#Cairo was still never one of her targets. Bet that ''you are nothing you have nothing without me'' hits pretty hard there huh Riley!!!

[rinmemesuoka]

thinking about how fucking good Wallflower is again

[s-j-ace]

The Same Question

Chapter Five

Characters:  Shuichi Saihara, Ouma Kokichi

Words: 10600

Summary:

After Detective Shuichi Saihara encounters mysterious thief Kokichi Ouma  for the first time, a game of cat and mouse ensues as both men ask  themselves the same question. Why exactly does the elusive phantom thief  do what he does?

This is Chapter Five, Here are Chapters One, Two, Three, and Four

Read on AO3

[Log of Text Messages from Maki Harukawa’s Cellular Device]

From: idiot #1

Hey Makiroll <3

How was your flight?

From: Me

Good

Well

You know

I was on an eight hour flight

So that was never going to go well

But I just got to the apartment and I made some tea

So I’m good now

It’s nice to be home

From: idiot #1

Haha I bet

Man I wish I could be home to greet you!

I’d give you a big hug and kiss right now if I could!!!!!!

From: Me

Gross

From: idiot #1

D:

From: Me

…

If you were here right now I’d tell you I love you with my words

Like an adult

From: idiot #1

What no kiss?

From: Me

Hm

Maybe a small one

From: idiot #1

:D

From: Me

If you’ve shaved

From: idiot #1

D:

From: Me

:P

I gotta wean you off kisses kaito

That way you won’t have to go cold turkey right away when you go on your big trip

From: idiot #1

My big trip?

Lol, you make it sound like I’m just going overseas or something

From: Me

Well space is treated as international waters by most countries

From: idiot #1

I guess that’s true?

Hey!!

That’s a space fact!

Maki Roll!!!!

From: Me

Shhushhhh

From: idiot #1

:D

From: Me

Oh hey

Speaking of big trips

Have you heard from Shuichi at all?

I’m concerned that he may be mad at me

From: idiot #1

Whaaaaat

Why would shuichi be mad at you

From: Me

Well

I didn’t back up his clowns stealing toilets from the louvre thing

And then clowns stole toilets from the louvre

I’m worried he may feel as though I’ve gaslit him

Or something

From: idiot #1

What

How did you know about the toilets

From: Me

It was in the news?

Wait, so you heard a different way?

From: idiot #1

Uh

From: Me

So you have heard from him

From: idiot #1

Oh yeah

I don’t think he’s mad at you

He’s pretty preoccupied with the clowns I think

And besides you know

My sidekick isn’t really the type of guy who like

Gets mad

He’s more likely to like

Think you’re mad at him                                                        

And then be mad at himself for making you mad

From: Me

Shuichi gets mad sometimes

I saw him punch a guy once

And he listens to those songs that are just people screaming endlessly about hating other people

From: idiot #1

Yeah but he cries while doing that

Also I meant like

He wouldn’t get mad at you like that

Because you’re friends

From: Me

Yeah

You’re probably right

I still want to go visit him tomorrow

Say I’m.. sorry? Or something

Is this the kind of stuff that apologies are for?

From: idiot #1

Well I mean like

If you feel bad like by all means feel free to let him know

But Shuichi probably doesn’t think it’s a big deal

From: Me

Yeah but I still want to

From: idiot #1

Also I don’t think visiting him would be super productive

As far as I can tell he isn’t back from his trip yet

From: Me

What

But it’s been a month since he left

Isn’t he bored of Paris yet

From: idiot #1

No I think he’s like

Going other places too

From: Me

wym

Like, he’s doing a tour of europe?

That sounds nice

From: idiot #1

No I think it's more like

He’s still on the case

Cuz last week he was in Taiwan

And the week before that he was in Egypt

And some robberies happened there

From: Me

Oh

So he didn’t take my vacation advice at all huh

From: idiot #1

Yea I guess not

But hey

Not giving up is a good thing!!

From: Me

But what if you need to give up something that’s hurting you

Like smoking or murdering or drinking or overworking yourself because you equate productivity to self-worth

From: idiot #1

Then don’t give up on trying to get better!!!! You gotta believe in the best version of yourself

From: Me

|:/

Is he at least going to take a break long enough to come home and see you off

From: idiot #1

Uh

From: Me

Maybe I could text him to remind him and casually slip in the fact that I may be a little bit sorry that I thought he was insane

I mean obviously he’ll want to come see you before you go

You did tell him right

Kaito

Kaito

...

You forgot to tell him

From: idiot #1

Well I don’t know about forgot

It’s more like

There was never really a good time? To tell him?

From: Me

…

I’m changing your contact back to number one idiot in my phone

From: #1 idiot

Ouch

Will you change it back if I tell him today?

From: Me

Maybe

Do you even know where he is?

From: #1 idiot

…

No

From: Me

… well you better find him before I change your contact to “best friend loser”

From: #1 idiot

Implying that I’m your best friend and a loser or implying that I lost our best friend to the thrill of chasing a group of fiendish clowns

From: Me

Both

From: #1 idiot

Okay okay I’m already texting him --- Shuichi Saihara spent the start of his day awkwardly trying to fit in with the rest of the people sitting in the front row of the exceedingly fancy audience at the first show of fashion week in Milan, Italy. He knew he should technically feel exceedingly lucky that he even got into the show, let alone that he got one of the very expensive front row seats. The Milan fashion week people were certainly the most cooperative of any potential DICE targets he had tried to warn previously. Probably because Shuichi made sure not to just send the warning through Interpol this time, and the fashion people actually cared about their careers enough to take the threat of a break in seriously. Except, Shuichi wasn't sure all the security should be placed around the stages and dresses like they were. The most typically valuable item on sight was never really DICE's MO.

That's why he was here, wasn't it?

In the front row. With all these strangers. Who were giving him weird looks. Did that lady just whisper to her friend while looking directly at him? Wait no, don't look at them. Or maybe do look at them? What if they were DICE members who only just spotted him? Right, right, all these people were suspects. Job before social anxiety Shuichi.

Refocused, Shuichi made some observations around him. He scanned the crowd, but didn't see any of the DICE members he would recognize. He did see that security guards had been helpfully placed by the doorways. He wondered if any of them were interpol agents. If they were, it wasn’t anyone he knew. Probably for the best anyway. Agent Ishimaru was mostly likely still pretty steamed at him. He hadn’t been letting Shuichi look at the notes DICE sent to Interpol, even though their team didn’t seem to have as much luck translating them as Shuichi had in the past.

