Case Closed Fan Fiction ❯ The First Woman In The World ❯ 19 ( Chapter 19 )

One Year Ago

“Great. Just great. Who are these clowns?

It was a small world, Eta mused; not only did she run into that “English teacher”- really, after so long, did the FBI not think she could recognize an agent when she saw one?- but on the bus, who had there been but Edogawa Conan and friends?

Eta shouldn't have been surprised that the bus would be subsequently hijacked. Really, the only thing to make it more likely would be if Kuroba Kaito had been there as well, although Eta would later revise her opinion to that his crazy-good luck might actually be enough to cancel out his doppelganger's bad luck. For pity's sake, since shrinking alone the poor boy must have dealt with more murders than most cops came across in years. Some cops, in fact, had been whispering and calling the boy a shinigami like Mori.

That was foolish, Eta knew. She felt sorry for him, but it was simply how things were. To say that he was a shinigami implied that murders happened because he was present, or that he was drawn to the scenes of murders; but neither was the case. It was simply that murders happened, and he was there, and these things could not be otherwise. Just like Kaito's good luck; he could not be caught, it was as simple as that. The world, Eta had come to realize, however strongly it may be irritated by that annoying little rash known as humans, was still very adept at organizing itself to suit its own purposes. The world would arrange itself so that Kudo Shinichi would be present to solve the murder, just as the world would arrange itself so that the Kaitou Kid would escape.

Unfortunately, he wasn't here to make his escape today. Eta couldn't tell how the men could apparently see out of the back of their heads any more than Shinichi could, which was why, until he figured it out, she really, really, wished he'd stay-

Crap. He'd crawled down to check out the bags, and they'd seen him...

“You really wanna die, kid?” the man growled. Eta felt hidden rage ignite at the sight of that man pointing a gun at her boy, a dead man within two minutes, she could kill both of them in no time, but that would blow her cover...

She did the only thing she could think of, in character with both herself and Ariade; she threw herself between Shinichi and the gunner, yelling “Stop it! He's only a little boy fooling around! The police are complying with your demands! Don't you think they might not be as cooperative if you start shooting children?!”

She could feel Shinichi behind her outstretched arm. Most children, faced with a gun, would be terrified, but he wasn't trembling; she felt that he was probably glaring at the hijackers with his intense blue stare...

“My brave boy,” she thought, staring down the barrel of the gun. “My brave, stupid boy... if he fires that, this disguise is done anyway, so might as well just kill them both if he intends to...”

Thankfully, the other hijacker cautioned his irate partner not to fire. Eta sat back down with a relieved sigh. Between Jodie and Shinichi, she was terrified that someone was going to get shot, and if a shot went astray and hit those bags...

The boy sat in silence after that, thank heavens. Eta mused on how to get out of the predicament, but there wasn't much she could do without exposing herself. She wondered if the FBI girl would be carrying a gun. She could probably take them both out with a couple of bullets, she was a dead shot...

“You! The guy with the cough and the geek with the glasses!”

Oh, yes. Akai Shuuichi was on the bus too, dammit. Out of everyone there, Eta figured that he was the one most likely to catch her out. Another reason to be careful. As she stood up, she saw Jodie subtly reach down and pick up a notebook, opening it to the marked page.

Do you have a lipstick?

Eta saw Jodie toss a tube of lipstick backwards, caught by Shinichi, who grinned triumphantly. He was planning something with the FBI- their “Cool Kid”.

“One tube of lipstick, huh?” she thought, docilely complying with the hijackers' demands. “Show me some magic... Cool Guy.”

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“I thought they were Holmes and Lupin, but I may revise that to Bond and Lupin...”

Once again, Eta thanked the stars that it was far from out of Ariade's character to fuss over Conan's wound.

The boy really was a magician. Not a Kid-like stage magician, but he'd certainly worked some kind of magic in that bus. Adults probably never realized just how much regard they gave the boy. He'd stopped the bus, taken out one of the hijackers, saved from the other by the FBI girl, and then rescued a girl who had stayed behind on the bus- Sherry, Eta was sure. She must have sensed Eta there and gotten frightened enough to try suicide. Eta almost wished that Shinichi hadn't gone back into the bus. He wouldn't have risked getting blown up and Sherry would be dead, saving Eta a lot of work.

It had been incredible, though. In under ten seconds, he had realized her absence, returned to the bus, shot out the window, grabbed the girl and made it out very literally in the nick of time. He had once more proven himself fearless and versatile, a worthy enemy for the Syndicate.

But Kaito was just as fearless, just as versatile, possessed of better luck and more physically capable of facing the Syndicate. Shinichi didn't know his own limits- or rather, he did, but they were far lower than he thought. In that moment of fear when the gun had been aimed at him, Eta had realized something; that if Shinichi didn't get the antidote soon, he might not be able to handle the Syndicate.

“Is this a message telling me to choose?” Eta wondered. “Do I get to choose my Silver Bullet? I still don't know which, but... do I have to decide? Before... it's decided for me...?”

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Let me apologize for FFnet being a bastard this weekend. I haven't been able to upload anything for two days, so here's the backlog ^_^;

I do not claim to own any of the characters in Meitantei Conan. They are the intellectual property of Aoyama Gosho. All characters, couples and locations, if Canon, will be faithful to the manga, so if you're into fics with weird pairings like Shinichi and Heiji, the back button is at the top there. The fic may not make sense if you have not read up to chapter 698, which you can do at a site called (read between the lines) O/n/e/ma/n/g/a, but I advise you to buy the official Tankoban novels (up to volume 30 are out in English at the time of writing) so that Aoyama-sensei can afford to continue gracing us with his imagination. Now, I hope you enjoy the fic! (If you don't, please see my previous comments re the back button).