Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Furuya Rei had been prepared to get his hands dirty from the start, when he accepted this mission. He’d been prepared to do what he had to do.

But there was definitely such a thing as too dirty. A point of no return. A line, when crossed, he wouldn’t be able to step back over. Before, it was hard to tell where that line was.

But now, he felt, he’d definitely found it.

Too far took the form of a Japanese six year old with big blue eyes and oversized glasses hiding under the desk in a vacant office in the business district. The vacant office where they’d chased their target to, after months of investigation, close calls, and near misses.

Where had the target gone? Rei had been so sure he had been chasing Gin’s rumored fox into a corner, but the only one here was practically a toddler!

Who let their kid wander around a dangerous place like this? Who? He really wanted to punch their brains out right now!

And how had their fox escaped? Wasn’t that guy just way too good at slipping through their fingers?

“Well, did you catch him, Bourbon?” His partner’s voice came over the comm in his ear, accompanied by the faint sound of pounding footsteps. Hiro would be arriving soon, then, but Rei was still crouching on the floor, dumbfounded.

The boy had bunched himself up against the back of the desk, little face twisted in a terrified scowl.

And Rei was still holding his gun.

Right.

Tucking that away, making sure the kid could see the weapon disappearing back into his jacket, Rei tried to look a little less threatening. The last thing anyone needed was the kid kicking up a fuss. If the kid stayed quiet, Rei could just pretend he hadn’t found anybody.

First things first, however. He had to find a better place to hide the kid. A glance upwards revealed that the ceiling was lay-in style. He could get on top of the desk and push one in, plop the kid up there, and then move it back into place before their third-wheel arrived.

He reached out to grab the kid. Said kid immediately scrambled to the other corner of the desk, wide eyes set fiercely on Rei’s outstretched hand.

The kid looked like he’d bite.

Rei pulled his hand back with an easy, gentle smile. The boy stared suspiciously at him.

A moment passed quietly.

Then, Rei shot out and snatched up the brat before he could even flinch, dragging him out in a single swoop. The kid squeaked and clawed at his arms, but Rei held firm and set his eyes on the ceiling.

Of course, that was the exact moment the door burst open.

Rye.

Fuck.

Rei adjusted his grip on the child, letting him inch away from Rei’s chest while keeping a firm hand on the kid’s forearm, and tried not to lose his goddamn mind.

Rye paused in the doorway with a cold expression, his eyes only flickering over the child once before focusing on Rei. He had his rifle in hand, his case slung over his shoulder, and of course, his face could make even the happiest of children cry. That was exactly what Rei needed right now. 

“What’s this?” He drawled as he approached, kneeling down to inspect the kid. Surprisingly, considering Rye’s admittedly intimidating gaze, the boy eased rather then tensed up further.  

“He was the only one here when I came in.” Rei said shortly, dragging the kid closer to himself and away from the dangerous criminal sniper. He allowed some of his anger to show on his face, as well as a tinge of anticipation, pretending to twist the boy’s arm to hide how he was subtly angling himself between them. Like this, looking over his shoulder at Rye slightly, he was in the best position to either attack or defend. “The target must have given us the slip somehow.”

He waited, forcing himself to breathe evenly, for Rye to make a move. To pull out his gun to shoot the kid, or to tell Rei to. The moment he did, Rei would have to strike. An elbow to the sternum, then in the same motion smash his fist right into the nose—he could do this. He could just tell their superiors that the target somehow got his gun and shot Rye, or that Rye and the target were working together, something like that. Hiro would back him up.

Rye didn’t say anything of the sort, and didn’t pull out his pistol. His poisonous eyes were on Rei instead, as if he was waiting for Rei to make the first move.

Like Rei could! This was a kid! He wasn’t going to murder some random six year-old for a criminal organization, mission or not!

The boy hissed, and Rei slowly eased his grip, feeling a little guilty as the child still winced. Right. Children were fragile. Not to be squeezed. Slightly behind them, Rye’s eyes had narrowed at the sound, and Rei felt chills down his back.

Fuck. Rye had definitely noticed that.

There wasn’t much Rei could do about that except squeeze his fingers once more over the red fingerprints he’d already left on the poor brat’s arm and leer into the little thing’s pained face.

“Why don’t you tell us your name, little guy?” He hoped the kid was smart enough to give them a fake name or something, or not say anything at all. “And what you are doing here?”

“Co-Conan.” The boy stuttered, obviously uneasy. His eyes flickered around the room behind the lenses of his glasses. “I was— there was—”

Rei gave him his patented Look, one hundred percent guaranteed to be both encouraging and terrifying in equal parts. He mastered it in the Police Academy, against the worthy opponent that was Matsuda. “It’s alright, you can tell me.”

The child tried to pull away, but Rei held firm. He had to keep himself bodily in between the boy and Rye. “T-the ghost…”

A ghost. Seriously.

Rei refrained from letting even a flicker of his exasperation escape into his voice. “You’re looking for a ghost?”

“Uh-huh.” The boy nodded so rapidly, his childish voice slurred. “Even though this place is supposed to be empty, I heard a buncha weird sounds.”

Their target, maybe?

“What were you doing around here?”

“My papa works in a building nearby. But playing soccer by myself in the park until he gets out is boring.”

I am going to find that man, Rei thought viciously, and make him regret not hiring a babysitter.

If it was just him, or just him and Hiro, he could just let the kid go, but with Rye right there, could he get away with it? The usual policy of leaving no witnesses, no evidence—they both knew what this situation demanded of them. If Rye reported that he broke protocol, he was screwed.

The other option was taking the kid with them.

“Well?” Rye said, his voice as dull as ever. Rei released the child to turn and face him, scrutinizing. Just like Rei’s own, his face gave away nothing at all.

Before Rei could answer, Hiro finally arrived, bursting into the room fully armed to find Rei and Rye in a stare down over a child.

