behind an instinctive yet useless mask.
"I. . . didn't have a. . . there wasn't any other choice."
"What do you mean?"
Shinichi shook his head.
"Exactly what I said. I didn't have any other choice. You read the file – you must have. That guy. . . he would have been too powerful, otherwise. Too fast. He'd already killed one person in less time than it took to tie a shoelace. I couldn't risk going back there as I was – I'd get killed, and if I wasn't there. . . even as Conan. . . and Ran. It never left my mind from the moment I left that place that Ran was in danger. So. . . when I found them, all the way back then, and she – she gave me a choice. I hate her for how she did it, but I have to respect her for that one thing – she did give me a choice. . ."
Kaito swallowed hard as Shinichi trailed off. This wasn't what he had expected at all. If he was honest with himself, he wasn't even sure what he had been expecting. Maybe something on the lines of Dracula, something forced on him, or even some huge trick where Kudo hadn't even realised what had been happening until it had already happened.
Kudo looked back at him, and for some reason Kaito wasn't too surprised to see a grimly bitter smile on his face.
"I suppose you think I'm some kind of stupid freak now, huh. . ."
At first, Kaito couldn't think of anything to say. Then it hit him and he shook his head.
"No. . . I don't think you're stupid at all. A bit reckless when it comes to the ones you care about – but if you're thinking of that, then we're both in the same boat. And as for being a freak – just you try saying that to Ran." He laughed at the thought. "I bet you'd get karate'd all the way into next week and told 'Freak? More like a super mystery freak!'"
Kaito half expected to get several bruises for imitating Kudo's girlfriend in the last bit, but was pleasantly surprised when the guy only flopped himself into a lying down position, arms above his head.
"You really don't care, do you."
He shrugged.
"Yes and no. I don't care because no matter what else changed about you, you're still the stupid Holmes freak that likes to chase me around and borrow Hakuba's cosplay from time to time. Still the guy Ran likes. I do care because what you just told me says that you knew the risks, but the threat to the others outweighed them. And that makes me respect you."
Kudo shook his head, and after a while stood back up, dusting himself off. He looked into the distance and sighed. But when he turned back to Kaito offering him a hand up, the magician could see that there was a slantways smile resting on his face.
"I don't think I'll ever get to understand you, Kaito."
"Mm. Maybe not. But then again, if we did understand each other just like that, life wouldn't be as interesting, ne?" A dove appeared out from within Kaito's sleeve, cooed and sidled up to him. He stroked its head. "Ever thought of telling any of that to 'Neechan?" He asked, using Hattori's nickname for her.
Shinichi shrugged.
"Maybe. I don't know."
-----
"Ah – hakase?"
"Oh, Shinichi-kun! I'll just be a minute!"
Shinichi nodded absently, and started to change his shoes to go inside. The professor's place hadn't changed that much in all the time he had known the man, and even recently the only real difference – other than the hardly noticeable smaller chairs in places and twice as many experiments that belonged to Haibara Ai – were the blackout curtains that were now positioned at the tops of each of the many windows, for emergency purposes. They could easily be explained away as a new eccentricity for use when experimenting with light-sensitive projects, and what was more, Shinichi thought with no little apprehension, they might well be. The faint reek of solder in the air did nothing to calm him of his worry.
Knowing that the older man would be a little while setting things down safely, Shinichi wandered around the open area that the professor lived in with Haibara. As usual, there were the familiar oddities and trinkets left unfinished on the worktops, bits and pieces of machinery lying around haphazard. Some looked unfinished, while others looked near to completion. One in particular caught his eye as something that looked somewhat akin to a microscope and one of those devices used to breath in steam when you had a cold. Curious, he leaned in further, only to start when he accidentally pressed down on something – damn it, he really didn't know his own strength sometimes now – which set off a series of cogs until –
"Erarghk!"
Overpowered by the many strong scents now emanating from the machine, Shinichi started to cough and hack to get the burning out of his nose and lungs. Which, while he didn't admittedly always need to breath, was a good and useful thing, especially if he wanted to talk and eat and look like a normal human being.