Wait, there was one entrance wasn’t there? Maybe he should watch it? After all, there was no guarantee that DICE wouldn't just walk right in. Like they did in Nevada. And Cairo. But weirdly not Taipei? It seemed like they had abandoned whatever they were going to use Doctor Iruma’s EMP bombs for after failing to get them... Or were the bombs the heist after all and DICE had just waited for him to leave Taiwan to carry out the heist and actually weren’t in Milan at all and Shuichi was a big old idiot? No, they had to be in Milan, he had seen the airport tapes and done the research. But were they at the show? If they weren’t that’d be good news for the next season of fashion, but probably not for Shuichi’s case...

Ok, he just had to make sure that even if they were here nothing got stolen. What was he saying? Oh, yeah. Just walking in was probably less likely here, with all the security and all.

But wasn't it just like DICE to pick the path less likely than one would expect?

As the intro music cued in to the beginning of the fashion show and the house lights dimmed, all Shuichi really knew was that he should be ready for anything.

Two spotlights did a bit of a dance on the catwalk before they too faded and the whole room was pitch black.

There was a moment of silence.

…

And another.

…

And… another…

…

People started murmuring in the crowd.

Shuichi heard some English lady say, "What, do they expect us to have night vision?"

"It's all part of the show, dearest," said the woman next to her.

Shuichi thought for a second.

…

And another.

…

And a-

…

They stole the lights didn't they. --- Kokichi Ouma had to be honest with himself, as he continued on his circuitous route throughout the vents which overlooked the first show of fashion week in Milan, stealing all the lights from this year’s venue wasn’t very inspired. He was essentially reusing the Taipei 101 idea that hadn’t come to fruition, but Queen had insisted he needed a powerful light for his next project and the rest of DICE seemed to have formed some sort of blood pact to support whatever his next heist idea was as long as he didn’t make them watch the cinematic masterpiece Cats (2019) at their last movie night.

Kokichi himself hadn’t actually seen Cats (2019) yet. He kept reminding himself to, after hearing of its reported cursedness, but he just hadn’t gotten around to it. DICE had watched it for the first time without him, and now every time Queen brought it up Kokichi felt obligated to shut him down for the sake of maintaining his own authority. “Now Queen, obviously I love Cats (2019) directed by Tom Hooper and starring Franceska Hayward, as a fellow enthusiast of the cinematic arts, but for the sake of everyone else…” Cue eight sighs of relief courtesy of your one and only super awesome boss.

While thinking absentmindedly about his and the cinematic masterpiece Cats (2019)’s passing like two ships in the night, Kokichi checked where all his pieces should be on his internal chessboard. The locations of four fake guards, two fake handymen, and three vent crawlers popped up on the schematics he had memorized of the event hall. All busy dismantling lighting equipment or keeping an eye on a certain detective.

The word detective sent a third train of thought spiraling. Saihara really had shown up, hadn’t he? Kokichi hadn’t even sent a note this time and the detective was already here in the front row of the audience. That was probably the main reason Kokichi felt it was fair to upcycle the same plan from Taipei. Usually he’d get bored of an idea after tossing it around for a bit, so he had to act fast before his own lack of motivation became his undoing, but with Saihara around he didn’t have to worry about entertaining himself with his plans. Whatever the detective would do in response was bound to be far more interesting.

Okay he was almost in position for the first hit, and Ace was about to cause the black out in 5… 4… 3…

Oup, the light already turned off. Now Kokichi was just shuffling through the dark old vent getting ready to drop down and steal the lights from whatever room was beneath him while counting to himself about nothing and having three incongruous trains of thought at the same time.

The reason behind Kokichi’s super special secret ability to be thinking about three things at once was that A) he was a genius and 1) he was still on a sugar high from the gelato that he and his hench people had gotten for breakfast, and everyone knows sugar make brain work good.

Also! Gelato is just like… Ice Cream ++. Just like, better ice cream. It was just smooth and creamy instead of cold and chunky all the time. Kokichi could eat a lot more of it without getting a brain freeze than the regular stuff, and he wanted to get as much of it in him as possible before they left Italy forever. He’d ‘reluctantly’ promised they’d get some more to celebrate after the heist was done, but it was mostly because when they were plotting their escape he didn’t want to deal with a sugar cr-

*CREEEEAAAAAAK*

No, a crash, silly vent making a stupid noise, a sugar cra-

*CRACKOOM*

That was the last sound Kokichi heard before the ceiling crumbled beneath him. --- Shuichi Saihara realized that, by all means, the black out was rather clever. It completely stifled any immediate action on the part of an investigator. Even if Shuichi was right and it was the stage lights that were stolen, waiting to confirm the fact would only give the thieves more time to escape. He’d probably be able to bumble around in the dark searching for the entrance, but then what?

   Then his phone buzzed.

   Oh. Duh. He thought.

   Quickly he pulled out his phone, swiping aside whatever thing Kaito had just sent him to access his phone’s flashlight feature.

"Lights!" He shouted. "Use your cellphones as lights!"

He repeated these directions once more in the best Italian he could manage, hoping he sounded authoritative enough to garner a response.

There was a great shuffling all around him as the audience muttered and reached for their phones.

Then, as Shuichi turned on his own phone's flashlight and raised it up, he watched everyone in the audience do the same. Hundreds of little lights flickered on around him, the image of the runway becoming clearer every second.

As if that were their planned cue all along, the first models began to strut down the catwalk, every glitzy gown and sparkly suit seemingly illuminated by a thousand stars in the night sky. The audience oohed and aahed, and maybe Shuichi would've found the sight pretty cool too if he hadn't been looking up at an entirely different catwalk altogether. The lighting deck above had apparently been stripped bare during the black out. Shuichi knew that both sides of that catwalk let out to the heavily guarded backstage area. So where did DICE go?

Wait… were those horizontal air vents over the catwalk?

Shuichi started making his way over to the security guards near the exit.

God, when would architects of security systems ever learn? Why would you ever put a horizontal vent right above whatever it is you're trying to not get stolen? It's child's play! Any thief with at least one limb or a very ambitious set of teeth could steal something with a horizontal vent over it, and yet no one ever thought to check them until it was too late!

When he reached the guards he said hurriedly in a low tone, “We need to check the vents right now.”

