Chapter Text
“Hey, Jodie-sensei,” Conan says, accompanied by his habitual beckoning gesture. The FBI agent follows suit, trailing after his lowering hand. No one else is within earshot. “Do you remember? With the bank hostage situation not so long ago. You wanted to tell me something?”
An uneasy expression flits across her face. She fiddles with the end of her sleeve. “Ah, that. I thought I said… it was nothing important?”
“Hmm,” Conan hums thoughtfully. Then he leans into that naive, childish voice, pressing his weight back on his heel so he can look up directly into her eyes, catching her in the midst of an innocuous lie. “But… I can’t really think of anything that would spook you that badly. Except for Akai-san, that is.”
That same pained expression returns to her face, followed by a resigned sigh, the telltale of someone who’s given up. “I can’t hide anything from you, can I, Cool Kid?”
Conan has the decency to smile wide, apologetic notes coloring his tone when he continues to push, “So what’s wrong? I can tell you’re still thinking about it.”
“I saw him that day at the bank. Actually, I had the chance to talk to him… but he couldn’t speak,” she recounts, eyes glazed over from memory. Shaking her head to snap herself out of it, “He couldn’t recognize me. We sat next to each other during most of it. More importantly, I remember a large burn scar on the right side of his face… if he had survived the fire and crawled away with no memory… I should have said something. Maybe we could have checked if he was just a phantom…”
Conan rubs his chin. What are the chances Jodie’s mind was playing tricks on her? As opposed to the man who was seemingly ‘Akai Shuuichi’ being real?
Especially when Ayumi, Mitsuhiko, and Genta saw him as well.
“I have a theory,” Conan says, then shakes his head softly, for the unspoken lies he’s been telling her. “I believe that you saw him. But I don’t believe that who you saw was really Akai-san.”
“Then… was it his doppelgänger? Who could possibly want to pretend to be…” Jodie’s eyes widen as she trails off. “You don’t mean to say…?”
“I don’t have any solid evidence,” he raises his chin and says firmly, “but that just means we’ll have to investigate. The highest likelihood is the Black Organization—Vermouth maybe—disguising herself as Akai-san to test all of your reactions.”
“So… Shuu really is…”
Conan turns away. “I have a plan. For preventative action. I’m going to need all of your help.”
Jodie acquiesces easily, but she doesn’t look as put together as she did before this conversation happened.
Conan wants to tell her that her glasses are askew, off-center where they sit on her nose bridge.
He doesn’t tell her about it.
He also doesn’t tell her about Akai Shuuichi's real fate. If anything happens to compromise their plans and put his loved ones in danger… he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself.
The solid surface of the smooth architectural normality that is the mall floor composed of a blend of colorful ceramic, glass, stone, and more beneath his feet anchors him to reality, as does the sight of the blinking security cameras of the outlet—he counts them and noted their blind spots as an afterthought—the ones visible from where they stand, that is. The bustling plaza is still buzzing with the muffled noise of a subdued crowd, still overwhelmed and disorganized in their collective reaction to the dramatic case of the day.
After a determined deep breath in, filled with the scent of a nearby tempura shop’s frying oil, Conan tells Jodie of his little preventative measures and quietly hopes everything will turn out alright when the time comes for the pieces to slide into place like one of Samizu Kichiemon’s puzzles.
He’ll try to go after the scarred man himself. This way he can tell Vermouth to her face—and no one else will be hurt in the process. If the person under the disguise isn’t her, they’ll be none the wiser to a child who barely reaches their hip.
Whether this is a gain worth venturing or a massive risk, he’s yet to know.
***
“I-I saw him!” Camel’s voice blares through the badge-shaped device. “I saw him again, just like you said I would!”
“Camel-san.” Conan shifts the receiver away from his face to mitigate any further explosion of noise. “Don’t move. Where are you right now? Where did he run to?”
And then he’s off.
It’s only by pure coincidence he almost runs into the man in question’s legs sprinting as fast as he can toward the direction Camel described to him.