He barely heard the steps coming rushed up the stairs from the lab.
"Shinichi-kun, what is it, are you all right – I should have packed that up, it's unfinished, really shouldn't have been left around like that..."
"I-" Shinichi gasped, trying to get the air for words. "I'm – will be fine. Just a couple of minutes – to get – my breathing back."
The professor was left standing around, obviously unsure of what to do by the shifting of his feet and almost certainly feeling guilty while Shinichi's coughing fits slowly and gradually died down enough for him to speak almost properly again.
"What – sorry – what was that?"
"It was, ah. . ."
"Hakase..."
"I'd been thinking about the way your recent investigations, and how they so often use your nose, so I thought that maybe it might be useful if I could figure out a way that normal people could have that same kind of advantage. . . It's still not finished yet, though. I haven't been able to get something quite right. . ."
With a gasp and eyes wide with disbelief, Shinichi shook his head.
"No kidding, hakase. . . that'd never work."
"What? Shinichi-kun, I'll have you know that I'm very close to a breakthrough, and..."
"Still not going to work, hakase. . . let me guess – that missing something you're after. It's supposed to separate out all the scents while also somehow making them clearer but not overpoweringly so?" He sighed at the professor's look of shock at his simple deduction. "Turn it off and dismantle it, hakase. That's my advice."
"D-dismantle?! Isn't that going a little far?"
Shinichi shook his head vehemently, and held his nose.
"Nuh-uh. There's a reason normal humans aren't supposed to smell that strongly. We got the right instincts for that sorta stuff – you don't. And you can't just add instincts into an equation. . . not, at the very least, when they're like these ones are."
The professor looked at Shinichi sadly as the detective shook his head one last time, as though imitating a dog, with a strange expression on his face as the last of the damage was being repaired. His gaze shifted to his creation – now revealed to be useless – and sighed despondently.
"Oh - ! Uh, was there something you wanted, Shinichi-kun?"
Shinichi instantly perked up, although that was rewarded by a sneeze.
"Actually, there was. I was wondering if Haibara was around? I didn't know whether or not she'd be back yet, so. . ."
The professor was shaking his head.
"I'm afraid not. She rang to tell me that they had been given a case – nothing too big, mind, just a lost cat, I think – and that they might not be back for a while. It's early yet, though. Why? What was it you wanted to talk to her about?"
"Ah – nothing too important. Really. Nothing to worry about..."
An arm snaking its way to the nape of his neck, he knew he probably looked the very opposite of innocent. But he really couldn't tell the professor just yet. He had to speak to Haibara first, and then some other people after her if she agreed to his insane plan.
"And I'm not supposed to be worrying about – what, exactly? When you come all the way here, Kudo-kun."
Both he and the professor jumped at the voice of the precocious little girl's voice that drifted through from the doorway.
"What happened to that case of yours hakase told me about?" Shinichi asked, getting over his slight surprise. He wasn't usually startled like that anymore. "And what do you mean by 'all the way here'? I only live next door!"
"It turned out that the kid's cat was with his next door neighbour," said Genta, sounding highly disheartened at the turn of events. "It wasn't even a real case."
"Yeah, yeah," agreed Mitsuhiko. "No one even died or got robbed from or anything. . ."
Both Shinichi and the professor sweatdropped. Haibara glared at them lightly as she came in, having taken off her shoes in exchange for house slippers.
"Of course," said Shinichi offhandedly, "you know what I'd call that kind of case?"
"What?" asked Genta, still morose.
"A good one. A good detective always goes around hoping that a case doesn't turn up – sure, there's a thrill to solving the mysteries that occur in real life, but if there's a case, it always happens at someone's expense. That is, there's always at least one person who's left really, really unhappy. Got it?"
The three faces, once they appeared at last, looked thoughtful, considering what he had just said in their minds. It was something he was sure he'd said at least once as Conan, but they were just kids. And kids wanted excitement, not real life. They still had to grow up a lot to figure that one out.