Both guards gave him weird looks and Shuichi felt his confidence immediately wither.

“Parla solo italiano.” Said the guard to the right with the long dark brown hair tied in a tight bun. Speak only Italian. Shit.

Uh. Okay. Um.

“I ladri hanno... colpito,” Okay, ladri means thieves. Yeah. Uh. Was colpito the right word? Maybe? It sounded like culprit. What was the word for air vent again... “Controllare l'uscita… dell'aria!” Yeah! It was dell’aria. Okay. Good. Italian spoken.

Except now she was giving him an even weirder look.

“Cosa hai detto signore? Lardo hanno colpito? Qualcuno sta lanciando lardo tra il pubblico? Lardo nelle prese d'aria?”

Ah. Uh. That was a lot of words. Cosa… hai detto… what did you say sir. And then. Something about lard?

“Lardo….” Had she not heard him correctly through the loud music of the show happening behind them? His eyes wandered to the other guard, a man about the same height as the woman with the same dark brown hair color. Both guards were wearing sunglasses, but the man’s face suddenly scrunched with obvious anger.

“Hey! Are you calling me fat?” He accused with no hint of Italian accent.

… What? Why would he… Unless…

The woman cracked her knuckles. “Ti faccio vedere dov'è il lardo, ragazzo duro.”

Before Shuichi could even begin to decipher what that meant, the woman put him in a headlock.

DICE . Shuichi realized as the man took a cloth out of his pocket. Shuichi smelled the sweet, familiar scent of a volatile anesthetic. Probably chloroform or something of the sort….

Luckily this wasn’t the first time Shuichi had been in a headlock, and she wasn’t even holding a knife to his neck. He tucked his chin into the arm restraining him, holding it with his right hand as he brought his left up and over the front of her face. In one smooth motion he flipped her over on her back.

Officer Chabashira had taught him that. Tenko had been one of his better friends on the force. Though she spent most of her time beating up other cops for being misogynist pigs than catching criminals. Then again that strong sense of justice was something Shuichi actually liked about her. He hadn’t seen much of her after she quit the force, though. He heard she opened a studio for something called “neo-aikido” but had been too afraid of too many things, like that she wouldn’t recognize him and that things would be awkward and then she would yell at him for being a degenerate male, to check it out. It was probably for the best anyway. If she were here right now, she’d definitely yell at him for betraying the number one rule of her aikido teachings...

“Shuichi don’t use neo-aikido on girls. If a girl tries to kill you, you deserve it.”

Said “girl” trying to kill him landed in a roll, and probably would have tried to grapple him again if she hadn’t crashed into a nearby audience member.

Shuichi made a break for the exit. He expected to be intercepted by the other guard, but the man turned instead to help up his partner.

“You okay, sis?” He asked concernedly.

“I’d be better if you weren’t letting him get away, lo stupido!” She replied tartly and also, Shuichi noted, without much accent.

He managed to get through the doors and found that the guards that had been assigned to stand outside the entrance were no longer there. That meant that he would most likely have to find his way backstage by going around the building if he wanted back up, so he started running.

   He’d probably have to shake his tails first, he reminded himself as the doors burst open again behind him.

   Shuichi changed course, making a couple of quick turns. Around the corner near the exit he saw the sign for the men’s bathroom. Of course! The bathroom! There would definitely be a vent outlet in the bathroom.

   He opened the door and quickly ducked in. He hoped that the DICE members wouldn’t follow him in before he got to the-

   Shuichi froze.

The scene that lay before him was one familiar to him since childhood, but yet every time he saw it he hoped to never see it again.

A body was sprawled face down on the bathroom tile, blood splattered on the ground all around the head. Shuichi realized that he recognized the blood soaked hair’s strange purple color, although it seemed to be tied back for some reason…  He looked up at what was apparently a hole in the ceiling and deduced that the thief had been crawling through the vents when he fell. The rubble on the ground around him seemed to confirm that. Shuichi…. Shuichi couldn’t tell if he was breathing from here.

What a way to end the thief’s crime spree...

He willed himself to put one foot in front of the other. Then he did so again. Then he got over his shock and walked up to the body. These things get easier, he reminded himself.

Shuichi kneeled down to take a look, careful not to contaminate any of the blood spatter with his shoes. There… really was a lot of blood. There were no obvious signs of breathing…

Okay. Shuichi needed to check the pulse to see if he should call an ambulance. Maybe there was still a chance…

He reached for the man’s wrist-

The man suddenly sprung up, thrusting his huge grinning, and now blood covered, clown mask into Shuichi’s personal space. “It’s a lie!” He exclaimed

Shuichi startled, falling on the floor. Shock ran through him as the thief began to cackle his signature laugh.

“Did I surprise you?” He teased, blood pouring down his mask, “Were you going to scream and cry in terror?”

Shuichi looked at him in shock for a solid ten seconds. The thief in return looked at him, leaning back and forth a little dazedly. Shuichi watched a drop of blood separate itself from the man’s chin, going to join the puddle on the floor.

“Oh, sorry…” The man disrupted the silence. “I should be saying something real witty just about now… I’m just a little light-headed from the blood loss. Yeah. This is. This is real blood.”

Then the shock was over and Shuichi found himself reacting by standing up, grabbing the thief, and putting him in a standard police academy arm lock on the ground. As much as the move required speed, Shuichi tried to be mindful of the head wound. He didn’t want to give the thief the chance to escape like his mistake in Taipei had, but he also didn’t want to further injure him.

The man still made a grunt of pain when he hit the ground. “Wow, detective, you’re a lot better at police brutality than you are at dressing for fashion shows.”

Shuichi remembered the people in the front row of the show who had been giving him odd looks. He frowned. “What’s wrong with the way I dress?” He muttered as he tried to figure out how he could hold this guy down and also grab a bandage from his coat pockets. Which were very functional, thank you very much.

“Well, some people might say that the all dark clothing kind of makes you look like an evil villain.” He said with the same dazed tone in his voice. How much blood was he losing? Shuichi couldn’t tell with the mask still on. He moved to take it off-

The door opened and Shuichi saw two security guards come in and Shuichi turned slighty to look at them. Thankfully they weren’t the two from before. Perhaps they had figured out the vents were the escape route already and had come to investigate?

“Like those guys.” The man beneath him muttered on. “They might think black clothing is kinda.. Villain looking. Not me though, I think you look like a sexy motorcycle.”