All three of them looked at each other. Hiro’s eyes flickered rapidly between Rye and Rei’s own. As best friends from childhood could always do, Hiro managed to convey a lot of colorful remarks with just his eyes.

Mostly along the lines of what the fuck did you get us into.

Not my fault, Rei shot right back, which was something Hiro heard often but rarely ever believed.

Rye measured them both up, his eyes narrowed into almost slits, but said nothing. All three of them turned back to the child, who had been very quietly and inconspicuously trying to sneak away, only to freeze under their collective stare.

Hiro cleared his throat. “Is that—?”

“Yup.” Rei filled in.

“Oh.” Hiro looked back through the door, glancing around the area. “But no one got passed me.”

“Me neither.” Rye agreed, and Hiro peeked back at Rei.

“Bourbon, did you—”

A scalding look shut him right up. As if Rei would be careless enough to let the target escape and catch an innocent kid instead!

They were running out of time until they next had to check in, too. It wouldn’t be long now until Gin was breathing down their necks. The underlings were already patrolling the area, maintaining the circle they’d trapped their prey within.

Rei reached out and reeled the kid back in, despite the sneaker-clad heels digging into the floor. The moment the kid’s mouth opened, to whine or scream or yell for help, Rei’s hand slammed over it. Teeth immediately tried to bite his palm, but only sunk into the cloth of his gloves. “Scotch, where’s your case?”

“...Why?” Hiro hesitated.

“This kid’s our only lead on the fox.” Rei bullshitted, one eye on Rye and the other on the child struggling to kick him in the shins. “We’re taking him with us.”

They didn’t have many other options. Thankfully, Hiro was quick on the uptake.

“Won’t Gin just kill him before we can get anything useful out of him?” Hiro asked, a cruel laugh working into his voice.

Rei grinned at him, full of malicious intent as a six year-old beat against his chest. “Which is exactly why we need your case.”

With a devious expression almost identical to Rei’s own, Hiro turned towards the door. “I left it on the roof. I’ll go fetch it.”

“No need.” Rye’s voice cut in. He’d been watching them both closely, and finally made his move. He shrugged off his own case, setting down his rifle to unzip it. The instrument inside was ditched soon after. “We’ll leave this here.”

That… was not what Rei had expected.

Rye was willing to play along? Why? Rei had expected he’d protest, and need… convincing. He didn’t think the taciturn man would volunteer. Was he planning to go with it, let them lower their guards, and the snitch later on? Was he testing them?

That was fine. Rei would just say they were testing him too, if things came to it. Then all three of them would look like untrusting bastards that let their rivalry get in the way of a job undone, not two traitors and one loyal dog.

But Rei did not want to leave a child in Rye’s hands. He also couldn’t think of a way to argue it. With frustration boiling in his gut, he carried over the boy, who had gone oddly still, and set him down in the case. Rye nudged the child into lying down, surprisingly gentle, and wide blue eyes stared out at them as the case was slowly zipped shut.

That was an image that was going to haunt Rei at night, probably, if this shoddy, half-baked plan went south.

They still had to smuggle the kid through the encirclement, after all.

Chapter Text

For a murder of crows, it really wasn’t often that they moved as a group. Coordination between operatives was essential to the ongoing success of their organization, of course, but there weren’t many among them that could be called ‘team players’.  But there were times that more than a few high-ranking operatives were mobilized at once, usually to the end of some very important people mysteriously dying and even more establishments vanishing due to some suddenly frequent and highly improbable gas leaks.

Not many threats necessitated more than one or two operatives; any more than that, and well, too many drinks in one night could make any situation hairy. But their target this time was an unseen foe that had been chasing their footprints for months. For once, it was their enemy they had next to no information on, instead of the other way around. No names, no faces, their enemy stuck to the shadows and struck only as he pleased, and always escaped unscathed.

But they, whoever they were, were a desperate little beast, snapping their teeth at even the slightest bit of bait left out. Being nothing short of hellbent on sinking their fangs in the Group’s heels, they were supposed to be easy to lure out.

But this time, their best, assuredly inescapable trap had turned up nothing but a little kid.

Who Rei, Hiro, and their unlikely accomplice had to escape the trap with.

Surprisingly, things were going pretty well, all things considered, right up until they weren’t.

Gin accepted the target’s escape with an admittedly impressive amount of begrudging grace (for him). He didn’t have much of a leg to stand on and complain about it; their target had given Gin himself the slip many times before, and everyone there knew it.

In fact, Rei had been feeling rather smug about the whole thing, as the three of them made their way through black vans and black suits in the direction Rei’s own ride, parked a couple blocks away.

Gin, the bastard, must have smelled how pleased with himself Rei was, because just as they were making their way through, a rough voice sliced through the air, freezing all three of them in place.

“Kir,” Gin demanded, “check their bags.”

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

They were dead. They were so dead. They were deader than Hado Rokumichi’s career.

A slender woman with pale eyes stopped before Hiro, who smiled a little nastily as he turned over the case he’d retrieved from the roof. Kir checked it thoroughly and efficiently, finding nothing but a rifle concealed behind an ordinary bass. While her eyes were focused on her task, Hiro’s met Rei’s own with desperate intensity.

They needed a distraction—some way to keep Kir from opening Rye’s bag, without drawing attention to themselves. But what?

“Wait,” Rei hissed, eyes focused on a medium height building in the distance. “Is that a—”

“Sniper!” Hiro yelled.

Immediately, the henchmen were scrambling in that direction, and Gin’s eyes were on the roof, searching. Chianti emerged from somewhere, armed to the teeth with her rifle’s barrel swinging through the air as she waved it around wildly.

“Where?”

“He ran!” Rei snapped.

Rye’s eyes were on the roof, before he moved to nudge Chianti. “He was heading for the stairs.”

Well.