Unsurprisingly, it was Ayumi who spoke up about it first.
"I think I get it," she said. "It's like how Noguchi-kun was so happy when his cat was found, and he was really sad when he thought it'd been lost. Right, Shinichi-niisan?"
Shinichi nodded absently, suddenly more interested in what the professor was doing with the gizmo they had only just been discussing.
"Oi, hakase," he called over in a flatly irritated voice. "I thought I told you to break that thing down?"
"Ah – yeah. . . sorry," the professor said with a self-conscious laugh. Shinichi rolled his eyes. The rest of the Shounen Tantei sniggered, and there was even a humoured light in Haibara's eyes.
"Ne, Shinichi-niisan? I. . ."
"Hm? What is it, Ayumi-chan?"
The little girl blushed – she still did, when he called her that, with that familiar honorific that he was used to using as Conan. It was kind of cute, in a way, since he supposed that 'Shinichi-niisan' reminded her of 'Conan-kun'.
"I – I just wanted you to know that I think you look a lot better today than before. You looked all unwell before, like you were really, really sick. I always thought that the Shinichi-niisan Conan-kun was always talking about would be too smart to get that sick. But you're better now, right?"
He smiled down at her, not sure whether or not it was good that they didn't know everything. Maybe one day, he thought pensively, but not today.
"Yeah. . . I'm better now, Ayumi-chan. And you know what?"
The little girl shook her head, eyes wide. Genta and Mitsuhiko watched, glaring slightly at the older boy who was commanding so much of their little princess's attention.
"If you see me getting sick-looking like that again, you each – all three of you – have my express permission to tell Ran, okay?"
Three grinning faces shouted affirmatives up at him, likely knowing all too well that Ran would ream him out and practice her karate on him if he ever got as down as that again. No matter what the reason.
He grinned nervously back at them, that very thought in mind. Then, driven by a now near-instinctive need, he looked towards the heavens, Agasa-hakase's roof being made almost entirely of windows and glass. Closed his eyes and sighed.
"Ne. . . you lot. Shouldn't you be getting back soon? It's about to get dark soon."
Haibara gave him a sharp look but silently agreed, nodding. Agasa immediately started to fuss over the children, hurrying them out and back into their coats and shoes.
The moment the children were waved off and in the distance, Haibara turned to him sharply, one slipper-shod foot tapping on the carpet.
"All right, Kudo-kun. Now you can tell me what it is you want. It's obviously not something for younger ears, or you wouldn't have hesitated to say anything before now, would you?"
Shinichi laughed, somewhat nervously. Even knowing that he himself had been in the same situation for even longer than she, he did understand now why people would so often give him such haunted, freaked out looks when he would unwittingly be himself around them. And Haibara didn't even try to hide it.
She continued to look at him like that, and he caved in with a sigh.
"Eh. . . yeah. You won't like it, though."
"I won't know whether or not I'll like your request unless you tell me what it is, Kudo-kun."
He sighed again and let himself fall softly onto a seat, to be more of a height with the shrunken scientist. Leaned in further and began to whisper his proposed plan in her ear. By the time he had finished, her eyes were wide, her heart beating rapidly and her breathing, while outwardly regular, was obviously – to his senses, at any rate – being controlled with an iron will.
"You. . . do you have any idea what you're asking of me?"
He didn't look away. He couldn't afford to.
"I know what I'm asking, Haibara Ai. I also know that if anyone can do it, you can. You're the only one."
Haibara snorted.
"You're my only hope, huh. . ." she quoted cynically.
He shrugged , and not for the last time did he resent that unnatural grace that had been gifted him which wouldn't let her see how shaky he actually felt.
"It'll work," he assured her. "It will. I'm not so hard to kill any more, you know," he said, adding in his own brand of black humour.
"Yes, Kudo-kun," she replied testily, shaking off the last of her shock. "But what doesn't kill you doesn't always make you stronger."
