#Vermouth? dead. Akai? dead and took out other FBI agents with him.

[ilurked]

What is Past is Prologue (Part 3)

Fandom: Detective Conan Rating: T for canon-typical violence Continuity: Post series

Part 1: The Detective Part 2: The Phantom Thief Part 3: The Agent

Jodie Starling spent more than half her life living in the past. She had allowed her past to define her identity and set the course for her future.

But no more.

She was defined by what had happened when she was a child. A fat lot of good it did her.

Despite dedicating her life to bringing the woman who all but destroyed her innocence to justice, she was thwarted, time and again, first by the organization shrouded in the darkness, and later by the institution she had sworn to serve and protect.

That was why when she was offered the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to walk away from her past, away from the bureau that betrayed her, away from everything, she took it with both hands and promised herself that never again would she allow herself to be this helpless, this powerless.

Therefore, when her past came calling, in the form of the man she once loved, she did not immediately respond. She had to make sure that she would not be meeting him out of some misguided hope that she would be able to fix the past. In the end, she said yes to meeting him because, like a cat, she could not help but know what had happened after she left.

“You’re a hard woman to find.” Shuichi Akai told her as he slid gracefully to the booth where Jodie Starling was sipping her coffee.

“I have to be,” she replied. She set down her teacup carefully to hide her hand’s subtle but unmistakable shaking. “A long list of people want my head on a platter.”

She absently noted that he was no longer wearing his disguise. He had ditched the blonde hair and the glasses that made him look harmless. He went back to growing out his dark hair. His look reminded him so much of the young man she met and loved so long ago.

Her heart ached.

Akai’s lips thinned as if her statement gave him displeasure, but he did not say anything until the server who approached their table to take their order had left.

“Don’t you think we’re too old to live like this?” He asked her honestly.

“By we, you mean me, don’t you?” She asked. As the head of a no-name, internationally funded, but globally disavowed organization, she knew that after helping bring down the Black Organization, Shuichi semi-retired from the FBI and concentrated on piecing back his family.

Unlike her.

Jodie shrugged when he didn’t reply to her question. “I actually spend more time behind the desk now,” she told him honestly. She was surprised how much paperwork being the head of a no-name organization generated. She took a deep breath; forced herself to relax and smile. “Hello, Shu. How are you?”

Taking his cue from her, he also relaxed. “I’m good.”

“Me, too. Let’s get straight to the point. After five years, why contact me now?”

“Direct, as always. I have information that your agency has in its custody an asset believed to be dead.”

Jodie struggled to keep the shock out of her face. It would have worked on any other person, but it was Shuichi watching her. He knew all of her tells.

One of the advantages of being the head of a no-name organization was that she could run it as she saw fit. And she saw fit that knowledge of her newly acquired asset would be known only to few people inside her organization: three people, to be exact: herself, one reluctant consultant, and the asset herself. 

The consultant would literally die before he revealed information about the asset while the asset would not talk, also literally. Since the leak did not come from her, that could only mean—

“That bitch.” She muttered. Jodie winced. She did not like calling other women  names. However, the shoe fits the woman now going by the name of Alicia Vineyard, the daughter of the late Chris Vineyard. To Jodie, that woman would always be Vermouth.

“That is why the PSB, the CIA, and the FBI all agreed to keep her alive and on the streets.” He told her gently. “She’s a veritable fount of information.”

“That woman needed to die. At the very least, she needed to pay for her sins. Putting her on the streets would only endanger more people.” Jodie told him vehemently.

“I agreed with your assessment five years ago,” he reminded her. “But we were outranked and outvoted by our superiors. “And you can’t place the blame entirely on her. Word on the street is that a certain Phantom Thief also had a run-in with your asset.”

A run-in which was not disclosed to her.

“How accurate is our asset’s information?” Shu asked, careful not to utter any names as one never knew who was listening. “Is your asset really the girl from Beika? All that the Kaitou Kid would say is that it’s her, but it’s not her.”

