A/N: This is so late and I am so tired.
A little bit of an announcement this week: the next update will be the week after next, instead of next week. I've pretty much exhausted my chapter backlog, and long experience has taught me that is a bad thing to have done, even when I didn't just have a sudden change in schedule or when I haven't been having health issues. So, I'm taking a week to get at least a chapter ahead of posting, preferably more, so that there aren't any unplanned update-less weeks. This should also give me some time to polish the upcoming arc as much as I can. I hope you all will be patient with me.
That said, I still have a lot of scenes pre-written, and I have a full outline for this thing's trajectory. The fate of the story is not in question; I just need time to connect and finish out some scenes and get a bit further ahead.
If you are a person who finds the warnings useful, this chapter is one in which they are particularly strong. They're still at the end, though.
Chapter 20
It was a clear, cloudless day, but even so, the air outside of Koizumi Akako's house smelled slightly of copper and tingled against Kaito's skin with the promise of lightning he knew couldn't be coming. It gave Kaito a bad feeling. But he had to do this, so he continued up the old mansion's front walk, Poker Face firmly in place as if it were a heist rather than a meeting with a classmate waiting for him at his destination.
The door swung open the moment his shoe touched the front step. Akako stood in the doorway, dressed in something frilly, black, and strategically low-cut, her hair floating out around her in a way that couldn't quite be explained by her movement or the breeze.
She stared at him for a few seconds, expression unreadable, then huffed out an annoyed sigh. "This is about Hakuba-san, isn't it?" she asked.
Kaito nodded. "That spell that you told me about...can you do it again?" he asked hesitantly. "Find him again?"
Akako pursed her lips. "I will need something of yours to do it."
Kaito hesitated. It wasn't like he didn't know anything about how this sort of thing worked. He'd read fantasy manga and novels, and he could guess at the mechanics of what Akako was doing. Sure, she could find Hakuba with something of his—and she could probably also do a lot of other things, both to Hakuba and to Kaito.
But Hakuba's life was at stake here, and he was far enough away to be relatively safe from Akako. And Kaito could deal with whatever she decided to do when it happened, as long as he came back safe. Sure, he still needed better self-preservation instincts, but...those could wait until everyone he cared about was home safe. Besides, Shinichi and the others were overreacting about the danger to Kaito, anyway.
"Whatever you need," he said, pulling a card out of the well-worn deck in his pocket and offering it to her.
Akako's expression darkened, and Kaito would have sworn he felt a prickle of electricity across his skin. "Don't be so careless, you fool of a magician!" Akako spat, practically tearing the card out of Kaito's hand.
Kaito blinked.
"I know you," Akako continued, tone acidic. "You were thinking things like 'Hakuba is in trouble' and 'Whatever she does, I'll deal with it' and decided it was worth the risk to you to give me something. Something like this!" She gestured wildly with the card, practically shoving it into Kaito's face. "Even though I've tried to kill you before. I told you before, I intend to have your heart, and for that to happen, it needs to remain beating!"
"Koizumi-san?" Kaito asked, confused.
"You believe me not to be trustworthy," Akako said.
Kaito started to voice a protest, but Akako held up a hand.
"Don't argue," she said. "It's the truth. I've been dangerous to you in the past and you don't believe I won't be again. This isn't a sign of trust. It's you deciding that your own safety is an acceptable risk in your search for Hakuba. And I can't condone that."
"And, another thing—witchcraft relies on the law of contagion; the idea that any contact between two entities forms a connection on the metaphysical plane that can be utilized in a spell," Akako said, voice tight with frustration. "So any item you had owned for any length of time would have done. Something you've had a long time—your uniform jacket, perhaps, or your school bag, might have helped my precision. But to give me a card from a deck that I can tell you've had at least five years, and have loved dearly, and used daily, for all that time—"
She broke off, then held up the card, expression stony, and flicked it with her thumb and forefinger.
Kaito felt it like a blow to the stomach, and bent over, gasping.
"Never give a witch you don't trust anything you love," Akako said. "It's the next most powerful emotion to hate, and you seem to hate rarely enough that I believe I can at least go without worrying about that."
Kaito, still clutching his stomach, looked up to see her holding out the card.
"Take this back, give me your jacket, and come inside," she said, just a bit coldly. "Then, perhaps, we can discuss why you are desperate enough to take such risks."
Kaito hesitated—understandably, he thought. She'd just done...something like what she'd done during the Red Tear Heist, when she'd injured him without even laying a finger on him.
