Case Closed Fan Fiction ❯ When Pandora's Box Is Opened ❯ Shadow Puppets ( Chapter 52 )

Chapter Fifty-Two

Shadow Puppets

“Oh, shit,” Hidemi thought, reading the message on her phone. “They've found `em...”

“What's wrong?” Chianti asked, oiling her gun.

“Seems a couple of Tokyo MPD officers have been taking a bit too much interest in our activities,” Hidemi replied coolly. “A couple of officers in the first investigative division... they're involved in the Kuroba car case, and it looks like they tried to reopen Kuroba Toichi's case file... there's a hit out on them.”

“I'll deal with it,” Korn said shortly. “Names?”

“Sato Miwako and Takagi Wataru,” Hidemi read. “The former drives a red car... there's no plate number, so I'm assuming that it'll be the only red car in the police lot... There's a stress on subtlety.”

Korn nodded, wandered over to his motorbike and drove away. He didn't seem to bother speaking unless necessary. He didn't chatter about his past as other agents sometimes did when they were free. Chianti didn't really either, but seemed to spend an inordinate amount of her free time maintaining her guns. Chianti glanced up and noticed Hidemi watching her.

“I know it doesn't really need it, but I like to keep my weapons in good shape,” she said. “So that I can take that bitch out if there's so much as a split second's opportunity.”

“Vermouth?” Hidemi said, wrinkling her nose. “Because she's... untrustworthy?”

“I have no idea,” Chianti said idly. “Gin doesn't trust her, even though Anokata really does... Frankly, I'd love her to be a rat. It'd be a great excuse to kill her...”

“Only an excuse?” Hidemi said. “I'd think that being a rat would be a perfect reason to die.” She grinned widely enough to bare her teeth.

“Oh, I know how you feel about rats,” Chianti said with a rare smirk. “Gin told me that story. But really... it's because of Calvados.”

“Calvados?” Hidemi said thoughtfully. “I heard he was killed by Akai...”

“And you killed Akai,” Chianti confirmed, miming shooting Hidemi with a pistol. “But he was only there because Vermouth seduced him into getting mixed up in her shit... I told that baka not to fall in love with her, not the least because I don't want that bitch as my sister-in-law...”

“Calvados was your brother?” Hidemi said in surprise.

“My twin,” Chianti said, gripping the barrel of her sniper rifle. “We've trained in the Organization since we were kids, like Gin. Just street orphans with a good shot... until she found us.” She snorted. “Vermouth. Always canvassing for new talents... she supported our training, and for that, we were loyal.” She glanced at Hidemi. “Don't get me wrong, the Organization is my life. It's all we've ever had. But Calvados... ever since she found us, he was more loyal to her than the Organization. I never trusted her. And the second that she gives me an opportunity...” she slammed a magazine into a handgun with extraneous force.

“She oughtn't to take people's loyalty away from the Organization,” Hidemi said. “If she's going to do that, she might as well make her own group...”

“Good excuse to wipe her out,” Chianti snorted. “I swear, Kir- the first chance I get, that bitch...” she clicked the pump of a shotgun.

“So there are factional disputes within the Organization,” Hidemi mused. “And now, if what Jodie said is true, they're getting more and more opposition from the outside too... Can the Organization really be breaking down?”

She curled her lips into a little smile, which Chianti assumed was an agreement with her feelings on Vermouth.

{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{ }{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

Conan looked around the dark area. Where was he? Tall, dark shapes hemmed him in on all sides, but...

BWOOOGAH

A ship! So this was a harbour. Yes, now he could see in the darkness, the shapes around him were shipping crates. He wandered through the crates, following no real path. Why was he here, anyway? He got the vague idea that he was looking for someone.

BANG

“A gunshot?!” he thought wildly, running towards the source of the noise. Then he saw it: a woman, dressed in white, facing away from him, slumping to her knees...

“Who...?” he thought, but his mouth screamed, “AKEMI-SAN!”

“What?” he wondered. “How do I know her name? Who is she?”

“Hold on!” he cried, catching her. Her hat had slumped over her face, covering it. “Just hold on...” Then her hat slipped from her face.

It was Ran.

“R-Ran?” he said, his blood freezing as a drop of her blood slipped from the corner of her mouth, cutting a vivid path down her pale white cheek. She was gone. Dead. Because...

He looked up, into a pair of cold green eyes, staring mercilessly at him from between two curtains of silvery hair, between a black fedora and a high-collared black coat. The man raised a gun and

Conan sat up with a gasp, breathing heavily. “What... what... what the hell was that?” He ran his hand through his bangs, trying to compose himself. The dream was slipping from him as fast as he tried to remember it, but two images remained crystal clear: the cold green eyes and the red path cutting across the white cheek...

“Conan-kun? Are you all right?”

Conan glanced up at Eri, who had sat up, putting on her glasses, looking at him worriedly. He gulped.

“You were... screaming, almost,” she said. “Were you having a nightmare?”

“Umm... y-yeah,” Conan said nervously.