Rye was corroborating their story. Huh. Rei… didn’t know how to feel about that. Though, he was the one actually carrying their forbidden goods, Rei supposed, and would probably be the first to be shot. Self-preservation could get guys like these to do just about anything.

All around them was a whirlwind of movement, a distraction so effective not even Rei realized Kir was at Rye’s elbow before it was too late.

“If there’s a sniper, we better hurry and get this over with.” She spoke coldly, despite the henchmen dashing passed them and Chianti’s manic and shrill yelling. “Show me your bag.”

Well, that didn’t work at all. Gin’s eyes were off them, eying the accused building like it personally offended him, but Kir had been utterly unimpressed.

Rye stared at her for a long moment, completely unmoving. Rei had no idea what was going through his head as he finally shrugged off the bag and handed it over. Kir seemed surprised by the weight, and settled it on the ground too roughly. At the sound of the bag hitting the concrete, Rei did not allow himself to wince.

The woman unzipped the bag in a single fluid motion, and glanced inside. She blinked once, the only obvious sign of her surprise at finding two wide eyes staring back out at her.

Rei had his hand wrapped around the grip of his gun, his heart pounding in his chest. This was it—this was game over, mission failed. Even if they managed to fight their way out, their cover was going to be completely blown. In the split second it took for Kir to register the sight before her, Rei went through all the stages of grief in single, fell swoop.

Conan put his finger to his lips in the universally understood gesture of shut the fuck up.

Kir turned to them, face blank as anything. They all conveyed the exact same thing with their eyes.

She zipped the case back up and handed it back to Rye. “Pack the instrument away properly next time.”

“Will do.” Rye replied, shouldering the bag again. Maybe it was only because Rei was looking, but his grip seemed like it was just a little too tight.

Kir was staring at them very dubiously, like she didn’t know what they were up to, but also didn’t really want to know either. Rei had no idea what she was thinking, but part of him he hadn’t thought could possibly still exist desperately wanted to scream it’s not what it looks like. Whatever it looked like.

“We’re all clear over here.” She called to Gin anyway, who snorted back. It was his disappointed snort, the kind of sound that one only heard when they’d just scraped by with their lives. Crazy bastard was always looking for an excuse to kill them. With the way Gin cut through the ranks, it was a shock the organization had any living members left at all. Some days Rei wondered if there was even any point to infiltrating when the enemies were just as liable to kill of each other as they would anyone else.

Vodka hurried over, a flock of lowlives from the building scuttling behind him.

Gin didn’t even bother looking at him, eyes still glued to the building as he bit down on the filter of his cigarette. “Any sign of the rat?”

“Sorry, aniki , we got nothing.”

“Spread out, search the area. All of you.”

Perfect.

Like a disturbed flock, they scattered. Rei’s heart was still beating way too fast in his chest, and he kept half an eye on Kir, watching for any potential move to snitch. Likewise, her eyes kept flickering back to Rye.

It felt like a poor game of Chicken, waiting for someone else to make the first move that would send all of them toppling.

Pretending to search the area, Rei didn’t let Rye get far from his line of sight. The sniper was doing a fine job of inspecting local rooftops, obviously looking for the best place to settle down and scope out the area while the rest of them had to scramble around on foot.

Snipers could be such lazy bastards.

Rye ducked around a corner, cutting through an alley, and Rei exchanged a quick glance with Hiro. Pincer, they both decided immediately, and Hiro took off to circle around the building as Rei took off after Rye.

If Rei didn’t know better, he’d say Rye was trying to lose them or something.

So much for being co-conspirators.

Rei had to scale three different fire escapes, jump the gap between no less than four separate buildings, and search three air vents before he caught up with Rye behind a dumpster in an alley. He’d have gotten there sooner, but there was no way in hell he was using that trash disposal chute as a shortcut.

Not for anybody or anything .

Hiro wasn’t far behind, smelling oddly of rotten milk and sawdust.

Rei did not ask.

Rye didn’t seem terribly surprised to see them, but then again, the guy never seemed terribly anything. He had the face of a fish that died feeling vaguely aggravated.

“What now?” Hiro asked as they regrouped, and all eyes were on the case.

Rei opened his mouth at the exact same time as Rye did, and they both paused, glaring into each others’ eyes.

Rei started again at the exact same time Rye did, again, and suddenly his hand was itching for his gun again.

A sound echoed down the alleyway.

Hiro made a curious noise and dashed to the far end of the alleyway, where he peeked around the corner and froze.

“Uh, guys…?” He said, his voice lilting up.

“What?” They both snapped, and went right back to trying to murder each other with their eyes.

“Those are cops, right? Yeah, those are definitely cops.”

What had started as a low, distant whine, was rapidly building up in a cacophony of wails.

Police sirens. And a lot of them. Getting very, very close.

Giving up the staring contest, they both glued themselves to the same corner: Hiro kneeling down, Rei stooping next to him, and Rye looming over them because he was obnoxiously tall.

A few patrol cars flew by, sirens flashing. And then, more alarmingly, a SWAT team nestled inside an armored van. Soon enough, it wasn’t even a single patrol car or two. No, there was an entire fleet of police vehicles, piled high with uniformed officers.

“Why?”

“Shit.” Rei cursed. “We’ve been made.”

He didn’t know how or why the police had ended up in the same district as a Group operation, en masse no less, but that was very bad.

“How?” Hiro whispered as they made their way back to their suddenly much more appealing dumpster and gathered around in a circle behind it.

Rei had no idea—

Wait.

Wait.

“Open that bag, right now.” He snapped at Rye, who was already shrugging it off and settling it steadily against the ground.

They were all fucking idiots, Rei decided, as they unzipped the bag.

Conan blinked innocently out of it—no tears, no shaking. Just a bit of a nervous glint in his eye.

Rye heaved the kid up by the back of his shirt and shook him. A phone tumbled out of the inside pocket of Conan’s jacket and clattered to the ground. On the bright screen, there was a very long text log with one Detective Takagi.