Shuichi frowned at him. Wow, he sounded very loopy. He was losing a lot of blood.

Shuichi turned to address the guards, who were seemingly frozen in shock. “Scusa... ma potra-no, uh, tresti, potresti chiamare,”  what was the gender for ambulance again? “a-ambulanza-”

The woman from before burst in, the other DICE member pretending to be a security guard at her heels. She pointed at Shuichi, exclaiming, “L'uomo in cima a quel brutto bambino è colui che ci ha attaccato!”

“Vroom vroom” The man beneath him giggled out before Shuichi was picked up by the two guards and slammed against the wall.

“Sei sicuro che sia lui?” One of them said to the Italian-speaking DICE member. “Quest'uomo sembra molto debole.”

“Quello è lui. Deve essere uno dei ladri.” She was… calling him one of the thieves? “Sono addestrati in aikido, ricordi l'incontro informativo?”

“Certo, certo.” Said the guard in response, obviously lying. If he had been to the l'incontro informativo - the informational meeting - then he would know who Shuichi was.

“Tu non capisci!” Shuichi exclaimed.

“Stai zitto, straniero.” The other guard shoved him up harder against the wall.

“Boss! What happened to you?” The male DICE member exclaimed.

His “boss” propped himself up on his elbow and swung his legs like a tweenager at a sleepover party. “Well, it’s a funny story! But at this rate I’m going to pass out from blood loss before I tell it to you!” His lackey gave him a concerned look. “Neeheehee… just kidding.”

“Wait I-” Shuichi started to say. The guards shoved him harder against the wall and he winced before going on. “I have some bandages and gauze in my pockets somewhere.”

The DICE members all turned to look at him. The man who had dressed as a guard looked at him hopefully, but the bleeding thief only gave him a blank stare and the woman fixed him with a steely glare.

“Aiuteremo questo piccolo bambino straniero.” She said icily. “Voi due potete prendervi cura del criminale.”

“What can I say Saihara?” The thief muttered as his lackeys helped him up. “Ya.. Ya shouldn't've worn all black to fashion week. Yup. That’s the… That’s the moral here.”

As they shuffled away, Shuichi realized there was nothing he could do. Even if he fought both security guards and managed to escape somehow, it would only prove to them that he really was a threat, and that was aside from the fact that he wouldn’t be able to do anything to capture the thieves on his own. He’d have to wait until they brought him to someone who actually recognized him and by then it would be too late.

The impossible is possible, all you gotta do is make it so.

“... I’ll stop you.” The detective said, resolution clear in his voice.

“I’d like to see you try.” The thief muttered in response.

Then the door shut. --- “Man… You’re really bleeding a lot there, boss…” Clubs muttered as Kokichi buckled himself into the seatbelt of their getaway car. After putting him down in the back seat, Clubs got in next to him, taking his usual spot in the middle seat even though there wasn’t really a need yet. Maybe he was anticipating the arrival of the rest of the group. Or maybe he was just being Clubs. And Clubs always sat in the middle seat. Not because of a reason but because he did. People operated from their own internal self as if the person they constructed from their thoughts and actions was more important to maintain than any law in the land.

Italian cars were… really weird huh? Very smooth… Like, like… Gelato.

“I’m fine.” He said. Ugh how unconvincing. “I’m just... pretending to bleed.”

Clubs frowned at him. “How could you possibly pretend to bleed?”

Kokichi was! Going to come up with a very, very good explanation. As soon as he just… sucked that blood back in… yeah… gelato… they were supposed to get gelato…

“He can’t.” Spades ducked her head into the car. “We need to stop it. Do you have a cloth or anything on you?”

“Only the one…” Kokichi muttered. He was thinking about the kerchief he still had in his pocket from the detective. Not that either Spades or Clubs knew that. They probably just thought he was going crazy. Well fine he didn’t want them to know about it anyway. They’d just get blood on it.

“Here,” Clubs took off his own bandana and put it on Kokichi’s head. “He’s still bleeding.” He reported.

“That’s why we’re taking him to a hospital.” Spades replied, now taking her place in the driver’s seat of the gelato car.

   Ugh, what? No.

   “You can’t take me to a hospital. It’s the first place they’ll look.” He wasn’t going to let the detective catch him at a hospital of all places… What kind of Phantom Thief got caught in a hospital… Lame… Lamey-lamey-lamooo….

   Spades put the key in the car and started it. “Fine. We’ll go to a mafia doctor if we have to.”

   Kokichi shook his head and felt the fluids roll around inside and outside of his skull. Part of him wondered if he could just sit in this car forever and bleed out until he died. The other part of him was sure that he was doomed to be immortal. “Nope. You crazy or something? We cannot get mixed up in organized crime. They murder people and we don’t do capitalism. Crime should be disorganized or else-”

   “Okay! Fine! We’ll go to a fucking Farmacia and pray that you don’t have a concussion!”

Kokichi snorted. “I can’t have a concussion. I’m too smart.”

Clubs gave him a look. “Boss, do you know what a concussion is?”

Kokichi squinted. He’d only ever seen the word being used by people making fun of jocks on the internet. “Isn’t it like a sports thing?”

“Well, actually,” Clubs said in an informative tone of voice. “It’s a serious brain injury.”

“You listening to your fortnite buddies again?”

“No, we learned that in junior high.”

Hah. School. Lameass. Kokichi never needed school. Who needs school when you have google, video games, and anime?

“I’m a serious brain injury already, I think I’ll be fine.”

“No, you won’t be, you could die.” Spades was on her phone, probably looking up italian pharmacies.

That would be fine too. Haha. What a good… A good joke… brain…

“I’m just woozy. I need… like a gelato. We’re getting gelato. We gotta wait for the rest of the gang so we can get gelato.”

“No, I texted them, they can all fit in the other car, you need medical attention.

Kokichi frowned. “There’s seven of them. That car’s a five seater.”

“We’re clowns boss.”

Right. Clowns.... Clowns…. Horses.

“Sis, don’t you think we should wait for King? He’s got his nurse certification, so he should be the one to help with injuries.”

Horses?

“No, this is a different kind of thing Clubs, with head injuries you have to act fast. King can catch up to us with the rest.”

Why weren’t there clown horses?

“Boss, don’t fall asleep. Clubs, make sure he stays awake. See if you can find concussion tests online” She handed her brother her phone.

Kokichi imagined a horse in clown makeup… they’d have to make it a real big red nose. Juicy like gelato…

“Boss, stay with us.”