He’s stopped by two larger hands planted firmly on his shoulders, surprisingly warm palms; he expects it to be followed by a harsh scolding, so his apology is already on the tip of his tongue as he rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. “Ah, I’m sor—”
Instead, when he recovers from the momentary crash, Conan stares up into a massive burn scar etched into the contours of the angles of an eerily familiar face and an expression as blank as a stillborn’s. Littering the edges are distortions and discolorations in the skin, splotchy as they near the center.
The scarred man turns to escape, letting go of Conan’s shoulders, but he knows he’ll never manage to outrun a taller adult with much longer legs, so he quickly moves to grab onto the other man’s left wrist with both of his hands.
At the end of that wrist is a black sleeve, or to be more specific, some type of dark cardigan, zipper stopping just short of the lower neck but going past the collarbone where the flaps of the collar are folded down messily. A cap, just as dark as the rest of his outfit, is adorned in such a way that covers his eyes with shadows if he were to tilt his head down. Only a few strands of his bangs hang loosely over his right eye, a fashion choice not too different from Akai’s preferred headgear of a knitted cap.
If it’s a fake disguise, it’s a very detailed one—Vermouth comes to mind immediately.
“Hey, Oji-san,” Conan says, pitching his voice higher and watching for any subtle twitches, any microexpressions, anything that might give some information away. “How did you get so badly hurt on your face? Are you maybe an actor? My favorite character Kamen Yaiba is in explosions all the time, but I’ve never seen such a big scar before!”
The scarred version of Akai wiggles his arm to shake Conan off, but his grip is solid, even for a grade-schooler. That being said, there is nothing stopping the potential Black Organization member from picking Conan up where he’s clamped onto the man like a vice grip and roughly throwing him down into the sidewalk.
Conan makes a loud and obvious gesture of looking around, peering into the alley the man’s just come out of. “Are you being chased, Oji-san? How exciting! Or…”
He loosens his hold for a moment to shift his fingers to either side of the man’s hand and tugs, as hard as he can in a child’s body. Something loosens further inside the sleeves of the man’s jacket and Conan’s eyes widen to the size of saucers when the skin under his hands begins to peel and scrunch up under his fingers. The forming narrow rips and tears reveal darker skin, closer to Hattori’s complexion than Akai Shuuchi’s.
This is when the man finally snatches his hand out of Conan’s and clutches it to his chest.
“Ah,” Conan says, like he hasn’t just ripped some of the skin from the scarred man’s left hand. He doesn’t remember Vermouth’s disguises being this flimsy. Then again, he’s never purposely tried to get close enough to her to unmask them. “S-Sorry.”
But there’s no going back. Replacing the previous nonchalant neutral expression on the scarred man is furrowed eyebrows, and most surprisingly of all, the man opens his mouth and begins to speak. “… Who exactly are you, boya?”
Well, that doesn’t sound like Akai Shuuchi. That doesn’t sound like Vermouth either, or any person Conan’s ever met before. Then it must be the only possibility left… a Black Organization member.
Though… it is unusually careless of them to omit something as important as a voice changer. Maybe he hadn’t planned on speaking while walking around as Akai Shuuichi, and in addition, perhaps the man’s guard is mistakenly lowered a significant amount due to Conan’s appearance as a nosy child. It’s a bit too easy, he thinks.
“Why do you look like Akai-no-niichan?” Conan blurts with all the naive bluntness that’s supposed to match his physical age, hoping his sidestepping of the question goes mostly unnoticed. “I thought your friends said that you had to go to a very far away place?”
“Huh,” the other man says, more a small disbelieving scoff than anything else. Or maybe some sort of internal understanding clicking into place. Either way, Conan pretends to misinterpret it as a noise affirmation.
“So you really are Akai-no-niichan! That’s a relief…”
‘Akai’ nods before clearing his throat. He leans down to meet Conan’s much shorter eye level. “Did my friends say anything else?”
Hmm. So it seems this imposter is going to lean into his role, even trying to mimic the intonation and tone of Akai’s speaking patterns. It’s not bad, considering he doesn’t have something to adjust his voice… maybe convincing enough to fool a child.
