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| パンドラ |
Toichi hadn’t expected it, but he had loved the thrill anyway.
The unexpected excitement it gave him; not to mention, these were some unwanted, unsavory fellows still going after his dear Phantom Lady. So it was also quite fun letting the police “stumble” upon their transactions.
He had never expected that a suit he personally tailored for one of his more elaborate magic show—just to be unique from other magicians would turn out to be his suit as an international wanted moonlighting magician phantom thief.
But hey, at least Chikage can now stop her protests of being a thief in the past.
They both now share that history.
…
He laughs silently, filled with giddy anticipation as the good inspector bellowed in the distance—having fallen for another dummy he had set up to be triggered right as they got to their destination. Switching to a disguise that was a contrast to Kid’s cover, he slinks into the shadows between the building alleyways. He had slipped past more than three streets when he noticed that there was something—or rather someone—moving, shifting as if they were expecting him to use this path.
But not hostile… as of the moment at least. So he stares at them, curious, hands already tucking into his pocket for a smoke bomb while—
“Kaitou KID?” only a few people called him that—more specifically, it was just his writer friend, though some of the law enforcement officers had also started to refer to him as such.
“Oh? And to whom do I owe the pleasure this fine evening, gentleman and milady?” the woman in dark colored trench coat—though he can’t help but note the white underneath and from the pattern of the collar—a lab coat?
“Charmed.” she says in a bit too bland tone, and every sense and nerve in him tenses up and prepares for a firearm to be pointed at his head—wouldn’t be the first time. Seeing as he’s dealing with his lover’s—wife, his wife’s—unsavory former clients that had strange fascination and obsession with guns and explosives.
He’s already fingering a sleeping gas bomb disguised as a coin.
Instead next to her the man sighs, one of heavy tone and resignation akin to someone who’s shouldering the world’s fate on their shoulders.
“We have a favor to the most elusive Phantom Thief of this time.”
That wasn’t accurate.
If Toichi would say so himself, if he were honest the one who should be labeled as such should be Lupin III, everyone knows who he is and yet he still manages to avoid capture. Meanwhile, he, Phantom Thief 1412 or Kaitou KID—as referred to his good friend, was an unknown.
Nobody knew who he is under the top hat, monocle, suit and cape.
Though he had a fair enough thought that his friend Yuusaku knew, if his latest series were anything to go by.
“Oh? And who’s speaking?” but it couldn’t hurt to hear them out, right?
“My name is Miyano Atsushi and this is my wife, Miyano Elena… we…” the man trails off, glancing at the woman who merely nods before he continues. “... we used to work and lead PANDORA, a project for the Humanity Research Facility of the Karasuma Corporation.”
Now that was interesting and alarming.
…
Toichi was never interested in family lines, a complete contrary to his father’s line of work who made a living out of inheritance, heredity and family ancestry tree of the sort.
If you wanted to know your ancestors even before your great, great grandparents, he was the man for the job.
If you wanted to know the family background of an orphan—or if you were an orphan and wanted to know. He was the guy you’d go for.
His father in every sense of the way was a genius and analytic, realist man, with his life full of statistics, numbers and logic. He lived for reasoning, impartial truths—and to be honest, Toichi had always found the man more of a machine than an actual human being who simply operated on strict rules without giving a damn for ethics and values.
To Toichi, the man was a cold-hearted man who lived solely for his work and money.
His mother was the complete opposite. She thrived for the unpredictable, impossible and unknown. She was more open to the wonders of the world and its more humane side, she was sensitive, highly emotional, and most of the times operated on her crazy whims. If there was a mystery she would twist it to the point no answers could be dragged out from it—and Toichi expected that would annoy his father.
But it never did, if anything the man accepted it with a fond sigh—and that was when Toichi grew certain, his father was no machine. His father loved his mother and that was enough.
There was another thing his mother was passionate about; horror and magic.
The woman thrived to scare the living daylights out of both him and his father. Always laughing (cackling) at every given opportunity and success. There was one thing that always unnerved him about his mother though.
And it wasn’t just the insane amount of black she wears on a daily basis—as if it weren’t enough for her to bear pitch black hair and eyes, and to paint her nails black—nor her constant tendency to wear matching black accessories (pearls most of the time). But it was the fact that there were magic tricks his mother could pull off, completely unheard of and completely ones he can never manage to figure out nor duplicate.
Anytime he asked after giving up (he’d always know which ones that he couldn’t hope to figure out. His father’s expression was a dead giveaway), she’d always giggle and press a lone finger on her curled lips—always bare despite her fondness of black and collection of cosmetics. (Which was why he was strongly against the mortuary cosmetologist with painting his mother’s lips red in her funeral—she’d always been against that color… and other colors. Instead he used his mother’s cosmetics and painted her face when no one was looking.
Strangely enough, none of her relatives protested, in fact, they seemed more at ease—a stark contrast from when they used to look at him with disappointment and expectation that he could never seem to meet.)
“It’s a secret~” was her constant reply, his father would sigh, mutter something under his breath but make no further comments. Unlike the times she’d pull magic tricks that he could decipher.