----
Being back at your own school, Kaito reflected, wasn't quite as great as it could have been after being told the news by Koizumi that morning.
In fact, he was finding it downright nerve wracking, being so far away while at the same time something serious and dangerous was going on. What was more, he knew that he couldn't do anything about it. Not a thing. Zip. Nada. Koizumi herself had told him to stay out of her business for the time being, until he was allowed in on what was going on. Which wasn't reassuring when she had left school early during lunchtime, her only excuse being that she was off to meet someone.
His depressed mood ended up infecting his tricks, making people wary of him and causing at least one mop fight due to the tension that kept building up in the room, yet although it was a good release for the energy, it didn't do anything to dispel that feeling of frustration, and Aoko only got angrier and more irritated with him in return.
By the time the middle of the afternoon rolled around, not too many people looked surprised to see him simply walk out, and probably no few of them were privately relieved – not that they would say so out loud, he knew; there was far too much risk that he would get them back somehow.
So it was no small shock to find a blond head, bent over a pocket watch and form still wearing the Ekoda school uniform waiting for him as he turned the first corner.
"Ha- Hakuba?! What the hell are you doing here?"
Hakuba looked up, piercing blue eyes easily finding his, and the pocket watch snapped shut, going back into its place in the detective's uniform.
"I might well ask you the same question, Kuroba-kun. You are precisely two hours, forty-two minutes and thirty seconds early to be here, you know."
Kaito snorted and kicked aimlessly at the ground.
"Yeah, yeah. . . like I could've managed to do anything other than get on everyone's nerves back there, anyway..."
Hakuba gave him a look filled with a detective's curiosity, and they started to walk. Not to his own home, but to the other side of Ekoda, where the Hakuba mansion was situated. The place had become a sort of safe haven for the lot of them ever since Aoko had been taken straight there after her rescue, and what was more, Hakuba Saguru didn't seem to mind all that much.
"Care to tell me why?"
Kaito sighed. For a long while he didn't say anything. Then, he surprised the both of them by actually explaining.
"It's a weird thing, Hakuba. Ever since all of this started, I don't know why – maybe it's because he looks like me, I dunno... I've just been feeling able to tell the guy things. Opening up. It never mattered that he wasn't even, uh, human any more. In fact, that was why I went to him in the first place. But now - !"
Hakuba glanced at him again, a calculating look that wasn't so much intimidating as it was trying to get to the bottom of his problems. It was almost comforting, even – or maybe especially – coming from that particular source. A strange thought, but true.
"Now," Hakuba said slowly, "something is going on with Kudo-kun, apart from the case that he has found himself buried in. And he isn't letting you in."
Kaito looked away, facing the sky with his arms behind his head.
"Got it in one, Tantei-san. Though it's more like Koizumi won't let me in."
"What – Koizumi? What does she have to do with all this?"
He snorted.
"Oh, how about we go with nearly everything? Apart from the fact that his great plan needs that Haibara kid as well to work, of course."
"I don't understand. What could Kudo-kun possibly want that only Koizumi-kun and Haibara-san can provide him?"
"In his words? 'A new perspective on that stupid case'," he said, imitating his twin's voice for the quote. Not a hard feat.
Hakuba stopped walking. Turned to face him slowly, confusion being taken over by no small amount of fear and trepidation.
"You. . . you can't mean. . . what I think you're meaning, can you? Please say that you aren't."
Kaito looked away, sharply.
"Sorry," he said, and started to walk again. "They asked me over at Koizumi's last night to test something out. Apparently, I'm going to be useful at one point, but not until then, and not allowed near until Koizumi lets me. I'm sure you heard her earlier," he added, only a touch bitterly.
This time, it was Hakuba who snorted, once he'd caught up the pace.
"Huh. 'Useful'."
"That's what they said."
"Any idea when this idiocy is going to take place?"
"Nope. Koizumi's probably going to contact me somehow. If nothing else, for a familiar face. You know."
Hakuba nodded mutely. Kaito sent one of his own brand of calculating looks the blond's way.