“What happened?” Eri asked.

“I... I can't remember.” Conan giggled a little. “Funny, huh? But I'm okay now.”

“Really?” Eri said. Her watchful stare made Conan a little nervous.

“Yeah... I'm okay, Obasan,” he insisted. “I'll go back to sleep now. Umm...”

“Yes?” Eri said, pausing as she removed her glasses again.

“Are you... going to tell Ran-neechan that I had a nightmare?” Conan asked, then wondered why he'd asked.

“Probably,” Eri said, looking surprised. “Why?”

“Umm... can you maybe not?” Conan asked nervously. “It's just... I feel kinda bad since she always looks so worried anyway, and I feel like it's my fault... I just don't want her to be worried.” He could feel himself blushing, oddly, but somehow it reminded him of the dream; of Ran's cold, dead face...

Eri watched him quietly for a moment, and then said, “well, I won't tell her if she doesn't ask. Now go back to sleep, okay? You still have a few more hours to sleep...”

“Okay,” Conan said, lying back down. He didn't go back to sleep, though.

{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{ }{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

“We might as well go check out the remnants of the Kuroba's home,” Miwako sighed, clipping on her seatbelt. Takagi nodded as he sat down next to her.

“It seems that Kuroba Minami is still in a coma,” he said, “although Hakuba-kun wouldn't say how Kuroba Kaito is involved, though...”

“Everyone's being taciturn about this whole affair, and I'm not surprise,” Miwako sighed. “Especially considering how large-scale it's getting...”

“Still, at least we're on track for finding out what happened to Conan-kun,” Takagi said cheerfully. “And maybe why it happened...”

“Yeah,” Miwako said, tapping the brakes as a red light appeared. “I hope...” she frowned, stamping on the brakes. The car wasn't slowing.

“Sato-san...?” Takagi asked as Miwako started to feel like panicking.

“The brakes...” she said, then swerved before the car crashed into the car in front, straight into the oncoming traffic. She took her foot off of the gas, but the car didn't slow down. She wrenched the steering wheel as two cars in the cross lanes nearly crashed into the side of the red car. It started to fishtail out of control.

“Let's hope this still works,” Miwako growled, wrenching the handbrake. The car executed a hairpin turn, narrowly missing two more cars by inches, before crashing into the lamppost with the traffic lights on it and finally coming to a stop. Miwako and Takagi jerked forwards as the car stopped, Miwako's seatbelt just preventing her from nutting the steering wheel. People were yelling outside of the car. Miwako paused to start breathing again.

“Sato-san?” Takagi asked. “Are you all right?”

“I'm okay, Takagi-kun,” Miwako said, unclipping her seatbelt. “How are you?”

“I'm fine, I'm fine,” he said, touching his forehead. “Banged into the dashboard, but it's not bad... I don't feel any blood...”

“That's because it's on the other side of your forehead,” Miwako said, pulling out a handkerchief and dabbing his forehead with it. “Here, put pressure on it with that.”

“Why didn't the airbags deploy?” Takagi asked, getting out of the car. The lamppost was quite deeply embedded in the bonnet of the car. Miwako sighed in mourning of her car, deeply relieved that it wasn't mourning for Takagi.

“Probably the same reason that the brakes weren't working,” she suggested, peering at the smoking hood. “Hard to tell since the car is clearly wasted, but I'd say the brake lines were cut.”

“Kami...” Takagi muttered, staring over the smashed car. “Can I take this opportunity to take back anything derogatory that I have ever said about your unusual driving skills?”

“Whoever was trying to kill us didn't do their research,” Miwako said with a smirk.

“If someone just tried to kill us, then why are you smiling?” Takagi asked, pressing the handkerchief a little harder to his forehead as a curious knot of people surrounded them.

“Because if someone's trying to kill us,” Miwako pointed out, “Then we're on to something.”

{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{ }{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

“...But I have my suspicions. Listen, can we meet tomorrow? That'll give me time to check something out. I don't want to waste your time on a wild goose chase...”

“Good move, Saku,” Gin said quietly, lighting a cigarette. “We'll meet at your place. Tomorrow, 4am.”

“4am? But...”

“You're not on the night shift, are you?” Gin said dangerously.

“No, no. Just... never mind. 4am's cool. No-one will be awake to see...”

“Precisely,” Gin said. He hung up, having nothing more to say.

“What do you think, Aniki?” Vodka asked, reading the information that Saku had emailed them on his laptop while Gin drove along the streets of Osaka.

“I think that if the police could catch five infiltrators so successfully, then there's no reason that they couldn't trace the sixth,” Gin said. “Besides, there's been no sign of the Kuroba boy- Sake failed again- and an anonymous call from Osaka was placed to those two suspicious cops in the 1st division... and whoever it was had a white noise generator, so the precise content of the call is unknown.”

“Which is just more suspicious, eh?” Vodka said. “Is this the two that Korn said he'd deal with?”

