Secrets and Lies: Chapter 6
Vermouth watched the scene that unfolded before her eyes with no emotion. Kaitou Kid was leaning over the girl that she had just fed APTX 4869 to and Shinichi Kudo was looking around suspiciously. She had been lurking around the Agasa residence waiting for one of the three to be alone and for a good opportunity to strike. She had been waiting for hours and she had grabbed her chance when the Nakamori girl and appeared in her sightline carrying a black plastic bag and was heading for the rubbish bin by the gate. Vermouth couldn't believe her luck. The audio feed from inside the house and become very uninteresting since Kid was knocked out.
She had crept up silently behind the oblivious and unsuspecting girl armed with a handkerchief that she had hastily doused with chloroform. She had grabbed the innocent girl who was humming to herself with an iron grip and pressed the handkerchief to her nose and waited for her to go limp and stop struggling. After a few seconds she slumped in Vermouth's arms and Vermouth laid her gently on the ground. She looked around her. Luckily the street was quiet at this time of night so no one would see what she was about to do. She had to work quickly now though as someone would be coming out from the house to investigate as the girl wouldn't exactly be coming back as herself and it would be a while until she woke up.
From her pocket she drew out a silver metal case which was identical to the one that had been filched from the dead body of Snake. She opened it, plucked out a single pill and popped it into the girl's mouth.
Her body began to smoke and tremble violently as her bones melted and shrunk. There weren't any cries or screams as Vermouth had been kind enough to knock her out first so there wouldn't be any noise to attract attention. Vermouth observed the sight, fascinated that it really was possible. She had harboured a minor concern that the poison would kill the girl instead of shrinking her and she would have another dead body on her hands, but she had been pretty sure that she would shrink like Shinichi Kudo and that traitor Sherry due to how similar all their ages were. After minute or so the girl's body stopped shaking and smoking and lay still. Vermouth leant down for a closer examination. The girl's facial features now definitely belonged on someone younger and she was certainly now the size of a seven year old. Vermouth stood up and smiled.
"Sherry did a good job with this strain. An improvement on her parents. Shame no one above the age of 20 can use it without dying," she muttered whilst writing a quick note to leave for her Silver Bullet to explain. She was sure that he would understand.
She withdrew into the black shadows when Kaitou Kid who had escaped from his captivity came running and was followed by the blonde detective and Shinichi Kudo a minute later. She was satisfied with her night's work. She had helped her Silver Bullet deal with some troublesome people that could potentially blow his cover.
Aoko cracked open an eyelid with difficulty. Her eyelids felt like they were weighed down with granite. When she managed to open both eyes her vision was blurred. She blinked a few times and it cleared revealing that she was in an unfamiliar environment. She was lying in a comfortable bed in a small room with white walls and plain wooden furniture. The duvet was a pale cream colour and the sun was flooding in through the curtains. Aoko yawned and looked down at herself and noticed that she was wearing pink pyjamas and her legs seemed to have shrunk overnight.
She rubbed her eyes with surprise. Surely she wasn't that small. She pulled the covers back and looked at her legs and arms. They had shrunk and looked they belonged on a seven year old. A seven year old... Like Shinichi Kudo as Conan Edogawa. She had shrunk like him. She tried to recall the events of the night before, but all she could remembers was cooking dinner for everyone and realising that the bin was overflowing and needed to be emptied. So she had walked out to the rubbish bin that she had glimpsed on her way in. She remembered nothing past that.
Aoko pinched herself on the off chance that she was dreaming and hadn't really shrunk. She winced and knew that she was wide awake and wasn't still asleep. She swung her legs off from the bed and stood up shakily as she always felt a little weak in the morning. Aoko had a blinding headache that was hurting her head and the sunlight shining into her eyes didn't help either.
A yawn from somewhere on the floor below her made her jump. She looked down and saw that the seven year old Sherry had been sleeping on a futon next to the bed and she had just accidentally woken her up. Aoko sat back down on the bed again to give her some space. Sherry sat up slowly and blinked the sleep out of her eyes. Aoko smiled silently to herself at the state of Sherry's hair.
"Good morning Nakamori-san," Sherry greeted sleepily lacking her usual cold demeanour. "If you want to know why you are so small I'll explain once I wake up properly. I'm not a morning person."
Aoko nodded and glanced round the bedroom wondering if it was Sherry's. "Is this your bedroom Sherry-san?" she enquired politely absorbing the bland, colourless walls and the lack of a personal touch. Her bedroom at home reflected her personality completely and she had taken pleasure in decorating it personally. This bedroom seemed to be the exact opposite.
"Yes. Please don't call me that name though. I hate it. Just stick with Haibara-san to ease difficulties," Haibara replied sounding a little more alert and displeased.
Aoko decided that she seemed more like her usual self and it would be okay to ask now. "Okay, Haibara-san. What happened last night? Was it something to do with APTX 4869?"
Haibara looked sharply at her and was reminded of her sister like when she looked at Ran Mori in the face. She didn't want to see Aoko cry because she explained it too harshly. She sighed. It would be hard hearing that you wouldn't be able to see your family and friends again and that an antidote would never be found. It would be better for her if Kudo-kun explained.
"On second thoughts. I'll get Kudo-kun to explain. He is more sympathetic than me."
