Case Closed Fan Fiction ❯ When Pandora's Box Is Opened ❯ Amnesia ( Chapter 41 )

Chapter Forty-one

Amnesia

“What's five minus three?”

“Two.”

“And the capital of Japan?”

“Tokyo, but it used to be Kyoto.”

“Do you know where you live?”

“Ummm.... no.”

“All right. Just watch my finger... the light's going to be a little bright, but try not to blink...”

Ran was pale white as the doctor went through the examination. Kazuha was hovering by her friend's side, seemingly on the verge of tears. Eri was twisting her wedding ring nervously. Heiji stood by the door, face unreadable as Kid's, but his hands fisting unconsciously.

“Kami, he didn't even remember Mori, an' if he was gonna remember anybody...” he thought, watching the boy demonstrate that he could remember how to tie shoelaces. “This ain't good. Amnesia ain't good anyway, but...”

But on top of not remembering who he was, Kudo didn't even remember who he really was, as had become evident by the boy's total confusion when Heiji had taken a lonely moment to address him as “Kudo.”

“I thought Ran-neechan said my name was Edogawa Conan,” he said, confused.

“Oh, it is, it is,” Heiji said hastily. “I jus' mispronounced it. It's the Osaka-ben. Some stuff comes out funny, ya know?”

The kid giggled. “You're kinda funny, Heiji-niichan.”

“He really thinks he's just a little kid,” Heiji thought worriedly. “How're ya supposed ta explain somethin' like this ta a kid? “yer actually my age an' ya were shrunk by a weird drug fed to ya by a psycho assassin from th' most dangerous criminal organization in th' world, who still kinda want ya dead so don't tell nobody?” yeah, as if he ain't freaked out already...”

“All right. I'm just going to talk to your friends outside for a moment, all right?” the doctor said, standing up and gesturing everybody out of Heiji's room. As Heiji left, he glanced back to see Kudo pick up his glasses in puzzlement.

“Even if he ain't got no memories, his mind's still a meitantei's,” Heiji realized, “an' he's gonna think it's pretty weird that e's got glasses that he don't seem ta need...”

“He remembers how to function in daily life and general knowledge, although I have to say the latter seems quite advanced for a child his age,” the doctor said, “but his personal memories- name, address, family, friends- in short, his memories about him are gone.”

“So what's wrong with him?” Heiji's father asked.

“Was he injured?” his mother asked.

“There's no sign of any form of physical trauma, although I can't be completely certain without a CAT scan,” the doctor admitted. “However, I'm inclined to say that it's more likely to have been some form of emotional trauma- something put a block on his memories. This should fade with time, or if something prompts him to remember the event. Until then, about all I can advise is to get him back to a normal routine as soon as possible- the presence of familiar places and people should speed up the return of his memories. Try not to overburden him with information, though. He'll just get frightened and confused.”

“I know,” Ran said quietly. “I had amnesia like this once. Umm... I'm going to go back through to him. It's a little scary to be alone when you're not sure where or who you are...” she went back into Heiji's room, closing the door behind her.

“She's right, this is like when Ran had amnesia,” Eri said. “We'll look after him. We'll get more tests done in Tokyo. He's been in hospital there before, there's a couple of doctors that he knows... like you said, familiarity is best.”

“I can see the boy's in capable hands,” the doctor said with a smile. “Well, if there's anything you need, don't hesitate to ask...”

“It's getting late, we'll head out to Tokyo in the morning,” Eri sighed, looking at her watch as Shizuka walked the doctor to the door.

“I'd better head home,” Kazuha sniffed. “I'm just going to go say goodbye to Ran-chan and Conan-kun...”

“Come to that, where are you going to sleep, Hattori-kun?” Eri asked. “I think Ran's going to want to move her futon in there with him...”

“We can do that, the kid needs th' bed ta recover,” Heiji said. “I'll jus' stick another futon down in the livin' room or somethin'...”

“I'll help you do that,” Heizo offered. “We need to discuss what to report, anyway...”

“I dunno how `e got away from the kidnapper, an' it looks like he don't either,” Heiji sighed, following his father down the hall to the linen cupboard with the spare futons in it. “Even if `e knew where she was, though, I'm guessin' she won't be there now, an' anyway we got no way ta know what she looks like now...”

“She?” Heizo enquired, pulling down a futon. Heiji smacked himself on the forehead with the pillow block.