“The late Sato and Takagi,” Gin said with an unpleasant smirk. “Soon to be joined by whoever their counterpart is in Osaka...” he tapped a box in his pocket.

“Aniki... you're going to use that again?”

“Anokata ruled it a simple police cover-up,” Gin said. “It has a 100% success rate... and a 100% rate of remaining unsolved. Perfect for dealing with nosy cops...”

{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{ }{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

“That information that you passed on came up trumps, Heiji,” Heizo said as his son came in the door, pushing his book bag into his armpit as he pulled his gloves off. “We're tracking the man now, and a couple of bugs have been placed in his home... it seems that he's planning to meet a superior officer tomorrow morning. We'll get them both in a dawn raid at 4.”

“Nice,” Heiji commented. “They're onta somethin' in Tokyo too, it seems...”

“How do you know that?” Heizo said.

“Got a text from Hakuba on th' way home,” Heiji said, waving his phone. “He's been poolin' info with a few confirmed clean cops in Tokyo... an' someone tried ta bump a coupla `em off with th' old cut brake line gimmick. Wouldn't hafta do anythin' if they weren't gettin' close ta somethin' they wanted hidden, would they?”

“That's true,” Heizo said. “By the way... I saw the word “VETA” scribbled on your desk. What does it mean?”

“Dunno,” Heiji sighed in annoyance. “I Googled it an' got an Indian movie, a river in Romania, a town in Colorado, a Norse town, an' a Soviet sprint canoer... none've which are what we're lookin' for, I think, given th' context...”

“What is the context?” Heizo asked curiously.

“A message from Kid about what happened ta Conan,” Heiji said. Heizo narrowed his eyes.

“Why didn't you mention this before?” he asked.

“I wanted ta try ta figure it out first, but no dice,” Heiji said. “Anyway... I figure there'll be somethin' in it at wherever the kid was held...”

“There is,” Heizo said. “I wanted to know because we found an old Kitsune shrine in the woods to the north. There were traces of cigarette butts there... and scratched into a rock...”

“VETA?” Heiji said in surprise. “So it's a message from Ku-Conan or somethin'?”

“Possibly,” Heizo said, “But it doesn't quite say VETA. It says V=ETA. The sign was very faint.”

“V... equals Eta?” Heiji said in surprise.

“Which begs the question: Who or what are V and Eta?” Heizo said.

“V... Vermouth?” Heiji wondered. “But what in th' hell is Eta?”

“There was something else, in the shrine,” Heizo said. “Scrawled into the dirt... it was smudged, but it wasn't washed away because of the rain...” he handed over a little piece of paper. “There's a copy.”

It showed a crudely-sketched monocle around what appeared to be two jewels, one surrounding another.

“What the...”

{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{ }{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{ }{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{} {}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}

Happy 80th, Grandma! We love you! :)

 

And RIP Harry Patch, who died yesterday aged 111. The last surviving British veteran of the first world war. May you go where there is no war, and the screaming is silenced.

 

“The war was not worth millions of lives. It was not even worth one.”

 

Pretty much, Mel72000, but comprehending the riddle depends on a piece of information we have and they don't...

We still get to call them whiteboards, KageNoNeko, which is just bizarre. Look up a comedy routine by Stephen K. Amos. He's absolutely hilarious on the subjects of PC and racism.

Conan's here, FaithlessGirl, but no Ai yet...

Conan's back, Pretztailfan95! Having a nightmare again, but here... You didn't have to wait two days, did you? It's only five days until August, It is hardly going to happen in that time, is it? And I've been waiting MONTHS for more Black Cat Conan or I'll Always Be There For You, thank you! :P I'll set Ronnie on you! (He's the fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, the one who left before they became famous) That's what people say to me when I say I'm from America... ^_^;

I'm surprised that I've gone so long without writing Kaito myself, Marie Ravenclaw... just what is Vermouth up to?

You sound like a scared cat, A Midsummer Night's Dream XD

Who knows, Kairi922? ^_- Eri's certainly in for a surprise XD Don't we all wish it would happen... bring Kaito in in a plotline capacity, already!

You can understand the logic, though JapaneseAnimeFreak16, even if you know it's wrong... that'll be fun when they find out the truth... They're doing great, but they keep complaining that it's too cold XD and we're in a Scottish heatwave (23 Celsius) too! XD Grandma says hugs for you ;)

It's all a-comin', Yuki Taiki! ^_- It's not all that surprising Eri didn't recognize Yukiko's voice. She didn't recognize her voice in the case where they worked together on a case, the one where they flashbacked to the “Miss Teitan” competition.

I'm suffering something along the lines of jetlag myself, Kayla Edogawa... that's what a 24-hour movie marathon with your pals will do to you. I'm glad you had a good time in Washington ^_- You cruel person XD Happy early birthday! (wait, the next chapter will be out on your birthday...) I've read them all and they are really good. “Hound Of The Baskervilles” is my favourite. The chapter of Arsene Lupin that I'm reading right now is entitled “Sherlock Holmes arrives too late” This oughta be good... XD

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).