Deep within the blessed privacy of his own mind, Rei screamed.

Chapter Text

Conan was trying to look innocent. No one was fooled.

“Are you the devil?” Hiro asked, completely serious. “You were sent here to punish us for our sins, weren’t you?”

The logical thing to do here, as heavily-armed bad guys with guns, would be to quietly murder the kid and leave his body in the dumpster and flee the scene. 

Unfortunately, Rei was actually trying to avoid having to do that, but the kid wasn’t exactly making sparing his life easier. Hiro was obviously not a problem, whether he genuinely thought the kid was hell-spawn or not, but there was no way on this damn Earth Rye wasn’t going to snap the little thing’s neck. 

Almost precisely on cue, Rye stepped in between Rei and Conan, and Rei’s gut twisted itself up like a knot. A hangman’s knot. For hanging himself, obviously, because that was what getting Conan out of this alive was going to take.

Otherwise, they had to kill Rye.

He had to do it.

The alternative was killing the kid. Hanging himself would be easier, but he hadn’t gotten into this for easy— 

Rye picked the phone off the ground, skimmed through it, and then handed it back to Conan.

“You,” he said firmly, “are going to tell that detective that the ‘scary men’ that picked you up dropped you off at the cafe two blocks from here.” He glanced in Rei and Hiro’s direction with venomous eyes.  “If we kill the kid, there’s no way they won’t notice.”

Rei and Hiro stared at him, then slowly glanced at each other. Hiro very casually put away the butterfly knife that had ended up in his hand at some point.

If Rye wasn’t going to push the pedicide issue just yet, Rei supposed they didn’t have to jump to murder yet either. 

“Let’s hide out in the cafe until the area’s cleared. We’ll just pass ourselves off as a band. If we keep the kid out, they probably won’t suspect us.” 

He picked Conan up by the back of his shirt, leaving the kid’s feet swaying almost a meter off the ground. 

“Let me see the message.” He snatched the phone from Conan’s hand and read it over, before locking it. “I’m holding on to this.” Sternly, he tucked the phone away in his own pocket and set the child down. “If you try anything in the cafe, anything at all…” 

“I’ll be good!” Conan chirped, all smiles.

Though Rye’s body language, his voice, his words all belied aggravation, and even beneath that a sort of deep-seated ruthless aggression, Rei couldn’t help but remember a moment quite a while back: that time a girl had caught Hiro and Rye at the subway station, and Rei had just a faint glimpse of a different man in Rye’s skin. A gruff man that wanted to hide everything he cared away from prying eyes, that wanted to make sure no one in the world thought he cared at all.

Was it at all possible that Rye’s soft spot extended beyond that supposed little sister?

Rei filed the observation away for later. He knew better than to trust it, or rely on it, or dare he say it, hope . But he also knew that in their lives, information was power—strengths and weaknesses could make a break everything . Even an ageless assassin with any face and voice could be matched if he had just the right information.  

In the meantime, there was the more pressing issue that was Conan. Rei would be the first to admit that children weren’t his expertise. How intelligent was the average six year-old? How intelligent was a smart six year-old?

He had no idea. 

Would most six year-olds, instead of screaming and crying, think to silently and imperceptibly contact the police without alerting his captors? He supposed any child acquainted with hide-and-seek could figure that much out, so long as they weren’t panicking. 

And yet, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something. 

Either way, it had been too naive to assume Conan himself wasn’t a factor he had to control for; Conan was a child, not a briefcase or USB. He’d get up and walk away by himself if they let him. 

They let Conan scamper ahead of them, hanging half a block back as a group, all three of them watching him like hawks. It wouldn’t be so bad, maybe, if he used the distance to scream for help or run if it was just Rei or Hiro. They could let him go, supposedly driven off by the high police presence, and call it a day.

But Rye? An expert marksman like him could blow a hole through a child’s head at even this distance with just a pistol. One wrong move, and Conan could very well be dead before Hiro or Rei could do a single thing about it. They’re only chance would be stopping him before he could draw the gun, and that wouldn’t exactly be easy to explain if it got caught on a security camera.

Conan stopped, and like vipers, they tensed in place, all coiled up. Conan reached into his pocket and pulled something out. Rei looked at Rye, Rye looked at Hiro, and Hiro let out a silent, but relieved, puff of breath.

“It’s just gum.”

Conan popped it into his mouth, threw away the wrapper, and cheerfully entered the cafe. 

They followed, leaving just enough time in between their entrance and Conan’s to keep anyone from associating them. As he was instructed to be, Conan was at the bar, fingering through the cafe’s menu. The three of them gathered around the table behind him, pretending to chat amicably about Two Mix’s new album.

Service was quick, the waitress hurrying over to take their drink orders while the man behind the cafe’s bar slid a glass of juice Conan’s way. 

“Parents busy, kid?”

“Yup!” Conan chirped. “I’m waiting to be picked up!”

Rei kept an ear out for anything suspicious popping out of the kid’s mouth, but Conan didn’t seem intent on ratting them out just yet. But without knowing what Rye’s plan for the kid after the police presence cleared, it wasn’t easy to think of a way out. Rye had the kid report his location to the detective, so there was certainly an officer of some kind on the way to collect Conan. What was the plan for that? And how could Rei get around it?

Rei stared at Rye over the table, trying to get inside that stoic mind. Rye seemingly ignored him, eyes on the menu as he ordered his food. 

Rei turned the conversation to hunting as they waited for the food to arrive, casual words hiding daggers as they measured each other up. 

“Don’t they shoot injured animals in America? The ones that get stuck in traps and such.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Rye shrugged. “But I suppose I can understand the philosophy of it. A quick death is kinder.” 