“I’m not at liberty to—”

“Don’t give me that, Jodie. Some people back in Japan deserve to know what happened.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Jodie looked away, figuring out how much she could tell him without her telling him anything. She knew that she would not get away with misleading him for information. Knowing him, he had already done his due diligence and confirmed what he could before confronting her with the information he already had.

“So, it is her?”

“If it’s not her, she’s an excellent imitation of the original.” She shrugged. “I tried to bring her home, but she had so many decisions taken away from her already. Now, I don’t think anyone could force her to do things she doesn’t want to do.”

“How is she?”

“She doesn’t speak much of what had happened to her.” She replied truthfully. “In fact, she doesn’t speak to me at all. She only talks to the doctor.”

“The doctor?”

Jodie nodded. “She found him and decided to trust him. She talks to him. He talks to us. She doesn’t trust me or anyone else. And he only talks to us only when it’s convenient for them. They help us, but they’re not with us.”

“Who are they with?”

“Who knows?” Jodie shrugged. “The Black Organization was weakened when its head died. A war broke out between many organizations, syndicates, and cartels to try to take its place. Rumor has it that the struggle unceremoniously and decisively ended two years ago. The victorious entity in the power struggle was more intelligent, secretive, and infinitely more dangerous than its predecessor. Law enforcement had tried and failed to identify, much less infiltrate, it.”

“You think your asset is with the new shadow organization?”

“Just a hunch.” She admitted. “Because there couldn’t be more than one organization so secret that not even my agency, with its infinite budget and network, could not know.”

“Is she in danger?”

Jodie paused. Considered. “I would have said no before. I believed that she had eliminated the threats to her life when she put out feelers to us.”

She saw the shock on his face at the revelation.

“Eliminated?”

“We still don’t know what happened to her. The only clues we could follow are the trail of bodies left behind.”

Shu hunched closer to her. “Are we sure it’s her?”

Jodie smiled bitterly. “As I’ve said, we have no idea what was done with her. But you and I both know that when the Black Organization puts its hands on you, it changes you.”

Shu let out a breath. He did know how much the Organization could change a person. He let that poison touch his life. And for what?

 “The Kaitou Kid is right,” Jodie continued. “She’s the same person, but she’s no longer the same person they took from her home all those years ago.”

“Is she in danger?” He asked again.

“Before today, I would answer no. But knowing that the Bitch knows about her means that the remnants of the Black Organization know about her.”

“The remnants?”

“The Black Organization may have been cut at its knees, but it still has many loyal supporters, trying to find a replacement for its former leader, hoping to bring it back to its former glory. She’s doing what the FBI, the CIA, and the PSB should have done five years ago,” she told him. “Burn the organization to the ground. Have you heard of the Malta massacre?”

Shu leaned back and tried to recall a short news article he had read a couple of months ago.

“An office building in Malta burned down a while back. The firemen found about a dozen unidentified people in the building.”

“It was not just an office building,” Jodie told him succinctly. “And the people there are not office workers. It was a hideout for the Black Organization. About half of the dozen people who died were high-ranking officers. They did not die by fire as the news reported.”

“She did that?” He was unable to reconcile the sweet, innocent teenager he knew all those years ago with the portrait of a person Jodie was painting. “Alone?”

“She did that,” Jodie confirmed. “But we don’t know if she did it alone. And we didn’t know that the building was a front for the organization until after we received a tip not to allow the local law enforcement to force open the vaults inside.”

“And what did you find?”

“Information.” She replied. “Enough to justify the budget of my agency to my superiors ten times over. And Malta’s just the beginning.”

“Do you need help to protect her?” “Protect her?” She scoffed. “God help the idiot who tries to hurt her.” #tbc

[mrs-tsunderemeitantei]

Wakasa Rumi Theory Series: Part 3 of 3

So this is it, the final part of my Wakasa Rumi Theory Series!

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

Here I'll be talking about the last two points in bold. Part 1 and Part 2 already covered points 1-3 and points 4-5.