"Why? You thinking of tagging along or something? It's not going to be anyone's idea of fun, you know."
"I'm well aware of that, Kuroba. And if I wish to join you, then I am sure that it would be up to Kudo-kun whether or not I am allowed to stay or not, am I right?"
Kaito stared at the detective, walking backwards to still see the guy's face. Was he serious? He leaned forward slightly, looking into those blue eyes. Hm. Maybe he was, at that.
He sighed.
"Ah, whatever. It's up to you. Your choice, your funeral, Hakuba-kun."
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
"Ah, nothing, nothing. . ."
-----
Having never been to Koizumi Akako's place before, Shinichi hadn't quite known what to expect. But knowing the stories that Kaito and Hakuba had fed him about her along with his own experiences, he really shouldn't have been so surprised at the sight of a dilapidated-looking old western style house, in the middle of a forest that looked as though it had been grown specifically around the area for effect.
He supposed that he should have been glad to arrive during the morning, despite the fact that he had cut school to do so. At least that way it hadn't looked quite so imposing as he expected it did now.
Most of his time spent in the place had made him feel like a human – vampire – guinea pig, being poked and prodded at with needles, sticks and other such questionable implements for most of the day, and told to go make himself useful elsewhere for the rest of it. For a lot of that time, he had been honing his soccer skills, making use of the movement to be able to think more clearly on the case and what he was about to do.
After all, it wasn't as though there was no time to turn back. It was a voluntary thing, this time. Not forced, it was going to be a decision made of his own free will. Even then, it wasn't going to be a point of no return for him. . .
If Haibara, Koizumi and he were all correct, then this only had to be temporary. No wondering, searching and waiting for what could be the rest of his life, making Ran wait for him and never know if he was going to be able to come back to her.
They couldn't afford to be wrong.
Kaito and Hakuba arrived around an hour before school was supposed to end, causing raised eyebrows but no real comments – unless Fritz's spoken thought that he couldn't somehow get away from delinquents counted, that is. Shinichi had rebuffed this by saying that all of them there were either out of school by several decades or centuries or were smart enough to not be bothered by a few hours' less tuition by the teacher, who just as often as not was being taught by them rather than the other way around. There wasn't too much the American could say to that, other than the apparently obligatory 'Help - I'm surrounded by teen geniuses'.
Hakuba had almost immediately begun to grow suspicious of Fritz, the various comments about the past few decades and the consistent fifties biker look not helping any, up until the point where Kaito had felt pity for the poor detective and enlightened him on a few details. After that, it had been uncertain whether or not the news had made him any more or less trustworthy in the eyes of the blond; at times he seemed to want to ask as many questions as he could think of, but seemed to think the better of it, and at others still looked as though he were afraid Fritz would turn out to be another Kuroba Kaito, tricks and all. Or perhaps Hattori, since Shinichi had once overheard by chance a comment on how the two were far too alike for the British detective's liking.
Thankfully though, Fritz had been off somewhere else at the time, out of even vampiric hearing range for such a whisper.
Less than half an hour later, Koizumi and Haibara had called everyone into Koizumi's living room, which was surprisingly normal compared to the rest of the place.
They had gone over what each person would be doing and when. The two in charge had reiterated time after time after time that everything would have to be done exactly the way that they had planned, or else dire things might go wrong.
He was used to listening to and taking Haibara seriously, at least when it came to her experiments. According to their reactions, Kaito and Hakuba felt the same about Koizumi's warnings, despite the fact that Hakuba was as non-believing of magic as Shinichi himself once had been of anything supernatural. Kaito had told him various times of his run-ins with the witch, however, so his reaction wasn't quite so unexpected.
Mina, of course, treated everything with such an everyday air that one would think that she did these sorts of things as part of her normal routine. Fritz seemed to follow her lead, but also appeared to know almost as much on the subject as she did. His sudden shift from playful like Kaito or Hattori to being serious was what phased those who didn't know him more, though.