“Geez, did I not mention this stuff the other night? Aho,” he commented to himself. “Kid said the kidnapper was as good at disguise as `im, but definitely a woman...” “Kid didn't say it, but we all know it was Vermouth,” Heiji thought. “Crazy bitch...”

“You didn't mention that the kidnapper was a disguise specialist the other night,” Heizo said quietly, shutting the cupboard door.

“Didn't realize it `till Kid had left,” Heiji hedged. “Some a' the stuff `e said... I was talkin' ta Kudo an' Kudo's Oyaji about in, an' they got evidence that th' kidnapper is... real good at disguise. Kudo's run foul a' her before.”

“She wouldn't happen to be connected to... your investigation, would she?” Heizo said sharply.

“She's a high-up in `em, yeah,” Heiji said quietly, glancing around to make sure that no-one else was nearby, closing the living room door behind him. “All right... ya know Chris Vineyard?”

“That American actress who was placed on all the Wanted lists about a year back for reasons that no-one would explain,” Heizo said, sounding a little annoyed. “All I understand is that it was at the behest of the FBI. Is she the kidnapper?”

“Think so,” Heiji said, shoving the table aside to roll out his futon. “Problem is, Chris Vineyard ain't her real name or identity any more than Sharon Vineyard was. Nobody knows who she really is, an' her disguise skills are good as Kid, so nobody seems ta know fer certain what she really looks like either... so chances of catchin' her are slim ta none, an' anyway if ya try ta put out a public warrant fer `er, ya know somebody's gonna corrupt the info or slow down the settin' up of a barricade...” he snorted angrily at the thought of the people who'd hurt Kudo again, and still had the power to elude the arm of the law. “Not that we know where the hell `e was and where ta set up a barricade, anyways. “

“We'll set up checkpoints anyway,” Heizo said. “Won't make much difference if she's in disguise, of course, but since one of the kidnapping suspects is Kid, it won't sound too strange to request a face-check on everyone passing through...”

“Guess the major problem is what's happened ta K-Conan,” Heiji said. “Our best evidence is locked in his head, an' `til he gets his memory back...”

“In the meantime,” Heizo said, leaning by the doorway, uninclined to return upstairs until their conversation was finished, “You have proof of infiltrators in the police?”

“I ain't got anythin' conclusive,” Heiji said, “but I got strong circumstantial evidence. Might be enough ta make `em crack under pressure o' interrogation. Problem is, they probably ain't gonna be ranked very high, but gettin' `em outa a position o' influence should be enough. Might be able ta lead us ta rats in th' rest a' the police. Oh yeah...” Heiji snapped his fingers as he remembered. “Gotta contact Hakuba. He's tryin' ta find rats in the Tokyo Met. His Oyaji's the superintendant general, so if he gets his hands on some a' this stuff...”

“I will contact Superintendant Hakuba,” Heizo said. “For now... focus on restoring Conan-kun's memory. You wouldn't have any idea what could've done this to him, do you?”

“Nope,” Heiji said, shaking his head. “Unknown an' terrible mental trauma is all I know. I dunno what exactly it was, though...”

“An' given the kinda stuff Kudo's seen,” he thought with a shudder, “I'm not sure I wanna.”

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Kaito shuddered, and it was nothing to do with the cold night air. He carefully started picking his way across Hattori's roof, intending to leave while drawing the minimum attention from the Chief of the Osaka Police.

Amnesia. That bitch had done something to tantei-kun, and given him amnesia. If there was no physical trauma, Hattori was right- it had to be something psychological, and what could she have told Tantei-kun or shown him that would traumatize him so?

“She turn out to be his mother or something?” Kaito snorted. “All right, Kaito, time to think. Do your Kudo impression. You saw them examining his clothes before Hattori's mother stole them to wash. There were leaves and twigs and mud, and the only place they'd pick up stuff like that is in a forest. His socks were a bit worn in the heel but not torn apart, so he can't have come too far. So the nearest bit of forestry to where Hattori found him is...” He pulled out a road map of Osaka and examined it. He was in his night-camo gear, so he didn't have a hat brim or cloak to shield the paper from the rain with, and so he only glanced at it briefly. It was long enough for his memory. “All right. Might as well check it out...”