“Who gets to decide that?” Tucking his chin in his hand, Rei smirked at the predictably arrogant answer. “The animal obviously wants to live, right? Unlike people, even if they’re in pain, animals don’t kill themselves.”

“That’s only because animals can’t recognize that there are things worse than death.” Hiro pointed out, grinning sheepishly as Rei glared at him. Traitor. 

“The only reason it’s okay to do that sort of thing is because a wild animal’s life doesn’t have much value to us.” Or say, the life of a stranger. “Plenty of people would try to save the animal if it were a beloved pet.” Alternatively, maybe, a beloved little sister… “Doesn’t that mean they acknowledge that shooting something that got itself into trouble instead of trying to save it is cruel? Just because they don’t have a personal connection to it…”

He was getting a little caught up in testing the waters, memorizing each flicker of Rye’s bland expression. Their food arrived, and Rei almost thought life had thrown its last curveball of the day.

And that was when the waitress went and died.

Right on their table. Centimeters from Rei’s salad. She just keeled over, cherry red.

Cyanide, his brain registered before he could really do much other than drop his fork. He could recognize the symptoms anywhere, except she hadn’t been drinking or eating anything, and no one was near her—

She was dead. Just like that. 

All throughout the cafe, people were screaming. The man from behind the bar rushed over, shaking the waitress by her shoulder with a pale face until Hiro hauled him away. Amidst all the shouting and sudden chaos, Rei heard a young voice ring out, carrying over the cacophony of noise. 

“Someone call an ambulance! And the police!” 

Oh, that wasn’t good at all.

Chapter Text

So, three fully-armed hitmen, the child they kidnapped, a whole lunch-rush worth of witnesses, and a corpse walk into a bar—

Well, he supposed, corpses couldn’t walk. If they did, Rei would have other things to worry about right now.

But his point stands: this whole day has been a fucking joke.

Did someone up there hate him? Or just think this was funny?

Couldn’t anything go off without a massive, mountain-sized hitch today? 

He just wanted to eat some goddamn salad, ditch the devilspawn, go home and, maybe, if that wasn’t too much to ask, hug his dog.

But apparently that wasn’t happening anytime soon.

Really, Rei had been in some bad situations before. Like the time with Gin, the pool stick, and the whale poachers in Tokyo Bay that left his clothes reeking of fish for weeks. Or that other time he and Hiro ended up waist-deep in cement with a Yakuza heir. Or that other, other time, with the wild boar and the oil and Kazami and the dress —actually, he didn’t even want to remember that one. 

Fiercely embarrassing anecdotes aside, Rei wasn’t a stranger to, ah, tight spots. 

But this? This took the cake. And threw it on the ground. And ran it over with a semi.

There was a woman dead on the table, their cases full of weapons piled underneath, and their fingerprints on everything. Worse, the victim hadn’t been eating or drinking anything when she died, and they’d been the ones closest to her, with the greatest opportunity to inject her. 

When the police arrived, they would be the prime suspects, motive or not. Which meant they’d be searched. The police probably wouldn’t find the cyanide they would be looking for, but they weren’t exactly going to be thrilled to find an assortment of illegal fire-arms either. And then Conan was going to point a tiny little finger in their direction and they’d be so fucked, Rei’s superiors wouldn’t even bother trying to bail them out of jail. 

They had to get out of here.

Everyone was rushing about: a few customers were trying to scramble out the door, and the guy from behind the counter was already contaminating the crime-scene, shaking the waitress and yelling what he assumed was her name very loudly. Rei watched the man’s hands carefully, his flight response at war with the need to bat the man away and take control. Hiro’s eyes were on the door, watching for anyone that held it together well enough to actually get out, and Rye was ever so helpfully pushing their bags further under the table with his shoes, as if that would save them.

Conan.

Where the hell was Conan?

For a moment, his heart lurched in his chest, because moments like these were prime child-trampling hours, but then his gaze locked on a little cowlick standing upright behind a chair. Conan was kneeling under the front counter, peering at the kitchen tiles that were on the other side.

Looking for a place to hide, probably.

Rei would like one for himself, in all honesty. Or at least his gun.

“What’s the plan?” Hiro whispered harshly, grabbing him by the arm.

“We could hold the place up.” Rye muttered, looking entirely unbothered by the shit-show they’d ended up in. “Take hostages, bring down the shutters, then escape out the back.”

Already, Rei could hear the sirens again. “Like we really need to make this more of a scene!”

“Got any better ideas?” A police cruiser screeched to a stop at the curb, and a tall man slid out of the passenger side, one hand pushing through the curls of his hair.

Conan had glanced from the floor to the windows and immediately perked up. “Oh, good, it’s Inspector Shiratori!” 

Oh, good, the kid knew the detective by name!

That was just great. 

Here they were, trapped in a small cafe armed to the teeth with illegal contraband and about to be under suspicion for murder, and the apparently chatty first-grader they kidnapped just happened to be buddy-buddy with the local homicide cops.

Just when Rei thought their luck couldn’t get any worse, life decided to throw them this curveball. 

Screw steps one and two. 

“Let’s just grab our shit and run.” Rei snarled as he swept one of the bags and dashed for the counter. He threw himself over it, glancing backwards just enough to see Rye slide under with his case, while Hiro knocked over all their drinks and drenched everything in enough water to take care of any prints. 

“Freeze, stop right there!” Someone was yelling as Rei barreled through the kitchen door, Rye hot on his heels. At least he didn’t recognize the voice from the police academy.

“I’ll shoot!” A very familiar voice snapped back, and Rei’s blood went cold.

What the fuck was Hiro doing?

He snapped his head back around and saw Hiro rushing through the kitchen door with a pistol in one hand and very unwelcome child in the other.

“Go!” Hiro yelled, and Rye shoved them both through the back door and onto the street. 

“What the hell, Scotch!” Rei snarled as he got his footing on the asphalt and started to sprint, sparing just enough breath to carry all of his broiling frustrations. “Why?”

