A Fortune's Fool

Written By: Lady Lunar Phoenix

Beta:

A/N: This concludes the first day since Naoto's official kidnapping!

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It starts with a sore throat, the pain spreads like a drop of ink, or blood from the source. It cuts off air and drags at a person to wake up. The pain tells the person they need to wake up and move to unblock the passage of air. So the person does, sluggishly opening their eyes to a dusty rug that probably hasn't been cleaned in a few years. There's a throbbing pain in the corner of the mouth, that makes opening it difficult for anything. The body is numb, sore from the restraints placed upon it by a seemingly stronger power. Where the head had been hanging a small splotch stained the dusty rug. Another rested close by where a silent pair of lips dripped them out like the tears of a wounded angel.

The room was pink in color, an ungodly amount of pink. It was that pink that people put in their daughter's bedrooms to reinforce those soft, frilly notions in their heads. The door was a newly painted shade of pink that was similar to the walls around it. The doorways had been altered to be as flat as the walls around them. Making it hard to tell wall from door, escape from desperate scrambling at said wall in a haze of pain. The room was barren of anything else though, save a lone forlorn curtain hanging over the window, shutting out the sunlight and world beyond.

Shutting out hope.

But the spirit was still defiant.

When Naoto first awoke, she had been locked up in a trunk so small that her knees were touching her nose. If only she hadn't been a girl, she would have inherited more of her father's side of the family in height and weight class. Then she wouldn't have turned into a tipsy airhead in less time then it took to boil water. Which would have meant she would have woken up at her regular time and not have been so easily kidnapped.

A jolt in the vehicle she had been traveling in made her head hit the wall causing her to wince in pain as she laid there. Tape over her mouth, a blindfold over her eyes, a box so small and air so slight that it was sent her slowly back under the deeper darkness.

Why was she doing this?

Well the answer was pretty simple, a born detective, she had a very short list that answered 'why'. Why she allowed herself to be tied up and had pictures of her taken, or made to look helpless, everything she hated, despised she gave into. A part of her feared that she would make herself appear so weak that Souji wouldn't like it. But then the others said that while she may have been fixated on 'being a man', based on the concepts of strength and respect. She lacked an understanding of the other aspects.

"Souji will figure out eventually that this isn't a serious kidnapping Naoto-chan. And it's a total turn on to a guy. By the time he figures out what's going on, he's going to be in a more protective mood. It's a game that we can play with him, and the reward will be a nice romantic evening at Yukiko's inn. It's totally a win-win situation!" Chie had repeated that statement almost by verbatim since the idea came up.

It had been unspeakably bizarre to sit in her apartment and write up what would be needed to create a kidnapping. Knowing that she had been writing her 'own' kidnapping as she did so. The older girls told her to just write the information they needed. They would work on the plot and story behind it. While the girls admitted to not being a writer of any sort, Rise had a writer who had been a bit bored and was willing to help concoct a storyline.

"You make for a rather attractive young man, but that is just clothes, make up and how you carry yourself. But you are attempting to woo a young man, which doesn't work exactly well with how you carry yourself." The maid commented as Naoto sat next to a small, but lovely, pond that rested near the Inn.

"I am not wooing him. We're already dating." She replied, her voice low when she got a soft scolding tut sound from the woman.

"Wrong 'I'." The maid corrected gently as she knelt down to sit by the detective. "Why are you going for such a thing then?" She asked her head tilted to the side, attentive and curious.

"That is rather personal." Naoto replied in a formal polite tone, the woman may have meant well, but Naoto didn't want to discuss possible betroths. Not with anyone, even Souji himself, which was what made this irrational, belittling stunt the more aggravating yet necessary. Her fingers curled more tightly around the pad of paper and pen she had been writing with. She had written the basics of a kidnapping, how it was carried out normally, the type that would be used in a hostage situation. Even shown Chie how to tie a person up in ways that would allow for limited movement for an assailant to show their control.

But Souji wasn't going to be allowed to use police resources, so she had to take into account mistakes and errors in judgment. A clumsy kidnapper who only wished to show off his prize, it would have to be something Souji could handle. So the pictures had to have clues in them, signs that would point to where Naoto was. She had worked up the original list, then went over it and over it. Taking off things and putting in notes to explain how this or that could be used.

"Forgive me, but I, well we ladies 'are' a touch curious." The lady explained her voice still patient, still gentle. "It is just that you seem to be a falcon trying to be a swan." The woman wore a lovely kimono, aesthetically appealing to the eye in soft shades of cherry blossom pink with cranes standing or taking flight on it. Her hair was up in the traditional manner, everything about her screamed of what Naoto had run so far from.