"...We've managed to work out that you were chloroformed and fed APTX 4869. Actually you were lucky that you were unconscious when the change happened. I can't describe how much it hurts being shrunk," Conan explained as kindly as he could to a nervous Aoko in the front room.
"And it was administered by a member of the Black Organisation called Vermouth who was doing you a favour because she likes you. Have I got it right?"
Conan flushed, annoyed at her terminology. "Please don't put it that way Nakamori-san. I don't know why she did it." He paused and carried on. "You're taking this quite well. Better than Kuroba anyway. You're very calm." Her coolness at being told that she wouldn't be able to go back to her normal was alarming, but she had been probably taught by Kid how to keep up a poker face.
Aoko shrugged casually determined not to show her real emotions until she was alone. "I was angry at first, but then I remembered that you and Sher-I mean Haibara-san have dealt with it. Besides the Black Organisation aren't looking for a seven year old so Vermouth had helped."
She smiled optimistically looking like any other normal seven year old when they were presented with sweets. Conan felt a pang of guilt inside. She looked so much like Ran. He didn't want to burst her happy bubble and tell her that she would have to lie to everyone she knew for the rest of her life or until an antidote was found which could be never. He didn't like to mention that her boyfriend didn't want to see her either and had instructed them to keep her away for now because he blamed himself.
"Where is Kaito?" Aoko asked the very question that he had been dreading whilst looking around the empty front room. "And Hakuba?"
"I'm over here." Hakuba's voice came from the doorway. He walked over and sat down next to Aoko determined to make up for her boyfriend's boorish behaviour.
"Are you feeling all right?" He kissed her hand daintily like a perfect gentleman. "I like your pyjamas. Hmm, pink bunny rabbits. I didn't expect Haibara-san to own anything like that."
Aoko snatched her hand away as politely as possible. "She said someone called Ayumi gave them to her as a present and she never wore them. Where's Kaito?"
Conan and Hakuba exchanged significant looks and tried to think of way to make light of Kaito's current black mood. They had spent the previous night trying to make him feel better, but he kept shrugging them off.
"He's busy outside feeding his doves and doesn't want to be interrupted in case they get scared," Hakuba hastily improvised feeling like criminal that should be arrested.
In fact Kaito was sulking in the bathroom sitting on the toilet seat. His dark mood was self inflicted. He blamed himself for the attack on Aoko that could have killed her. If he wasn't so hot headed Tantei-kun wouldn't have felt there was a need to tranquillise him and he would have been there with Aoko and she wouldn't have been attacked.
He was trying to avoid Tantei-kun and Hakuba as much as possible. Their sympathetic pats on the shoulder made everything worse as it constantly reminded him. They also kept telling him that it was not his fault, but those words only made it more painful for him as words like that always sounded unbearably false. He had only gotten a few hours of sleep that night due to the guilt he felt and in his mind he kept playing the scene when he found Aoko over and over.
A knock at the bathroom door caused him to almost jump out of his skin. His body stiffened at the person's voice. It was Aoko, the very person he didn't want to see right now.
"Hello? Is anyone in here?"
Kaito felt like crying again. Her voice was the exact same as when they had first met at that clock tower and he had presented her with a rose for the first time. He remembered it very well as that was when he had fallen in love with her. It was his luck that she happened to be the daughter of the policeman that was trying to hunt him down.
Not wanting to face or talk to her he hastily scanned the bathroom analytically for a sensible hiding place. The only one available was the bath. He dived in and drew the plastic shower curtain across just as Aoko opened the door. Kaito leaned back from the edge as far as he could so she wouldn't be able to see his silhouette.
He held his breath listening carefully. He couldn't hear the toilet or the tap so he knew something wasn't right. He thought he could hear a noise the sounded like muffled sobs. The noise got louder and he could make out words too.
"It's all my fault. I shouldn't have gone out by myself. What was I thinking?" Aoko sobbed plaintively plopping herself onto the floor.
She blames herself, Kaito thought sadly. She needn't. I brought her into this mess in the first place. If I hadn't confessed to her the Black Organisation wouldn't have tracked her down and kidnapped her and she would be normal and not caught up in this. However something told Kaito that Aoko would be upset if the only way she found out that he had been lying to her about Kaito Kid was when she saw his dead body.
"I'm a midget now and Kaito is avoiding me because he doesn't love me anymore," Aoko continued and he could also hear her hit the sink. "I can't even hit anything properly or hold a mop. Damn. It's my fault so I should stop complaining."
Kaito whipped back the shower curtain furiously nearly giving Aoko a heart attack. After getting over the fright she looked him deliberately in the eye ready to face him.
"You don't love me anymore, do you?" she said calmly. "I'm the wrong age."
That was the last thing that Kaito had been expecting to hear. It looked like Aoko still possessed the ability to surprise him and do the unexpected. That was one of the things that he loved about her. He leapt over the side of the bathtub and grabbed her by the shoulders.
"Where on earth did you get that idea from? I would still love you if you were an 80 year old with wrinkles. Appearances don't matter."
Just to prove his point he bent down and kissed her on the lips like he normally did. Aoko blushed just like normal
"See," Kaito said, pleased that he had proved to her that he still loved her and wasn't rejecting her just because her appearance had changed.
"But you can't do that it public for the obvious reasons," Aoko reprimanded sounding like her usual self again.
Kaito took her hand. "It doesn't matter. Come on, let's go get breakfast. I'll make your favourite; pancakes."