Detective Conan Fanfiction
Kiss of Death
Part 28
Chapter 27
"Massacre"
A/N: I'm back! I've got great news! Here's a 7-chapter update as promised. I've noticed a few flaws and slips in the previous chapters. I'll only edit this once I'm finished with the story.
Reply to Anonymous: Thank you for the encouragement! Here's the update as planned.
Rated M especially for this chapter due to graphic violence.
Vermouth stepped out of her violet car.
Oh, how she hated the Boss's orders. She should have known. Yet, she owed him her life.
A worried frown creased across her face.
A young girl in an adorable dress with her hair tied up into two low pigtails followed behind her. Contradictory to Vermouth's concerned look, this girl was rather excited. She was twirling her pink hair, but the roots of the hair strands indicated that it was originally platinum blonde, but dyed it in velvety pink.
"Vinsanto, behave yourself,and we're supposed to only kidnap James Black, but you went too far and killed him" Vermouth reminded the girl, whose codename is "Vinsanto", sternly.
Besides Williamine, Vinsanto was the other student from Moriarty Academy to actually earn a code name for herself, based on her skills. At a tender age of 15, she was known for her acrobatic agility and ruthless killing methods. Her obsessive dedication towards the Boss made her loyalty unquestionable. Many speculated her to be the current Boss's favourite, much to Vermouth's chagrin.
"I'm just so glad that Boss-sama entrusted me with this mission!" she squealed, hugging the Parian doll that the Boss gave her as a present. The older woman rolled her eyes.
"Vermouth-san... Do you wanna know what's the special ingredient on the gas that we're gonna release?" she asked, teasingly.
"Apotoxin 4869, a much, much stronger form," Vermouth answered tersely.
"No silly, I meant the secret ingredient! But I won't tell you! A secret makes a woman, woman," she chuckled in an immature manner. Vermouth glared when the girl used her own words against hers.
"You're not a woman. Just a little girl," Vermouth retorted, "if you're not going to tell me, then so be it. It doesn't matter what happens to them."
"Oh really?" the girl teased, "are you really sure you won't care? You might regret it." She started twirling her rosey-pink hair.
Because of the rising number of deaths and the rising threat of the Black Organisation, the FBI, CIA and the National Police Agency agreed to hold a meeting. Almost all the agents that were investigating this case were to be present at the National Police Agency's headquarters.
Vermouth was currently disguised as James Black. Hours ago, they had attempted to abduct him, but during their assault, Vinsanto had struck a knife on his neck when he tried to escape. It did not take too long for the aged man to die of blood loss minutes after the cut. They had his body up in the the trunk of the violet caVinsanto posed as James's granddaughter. Together, they walked up to the building, spotting Akai Shuichi nearby.
"Agent James Black," Akai greeted, then eyeing on Vinsanto.
"My granddaughter," Vermouth nodded.
Calm-headed expression on his face, mesmerizing iridescent eyes like Boss-sama's, dark long eyelashes...This man is known for being a potential silver bullet -Vinsanto thought.
Akai eyed on Vinsanto intensely but the girl simply gave him a sweet smile.
I want to add his head to my collection - she said.
All 3 of them headed to the meeting room, but Vinsanto, playing the role of a young innocent girl, was asked to wait outside the room. Vermouth and Akai entered the room. It was packed with agents from all 3 agencies, they were all clad in formal attire and were seated like a massive lecture in law school. The seats were arranged in a semi-circle, each separated in an ample spaces. They were made of fine wood, like those in a court room. The front showed a stage and the chief agent from the National Police Agency was standing there.
Noticing the arrival of all agents, he cleared his throat to speak, "normally, we would work independently. But due to the large threat of this syndicate, we had agreed to join forces. 5 years ago, we had all thought the Black Organisation had been obliterated and its Anakota was found dead. Yet, now it's back and reliable sources has said that the current Boss is a new one. And there are evidences that has shown that the current Boss had killed the former."
A negatively-toned murmur erupted the room.
"Now settle down, all of you!" he yelled.
The murmur died in hushes and more clearing of throats echoed.
"What's more, in a recent investigation, we had received information that the Moriarty Academy is guilty of raising children to be perfect killing criminal machines-"
The murmur returned, even louder this time.