They wanted to be free of the kid, not take him hostage!

“He had a gun on me!” Hiro wailed—and there was no way Rei was going to let him deny that later. It was a wail, one hundred percent. No other word for it. “And the kid was just there!”

“Well, drop him!” Conan was looking a bit dizzy, dangling from under Hiro’s arm. Rei would really prefer Hiro didn’t drop him on the concrete from a meter up while they were running at a dead sprint, but they didn’t exactly have a lot of options!

There were a lot of shouts behind them too.

“Alley, now!”

They took a sharp right turn and hurdled over some trash cans. Hiro didn’t quite make it, clipping the top of one and sending it crashing down behind them.

They ran for all they were worth, which wasn’t much considering how badly they were fucking things up all day, and more. Back to the warehouse district, which Rei wasn’t sure was a good idea or a spectacularly bad one. Either way, it meant finding a place to maybe lay low, catch their breath, and figure out how in seven hells they were going to get out of this mess.

Rye picked out a seedy looking building with busted windows and graffiti on the walls, because he was a walking cliche like that, and all three and a half of them stumbled in and hunkered down.

“Not our best plan.” Rye said, voice perfectly flat, as he leaned up against what might have once been a crate and lit up a cigarette. 

Hiro didn’t seem to know whether he was supposed to be putting down Conan or not. Conan, for his part, seemed more thoroughly exasperated by the rough handling than anything else, and kicked a red sneaker right into Hiro’s thigh. 

Hiro got message and set him down.

“What do we do now?”

“Wait it out.” Rei said, as if it was simple. As if they didn’t just kidnap a first-grader in front of the cops, and the entire Tokyo MPD wasn’t about to be bearing down upon their heads like an unholy and vengeful god. 

Maybe they’d get lucky. Maybe no one would find them, and they could creep out to Rei’s car. They were dressed at not their least conspicuous, but at their least recognizable: beanies, jackets with collars, sunglasses. And the cops and other customers probably didn’t get a good look at them, either. If they ditched the gear and a couple layers, there was a chance that no one would even give them a second glance. 

For once, Rye nodded his agreement, and then turned his poisonous eyes upon Conan. “And I’ll take our little friend here out back.” 

And that was bad. Very bad.

Of fucking course the one time Rye didn’t challenge him, he followed up with that. 

Conan didn’t seem to get it, staring right back up at Rye with a blank face and huge, childish eyes.

Rei grit his teeth, then forced a dazzlingly malicious smile on his face. The kind of smile that just screamed I love killing kids!  Fake it, he told himself, fake it ‘til you make it and everyone thinks you just live for the sadistic rush of adding another homicide to the list. “I’ll do it.”

Rye lifted an eyebrow, the single motion managing to convey far too much disdain to do anything but make Rei want to punch his stupid cheekbones in. “I said I’ll do it.”

“I wanna do it!” Hiro piped up, eternally helpful, but that only got him his own serving of Rye’s veiled derision. 

“I just said I’m doing it.” Rye wasn’t budging a centimeter, and Rei wanted to strangle him. Just how badly did this guy want to shoot Conan? 

And how was Rei supposed to stop him? Was it finally time to shoot Rye?

Had the whole excruciating crucible of all day been leading up to this? Was the universe finally giving him this? He’d damn well earned it, honestly.

“Why do you get to shoot the brat?” 

“Why are you fighting me on this?”

Both Hiro and Rye were facing each other now, and Conan was glancing between the two of them with an odd sort of expression, like he felt too bemused by the sight of grown men arguing about who got to murder him to be scared.

“I’m the one that caught him.” Rei put forward, wondering if that was even sound logic for the hardened criminal he was supposed to be. “I’ll be the one doing the honors on shooting the brat’s brains out.”

Rye and Hiro both glanced at him, Conan not far behind, and then all three of them just paused.

Something pressed into Rei’s back, right through his jacket.

Rei went very still.

Because that feeling? The blunt but focused pressure, hard and unyielding? That was a gun barrel. 

“Who is shooting who’s brains out, may I ask?”

The voice was soft around the edges, femininity draping over the hardened steel running underneath each vowel and consonant, and when Rei slowly turned around and the woman took a careful step out of his arm’s reach, he met the ice blue eyes on the other side of the gun barrel.

Rei really had to stop thinking things couldn’t go any further downhill.

Chapter Text

The trouble with little miracles, Rei knew, was that they always came back to bite him in the ass. Nothing good ever happened ever happened for free, least of all to him.  Because of course they couldn’t just catch a break. Of course the one thing that had gone their way today to blow up right in their faces. Why not.

“Nobody is shooting anybody.” Rei tried, casually reaching for the gun tucked into his waistband. 

A crack cut through the air, something shooting by his face faster than the eye could see. Conan squeaked, but went ignored: all eyes were on the offending gun barrel.

“Try again.” Kir said, unflinching. 

Here’s the thing about Kir: Rei hardly knew her. They’d never even exchanged words before, let alone bullets. But he’d seen her around, and more than that, he’d seen her on TV. On television, she was a friendly, but elegant face, with a sort of refreshing, refined youthfulness that brought life to her newscasts. 

Off the safety of his TV, though, she was scary as fuck. Everyone knew Vermouth was the most dangerous woman in their agency, but it was her capabilities that made her intimidating, not her manner. Vermouth, for all the blood on her hands and her ruthlessness, was a reasonable woman. 

Kir, rumor had it, was a mad dog with a taste for blood. She had none of Vermouth’s flirtatious playfulness, none of Vermouth’s alluring soft, supple curves, but instead had sharpened all of her edges into razors. This was the kind of woman men instinctively kept their distance from, whose beauty was more of a threat than a promise. 

The kind of woman Rei really wasn’t good at dealing with.