The takeaway from the other man’s choice of action is a very obvious fact—he knows Akai Shuuchi. Knows him better than someone who might know another person through brief conversations.
… Personal grudge about Akai being revealed as NOC, maybe?
Conan shakes his head, returning the other man’s stare with an oblivious look. “I just remember that… they looked very, very sad when they told me. But you can still visit anytime, right? I mean, look! You’re here now, aren’t you?”
The other man’s eyes look exactly like Akai’s unique ones when they make firm eye contact, but everything about them is wrong. “… That’s right. I was just going to do that.”
Tilting his head childishly, Conan blatantly shifts his gaze to the left hand still being held closer to the other man’s chest. “Earlier, why did your hand fall off? I didn't hurt you, did I, Onii-san? I really didn’t mean to…”
The imposter makes a throaty noise of dissent before smiling, an oddly gentle expression on Akai’s face. “No, you didn’t hurt me at all. Don’t worry about it, boya.”
Interesting. Unnecessarily kind to children?
“If you’re on your way to see your friends… I can take you to them! I just talked to them earlier, and it’s not too far away from here!” Injecting as much enthusiasm as he can into his voice, he gestures through the alley, pointing to the direction where he knows Camel should still be waiting.
From the corner of his eyes, he watches as the gears turn in the other man’s head. The best plan of action is to agree and then use Conan as a hostage while the FBI still has suspicions that he’s actually ‘Akai’. Maybe he can aim to tarnish Akai’s reputation, slot himself as a spy in the FBI and gather information undercover, or even pretend the Black Organization has recruited him in his amnesia state. Despite Conan’s earlier reassurances to Jodie, a hypothesis without any proof isn’t very believable when the man in question is a loved one that quite possibly could have survived death when he shouldn’t have.
Still, Conan has the upper hand if he plays his cards correctly. He has more information about the overall situation, and even if he ends up with a gun pointed at his head once again, Camel, Jodie, and James outnumber ‘Akai’.
“That sounds like a great idea.” Then ‘Akai’ adds, “You’re very kind and thoughtful.”
As if that’ll butter Conan up. Maybe it would, if he were a regular grade-schooler.
Conan swallows a yelp when his left hand is grabbed, but forces his tense body to relax when he realizes the other man is simply holding his hand. Unfortunately, the chance to grab any fingerprints of the true identity of the man under the ‘Akai’ facade is just out of reach; the man’s left hand is freely at his other side, most likely for convenience's sake—any holstered or well-hidden gun is probably in reach somewhere on the opposite side of the man’s body as well.
“Lead the way?”
Sucking in a breath that doesn’t go unnoticed, Conan shrinks into himself, pointing at the alley shortcut again. “Onii-san, I’m… a little bit afraid of the dark. Can you go first? Pretty please?”
“I understand,” the man says, flashing another smile. “You should hold onto my hand tighter then, okay?”
It’s only several moments after Conan has begun to trail after ‘Akai’ into a dark alley does he realize how much of a risk he’s taking when he’s had the chance to think it through about three more times. Vermouth was the one who disguised the man, there’s no doubt about it—and yet Conan doesn’t know if Vermouth’s close by or not. She could have been at the scene of the bank robbery as well, unnoticeable with her disguise. Similarly, she could be aware of what awaits her partner at the end of their walk, which would put Conan and the other members of the FBI at an enormous disadvantage. Even worse if she’s managed to disguise herself as one of them, voice changer in tow.
Suddenly, Conan doesn’t feel as confident in his plan as he did at the start of all this. The idea of a new organization member being introduced so abruptly and so easily has jarred his reasoning more than it should.
He’s not even sure why—just that it feels a little different than when he’s facing someone like Gin. Is it because no one has been hunting for confirmation of Akai Shuuichi’s death until now? Who is this new member capable of having doubts about something Conan went to great lengths to playwright?
Occasionally, ‘Akai’ turns his head back to check on Conan’s mental state because of his previously revealed fear of the dark, so he continues to play the fool, skittish at every shadow they cross when the other man is looking, appropriately spooked.