"Silence," he said, in a booming voice, "we tried to travel there to investigate the campus of the school, but the agents that we sent there found a school with no one. And when they had arrived, none of them came back. For multiple bombs were set-up in every corner of that school, trapping them inside and killing them. The investigation was rendered fruitless and some of us even concluded that it was a trap, set by the syndicate. They knew that our next step was to look into the school and they took advantage of us."
The atmosphere roared. Some agents were concerned, while the others were visibly fuming.
Vermouth found herself smirking.
That's not the only trap that we had laid.
"The only witness we had, whose name is Amora, was murdered by them. Along with Tokyo Metropolitan inspector Megure, as well as two teen-aged schoolboys named "Kojima Genta" and "Cedric Dolores". Little is known why the boys were killed, but their deaths show the brutality and lack of restrictions this syndicate is making-"
I think I've heard enough. Vinsanto should be done with her set-up.
Vermouth stood up to leave. Akai's head perked up.
"James Black?" Akai said questioningly.
"I'm just going to the washroom. Do fill me in with the details," Vermouth headed towards the door. Akai watched her leave.
It's strange for James Black to miss something so important, unless... -Akai pondered.
He sneaked out, planning to follow the disguised woman.
That was quick. Where'd he go?
Akai quickly weighed the options on the path that he should take. He quickly took a peek inside the gents.
There was no one there.
A flash of the seats outside the meeting room suddenly interrupted his thoughts. The seats were missing. Where did the young girl run off to? His thick brows furrowed, trying to find a solution to this.
Then, from the corner of his left eye, he caught a glimpse of an all-familiar figure. From the adjacent building, he saw a beautiful woman with platinum blonde hair exiting via the stairway. He spotted a mask resembling James Black's face on her hand. His heart made a leap to his throat.
Vermouth-!
Akai was ready to run to where the woman was, but the boom of piercing screams and firing of guns halted him.
They were all coming from the meeting room.
Akai rushed to the scene, attempting to open the door. But it was futile.
The doors seemed shut tight. Cloudy white smoke appeared from the gaps of the door, and Akai's instinct was alarming him to avoid it.
"What's going on?" a woman, who seemed to be working at the reception counter appeared.
"Don't-!" Akai yelled, but it was too late. The woman had inhaled a fair amount of the white fume. She sunk to her knees, her body convulsing into a seizure. To his horror, the woman's body was seemed to be shrinking. Seconds later, the woman had been reduced to a body of a 5-year old girl.
He moved towards the shrunken woman, mindful of not inhaling the gas. He took off his jacket and enveloped it around her. He carried her petite figure, dashing towards the staircase and descending towards the first floor.
He had to warn the rest of the people working in this building of the harmful effects of the gas.
He went to the reception desk, all flustered. The others were equally alarmed and confused, due to the continued sounds of the firing of guns and screams that were breaking through the building.
"Activate the alarm system! Get everyone out and do not go near the Grand Meeting Room!" he yelled. Although still puzzled, the other workers merely nodded and obeyed his orders. The alarms blared, along with the announcement to evacuate. Soon enough, a crowd rushed towards the exit. The other agents, knowing that they were adeptly trained, headed towards the Grand Meeting Room instead. Akai attempted to stop them, but his words fell on dead ears.
He noticed the shrunken woman in his arms stirring awake.
"Are you alright?" Akai questioned, but he held back. He saw that the shrunken woman's eyes shot open, but they looked absolutely crazed.
It frightened him.
She let out an ear-splitting scream, before using her tiny fists to hack away from his arms. Her sudden aggression towards him rendered him helpless. He was too stunned to even register what was occurring. She was just attacking him, with no reason at all - as if some evil demon had possessed her.
She clung onto his neck, hitting him as hard as she could. Akai did not know if he should fight back, whether to toss her small body to the ground.
She was in a body of a very small child, for fuck's sake. How could he possibly retaliate?
The assault on his head and reluctance to retaliate caused him to stumble backwards, tripping over a chair. The shrunken woman sat on top of him, her long nails digging onto his neck. Her hands were tiny, but the amount of force was enough to squeeze his windpipe.
This woman, shrunk to a size of a child, was attempting to murder him.