He also noticed that every time she pulled those unfathomable tricks, she always seemed depressed afterwards, and his father would lean on her whisper something in her ears that would eventually calm her down and significantly cheer her up.
Another thing he noticed was that, there were times she disappeared in the house.
All was well, until his father became terminally ill.
His mother’s actions started to make sense yet not at the same time.
She acted oddly, she alternated between caring for him, then his father, then she’ll go on about the day nose buried in a dusty tome that he’d never seen before. Flipping through the pages with a pace of a possessed woman.
This went on, and each day his father got worse.
Just three days before his father’s death, his mother’s reading obsession stopped and she cried.
When she did, it stunned Toichi—he’s never seen her cry before.
She sobbed and kept on apologizing to his father, who had spent his last hours comforting her, assuring her that it wasn’t her fault.
It was only when his mother left with a somber expression, a depressed glazed look, and strange indents on her face that looked far too much alike tear tracks that somehow burrowed stream lines on her face,
“You’ll understand… someday.”
That he realized, he never knew what his mother did for a living. Everyone had assumed she was a house-wife and he had too… but she wasn’t.
His father had scoffed at that when he asked back in elementary.
It was the police that informed him when he turned 18 that his mother had committed suicide, and he had officially received all of his inheritance from both parents, including his mother’s mansion and all of her things.
One he was surprised to even inherit. It was called the Dawn or the Sunrise Mansion—it was only beautiful during dawn and morning, but looked completely ripped out of a horror story at night. The mansion was entitled to him, and while he didn’t want anything to do with it, he had no intention to sell it either.
-
He only grew interested in his father’s connections when he came across a brilliant young man in college who introduced himself as, Kudou Yuusaku.
Any trick Toichi pulled the man could take it apart and bare its secrets to the world. It was like the man was able to read him like an open book. And Toichi has actually heard of him—for the man has been popular for quite some time, a consultant detective that doesn’t officially work with the Tokyo Metropolitan Department, and asks to keep his involvement on the down low.
After their first happenstance meeting, Toichi could feel himself filled to the brim with curiosity.
Thus, he tried out to investigate Yuusaku and his family. (He needed to know who the man’s brilliant parents.)
That was where he got curious.
Kudou Yuusaku has a family tree from his mother’s side—and shares his mother’s current last name… which if Toichi read correctly, is from a man she remarried years after Yuusaku was born. It also doesn’t change the fact that she had her full name changed more than twice. And that had almost made Kudou Yuusaku’s paternal family tree non-existent.
Toichi managed to track it down and compile it into one.
And what he saw was even more amazing. Yuusaku’s maternal family tree was full of politicians, law enforcements, detectives and police officers… the common factor binding them together being consistent genius intellect and side-by-side with the law. He could see Yuusaku held the tradition, as far as brain prowess went.
But it made him curious, just why would a woman of such a stock would go living her life in the shadows where people of more-shady characters dwelled? (Excluding those who purposefully dwelled in such waters to uncover something.)
Not only that, Yuusaku’s mother acted strangely too, there was no pattern to the name change… most of them were even ridiculous that Toichi can’t help but think she just saw two different author names, and took a first name and a last name from each to compile an alias—because that’s what it was, a temporary identity, until she settled on Kudou Fumiyo—which ironically is her first name before she started the whole trail of false identities.
(Except for the different characters used*.)
Ones she somehow managed to get away with.
However, Toichi didn’t find that too alarming—no, what was more alarming was that she wasn’t changing her name due to the law. She was running from something else, and she was subtly asking for help from the Law Government and likely the Secret Police—the Public Security Bureau. This was something only their collaborators would catch sight of. And the fact that Kudou Shori was a former Public Security Bureau Superintendent said a lot of things.
Kudou Fumiyo and Kudou Yuusaku had the best form of defense.
That only made him question something though. Kudou Fumiyo had remarried once—there should be a mention of her former husband, even if the man is deceased—considering the lack of official divorcement issue.
A further in-depth search and hours of searching lead him to a clue.
That was when Toichi stumbled upon the messy family line and ancestry tree of one, intriguing individual.
Karasuma Renya Jr.
…
The Karasuma Clan dated way back, it didn’t help that their ancestors had branches and branches of families—and Toichi wouldn’t be surprised if he himself had a Karasuma ancestor, at least ten generations before his own father. Especially since the Karasuma is actually a dominant gene, and considering the fact that most of them are men of logic and numbers (and even if that wasn’t the case, their identical features and bone structures were a dead giveaway). It was expected for his father to actually be distantly related.
And to be honest, he also wanted to be deeply related with Kudou Yuusaku. The man is a genius and an intelligent bastard—what can he say?
A check told him that there was nothing even remotely relating them to one another, except for their uncanny resemblance in facial features and mind frames.
So he eventually decides to chuck that up to coincidence and under the statistic belief that there were at least two people who isn’t blood-related to you that looked uncannily alike.
Plus, there was no foreigner that wedded his ancestor—that had a direct line to him. He had a foreign aunt and uncle, but that’s it. Unlike the Karasuma ancestor who had once married a foreign woman that had gone missing after bearing his children—two of them. The younger being Yuusaku’s direct ancestor.