Akako sighed. "I was just trying to remind you to be more careful," she said, waving her hand as if to dismiss Kaito's wariness.
Kaito just gave her a weary smile and pushed the faint ache in his stomach under Poker Face right along with all the other lingering muscle aches from the last heist.
"You silly magician," Akako said, somehow managing to give the impression that she was looking down at him when she had no height advantage on him whatsoever. "I'll get you an icepack."
She turned on her heel, gesturing for Kaito to follow. He was too stunned to do otherwise.
Akako's house was…weird. Like a curio shop in a Western movie, filled with shiny elaborate golden objects that Kaito didn't recognize—which was a feat, given who Kaito was and what he did. The carpet was thick and red, the walls were papered with an elaborate vine pattern that Kaito could see magical symbols hidden in, and chandeliers hung with crystals and tipped with real, burning candles lit the rooms and created dancing patterns of light and shadow that changed with every passing moment.
It felt alive, and not particularly friendly.
Akako led him to a large room with a floor that was wood instead of carpet. It wasn't simple paneling, but instead an elaborate yosegi mosaic, and it took Kaito a few seconds to recognize the image.
"Is this a map?" he asked, staring down at the varied shades of gold and brown that made it up and the accompanying brightly-colored monsters painted on each wall—images he now recognized as the beasts of the four directions, from Chinese myths. It looked old enough to be in a museum—it had to have been moved from an older house; there was no way it was original to a Western-style mansion like this.
"One of my ancestors had occasion for a manhunt, once," Akako said. "Normally, I just use this as a dining room, because the floor is easy to clean, but this is for a good cause, so I cleared out all the furniture."
"B-but, this has to be at least 200 years old—"
"Relax, I have a conservation expert visit every so often," Akako said. She giggled. "Imagine, a thief so concerned about artifacts he isn't even planning to steal!" She fixed him with a slightly stern look. "Well, at least, I hope you aren't planning to steal it."
Kaito held up his hands. "Of course not! What would I even do with it?"
Akako's smile turned bemused. "What indeed. You are such a strange thief." She giggled again. "I'll get you that icepack now. Please stay here; I'm afraid the rest of the mansion can be a bit treacherous if you don't know what you're doing."
Kaito swallowed. "I'll stay right here, don't worry."
While he waited for Akako, Kaito looked around the room. The map was old, but mostly accurate—more than Kaito would've expected given its apparent age. It looked a lot like the one famous Tokugawa-era map that Kaito had seen in a few history books, but the details were different and the style of calligraphy used to label the countries made Kaito certain it was older. He suspected witchcraft. But the map did still suffer from the common problems of old maps—the names of countries were different, or spelled differently, or entirely wrong because of changes in the intervening centuries. Still, the positions of the landmasses were more or less right. Also, whoever did all the writing had a really nice hand and Kaito needed to forge it someday, just for fun.
Was forging the handwriting of long-dead witches dangerous? He should probably find out in a way that wasn't trying and hoping for the best; then again, most of what he did nowadays was pretty much 'trying and hoping for the best' and other than getting shot it hadn't been going so badly…
"Here you go," Akako said, jarring him from his thoughts by presenting him with a large icepack with a cloth-like surface. "I hope you at least know how to use this?"
Kaito sighed and pressed it against his stomach. It did help—with the new ache, and the old ones, as well. The one he had at home was not cloth-like or this big, and he kind of wanted to steal this one. But stealing the witch's icepack was definitely a stupid idea.
Akako also had a small quartz crystal dangling from a chain.
"I'm ready to begin if you are," she said. "All you need to do is step out of the room and give me your jacket."
Kaito nodded and moved back to the doorway, then shrugged off his uniform jacket and handed it to her. Akako took it, moved to stand by the wall painted with the red phoenix, and very deliberately pressed the crystal against it. For a split-second, there was a slight red glow around it and the crystal, and Akako's hair rose up as if in the wind. Then the glow faded, Akako's hair fell flat, and Kaito's vision was obscured by his uniform jacket being thrown at his face.
"Oops," Akako said.
"You did that on purpose!" Kaito accused, pulling the jacket off of his head and putting it back on. Grumpily, he sat down crosslegged, icepack still pressed to his stomach, and glared at Akako.
Akako shot him a remorseless grin and held out her right hand. The crystal glowed red again and floated off of her palm, then dropped to about an inch above the floor. From there, it floated along the surface in fits and starts. Kaito was somehow reminded of a GPS icon on a phone, searching for a signal.