He choked on air, fumbling for a gun. He didn't like the idea of violence against a child-sized adult, but his life was at stake. Finally grabbing hold of his gun, he used it to smack it against her forehead, causing her to flung to the ground, unconscious. He then took off his belt, using it to restrain her small limbs, in case she wakes up again.
He reached outside, watching the chaos and confusion unfold before him. There were ambulances and police cars on standby, ready to take action. Yet, they were unable to get hold of the situation.
"Someone! Someone show me a footage and update me what the heck is going on!" a police member shouted, in the midst of the screaming crowd. Akai approached him.
"I saw part of it. They had the Grand Meeting Room that was filled with agents sealed and bombed it with a gas. The gas apparently shrinks an adult into a toddler like this," Akai explained frantically, holding up the shrunken lady in his arms, "what's worse is that the gas may have contained some kind of drug that induces insanity and hallucinations, thus causing the inhaler to go berserk and attack anyone aggressively."
"Do you know who might have done this?" the man asked, trying to remain calm despite Akai's shocking revelation.
Akai searched for a suspicious vehicle. "I know who might have done it, but I am not sure if they have escaped," he said hurriedly, "please take this affected woman. She might be a good clue to this case. I'll try to tail the culprit."
He spotted a violet car, dashing off. His gut told him to follow it.
Akai quickly got onto his car and left the scene, careful not to be too obvious in tailing the violet vehicle.
"Hey Vermouth, don't you think Boss-sama is really smart?" Vinsanto piped up cheerfully, rubbing the doll that the Boss gave her in a gentle manner.
Vermouth ignored the girl, focused on driving.
Yet, Vermouth could not concentrate at all. Her hands were shaking nervously. Something horrible had transpired in the National Police Agency headquarters, far more terrifying than she had anticipated.
"I think he's really amazing!" Vinsanto continued rambling on, "he intentionally staged the conditions to get Amora and Phoebe caught, in order to reveal the truth about Moriarty Academy and give them a sense of false victory-"
Silence from Vermouth.
"-And then, once they thought they were a step closer to the truth, he crushed their hopes! He had anticipated that they would raid the Moriarty Academy, so he used the former campus to lure them in and trap them with bombs. He also staged a few deaths to shake up some agents, especially the boy with the glasses, to throw him off guard-"
Still silence.
"-Then because of the deaths, the three law enforcement agencies came all under one roof. Boss-sama knew that this would happen too, he purposely planned all those traps and deaths so that they would resort into meeting one another. And like a tactician he is, he used their move as an advantaged and killed them in one go!-"
"-it's like some sort of domino effect that he created!" she laughed, clapping like a happy seal.
Click.
Vermouth pointed a gun at Vinsanto's head, while her other hand was on the steering wheel. Her eyes never left the road.
"Besides the enhanced Apotoxin 4869, what else was in that damn gas?!" she exclaimed, threatening the girl beside her.
"Oh?" Vinsanto replied nonchalantly, "I thought you said you didn't care what would happen to them."
"Don't. Fuck. With. Me."
"Alright, I'll tell you," the girl pouted, attempting to use her adorable charm, "there's a drug where you have strong hallucinations of scary monsters that are attempting to kill you. It's also added with another drug that contains adrenaline and substances that induces high aggression, so the victims' natural reaction would be to murder the surrounding individuals. So imagine that combined with the enhanced Apotoxin 4869, with a bunch of people in a sealed room."
Vermouth's face paled.
What on Earth have I done?
This was the first time, in so many years, that she felt incredibly remorseful. Her mind was in a blank state.
"Oh, and as Boss-sama requested, I placed a camera inside the room, so that he and I, and anyone else in the organisation, can watch what happened inside! See?" the girl talked excitedly. She sounded like a squirming schoolgirl that had recently seen her celebrity crush's concert, but Vermouth knew this was not the case.
The girl was bat-shit crazy.
Vinsanto took out a tablet and played the video. The video showed the emerging of the gas. Soon enough, many agents were coughing and were heading towards the exit door, panicking when they had realized that they were locked in. They were banging their fists on the wall, crying for assistance.
Screams followed, with someone lamenting that they felt as if their bones were melting. The cloudy white gas started to fog, obscuring the scene from the camera lenses. Every individual in the room eventually dropped to the ground like mosquitoes dying from a terrible anti-bug spray by the exterminator.