Someone with a genius mind like Yuusaku, and his obscure family origins, it was obvious that he would grow curious and investigate.
-
After he consulted Yuusaku about it, the other man immediately dissuaded him from further investigating.
And that’s where he learned the background behind the Karasuma Family from an inside man.
…
Hearing the name Karasuma from someone else’s lips was intriguing. It tore something within him and he’s reminded of his best friend—who from the last update he heard is currently in America with his fiancée. It also reminded him of the sheer fear that dominated the usually aloof man’s features.
If the writer was here, the man would dissuade him from accepting the scientist couple’s request.
But as usual, his curiosity got the better of him and he accepted.
He only had a simple job.
Hide the pill that’s encased in a specialized resin formula that’s larger than his palm. It was ridiculous, considering the pill was way smaller than the encasing resin. Barely even using a quarter of the space. In fact, it didn’t even take up a quarter of the space of the pseudo-jewel’s enclosure.
Testing his grip around it told him that it was fully solid and cured. It was unpolished though, like a rough gemstone that’s recently discovered and still rough around the edges, a few polishing and shaping and it can pass off as an actual gem. He had no doubts about that. However, the small translucent red pill inside was still too visible, especially against the translucent royal blue enclosure.
When they gave him the “gem,” it gave off an odd glow when hit by a source of light—though it was notably glowing it’s brightest against the moonlight and only faintly against other source of light, but it still glowed—likely an effect of some sort of optical refraction components.
Setting the pseudo-gemstone down on his locked drawer and sliding that shut, his eyes trailed on the card that both Miyano’s gave to him.
Picking up the card and eyeing his phone, he sighs before ultimately deciding against it and putting the card together with the pseudo-jewel.
(But, just in case… he starts recording.)
…
When news of an underground lab blowing up, taking talented scientists with it; Toichi then knew that the couple were found, killed—and their death’s covered up.
(And he knows that if he were ever found out he too would likely—)
Toichi brushes off Chikage’s concern, concerning himself with the secret passage they built-in, giving her a silent gesture to leave him alone for a bit. The former phantom thief raises a brow but gives a smile that showed she understood the secrecy—before pretending to forget something and going out of the house.
Satisfied, he immediately strides towards the desk drawer that hid the pseudo-gem, pocketing that and he heads to workshop hidden in Jii’s parlor. It works as there will be no records left—knowing exactly what to do.
While he normally would have been satisfied with simply hiding the “gem” as it is, there was the fact that it could be easily found—and the fact that shady men have personally approached him as Kaitou KID told him that Karasuma had likely already been tipped off on the gem’s appearance, and was tasking him to find it.
He had already discussed it with Yuusaku, and while his friend wasn’t happy with his involvement—was reasonable, knowing that had the Miyano’s not approached him—the Organization could have approached KID first; in order to hire him to steal the “gem” from the Miyano’s. And thankfully, Yuusaku agreed and tipped in with the plan to hide PANDORA.
Named appropriately, considering its capabilities.
(Meanwhile, let the Organization believe that he was still looking for something that’s already in his grasp.)
Knowing that Jii wouldn’t be present, he sets to work on polishing the gem—since its spent so long looking like a gemstone, it’s only right he turns it as such. Not to mention, it would be easy considering its consistency and the news he and Yuusaku found concerning what that Adviser found.
Considering the man, it would be simple to convince him, not to mention, him and his family are the only line with the capability to stand up against Karasuma’s fame—especially considering the fact that the Karasuma wealth has been declared as a dead asset and fortune, until someone with the right blood or capabilities managed to pick it up.
Checking the now ball shaped “gem”, he smirks, setting to dip it into the specialized formula he and Yuusaku had concocted—considering that they both personally knew the man they’re entrusting the “gem” to. They can easily ask for its maintenance.
But for now, he has to work on the dyeing process.
In every dip, the pseudo-gem comes up darker, and darker.
-
“Kuroba Toichi! It has been a while since I saw your magic show! I heard you have something for me?” as expected of the sharp advisor.
No matter what, this man will be their ally.
“It has been a while since you’ve come to my shows, Advisor Suzuki Jirokichi.” Jirokichi—the only Suzuki who’s aware of the current existence of the continuation of the Karasuma Clan—smirks, undoubtedly reading in between the lines just fine—Karasuma has always been one of his greater rivals, knowing fully well that it can rise from the dead like a phoenix. The fact, that Karasuma’s own son was willing to get rid of that chance was enough for the man to team up with them, it was a rare opportunity, after all.
It isn’t everyday a Karasuma loses their own that’s not to death.
Everything will be fine, it’ll be easy to hide PANDORA. Considering it’s not even a real gem. After all, no one would expect PANDORA to be blatantly displayed as a fake gem—not that people would know, except for those who are knowledgeable.
Well… isn’t it fitting that it’s permanent display show case of the BS Black Star will be on April Fools?
It’ll be Kaitou KID’s greatest mystery and joke to leave on this world, even if they wouldn’t know about it.
|End|