“Only if we’re going to get… get gelato.” --- Shuichi Saihara was still in police custody, locked alone in one of the back rooms of the fashion week venue and wrestling with his own inadequacy, as he often did, when Agent Ishimaru arrived. He was holding a briefcase.

The interpol agent usually announced himself loudly to whatever room he was in, but today he entered quietly, closing the door in that stiff way of his before sitting down at the interrogation table across from Shuichi.

Shuichi expected him to start yelling again.

He didn’t.

Instead he said, “Mr. Saihara. I am disappointed to see you here.”

“... I am too.” Shuichi said after a moment’s pause. “I almost caught the thief today.”

Kiyotaka looked like he was about to say something along the lines of a reprimand, but he paused and took a breath instead. “Perhaps… perhaps you did.”

Shuichi was still trying to piece this together.  Was Kiyotaka mad at him or not?

“But, Mr. Saihara, I would ask you to consider…” He paused. He put the briefcase on the table, but didn’t open it. “That it is not your job to catch this thief.”

Shuichi felt indignant at that. But clearly Kiyotaka was going somewhere with this. “... as a detective, I often find it is my job to solve crimes.”

“You-” Kiyotaka grimaced. “I must apologize, Mr. Saihara, for speaking so obtusely. Yet there are some matters of rule violation recently brought to my attention that require me to handle this situation with a delicacy I am not known for.”

Oh… was this about…

“Just tell me the truth.” Shuichi said.

Kiyotaka took another breath.

“Shuichi Saihara, it has recently aggrieved me to know that you have recently been impersonating an interpol officer at crime scenes involving the DICE cases to further your vigilante investigations. Is this true?”

Vigilante was a little harsh…

“Yes.” Shuichi replied honestly. “I have been asking local law enforcement for access to flight records and airport security information in order to track down DICE--” Kiyotaka visibly tensed at this admission, but Shuichi kept going, “--but I sent every piece of info I’ve uncovered to your team. I know that it’s against your protocol to respond to them, but I’ve been right every time and-”

“And to some that could be very suspicious.” Ishimaru finished for him.

Shuichi grew wary. “What do you mean?” He asked.

Ishimaru sighed. “Do you know the name Kyosuke Munakata?”

“Yes.” Shuichi replied. “Isn’t he the new Secretary General?”

“Yes. The officer in charge of our day-to-day practice. He is my direct superior.” Ishimaru began opening the suitcase, which had two simple latches sealing it shut. He took out a small white envelope and handed it to Shuichi. “This is from him.”

Shuichi took the envelope and looked it over. There was no address on the outside, or stamp, or anything really. Just a foil laminate seal, with two characters interlaced stylistically in it. “未” and “来.” Future.

“You do not need to open it here.” Ishimaru went on. “But I can tell you what it says, if you want.”

Shuichi set the letter down on the table, “What does it say?” he asked.

“If what my superior has told me is to be believed, it is an offer of employment.”

What.

His disbelief must have shown on his face, because when Ishimaru kept going he acknowledged, “I was just about as surprised as you. To see my superior want to reward a rule breaker such as yourself… but then he explained it to me like this. He said, ‘If that young man was able to use our resources to such consistent efficiency, then he should see no problem with transparently putting his methods towards our cause. But if he is not so transparent and refuses our offer, well then we have reason to suspect his intent in this case.’”

Shuichi blinked. Really?

“You’re saying that… the Secretary General suspects that I’m in league with DICE.”

“That is correct.”

"But I-"

"Frankly I do not agree with Secretary General Munakata's deduction."

That was… some relief at least.

"I think that you will refuse this opportunity because, despite your tendency to believe the law does not apply to you simply because you don't believe in it, you are a good detective."

That was… not not where Shuichi thought that sentence would go.

Ishimaru pulled a chunky manilla folder out of the briefcase next. And then another one. And another. And… yeah he ended up pulling out five overflowing manilla folders.

"Do you know what this is?"

"... No."

"This is a print out of the files we have on you."

"What?" They had files? About him? What was he, an international security threat?

Oh… Maybe that was what Ishimaru had just finished telling him wasn’t it...

"Each of these files is a year since you joined the Towa city police force." Ishimaru gestured towards two slightly thicker files. "And these are the two years after you quit." He riffled the papers coming out of the side of one of the folders with his thumb. "Each packet of paper in these outlines a specific contribution you have made to getting a case solved. Everything from missing kids to the Novoselic Diamond case."

Oy vey...

"There's about forty or so cases in each of these files. That means you solve, on average, forty cases in a year. That's about three cases every month."

That wasn't so much. It  wasn’t uncommon for Shuichi to be looking into more than one case at once. Except this month…

"This month you've solved zero cases.” Ishimaru seemed to read Shuichi’s mind, but the statistics hit him like a knife to the chest when read aloud. “You've been too busy doing what? Chasing a troupe of clowns who nab the occasional toilet or light fixture?"

… ouch.

"I don't mean to be harsh, Mr. Saihara, I really don't. You'll have to forgive my tone. But these DICE guys simply aren't worth your time. A month spent chasing them is a month you could use to much better effect on a different case. One involving the safety of children or national treasures, rather than the carpets of closing museums."

Ishimaru paused, letting Shuichi absorb what he just said. Then he started placing the folders back in the briefcase.

"So, Mr. Saihara, I think that I may be able to get my superior off your back, but only under two conditions."

He closed the lid of the case.

"The first being that you reveal to us in detail whatever method you have used to divine DICE's machinations from airport documents."

He closed the latch on the right of the briefcase.

"And the second being that you return home effective immediately and cut all ties with this case."

He closed the latch on the left.

"Do you find issue with these terms?"

His usually active hands found a resting place atop the case.

“...”

“Well?”

Shuichi couldn't quite understand how he had gotten here. In his head, until this moment, it really had seemed like he had been doing the right thing. He remembered that when he first latched onto the DICE case he had managed to keep it on the back burner while he dealt with the cases of clients. It had struck him as odd that a string of high scale robberies such as theirs would go unchecked for so long, going back five years or more. It hinted, to him at least, at a missing factor. Perhaps each hit was a calculated strike paid for by a foreign government, or a scheme funded by an underground criminal organization, or perhaps just another play at developing a network of untraceable capital to benefit a small group of people. Yet when was the last time Shuichi had spent any serious time looking into those connections?