Damn, he can’t shoot a tranquilizer dart from his watch with the way the imposter is holding his hand, no matter how gently he’s being tugged along—his wrist is completely dwarfed by the other man’s fingers.
Everything in his head is screaming for him to abort, abort, abort…! especially when his shorter height allows him to spot a glimpse of an emerging feral grin adorning the man’s face that makes Conan’s breath catch in his throat. He doesn’t think he’s supposed to be seeing that. It’s a massive contrast to the soft smile he’d been given at his confession about his fear of the dark, which had been a total lie.
Has he been thoroughly read? Is he being taken to the man’s car instead of to where the FBI members were waiting for him? Did the Black Organization member completely see through him…? It can’t be…!
Maybe he’s being overly cautious.
Maybe he’s not.
Conan quickly reaches for his shoe as normally as someone trying to adjust the discomfort of a sock riding up their ankle, holds his breath, hoping the subtle click click click and consequential noises go unnoticed, then shifts his hand toward the center of his belt like he’s going to scratch an itch.
A soccer ball inflates in an instant and Conan kicks hard, heart pounding uneasily when the hand covering his wrist tightens at the first sound of danger, squeezing not unlike those dangerous industrial machines that crush people to death, and he panics for a moment, thinking, oh no, what if he doesn’t let go?
His burning fears are quenched when the grip disappears, leaving his hand aching from the force. Conan turns the other way and puts several paces between them, just in time to see how the Black Organization member manages to block the soccer ball aimed at his face backed by a dangerous amount of speed with both his forearms blocking his throat and chin, not even trying to hide a gritted, shadowy expression—but to his credit, he doesn’t get knocked over by the force when most would, knees bent lower and spread slightly to distribute the hefty blow. The skin of the disguise being shredded by the strength of the ball reveals the same shade of skin from earlier, one that most definitely doesn’t belong to Akai Shuuichi.
Conan takes the distraction as a chance to ready his wristwatch, but before he can get the chance to press the release mechanism, in a single moment, the Black Organization member shifts his weight lower like an experienced boxer, twists in Conan’s direction, and begins running full speed at him like someone with the intention of tackling him to the ground and pinning him by his throat like a butterfly to a dartboard. Conan’s automatic response to the violent switch in behavior is raising his hands to protect his face which he knows is a mistake the moment he begins to do it—he should have just tried to tranquilize the other man even if his chances of missing suddenly increased drastically—and consequently earns a hard kick to his upper body by what feels to be a well-practiced technique, meant to knock people five times his size out.
“I don’t make it a habit to beat up little children, but…” A small chuckle leaves the other man’s mouth. Committing the new voice to memory, Conan clutches his chest in pain, wheezing from the wind that’s just been knocked out of him. He knows the other man didn’t even use half of his full force, otherwise, he could have genuinely killed Conan with that kick. “You’re a little bit dangerous, aren’t you?”
Dropping all pretenses, Conan croaks out, weaker than he’d like to sound, “Right back at you.”
A rough bout of coughing interrupts anything further he wants to say. He hopes he doesn’t have any internal injuries.
His detective badge crackles to life. He winces at the volume but doesn’t have the strength to even reach for it where it rests on the collar of his shirt. “Conan-kun? Conan-kun? Can you hear me? You’re taking longer than the estimated time you gave us—we’re going to come to you, okay?”
Staring down at Conan, still pathetically strewn on the ground, the Black Organization member clicks his tongue, muttering, “To be so incompetent that they have to drag a child into their affairs. On foreign land, no less.”
… What?
What does that mean?
It seems the man doesn’t see him as a threat anymore, if ever in the first place, suddenly pretending Conan isn’t there when he receives an incoming phone call. Sighing, the other man answers, leaning against the wall of the alley, choosing to speak first, “If you’re calling to tell me about the trap, you’re a little too late. I dealt with it already. It was pretty flimsy, though, if you ask me. They sent a child, and—”
The man suddenly stops speaking, like he’s just been cut off by a confused exclamation.