He jumped off of the roof and used the tree outside Hattori's window to make it to the wall without leaving footprints. As he passed Hattori's bedroom window, he glanced in. Tantei-kun was sitting up in bed and Mori Ran was kneeling next to him, holding his hand and talking to him with a gentle if sad expression on her face- “Probably telling him who she is,” Kaito thought. “That's gotta be sore. That kid's pretty attached to his neechan.” He didn't linger, however- he had to get out of Osaka before the barricades went up. He dropped onto the motorbike and gunned the engine, roaring out into the streets.

“Should I make a beeline for the forest, or take the motorway? It runs along the edge of the forest for a while,” he remembered. “If she was riding down the motorway late at night, it'd be almost empty... and then she could have slipped off of the road and into the forest unnoticed...”

He turned onto the motorway to check, just in case. It was still pretty busy, but he needed to ride slow to look for any indication of someone entering the forest, so he rode slow at the very edge of the lane, allowing cars to pass. It was over an hour before he found what he was looking for.

It was subtle, and he almost missed it, but when he reversed and parked to have a look, there was no mistake- broken branches and flattened grass. Someone had passed through here.

“Do I leave the bike here? But it'll look suspicious to police on the lookout for the suspect...” he thought. “Maybe I should take it. She would have had to take her bike in, and it'll help eliminate paths that'd be impossible with a bike...” He started wheeling the bike in, as Vermouth would have.

“Reconstructing the crime on the trail of the suspect... I feel like Kudo or Hakuba,” he thought with a wry grin.

“You an' him ain't so different...”

“More than you can imagine, Hattori,” he said quietly to the trees.

There wasn't any clear indication of a path- if there had been footprints, the rain had washed them away. But there were occasional indications that someone had passed through, and generally, he just followed whatever path he could get the bike through. Eventually, he came to a small shrine.

There was a little white statue inside, some sort of Kitsune, Kaito figured. He poked around a little. Again, no indication of habitation...

But there was.

It was faint, scratched at the bottom of a rock in front of the temple, hidden in the grass. He would have missed it if his night vision wasn't so good and he wasn't looking so desperately. It took him a moment to realize that it was several letters in the Latin alphabet, not very deeply scratched, as if whoever had done it was desperate to make no noise. He pulled out his monocle and clicked the clover on the tag a couple of times- there was a hidden camera in the monocle. He'd also been working on putting an infrared lens in it, figuring that there was no shame in stealing a good idea from your rival. It didn't have a flash, but he hoped that the image would be clear enough, and he committed the symbols to memory just in case, though he knew he'd probably be puzzling over them for some time to come.

VETA

“Veta? What does that mean?” he wondered. “It's probably something foreign, there's not a lot of Japanese words that begin with V when Romanized. Veta...” Kaito was fluent in a good half-dozen languages and could keep afloat in many others, but he couldn't for the life of him identify VETA. “Vet? Veto? What is it? Maybe it's an acronym. But what for?” he started looking around again.

Then he saw it, snagged on a jagged fragment of low branch- a couple of strands of short, dark hair, like some short person had forced their way through.

“He walked all the way from here?” Kid thought in surprise. “Did he escape, or did she abandon him and leave...?”

Suddenly, he felt something odd under the sole of his shoe. It didn't feel like mud or grass. Leaning against the side of the little shrine, he turned his foot up to look at the sole.

It was a cigarette. He peeled it off. The ash was damp but warm. Someone had been here recently- very recently.

He froze, glancing around, suddenly wary, ears pricked for any sound, but the pouring rain erased any sound or footprints.

“Is this hers?” he wondered. “It's smoked right down... that's pretty risky, if she makes her masks out of the same stuff I do, that's what screwed up my Mori Kogoro disguise... If she smoked it this far down, she would probably have done it without a mask on if she's smart, which she seems to be. Then again, she wouldn't need a disguise out here... so is she still nearby?”

The bushes behind him rustled. He turned and flung a flash grenade in the direction of the sound. In the few moments that the light lit up the woods, he caught a glimpse of a figure in black running away with an arm over its eyes.

“Oh no you don't,” Kaito hissed, drawing his new card gun and firing a couple shots, aimed to whip just past the runner's head, hopefully causing them to freak and trip. Instead, however, they ignored the cards and kept running, vaulting over a fallen tree. Kaito couldn't get a good look at the figure, but it vaguely resembled a man, taller than Vermouth- but then, appearing as someone taller or larger than yourself is easy. He probably couldn't manage Mori Ran anymore like he could when he was sixteen and still a bit shrimpy. He vaulted the log as well as pursued the figure, but they were faster than Kaito, something that took him by surprise- not many were faster at running away than him. He burst out of the woods just in time to see his target dive into the front seat of a blue 4x4 and accelerate away, slamming the door closed as he did so.