“Wait, we can explain!” Hiro had his hands up, placating, though no one was quite sure what he was talking about, probably least of all himself. Rei could tell, watching his friend from the corner of his eye, that he was grasping in the dark.

Kir cocked a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at him, thoroughly unimpressed.

“Did you really think,” she said, enunciating each word with perfect, news-broadcast worthy clarity, “I would just let you get away with this ?” 

Rei kept his hands where she could see them as she held him at gunpoint, following each little gesture of her gun barrel.

This, he assumed, meant Conan, who was looking decidedly a little nervous as his eyes flickered between them all. Fair enough—things hadn’t exactly been peaceful until now, but no shots had been fired! Or needed to be fired! 

“Maybe a little?” Hiro admitted. The gun turned towards him. 

Fuck, they’d really gone from one murderous criminal on their already full hands to two. Rye was bad enough, but at least Rei knew him. He hadn’t prepared to deal with Kir too, because he’d assumed she have something better to do. Didn’t she have some oil mogul she should be interviewing instead of getting on Rei’s ass? Or was the chance to kill three comrades and a kid just way too good for a supposed mad dog to pass up?

“Enough, Kir.” Rye said. At some point when Rei had been focused on Kir and Hiro, he’d placed himself between the rest of them and Conan. “We’ve got this handled.”

“Doesn’t look very handled to me!” She snapped right back, eyes flickering away from them for the first time, to Conan’s half hidden form. 

Distracted, was Rei’s first thought. His second was, gun. Now.

His hand found the familiar grip of his weapon in an instant, and Hiro wasn’t far behind. Both their pistols were out fast, but then they both paused, not sure where to aim. 

Because Rye, in turn, hadn’t grabbed his weapon, but thrown himself over Conan.

Because, before anyone could blink, Kir had the barrel of her gun trained on Rye’s forehead. 

She looked so pissed.

But Rei’s brain was really struggling to keep up with this.

What the hell?

What were these idiots doing? 

Both he and Hiro had their weapons pointed in her general direction, and while she was clearly not happy about that, Kir was glaring at Rye like he was the greatest threat in the room.

Which, yeah, he should’ve been, but instead he was stooped over the kid like, like—

Oh fuck, he was threatening to snap the brat’s neck, wasn’t he? Then using him as a meat shield? 

What a bastard. 

Rei tried to convey his realization to Hiro with his eyes—one of them had to keep their gun on Kir, while the other took out Rye. They’d have to move near simultaneously to take out both assassins before Rye made his move or Kir decided to shoot. 

Hiro nodded, very slightly.

Quicker than a viper, Rei turned on his heel and levered his gun at Rye.

Then froze when he realized Hiro had done the exact same thing.

“ Seriously?" Rei finally, finally snapped. It was straw that broke the camel's back, the last little crack in the dam holding back the incredulity and frustration that had been crashing against it for hours. He reached his breaking point. "You were supposed to stay on Kir!”

Hiro at least looked guilty. “I thought you meant I was on Rye!”

“Why would you be on Rye? I hate Rye!” Obviously, he should be the one that got to shoot Rye. He deserved it, dammit!

A significantly calmer voice cut off Hiro's indignant reply. “Everybody shut the fuck up.”

Right. Kir had no guns on her right now, and seeing Rye was clearly taken care of, had levered her own gun barrel at Rei’s head. Rei knew better than to move, and Hiro couldn’t exactly turn not and leave Conan undefended.

Shit, this bitch was good.  Or rather, better than them and the clearly malfunctioning brains.

“Rye,” the good bitch herself said, nice and slow, not looking away from Rei. “You are going to release that child, and then we're all going to go back, and then none of you will say anything to anyone, unless you want Gin to hear about this little breach of protocol.”

They all went quiet. Not their normal, on an assassination mission quiet. But like, real, actual, hear a pin drop quiet. The silence of a complete lack of comprehension.

Because, really, what the actual fuck?

“Hold on, hold on,” Hiro waved his hands in the air. “You want us to let the kid go?”

“Yes?” Kir’s eyebrows were up again, like it was obvious.

“But… he’s a witness?”

“I didn’t realize I was supposed to care about cleaning up your messes.” Kir narrowed her ice eyes and motioned impatiently with the gun. Despite the nonsensical situation, Rye’s impassive face hadn’t changed, and he released Conan to stand back up to his full, imposing height. Conan let out a notably relieved sigh, but didn’t move from his spot at Rye’s feet. 

Kir wasn’t looking at him, still focused on the three men before her, but the tone of her voice softened. “Boy, did these men hurt you? In any way?” 

Noting the look in her eyes, Rei didn’t want to consider what was going to happen if the answer to that question was yes.

The question itself was bad enough, as the situation finally resolved itself. It physically hurt, like a punch to the gut or a knife to the eye. In fact, Rei would have taken either of the those things over the implications of that question.

Kir thought they were goddamn fucking child molesters! 

No wonder she was ready to shoot them dead and let the kid go! Even criminal scum had to draw their own lines somewhere, and they’d clearly stumbled right across hers! What self-respecting woman could stand by and let that kind of thing go? Least of all one with a gun and all the skill required to use it!

Rei wanted to bury his head in his hands and groan. 

It really wasn’t what it looked like!

Thankfully for them, the answer came quickly.

“Nope!” Conan chirped, laughing a little awkwardly, and then hastily tacked on: “n—not even a little.”

“Good,” Kir said very cooly, her gun and eyes unwavering, “come here, please.” 

The child really did try to scamper towards her, but Rye didn’t let him, reaching down and catching Conan by the back of his jacket to reel him back in.

“Hold on,” Rye said, as Kir’s finger tightened on the trigger. “There seems to have been a serious misunderstanding here.”

“Misunderstanding?” Even Kir’s disbelieving laugh was like a bucket of ice water, cold, jarring , and fundamentally unpleasant. “I have eyes. I know what’s going on here.”