"We start at Twilight," Koizumi proclaimed once she was certain she had everyone's attention, and that everyone already knew what she was going to say. As things stood, there were only a few minutes until twilight at any rate, but she was a witch, and if he knew anything about this strange group he had gathered about him, it was that none of them would pass up an opportunity for drama – especially if it actually fitted in with what they wanted to do.
They all got into position, curtains drawing closed for the safety of three of their group, and Koizumi checking once more the magical circle that she had drawn in permanent marker on her living room floorboards.
"You all remember what you have to do, don't you?"
Shinichi nodded. The others must have as well, because Haibara nodded, business-like, once to herself.
"First, Kudo-kun takes the pill. Remember, this will have absolutely no effect without one or both of the next steps. Next, Kuroba-kun. You understand what you have to do, and that it would be of your own will. In other words, you could back out now if you so wished."
Kuroba shook his head, though Shinichi knew that he could hear the other's nerves.
"I came this far," the magician said. "If I back out now, none of the rest of it'll work. Besides, have any of you ever known me to take the easy, safe option, no..."
Hakuba, leaning against a far wall, snorted, nerves showing through in a shaking voice, even though he wasn't actually going to be an active part of any of it.
"Then," Haibara continued, "Kudo-kun will step into the circle, and from there Koizumi-san will take over, her spell being the thing that links the two together to make the regenerative and reparative properties of Kudo-kun's blood weak enough for the drug to take. And from there..."
"We know what happens from there, Haibara," he said, cutting across her. "Let's just get on with it."
The first rays of twilight dusk crept in through the curtains, the signal for Haibara to hand Shinichi the all-important drug that had been his bane for over a year. With the aid of a glass of water given to him by Koizumi, he swallowed, instantly feeling nausea swelling in his gut, his heart remembering what was to come if nothing else.
He kept himself standing only by willpower and the fact that Kuroba's arm was now around his shoulders, keeping him upright. His wrist in front of his face.
It was something that they had only recently and by accident discovered. Koizumi had attempted several minor spells both on him and in his general vicinity unwittingly only a short time after that morning in the police station when Shinichi had drunk Kaito's blood. The witch had started to suspect something at the time, but hadn't had the opportunity to look further into the matter until that very morning, when she had been able to experiment with both Shinichi and Kaito's blood to her heart's content.
The discovery had been that Kuroba Kaito had reasons for being such a good magician. Some of the things that he did both as himself and as the Kaitou Kid would not normally be thought of as possible. One such thing – and the most important, both in Koizumi Akako's view and for the current operation taking place – was that the magician's blood acted as a temporary inhibitor for most other types of magic other than the Kuroba's own brand.
As a result, as long as the thief's blood was in his system as a major contributor, the pill – Apotoxin 4869 – would actually work, instead of being taken apart harmlessly.
Thankfully, he wouldn't need too much, for Kuroba's safety and his own sanity. Body mass changes meant that what his body now translated as 'not enough' would possibly be 'just enough' on the other end.
His mouth came away from the wrist ever so slightly bloody due to not being able to co-ordinate himself properly anymore now, and he heard a stifled erk sound from the back of the room. Hushed voices as he stumbled into the circle. Defiant. He would do this. He had to.
Had to.
Despite and through the pain, which was now reaching each and every one of his cells, putting them on fire. In spite of the feeling that, no matter what he did, he would now never get the aches and pains and cramps out of his muscles and joints.
Had to keep going. Get through this. Stay alive, whatever alive meant now, because he wouldn't give up.
Not even when the scream tore its way from his throat, an inhuman scream of agony and determination and fear and complete and utter darkness, just as he was blacking out.
----
AN: Well, there you go. I wonder how many of you have screamed/cried/ insert random other at that plot twist? Nyeehee, been planning that one since probably about halfway through TVD1.
Again, if you think that for any reason (though give me a good one) this fic should have its rating upped, tell me. If enough people say so, I will. If not, I won't.
I hope you enjoyed this. I stayed up way, way too late (early?) working on it.