“Okay... crap,” he thought. “I know she could easily change vehicles, but think about it; wouldn't she clean out before she left instead of coming back later? In a car that's not black? Okay, that's an overly simplistic reason, but I'm getting less of the “kidnapping bitch” vibes and more of the “police” vibes. Or possibly the FBI. “So what's the report?” “Well, sir, I think I may have found the place where the child was held, and then the Kaitou Kid attacked me, which just makes him more of a suspect, doesn't it?” dammit. Baka. She'll have gotten the hell out of dodge before barricades and checkpoints go up... speaking of which...” he went back and got his bike, getting on the road. “I've got two choices. Get back to Tokyo or lie low in Osaka for a while. Tokyo is tempting, but... what the hell am I going to do there? Tantei-kun's unlikely to get himself in any more trouble when re-memorizing his address. If Hattori's making a move on the Ravens in Osaka... maybe I should lend a hand.”

That decided, he took the next turnoff as a chance to return to Osaka.

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Okay, I've checked and the “100 Tales” oneshot collection aside, this is actually the longest fic on FFnet or MMorg. And it's just gonna get longer... XD Though thanks to an attack of the muses, I'm going to keep on updating on Saturday as well for a while, so that's 4 times a week... Tues/Thurs/Sat/Sun... until I finish the story and move up to 7 a week. I'm on a roll! *is hyperhappy in case you hadn't noticed XD*

(Those living outwith the range of the BBC who have thus never been exposed to the majesty of Doctor Who or Torchwood can be forgiven for skipping this next rant of hyperhappiness, as I don't expect you to understand a word of it. I also feel very, very sorry for you.)

The other reason for hyperhappiness is WEEKLONG TORCHWOOD SPECIAL! Children of the Earth! Every night at 9:00 for a week! YESSSS! I was starting to feel withdrawal symptoms XD seriously, anyone who's ever accused me of evil cliffies will HATE Russel T Davies. The man does downright SATANIC cliffies, like... BITCH BLEW UP CAPTAIN JACK! Still can't believe it- how DARE she?! I mean, he'll be back, he always is, but... BITCH BLEW UP CAPTAIN JACK!!! She must die. She must. Just give me five minutes alone with her. Me, her, a locked room, five minutes. And maybe a chainsaw.

Shonen Tantei-Dan: WE ARE COMING... BACK!!

Love to hate, FaithlessGirl XD OneManga is always a day or two behind DCTP, which is why I just read the scans on there now... New storyarc next week! It'll start whatever the major chapter 700 thing is, I hope...

You can't remember who Eta is, KageNoNeko, because I haven't revealed that yet... but she's turned up a couple of times before, though only once by name... now, what did happen to Conan...?

Yep, Kid is pissed, ObsessedConanFan, and Hakuba's right- considering how much trouble he gives the police, who he actually likes...

It's the joy of miracles, Mel72000 XD

It could be a rave review, AngelRoy XD I meant that chapter to be a shocker, and it looks like I hit the mark...

Kaito knows, Kayla Edogawa, and he's pissed about it... I know amnesia has been done, but I think that by the time I'm done this'll be far different from any other fic... Hmm, yes, what was that first part about? ;P Fourth of July meant brownies and corn on the cob, which automatically made it awesome. BROWNIES! XD Too bad yours sucked. You need brownies! *picks up brownie and summons strength not to eat it* have one! Take it... quickly... before... my strength... fails... XD

XD another rave review from lifawn!

And a spazfest from kolidescope! XD I update so often because I'd like to get it online before my exams next year, and since it's projected to run to around 80 chapters...

What happened when Conan got away is known only to him, Silver Shadowbreeze, and not even that until he gets his memory back...

I was too scared to write the moment that Jodie was told, HikariPachi! XD Rest assured that it'll make her rage on hearing that he was kidnapped seem like nothing...

XD the fic's so long that it's overloading TwilTye's memory... it's not so nice having so many people worrying about you if you don't know who the hell they all ARE, I guess. Poor Conan... The side story's not necessary YET, and while I won't post the chapters with spoilers until necessary, there ARE some important clues...

Glad you're liking the story so far, Kyoko-chann! ^_- Don't worry, the updates aren't stopping any time soon...

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 29 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).