Finally, it came to a stop over a small, lopsided mass of golden-brown word, and the red light it was giving off turned from a steady glow to a pulsating light.
Kaito stared at the map. "That's England," he said softly.
"The pulsating means that the magic is fairly certain he's on that specific landmass," Akako said. "It did the same thing for you being in Japan."
"Wait, shouldn't it be showing me in Japan, too?" Kaito asked, confused.
"That's why you're just outside the room," Akako said. "I asked the spell to look for the 'you' who wasn't here."
"So, how accurate is this?" Kaito asked, fascinated.
"This map is old, made using enchantments that modern witches have long forgotten and can't quite match in power and precision, and dozens of my ancestors have used it," Akako said, grinning like Kudou with a culprit in his sights. "Its power is incredible. The only thing it lacks is detail. If it says he's in England, he's in England."
"Okay," Kaito said, feeling something like real hope about finding Hakuba for the first time since Omsk. "Okay. Thank you."
"You're welcome," Akako said, walking across the room to lean down and scoop up the crystal. When she stood back up, she was looking Kaito in the eye. "Bring him home, Kaitou KID. You've stolen so many other things, surely one thief-turned-detective can't be beyond your abilities."
"I'm not stealing him," Kaito said, torn between amusement and affront. "He's a person, and stealing those is called kidnapping, and I do not do that. I'm returning him."
"But you didn't even steal him in the first place," Akako said. "If anyone stole him, he stole himself."
"But he's me," Kaito said, still grinning.
"You're insufferable," Akako said. "Get out of my house." But she was grinning right back.
Kaito thought about stealing the icepack one more time, but in the end, he decided to drop it and run, leaving KID's laugh echoing behind him like an extra "thank-you."
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Heiji settled onto his futon, glancing at the bedroom door one more time to make sure it was closed as he started his call to Tokyo. His dad had woken up a bit during Kudou's unceremonious reveal of Kaito's name and identity and Heiji's reaction to it, and Heiji had needed to sit through a good half-hour lecture about it. No need to do that again.
"Hattori," Shinichi said as the call connected.
"Hey," Hattori replied. "Kuroba-han shown up yet?"
"No, and I'm worried too," Shinichi said with a grimace.
Heiji heard the door on Kudou's end of the line slam open. "England," Kaito announced, loud enough to be heard over the phone.
"So you talked to her," Kudou said. "Hattori is on the phone, but Hondou-san isn't here yet."
"Hi, Tantei-han!" Kaito said cheerily. "And yes, I talked to her. It was...weird, but I don't think I was ever even in real danger. She yelled at me to be more careful, even."
Shinichi got that look on his face that meant he was thinking about the little neechan, which, come to think, this girl sounded like...well, her around when she first showed up and was still more scary than helpful, at least.
"Guess he's goin' home," Heiji said.
"We startled him, I think," Kudou said. "It wasn't our plan that did it, but we did accidentally get a lot closer to him than he ever meant to let us get. He knows England much better than we do; we'll have a hard time tracking him down there, period."
Heiji's phone chimed. "Hang on, Hondou-han's callin' me," he said, accepting the call.
"What did I miss?" Eisuke asked.
"Hakuba's in England," Heiji said. "Call Kuroba-san and Kudou-san too; they're the ones with all the information."
Eisuke nodded.
"What do we do now?" Heiji asked. "England's not as big as, say, Russia or the U.S. were, but it ain't tiny either. We gotta narrow our search area beyond the entire freakin' country."
"I already told Eisuke this, but I don't have contacts outside of Japan and the United States," Kudou said. "The only people I know in England are tennis players and I don't think they'll be very useful in this situation."
"Probably not," Kaito agreed, grinning. "Mom's got a network. But getting her involved, even this much, uh…" He was grimacing, his shoulders inching upward. "Well, I mean, you guys don't know as much about her, and she is still a thief…"
Heiji felt his throat tighten, more and more, with every word, because he recognized that posture and that expression from the first time that Kudou had awkwardly tried to explain that asking his parents for help usually caused more problems than it solved.
Maybe it's just the resemblance, he thought. Except I've never seen Kudou talk about his parents full-sized. It's just the body language that's the same.
"Okay, sure, but yer face looks exactly like Kudou's when we suggest gettin' his parents involved an' I wanna know why," he said aloud.
"She just...sometimes...does things," Kaito said, expression caught between helpless and uncomfortable. "I'm not sure why you're comparing Kudou-san's parents to her; they're law-abiding citizens and all…"
Still looks the same as Kudou does, Heiji thought, swearing a bit mentally. And then, the humor of Kaito's claim hit him.