It occured to Shuichi, then, that perhaps his ego was behind the wheel of the past month or so, when he'd spent the majority of his time exclusively tracking down DICE. Instead of actually assessing the threat that DICE posed, if any at all, he wasted time tracking down where they would strike next. To do what, catch them in the act? He didn't have the power to arrest them if he did. Even now, when he was closer than ever, all he had done was worsen his already tenuous relationship with the international police. The only plausible motive behind his own actions was that he investigated DICE simply because he knew that he could and he thought that he could do it better than anyone else.

But that wasn't true, was it?

He might think he was especially clever, but as soon as he revealed his methods that special cleverness would run out.

And he was tired, wasn't he? His head was perpetually sore, his eye sockets ached, and his limbs were weighed down by a the familiar slowness of a confused circadian rhythm anytime he didn't have a cup of coffee in his hand.

What Ishimaru had just done with the case files felt like an intervention. Like when TV nutritionists would show someone how many Coca-Colas they drank a month by building a tower of cans or filling a swimming pool with them in order to stop that person from drinking so many Coca-Colas… except Shuichi's Coca-Colas were investigative contributions to criminal offenses.

Maki had been right. He needed a break from this case. What kind of detective was he anyway…

Shuichi swallowed the lump forming in his throat and started talking.

"Well the only thing from the airport you need are logs of ticket purchases and the security footage from the gates if those aren't enough. DICE is an organization of ten people, so you're always looking for a bulk purchase of 9 to 10 tickets at the same time, although they can be from different airports... It doesn't matter who the tickets are purchased by or what identities are attributed to them, only that they're purchased at the same time. I say 9 or 10 tickets because sometimes DICE members will infiltrate the flight crew."

"Like in Paris."

"Like in Paris." Shuichi confirmed. "From there you can essentially pin down what flight they're on. Then you can figure out the general vicinity of the next crime… and I think from there is mostly luck."

"I don't believe in luck.” Ishimaru pressed on. “I believe in hard work. I think the same can be said for you."

Haha. Maybe.

Shuichi was hard pressed to think of anything that wasn’t already pretty obvious, though.

"... I suppose if you really cared to, I would think up all the possible targets after some preliminary research and try to warn them. You probably know this already… but DICE's targets have a trend of being rather famous or rather high security locations in big cities. Honestly, though, a lot of my encounters with them were due to chance."

He really wasn’t lying about that. The Paris, Taipei, and Cairo encounters were essentially pure coincidence.

Ishimaru paused, seemingly weighing this information for any fraudulence in his head. Then, he simply nodded. "Very well, Mr. Saihara. Thank you for cooperating with our investigation."

The agent stood, picking up his briefcase. "I hear that you've already given your testimony to the Italian authorities. In truth, however, we expect this case to be wrapped up shortly regardless of the details of this particular robbery, considering the substantial forensic evidence left by the perpetrator of these crimes." That was one way to refer to a pool of blood on the bathroom floor... "Is this of any consolation to you?"

"Yes, some." Shuichi felt the untruth of the statement even as he said it. It wasn’t how he would run the case, if he were in charge. Blood tests were highly unreliable for tracking down a criminal that could be from anywhere in the world, especially in a contaminated place like a bathroom. And if that criminal has never been taken into police custody or gotten blood work done before then the test would be completely useless. As a detective, he’d want to do his due diligence at the crime scene anyway…

… But this wasn’t his case anymore, was it?

Ishimaru took him at his word.

"Very well," He said.

The man pulled out of his pocket a phone, which Shuichi realized to be his own, and handed it to him.

"Your coat and other confiscated items are outside. Feel free to leave at any time."

Ishimaru did a quick bow in lieu of a verbal farewell, leaving the room in an orderly fashion.

After the door shut, Shuichi was in silence again.

He turned on his phone. As the screen lit up, he was greeted by a few messages from Kaito. He remembered, guiltily, swiping them aside when he had taken out his phone before his confrontation with DICE.

Now, he opened them. --- [Log of Text Messages from Shuichi Saihara’s Cellular Device]

From: Kaito

Hey Shuichi

How’s it going man

From: Kaito

Are you like chasing clowns right now

Ok

Text me when you’re not chasing clowns down

From: Me

I am no longer in the career of chasing clowns down

From: Kaito

Oh shit for real??

Did you catch them?

From: Me

No

I was just asked not to try to catch them

Very politely

By interpol

From: Kaito

Haha

That’s my sidekick

Making the international police scared for their jobs every day of the week

From: Me

That’s a funny way to look at it...

From: Kaito

Hey don’t be blue about it Shuichi

You got off the clown catching clock at a good time

If you catch a flight home sometime this week you could come with us to the open house at JAXA on friday!

From: Me

Oh is that this friday?

Man I totally

Spaced

On that

From: Kaito

Aklsjdfasflkdj

Since when do you do puns

From: Me

I would be fine if you deleted those messages actually

From: Kaito

Too late I already sent that to Maki

From: Me

:( rude

From: Kaito

She says she’s disappointed in both of us now lol

From: Me

Haha that sounds like Maki

why would she be disappointed in you tho lol

From: Kaito

Uh

There might be something I forgot to tell you

From: Me

What?

From: Kaito

So

Do you remember when we were in DC

I had to go to NASA (america’s JAXA basically) and meet with some people

And then I told you I had to tell you something over steak dinner

But then you had to tell me you said you wanted to do a “stake out” not “go out for steak”

And we kind of forgot about it

From: Me

Oh uh

Vaguely?

From: Kaito

Well

The thing i was going to tell you and then forgot to tell you

Is that I’m going on my first mission next week

From: Me

Oh

Like

A space mission

From: Kaito

Yeah

Just to the ISS though

I’m gonna be running experiments in the kibo module

For a few months

Maybe a year

From: Me

Uh

You’re leaving next week?

How long have you known?

From: Kaito

Like, a few months

From: Me

Oh

From: Kaito

Haha yeah

Kinda forgot to tell you

Thats on me

From: Me

Its fine

From: Kaito

Phew glad i got that off my chest

Can you believe Maki Roll thought you’d be mad at me?

From: Me

Haha what

No its fine

Everything’s cool --- [Log of Text Messages from Shuichi Saihara’s Cellular Device]

From: Me

What the hell???

From: Maki

I know right???? --- Shuichi put down his phone, feeling like a plate on a table that just got the table cloth pulled from beneath it and yet some how found itself shockingly sedentary. He internally recalculated his schedule. He'd need to get on the next plane to Japan as fast as he could.