“It was a little boy. Smart, elementary school, maybe? He heard my voice so—What? No, I didn’t kill the boy!”
During the next short bout of silence, his eyes flit to Conan’s prone form. “… Should I? Do I need to? I can do it, he’s already—”
Conan inhales sharply, wincing when a spike of pain laces through his small body at the intake of breath. He might be a little more than winded, but he won’t be able to tell until all the adrenaline goes away, a fight or flight mechanism he’s grateful for. Physical pain isn’t something he can often power through or overcome by sheer force of will.
Jerking, the man leans away from the phone, a warbly distorted voice coming from the speaker. “Hai, hai. Loud and clear. There’s no need to raise your voice at me. I’ll be seeing you later.”
It must be the man’s partner-in-crime for their scarred Akai scheme. So Conan was right—the new Black Organization member isn’t acting alone at all. It probably isn’t Gin, who’s always followed by Vodka. Probably not any of the higher-ups, either.
Ending the call, the man sighs, again. “Why would Vermouth…?” he muses to himself, trailing off, confirming Conan’s suspicion.
Conan groans in relief, but even that makes his entire being hurt. He hates how helpless he is. Hates that one good kick puts him completely out of commission. Hates how he’s being spared today only thanks to Vermouth.
Thankfully, it’s just him. No one else is within the Black Organization’s grasp.
“Hmm, now how does a child play into all this?” the other man wonders aloud, slowly inching closer to Conan, an apex predator slinking toward his prey with a glean of observative scrutiny that so many others simply don’t have.
If there’s a Black Organization member out there who can think like Conan, connect the dots after minimal investigation, someone with a similar level of deductive prowess…
A thrum of something pleasurable crawls up his spine, something like sparks of excitement and fascination akin to what he feels toward particularly difficult mysteries.
No, no, no. This isn’t good.
Dropping to a crouch and shifting his weight on one knee for convenience, the man presses his left palm to Conan’s mouth, his other free hand easily wrapping around the front of Conan’s neck in a clawed grip. “Now, don’t struggle, okay? I’m not going to kill you. It’ll be like a small pinch! You won’t even feel it.”
Conan glares daggers at the man, putting as much aggression into the narrowing of his eyes as possible, hoping he can burn a hole into the Black Organization member’s forehead just through force of will alone. This situation is in no way comparable to a brief inoculation at the doctor’s.
The meant-to-be-soothing shushing noises the man keeps making don’t help one bit, either. They only make Conan’s hackles rise even further, a creeping shroud of fear moving in like a rapid stormfront in the form of goosebumps on his skin when the man presses firmly and suddenly—ten, nine, eight—Conan can’t breathe, can’t think, chest tightening and collapsing inward from the lack of oxygen. His hands jerk at his sides, uselessly flailing after all his attempts to pry the hands off his body prove fruitless, the organization member’s long-sleeves preventing any skin from getting under Conan’s fingernails through his struggling. His vision begins to spin into speckles of black and white as he recalls how long the carotid artery needs to be restricted for a person to faint, how it must be faster for children.
Conan makes one last ditch attempt to lunge his head forward and bite the man’s fingers, palms, any of the exposed skin of the left hand pressed to his face—seven, six—because if he could just get some DNA in his mouth, maybe they could use it to find the man’s identity somewhere in the system.
At the same time—five, four—the man’s hold on his face tightens, presses harder, forcing Conan’s body to tense, mouth automatically opening to gasp for air, wheezing and understandably slack-jawed from the loss of autonomy. Following his failed attempt to do something useful, anything at all to save himself, Conan hears laughter, genuine noises of amusement, and it’s so unfair, considering it’s one of the nicest sounding laughs he’s ever heard, a light and full and round sound of mirth.
“Sorry, Conan-kun… That’s what they called you earlier, isn’t it? Conan-kun?”
Three, two, one.
“... Sleep well.”
Zero.
And it’s the last thing he hears before he weakly slips into the sweet release of unconsciousness, another frustrating betrayal of his small, shrunken body.