"Law-abiding," he repeated, incredulous.
"Most of the time, and when they aren't, it's usually for good causes," Kudou said, holding up his hands with a slightly desperate expression on his face. "Let's not get into this now, Hattori."
"It's just that 'she sometimes does things' is an awful familiar description and before she gets mixed up in our case, I'd like to know exactly how near ta your parents' level of crazy we're dealing with here," Heiji said, frowning.
"Kudou-san?" Eisuke asked, confused.
Poor Hondou-han has no idea what he's gettin' himself into, Heiji thought grimly.
"My parents are a little capricious, that's all," Kudou said, with a weak little grin.
"Capricious," Heiji muttered darkly.
"Okay, it's really...she probably won't do anything since she feels bad about everything that's happened so far with Hakuba…" Kaito trailed off. "But if I were to give an example, she basically told me that the Ryoma Heist was necessary out of the blue, and she didn't give me all the information I needed beforehand, either."
"So she's the exact same kind of crazy as Kudou's parents, is what you're saying," Heiji said. Great, jus' great.
"Look, I wouldn't go so far as crazy—" Kaito started.
Oh, no, I am not listenin' ta him try ta explain this away. "She ever done anything really terrible and called it a test?" Heiji asked.
Kaito went a little grey in the face.
"Yeah, I thought so," Heiji said, feeling absolutely exhausted. "At least tell me she didn't take off when you were fourteen?"
"She started touring in Vegas off and on when I was ten, but she'd have me stay with the Nakamoris when she was away," Kaito said, looking embarrassed, of all things. "When I got older she'd just have Inspector Nakamori check in on me and ask him to invite me over for meals every so often."
Hattori swore, because honestly, what else could he do. I knew Kudou attracted pieces o' work but this is ridiculous.
"Where'd you get fourteen from?" Eisuke asked.
"That was how old I was when Mom and Dad decided to travel the world," Kudou said, in that matter-of-fact tone of his. "I asked if I could stay in Japan with Ran instead, and they said I could. So they had Professor Agasa check in on me and everything worked out."
"Fourteen's a little young to have your parents in another country," Eisuke said, frowning.
"Yeah, people keep saying that," Kudou said. "But it's also a little young to have to be in the same country as those two. They're a little too much to deal with, most of the time."
"Yeah, Mom's like that too," Kaito said. "I think she's trying to be better lately. Me getting shot scared her."
"If only everyone's parents reacted so well to near-death experiences," Heiji muttered, not quite able or really willing to stop himself.
"Lay off, Hattori, it's over and they didn't mean...they were trying to help," Kudou said, now looking uncomfortable.
"H*** of a way to try to help," Heiji huffed.
"Hattori-san?" Eisuke ventured.
"Kudou-san doesn't like me telling people about it, because he knows it wasn't okay, even though he will insist until the end of time that it wasn't that bad and they were just being annoying," Hattori practically spat, because he had been pissed off about the fake kidnapping since Kudou told him about it.
"What was this, exactly?" Kaito asked, voice edged.
Seems like we woke up KID's 'protective-of-Tantei-kun' instincts, Heiji thought, with no little satisfaction. Good.
"Their reaction ta findin' out that he'd been shrunk was ta stage a fake kidnapping ta see if he could still take care o' himself like he is," Heiji said darkly. "An' ta scare a little extra caution inta him, not that he needed it. They pretended to be members of Them and used chloroform to knock 'im out after he nearly escaped once."
As usual, Kudou looked only faintly annoyed by the discussion of what Heiji knew had been a pretty traumatic experience at the time. But Kudou's parents hadn't treated it like a big deal—heck, even Agasa had laughed with them at how freaked-out Kudou was—so Kudou had decided that he'd been overreacting when he got upset, and pretty much nothing Heiji could say could convince him otherwise.
"That almost makes what Mom pulled a few months back look tame," Kaito said faintly, sounding a bit stunned. "Real chloroform? On a kid your size?"
"They were careful about how much they used," Shinichi said flatly.
"Holy s***," Kaito said.
"Okay, what did your mom pull a few months back, jus' fer reference?" Heiji asked, dread welling in his stomach.
"You guys promised that you would pretend not to know things about my mom, remember," Kaito said. "And you said you wouldn't arrest her."
Heiji did not like the direction in which this was going. Eisuke looked about as worried as he felt. Shinichi just looked curious, but to be fair, Kaito's mom was getting compared to Shinichi's parents, which meant from Shinichi's perspective, whatever she did couldn't have been that bad.