He opened the door. The lights outside the holding room seemed to have been taken as well. There was an officer with a flashlight who helped him grab his stuff.

Weirdly, on the way out, Shuichi looked back through the little window in the door to the holding room. The lights had gone out in it as well. Wait… wasn't there a vent in that room too?

As soon as the thought occurred to Shuichi he forcefully extinguished it.

Not my case. He reminded himself.

Then he turned, nodded to the officer, and walked out the door. --- Kokichi Ouma sat in the back seat of one of DICE's get away cars with a fresh bandage wrap on his head, slurping street vendor Gelato and trying to convince himself this was another win. Sure, the heist went well. Rook, King, and Queen had been on vent duty with him and had managed to sweep up his unfinished light fixture nabbing route. They were actually about to pick Rook up from the final rendezvous point right that second.

Which brought Kokichi to the discrepancies indicating he may be suffering a loss here.

For starters, no one was smiling. They had just pulled off a major haul and nobody was happy about it. Kokichi thought that if he got into the car where no one had seen him go splat from ceiling to floor he wouldn't have to deal with this, but Queen, King, and Bishop were really out here acting like he had died or something. He didn't even have a concussion! They did all the tests! King checked him out like forty times, he just cut himself on the edge of the broken vent!

But Bishop was stone faced behind the wheel and Queen kept pausing the tikkertap of his fingers on the keyboard to look back at Kokichi. Even King was just sitting there trying not to stare at him. Kokichi could tell he was worrying about him because if King wasn't worrying about him then he would be texting Rook. Those two were insufferable. Did he say insufferable? He meant inseparable. Like they always say next to each other when they could and texted each other the entire time they couldn't. If King was texting them it meant he was looking for emotional support because he was worrying about Kokichi but thought that he should try and make sure Kokichi didn’t know he was worrying about him, which was annoying as hell.

They weren't looking at him like their boss right now, they were looking at him like their kid brother.

He tried not to let that turn his stomach. He had gelato left to put in there, after all.

Ok, them thinking he was weak for bleeding out wasn’t the only option here. Maybe they were just antsy to be done with this heist.

Kokichi couldn’t really argue with that sentiment, though. Not because this one was a trash fire, even though it kind of was, but because he wanted to get onto the next one. Once they picked up Rook, they could figure out where they were going next and Kokichi would have another chance to match wits with the detective. With Kokichi's big screw up today it had only been due to Spades and Clubs's intervention that he hadn't gotten caught. Saihara was right on his tail and Kokichi still had no idea how he was doing it. It was like a puzzle, like an actually hard one. Kokichi spent a few moments thinking up possible methods, crossing out a few, and sorting the rest of them into piles based on likelihood in his head.

He only realized he had been silently spacing out for six minutes when the car stopped. He heard the trunk open and close

King scooted over into the middle seat and Rook came in to sit on the right hand side behind Queen. Kokichi thought about that for a second, because King had automatically assumed that he should be the one to move to the middle seat. Did it speak to Kokichi’s authority that it wasn’t even a consideration that he should move over to let Rook into the car, or did it speak to their interpretation of his fragility? Well, Kokichi was never asked to move over in the back seat. Then again, he usually sat in the front. Wait, wasn’t he in the seat behind the driver? There was a gif set online somewhere where two white guys are in a car and one explains to the other how the seat behind the driver’s is the safest seat in the car. Had everyone subconsciously thought of that gif set when they sat down in the car? Or were they merely following a pattern of behavior because Kokichi was never asked to move over when someone got in the car. In fact he was never asked to move over at all, not even when he was taking up a lot of space on the couch. Again, that could be a sign of his inherent authority. Except maybe it didn’t mean anything because DICE members asked each other to move over as a sign of antagonism and they just didn’t antagonize him like that. Were they afraid of him? Or maybe King just scooted over because Rook was coming in on his side-

Wait, rewind. Were they afraid of him?

Kokichi rethought the silence that had encompassed their ride thus far. Now that he reconsidered, the silence had almost seemed anticipatory, as if something were weighing on their minds more pressing than fresh banter or celebration. He had thought they were just anxious to finish off the operation, but now that Rook had stowed the goods and was safely in the car, the tense anticipation of something to come still hung heavy in the air.

As the car started back up, Kokichi noticed Rook and King exchange a glance. Bishop checked the rear view window at a suspicious angle. Rook’s hand went over the shoulder of the passenger seat, obviously palming something they were handing to Queen.

Kokichi spun a wheel in his head. Get out of the car? Confront them? Change the topic? Make them feel so bad for him they have to drop everything? Strike fear into their hearts of what his reaction would be towards untoward news? Maybe he should do a food crime to make them realize he was fine? Except he had finished his gelato, so what was he supposed to do? Eat the paper cup his gelato was-

Oh, oops.

While Kokichi had been considering what to do, it turned out he had also been methodically folding the finished gelato cup in his hands. Now, it was in his mouth.

Wow, he hadn’t thought this out, huh? He was trying to look less like a person with brain damage, not more . Well, too late to take the paper out of his mouth, he had already committed to the bit.

Kokichi pretended not to notice that everyone had stopped what they were doing to watch him with dawning horror as he chewed the former bowl to pulp in his mouth. It still tasted a little chocolatey. Mostly in an unsatisfying way, though. You know how when you eat the last bit off your spoon and you end up tasting mostly the spoon which just leaves you wishing you had more ice cream and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Except instead of a spoon it was this paper bowl. He felt the fibers dampen and rip apart under his teeth. The gnashing filled the car with sound.

Then he swallowed.

The car was once more filled with a petrified silence, this time on Kokichi’s terms.

“You four have been scheming behind my back.” He announced, emptying the car of silence with the sound of his voice.

At Kokichi’s words, everyone in the car flinched into an avoidant position. Bishop took the car out of park and started driving, Queen went back to typing on his computer, and King leaned as far away as he could from Kokichi without unbuckling.

Rook was the last player standing and braved looking Kokichi in the eyes.

“Uh. So.” They started roughly. “We just thought that….”

“I knew what you thought as soon as you volunteered for the last rendezvous point this morning.” Kokichi interrupted, bluffing wildly, “Just show me what you got out of it.”