"A-A falcon trying to be a swan?" What did that mean? She wasn't all that into animals to start with, though she knew about insects and other things that could appear during the decomposition of a corpse.

"Falcons mate for life, as do swans, but in hiding your gender you act more like a falcon, small and dangerous. But you are trying to shed that image for this plan you and the others have going on, as though you wish to be a swan." The woman elaborated gently as she turned her gaze out towards the pond. Across the way a dragonfly dipped down and landed on a reed piercing the water a typical image of a serene setting.

"I, I wouldn't consider Souji-senpai as a falcon," she began softly her eyes lowering to the ground closer to her. Swans were lovely to look at, she still could recall that time in America. When her grandfather had taken her to see his friend. They had spent the day at the man's home, also by a lake, one blessed to have swans. "Yukiko-senpai exudes more swan like qualities then I." She remarked, her voice growing thoughtful.

"Well yes, Souji-kun is very much like a swan himself. From what we've been told he's very kind and laid back, much like a swan himself. But he is strong and protective of his friends and loved ones I've been told." The bird lady, and with all this talk on birds why not such a title, replied. But how did she know of Senpai's qualities? "Swans are like that, they're beautiful and graceful. But they protect what is theirs fiercely." The maid explained softly her gaze fixed on Naoto.

But the words puzzled Naoto, and not in a good way as she could pick up that there was a meaning to those words. "How do you know so much about Senpai?" She asked quietly her voice calm, but she was thinking the whole time, trying to figure out what the woman was getting at. Deciphering the angle.

"Oh Yukiko-chan had a big crush on Souji-kun, he was the first boy she talked so much about." The tone had shifted from being completely gentle to an, intentional but subtle, slap to the face that got itself a response out of Naoto.

The girl froze staring at the woman with her eyes wide in shock as it clicked, why she was being described as 'dangerous' and liken to a predator. "I-I... I-I didn't know... I had no idea..." She went back into her masculine tones and words before facing the pond instead. Maids talked, servants talked all of them would have known about Yukiko-senpai's feelings for Senpai. So that must have meant that they now all knew who took Yukiko-senpai's first love from her.

"Oh we figure that, the way she described things told us before she recognized it herself, that he didn't care for her in the same way." The Bird Lady admitted rather candid in her tone.

Leaving Naoto with two options, face the woman's defensiveness about Yukiko-senpai's unrequited feelings for Souji, or run home crying like a girl. While running sounded like a terribly good idea at the moment. After all, while she could fathom the idea of girls being interested in him. It never occurred to her that maybe someone she knew would as well. Later, when she was safe within the walls of her apartment, she would give in to her pain at inadvertently hurting a friend. But for now, she wasn't going to back down, just as she didn't from the men in the station. She righted herself fully to attention staring at the woman, daring her to challenge the Detective Prince.

"While I do apologize for the pain of not winning Souji-senpai's heart may have caused. He has chosen me as I have chosen him. I will 'not' surrender that which is mine by right."

Her limbs were starting to fall asleep, forcing her to pay attention to the world around her again. She couldn't stay on her knees forever after all, she stood up as far as she could and began pulling back. She had to try to work the nail holding her to the wall loose, but to do so constricted the modified prong collar she wore. She pulled between breathes, for as long as she could before she began to see stars. She over extended herself the last time, blacked out in pain and lack of air . Been left dangling from the collar, the prongs digging into her throat as she hung there.

'I have to get out of here on my own. I don't know how long it will be before they tell Senpai that I've been abducted. He'll worry, and I don't want him to get hurt over something like this.' She thought.

The shrine at the top of the hill, Souji had mentioned that the Fox that accompanied them into the other world was from there. A shrine that had no human to look after it properly would be a good place to hide the Knife. So she turned her steps towards the lonely shrine, walking up the hill her mind more focused on getting the Knife back. The shrine certainly did look lonely, no wonder the fox was making Souji run so many odd jobs in an attempt to bring people to it. Though what exactly was the fox? It was far too intelligent to be just a wild creature.

She saw someone in the distance standing before the shrine, tall, graying hair neatly kept, a black suit. She ran forward, but when the man turned to face her she could only stare for a moment. Yakushiji, was the Phantom Thief? But he wasn't supposed to be home, oh wait. He wasn't, he was here hiding the tools she made as a child. She had a sudden childish urge to yell at her grandpa for putting her through this. Distracting her from her reason for being in Inaba in the first place with a childish game.