Heiji probably needed friends besides Kazuha who weren't walking bundles of issues, but talking to people was hard and cases were more interesting.
"Yeah, we did," Eisuke said carefully. "…What does that have to do with this?"
"Look up Kaitou Corbeau," Kaito said. "Ah, 'he' was supposed to show up to one of my heists a few months ago, but Hakuba-san intervened."
One Google search later, Heiji was ready to jump on a train to Tokyo for the sole purpose of screaming at someone until he went hoarse.
"Okay, Kuroba-kun, you know that this is not even in the same neighborhood as okay, right?" he managed aloud.
"Oh my God," Eisuke said in English, sounding a little nauseous. "What the….what was the point of that?"
"It was supposed to be a test," Kaito said darkly. "To make sure I could handle myself as KID. Hakuba yelled at her for it. I yelled at her about it too. Um…actually, we haven't really talked much since I yelled at her about it?"
"That took guts, Kuroba-han," Heiji said.
"Yeah, it kinda did, I guess," Kaito said weakly. "But…I think she's trying to be better now. Because people have been yelling at her. So I think we could tell her Hakuba's in England, and ask her to see if she could figure out where, without things going really wrong."
"I really hate not having other viable options," Kudou said, voice soft and acidic.
"So you won't argue against it?" Kaito asked hopefully.
"I don't want anything to do with this woman, but I don't see any other options presenting themselves," Kudou said.
"You said you wouldn't arrest her," Kaito said, a hint of steel to his tone.
"That I did," Shinichi agreed coldly. "I gave my word, and I will keep it, but you can't make me like it."
"I'm with him," Hattori said firmly.
"She's trying to do better," Kaito said weakly.
"Then let's see it," Eisuke said sharply. "Don't tell her anything about us that she doesn't need to know to find Hakuba. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't trust her with the kind of things we've told you up to this point. For Hidemi-nee and Kudou-san, especially, it could be dangerous."
"Agreed," Shinichi agreed. "Besides, if you can get her to agree to that—to telling us everything when we're telling her nothing—maybe, maybe that would be a start."
"But don't tell her that, either," Hattori said.
"Then what can I tell her?" Kaito asked.
"The one thing she won't wanna hear," Hattori said. "We've got a deadline, now. They're gonna kill Hakuba if we don't find 'im fast, and ta pull that off, we need her help. If that ain't enough for her, the problem ain't with us."
A/N: Warning for an appearance from Akako in the first half and with it, callbacks to the way her actions during the Red Tear heist were framed in terms of sexual consent in RiR. This appearance includes Akako shouting at and magically harming Kaito, albeit in a very minor fashion, without giving any warning beforehand. In the second half, warning for what basically amounts to a bunch of canon events framed as mistreatment and neglect of children by their parents. I made attempts to write this somewhat realistically, which means that the people involved are not always aware that what happened was bad or even willing to agree that it was.
First, let me say that I am not trying to demonize anyone's favorite characters here or embellish canon. But if you've read this far, chances are that you are also of the opinion that Corbeau was a crappy thing to do. I'm just going the extra couple steps of saying explicitly that part of the reason it was crappy was because it was Kaito's mom doing it; same with the whole fake kidnapping thing in DC-part of why it was so not okay is because it was Shinichi's parents in collusion with his erstwhile guardian. While we don't know how much Kaito was left alone by his mom when he was younger, we can surmise it was at least some; Shinichi living on his own since 14, on the other hand, is canon. And while teenagers living alone as a sort of "independence-test-run" is a done thing in Japan, it seems to be more for high schoolers. Which 14 is not.
The Kudous have moments of genuine helpfulness in canon but they're balanced with moments of goading their kid for reactions at times when he really doesn't need the extra stress. Chikage is better in the manga but in the anime she's almost always either a distant presence or a disruptive one. I'm not saying this is the only way to read canon, by any means-I think Gosho intends both families to be healthy and ideal and while I disagree, everyone has a right to their opinion. I'm not going to make this a major point of the plot either-beyond the arc centered on Kaito and Chikage that's already in progress. But this take on how these two families function has undoubtedly shaped how I've written Kaito and Shinichi so far, so I thought I ought to address it.
Regarding Akako's map-room, it's based on a map of the world from the Tokugawa period often called the Kaei 6 map, created by Nakajima Suido. The style of mosaic used to create it, yosegi, is really interesting and cool-looking, by the way.