   “Just one sec, boss I’m uploading it to the computer.” Queen muttered, probably dragging around files from the SD card Rook had handed him. When he finally did turn the laptop around to show Kokichi, an audio player was open. He also noted on the task bar that file explorer,

Mozilla Firefox, and Fieldwire were open but minimized.

Kokichi grabbed the computer and put it in his lap before pressing play.

“Well the only thing from the airport you need are logs of ticket purchases and the security footage from the gates if those aren’t enough.” It took Kokichi a couple seconds to recognize the voice. “DICE is an organization of ten people, so you're always looking for a bulk purchase of 9 to 10 tickets at the same time, although they can be from different airports... ”

Kokichi opened Fieldwire. It was the program that DICE used to share blueprints with one another. Queen had started a new project that had been shared only with Bishop. He opened it.

“It doesn't matter who the tickets are purchased by or what identities are attributed to them, only that they're purchased at the same time.”

It took Kokichi a  few moments to figure out what exactly he was looking at.

“I say 9 or 10 tickets because sometimes DICE members will infiltrate the flight crew.”

They were blueprints for a plane.

“Like in Paris” A new voice cut into the recording.

“Like in Paris” Shuichi replied.

There was a minute left on the recording. That was how long Kokichi had to figure out what the hell was going on here and what his response should be.

Detective Saihara using information from airports had been a possibility that crossed his mind before, but Kokichi hadn’t highlighted it any more than his other theories, which ranged from secret spy gear, to omniscience, or to just plain old random chance.

Obviously the same could not be said for those of his cohort. They had suspected public air transport was the root cause of their encounters with the Detective long enough for Queen to draw up these blueprints and recruit Rook to bring evidence for some sort of pitch they were planning.

They had figured the detective out before him.

Kokichi had thought of the detective’s successes as challenges, exciting roadside attractions to disrupt an otherwise monotonous road trip through life. How had he not stopped himself even once during the past month to ask himself how they looked to the rest of DICE? To his subordinates, Saihara’s successes seemed less like fun interruptions and more like real obstacles towards goals they all commonly held. In other words, setbacks revealing failures in Kokichi’s plans.

The worst thing was that Kokichi wanted to be angry at these four for this intervention bullshit. Angry that they took away some bit of mystery solving fun from him. Angry that they wanted to take away something that he had felt good about. Angry that they were undermining his authority by going behind his back.

But he wasn’t going to be angry. It was a stupid, pointless thing, his anger.

Being a supreme leader of ultimate evil isn’t all tulips and tirades. Everything Kokichi did needed to have a purpose, because he knew that DICE were always watching him, looking to him, making judgements and changing their perceptions of him in their minds.

What would being angry here accomplish? It would only strengthen their impression of his sudden unreasonableness. Even if he explained his motives, they didn’t hold up very well upon inspection. What was that Boss? You’re so bored by us that you feel the need to endanger us by playing mind games with a boot licking private eye while we do all the work? Oh yeah, we totally understand. Wait right there while we never fully trust you with anything ever again.

If anything DICE had a right to be angry at him. What had he been doing these past few weeks? How had they figured out this plane thing before him?

Was there some part of him that was actively sabotaging himself? A part that wanted him to fail just for the thrill of it? Maybe he had known how Saihara was really tracking them, but had just ignored the obvious answer because he didn’t want the mystery to be over yet.

How could his friends trust him if he didn’t even trust himself?

Kokichi had ten seconds to wrap up this train of thought before the recording was finished. No more questions, only answers, lets go.

The plans for the airplane were by all means exactly what DICE would be looking for in a plane. It was small enough as to not require a massive amount of runway space but large enough to house everyone comfortably. There were some rather intricate illustrations of those convertible mechanisms that Queen had gotten really into earlier that year. How long had he been planning thi- no questions. Fold out tables, couches, a TV, things that could turn a vehicle into an on the go hideout in the blink of an eye. Kokichi estimated the total cost of everything to come out to around ¥1,190,401,200. Which is. A lot of money. But most of that money would probably be for the engine, which if you buy legally would be around a billion yen. If he factored out buying legally, the rest of the blueprint would probably cost around ¥1,081,200, a much lower figure. Renting a hangar would cost a little less, but that price was more flexible depending on what Bishop said their monthly earnings were.

Kokichi googled ‘Japan Aerospace.’ He was in luck, the first thing that popped up was an article about a new JAXA mission.

The recording stopped.

Showtime.

Kokichi let them breathe in the silence a bit.

Then, when they were good and nervous, he enacted his plan.

“Bishop, tell Queen how much we earned this month.” He requested calmly.

Bishop replied readily, “About ¥2,000,000, Boss!”

Whoa. What? Were they really making that much a month? Kokichi supposed they had been robbing high security locales on a weekly basis, but somehow he had still viewed their team as barely scraping by. What was even the point of the heists anymore if they-

No time for questions, Kokichi had to use that figure right now.

“Do you know what that figure means, Queen?” Kokichi asked, knowing that Queen never thought about the monetary cost of his projects for more than three seconds.

“Uh… Money?” Yeah, okay, Kokichi needed to remember not to target Queen too much, even though he seemed to be the ringleader of this insurrection. That would only serve to force the other members of DICE to pick a side, which was not the ideal dynamic of a ten person group.

“It’s exactly how much money we would need to rent a hangar and build an airplane covertly in Kagoshima next month.” Kokichi clarified.

“... Uh boss,” Bishop interrupted hesitantly, “I hate to contradict you there, but most airplanes would cost a hundred times that-”    “I’m not talking about how much it would take to build most airplanes.” Kokichi interrupted the interruption he had expected to occur. “I’m talking about how much it would take us to build an airplane.”

Kokichi then turned the laptop back around to show Queen the article about the manned launch to the ISS happening next week. He scrolled down to a picture of the engine taken at the launch site in Tanegashima. When Queen’s eyes lit up and King let out a sigh of relief, Kokichi knew that he had gotten away with it.

He managed to play off this whole month-long debacle as a waiting game, pretending that he had the very same understanding and intentions as the rest of them since the start of the month.

They’d get on different planes, booked at different times to the international airports in Tokyo, and then ship out to the JAXA launch site on Tanegashima, fuck things up a little and steal some rocket level engines. And Kokichi would stuff down the emptiness that curled in his gut at the lost prospect of a very interesting adversary.

… empty, huh?

Why would cutting his losses make him feel empty? Why-

No questions.

…

He should get some more gelato. Things were good when he was eating gelato.