Why I think she's Asaca

Her probable relationship to Haneda Koji.

How she became Amanda's bodyguard.

What might have happened on the day of Haneda Koji's murder.

How Haneda Koji's dying message directly refers to RUM as his killer.

Why Wakasa went on a hiatus for 17 years since the murder.

Reason behind Haibara liking Wakasa.

As usual, happy reading 😁💛

6. Why Wakasa went on a hiatus for 17 years since the murder.

Now this point will have so many things that will go into it, so hopefully no one gets lost along the way 🙌🏼

As per my theory in Part 2, I believe Wakasa had a full on confrontation with RUM after she found Haneda Koji dead. And now that she's also the lead suspect for a crime she didn't commit, the logical thing would be that she goes into hiding. The first case she was ever involved in (Chapter 968) foreshadowed the possibility of someone going into hiding for years. And after literally crossing paths with a dangerous BO member, she probably changed her appearance. This was also foreshadowed in the Pro-golfer murderer case that probably hints to the fact that she is in disguise or had plastic surgery altogether. That's why I'm not entirely sure if we can judge that she could be Atsushi's sister based on appearance (I talked about it in an ask here).

Now during the time she was in hiding, she could have still been trying to investigate the BO or trying to find a way to infiltrate it. During that time, she must have crossed paths with Kuroda 10 years ago. If they were both investigating around the same time, they could have very well crossed paths. Her reaction to meeting Kuroda the first time was just as triggered as when she saw Wakita leave the school, except this time, she wasn't as scared to talk back to Kuroda which implies she has interacted with him before and knows of him. At the same time, Kuroda's knowing smirk when he found out Wakasa was going on a camping trip. Implying it's not like her to go camping further strengthens that they met each other before.

Then, Kuroda must have fallen a victim to the accident that put him in a coma for 10 years. During that time, Wakasa must have trained even more and eventually joined some security or intelligence department like the PSB, FBI, CIA or MI6. I am drawing more parallels of her character based on Jodie who was very suspicious in the Vermouth arc but was in fact an FBI agent. Another such similarity is just like Jodie lived in a high rise apartment that Heiji noted is very expensive for an English teacher, Wakasa also lives in an expensive building. A pro-golfer even lived there so rent must have not been cheap.

So yes, my theory is Wakasa started working for some intelligence security department ever since Kuroda's accident and her main goal was to investigate the BO and steal information about them. If like Haibara she managed to hack into the BO's database, the following points would make sense:

She holds a very recent list of the APTX-4869 victims that has Kudo Shinichi on it.

She managed to find out about Miyano Shiho and 'Hell Angel'.

She could have discovered that Amuro is a BO agent which is why she fought him to retrieve the shogi piece, especially after Kobayashi-sensei introduced him as a private eye.

She described Karasu as someone that has 'Karasu' in their name as someone who is difficult to approach and a conspirator so it's very likely she tried to infilitrate the BO to get close to him.

The reason why she briefly triggered Haibara's BO sense was because she recalled her confrontation with Wakita while gripping the bishop and Uma shogi piece that refers to him in Haneda Koji's dying message.

Now coming onto the final point in this series:

7. Why Haibara likes Wakasa.

I don't know if I am entirely convinced it's because Haibara is in fact related to Wakasa or if her being Atsushi's sister bears any weight since we can't really judge by appearances if Wakasa did get plastic surgery or is sporting a disguise. But, let's backtrack a little. When Okiya Subaru was first introduced, Conan was incredibly trusting of what seemed to be a very suspicious character. Turns out this is because he was Akai in disguise and Conan was the mastermind behind this. Haibara may not be the mastermind behind Wakasa's situation but I'm guessing she knows something about her that we don't and it shall be revealed to us later.

And that's it! Omg I can't believe how long it took me to put this out. As exhausting as it was, it was so much fun to write 😂.

(In cased you stumbled upon this post first, these are the links for Part 1 and Part 2)!

I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I did and I'm open to everyone's thoughts and opinions 😁 💛🖤