Then, there was silence.
Child-like occasional sniffs followed, small figures in over-sized clothes started to rise. They wailed, gave a cry and shout at the sight of one another. In a flash, there were in a murder frenzy.
Gunshots were fired. A few of the "toddlers" dropped to the floor, most likely dead. Blood splattered on the walls like vandalism in the nursery room.
The ones unarmed charged towards another, beating and slapping the fellow child.
More screams broke through the speakers.
And the sound of chainsaws.
Wait, chainsaws?
Vermouth looked alarmed. "I thought I could make it more interesting by leaving a few weapons in the room," Vinsanto chuckled.
That's when Vermouth saw something that she had regretted. A shrunken adult, looking like a small boy, with a small chainsaw in his tiny hands. He ran towards another crazed small girl, hacking her in the stomach and dismembered her. Soon, other tiny limbs were flying across the room, while the walls and furniture were getting painted with scarlet colour. Other "toddlers" were getting slashed by knives and fragile bones were being crushed by hammers.
By the end of the fiasco, the video showed a mountain of the cadavers, bloodied bodies of children of about age 5. Most of the bodies were ripped apart or clobbered. Their skins wore colours of purple, red and black, there were even a few heads that were popped like a confetti and its contents spilled like the pink frosting of cakes.
The last survivor stood on top of the corpses, in tears. He was hugging a dismembered torso of another, as if it was his teddy bear, trying to seek comfort from his nightmares. Sensing that the torso carried no warmth any longer, he dropped it. With the last war cry, he put a gun to his temple and left a hole in his skull. His body rolled over like a rock on a landslide.
Vermouth was too appalled to even move her tongue. Even for a criminal syndicate member like her, this was too much. She had always disliked the idea of killing children. Which was why she spared Jodie when she was still just a child, on the day Vermouth had to assassinate Jodie's father.
"I never wanted this," Vermouth said out in pure spite, gritting her teeth.
Tears threatened to fall out of her eyes.
"Oh? Are you regretting it now? Didn't I warn you?" Vinsanto taunted, enjoying Vermouth's despair.
Vermouth deepened the gun on the girl's temple. She hissed vehemently, "Don't try to play with me! I can end your life right here and now!"
"I wonder if you would really do that?" the girl feigned curiosity, twirling her pink hair, "I might be dead but maybe your daughter's hair would be a good decoration in my coffin? She's currently somewhere in Tokyo, with a happy married life, am I right? You honestly think I didn't know about your enstranged daughter? What a tragedy, knowing that your daughter doesn't want to be associated with you."
Vermouth was takenaback.
"Don't you dare touch her or her family! Do you understand?" Vermouth screamed.
"No worries. I'm not that interested in her," she replied, "it's just that the others and I made a pact that should you betray us, your daughter will suffer the consequences. I'm pretty sure you've made a lot of enemies in the syndicate to do that simple task."
Vermouth was speechless. No witty replies, nothing. Defeated, she lowered her gun and continued driving.
"Now, putting that aside, let's target a prey that you're more interested in - Hidemi Hondou, a CIA agent. A former mole in the Black Organisation, known as "Kir". I'm sure you'd like to have a traitor's blood shed," the pink-haired girl chuckled, her eyes glistening with bloodlust.
Perhaps it will not be an unpleasant mission this time - Vermouth thought.
But then, she spotted something.
Hidemi Hondou was riding a car with Ran Mouri.
No!
Angel!
Vermouth chewed her lip anxiously, knowing that she never wanted to hurt Ran.
No, not her. Anyone but her!
Ever since Ran saved her in New York years ago, despite attempting to murder Ran, Vermouth never wanted anything bad to happen to the younger woman.
Yet, Ran might be in danger now. Because of Vermouth.
If Hidemi Hondou was their target and Ran happens to be with her at this moment, there was a very high chance that Ran would get involved as well. Taking Vinsanto's threat against her daughter and the girl's ruthless nature, Vermouth found herself in a sticky situation.
This mission will definitely be an unpleasant one, after all.
A/N: Imagine Vinsanto looking like Gasai Yuno from Mirai Nikki and it'll be easier.