"You're..." Yakushiji pulled out a small item that she knew already. Her knife, one of the other tools she had made. Older now, she couldn't help but wonder what convinced her that it made sense to hold a knife to one's ear.

Only her vision was suddenly blocked by Souji-senpai's body as he got between them.

"Naoto stay back." He ordered in a tone he normally reserved for in the Other World. But what was wrong?

"Senpai..." What was he doing? She had her gun, he didn't even have his sword with him and couldn't summon outside of the Other World. He'd get hurt if this had been a real threat! Would he attack Yakushiji-san? Oh how would she explain 'that' to her grandpa? "Th-There's no reason for alarm! That knife is a toy!"

"A-a toy?" He sounded confused, but he fell back a step, even as beyond him Yakushiji-san ran off. The sound of the toy dropping to the stone laid path letting her know the item had been recovered. She was relieved that violence didn't break out, Yakushiji was a good man having served the family faithfully for years.

She walked around Souji, reclaiming the knife. Why was she shaking though? "This knife... I knew it. It's another of the seven tools I made... This is a knife-shaped radio. As I said it's just a toy." She remembered how she made it when she was a child, dismantling preexisting items to create her tools. But if it hadn't been Yakushiji and the knife had been real?

In a burst of the anger, anger that she didn't know where it's focus was from, she tore her hat off her head and found herself shouting at Senpai. "But... Even so, what you did... What if the Knife had been real!? You would've been in grave danger!" She must have looked like a child, like everyone scoffed her as being. Standing there shouting at him, while gripping the bill of her cap before she put it back on her head. What if the knife had been real? What would they do? What would she do? Out of everyone in the group, it was only Souji-senpai that she really could talk to. He was her Senpai, in a way her teacher like Teddie called him.

Oh Kanji-kun tried to talk to her, often in fact. But she couldn't fathom what he was trying to convey half the time. Or rather she couldn't explain things in a way he could. It was rather disheartening sometimes, because Kanji-kun spoke with a rather earthy street style wisdom that she found informative and interesting. But she could tell her scientific perceptions and speech often left him confused and her on the border of frustration.

But Souji-senpai understood her perfectly, leaving her not having to try to figure out a way to explain a statement or idea. Through him she was learning how to relax, accepting companionship and friendship among peers closer to her age. She didn't try to break her back getting the grown ups attention about the murder case. Working with a group, something she never had done before, was helping broaden her horizons. Even Dojima-san allowed her to aid him as he continued to study the murder case. Restoring her access to information about the murders.

"Rrrgh... you're always like that! I can't imagine becoming a woman only to have a man protect me!" It was a sign of weakness after all, a woman who needed a man couldn't get as close to information as she needed. She'd be considered ,too, 'fragile' ,too, 'soft' to face murder scenes or dangerous locations. "And yet... you always..."

She couldn't stop shaking, Senpai was important to all of them! If not for them she would never had made it this far. The cops had no access to the Other World and assumed her absence that of a child hiding after being chastised. She would have died without him and the others! Besides, he said he liked her as a girl. The leader that everyone in the group looked up to preferred her inferior gender assignment? If she were a boy she would be so much more useful to the group, she'd be stronger able to endure more pain. "Why?!"

He smiled, been smiling since she started yelling at him, that peaceful serene smile he often had. "Because I love you."

She had felt like he had sucker punched her. The world seemed to stop moving as she tried to process the improbable. Her? Someone in love with her? The Detective Prince who dressed as a boy to hide her female body? The person who couldn't look at her self in a full length mirror because of all the signs of her weakness? Not only loved, but loved by the very Leader she looked up to?

Her struggles had finally yanked the nail that kept her bound to the wall. It gave way to half an inch before slamming into an electrical trap set into the wall. Before she had a chance to realize what was happening, enough electricity to match the Ziodyne spell slammed into her. It ripped it's way up the prong collar around her throat and throttled her senses sending her screaming. Her body felt as though it was on fire, as instinct overrode training and she pulled even harder against the source of the pain.

The prongs tightened around her throat, cutting off her desperate need of air. Sharp was the agony of the current being ran though her body overwhelming her. The nail finally was jerked free as the world began to fade into black around Naoto, only the sharp vivid sparks dancing on her chain pierced it before fading out.

Beyond her, the door opened slowly while a person, dressed from head to toe in black stepped into the room. Burn marks were starting to form around her throat, the slightest trails of blood trickling down, dampening her shirt collar. The stranger, the kidnapper held a camera and after stalking around the young, what he thought was a, man for a bit he began taking a few pictures.