You really, really don’t, they all unsubtly thought. 

In response to their clearly contradicting gazes, Kir frowned.

“Alright, I don’t know what he,” she nodded to the side, “had to do with this, but I’m not an idiot. Don’t think you can fool me.”

He?

Who?

Rei looked to the side, realizing for the first time, they hadn’t really scoped the place out before they’d turned on each other. They'd just assumed the obviously abandoned warehouse would be, well, obviously abandoned.

Looking now, that may have been a mistake.

“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me…” Hiro’s aghast voice really failed to convey the true unbelievable horror of the situation. “Really? Really ? Tell me this is a joke!”

“Is that really a-fucking-nother dead body?!”

Chapter Text

Bourbon was a very different person from Rei, by necessity, particularly in how they were supposed to react to stressors. 

But sometimes, there was a point when he had to compromise, and sacrifice dedication to his role for something a bit more practical. Bourbon would never back down, not in a situation like this. He’d think of some clever plan to dastardly turn things around, no matter how drastic he had to get. 

Rei, however, knew that occasionally, sometimes, maybe, he had to deescalate. Unfortunately.

So with no small amount of regret, he tucked his pistol away and put his hands up.

“Alright, everyone just calm down and put all the guns away.” Hiro stared at him, eyebrows high and disbelieving. Rei waved him off, and reluctantly, Hiro’s own pistol disappeared back into his jacket. “We’re all on the same side here, right?”

Even though we aren’t.

Kir regarded him with extreme suspicion, her own finger still sitting on the trigger. Cold blue eyes cut from side to side, measuring Rei and Hiro up. “Some of us more than others.”

Yeah, they’d given the jig up. At this point, it was plain as day that Hiro and he were a package deal. 

Regardless, Hiro gave her a reassuring smile. “Like Rye said, there seems to have been a misunderstanding. Just let us catch you up, Kir.”

Us, he said, like Rye was with them. As always, Hiro could make a killer move so casually, brushing over the fact that Rei had just pretty blatantly dropped the damning little detail that he, oh, wanted Rye dead. 

The man was utterly shameless. 

Rye, for his part, didn’t release Conan or call them out on their bullshit, his olive eyes turning towards the distant exit with a calculating gleam. His expression was impossible to discern; whether he intended to go along with their farce, or use Conan as a hostage against Kir was unclear. 

But it was clear that Conan was an effective hostage against Kir, and wasn’t that interesting. 

Kir didn’t put the gun away, but she didn’t shoot any of them either. Her painted lips pinched together as she took a breath through the nose. 

“I suggest you start with where the hell you got this kid from.”

Rei didn’t let out a breath of relief, but some of the tension in his limbs eased. Hiro, emboldened, launched into the tale.

“We found this kid where Gin’s ‘mysterious pursuer’ was supposed to be.”

Kir gave Conan a long, unfathomable look. “...Really.” Her voice had gone very flat. There was approximately zero chance she believed them. Already, Conan was withering under her gaze, trying to hide his clear discomfort with a faltering smile.

Hiro stepped in between Kir and the poor kid, his hands raised placatingly. “Really!”

Before anyone thought too hard about why Hiro was clearly placing himself between an armed assassin and a witness, Rei took the wheel. “Since he was on the scene and our target wasn’t, we’ve been running on the assumption that the brat might know or have seen something that could, you know, give us an actual lead as opposed to the stupid wild goose chase Gin has us on.”

If they had any luck at all, and they really were overdue for some, Kir was as fed up with Gin’s fruitless circus as the rest of them. If the bastard hadn’t caught the fox by then, then he probably never would. There was no way Rei was the only one feeling like they were chasing a ghost.

Kir said nothing, and while her face didn’t so much as shift, Rei could tell she was thinking, combing over the words in her head and weighing her options.

Best not to give her too much time to think it over. Rei was pretty sure their story would hold up like a wet napkin under scrutiny. Thankfully, Hiro carried on from there. “Of course, we didn’t want to risk Gin capping the brat until we got everything we could out of him.” 

Kir’s eyes were narrow slits of startling blue. She somehow managed to stand even straighter. “And well? Have you gotten anything?”

Actually, Rei had completely forgotten his own bullshit reasoning for why they were carting the brat around and hadn’t actually properly interrogated Conan—and so had Rye, apparently, since he wanted to take the kid out back and shoot him.

Huh.

“We haven’t had the chance!” Hiro hastily cut in, because Rei was still stuck on Rye. “The police showed up and then there was this body…”

Kir scowled, but at least her gun lowered, pointing at the ground. “This body?”

Hiro shook his head. “No, a different body…”

“Two bodies?”

“This one was here when we got here. The other one was, y’know…still breathing at first.” 

Kir’s eyebrows were climbing higher and higher on her face. “And then you killed them?”

“No! Look, it’s just been a long day!”

“Are you seriously trying to fuck with me right now?” Rei could see Kir's tolerance for bullshit lowering with each word and internally cringed. By the end of the sentence, unsurprisingly, the gun was back up. 

He could hardly blame her. If Rei hadn’t experienced the whole garbage fire in real time, he wouldn’t believe it either. In fact, if someone tried to feed him this nonsensical tale, he’d probably have already shot them by now. For someone with such a reputation, Kir wasn’t particularly trigger happy, at least.

Rei couldn’t decide if that made her less scary, or more. Speculation said that she preferred to use her teeth.

With a helpless smile and no small amount of unease, Hiro threw his hands in the air. “No! Trust us, we know it’s crazy!”

Kir didn’t look very appeased. “You seriously expect me to believe you’ve managed to stumble across two random corpses in less than two hours.”

“We’ve been finding it hard to believe as well.” Rye spoke up. He’d been watching their back and forth with a wary eye, and finally rose from the ground. Conan remained at his feet, still quiet and obedient. “Regardless, that is the situation we’ve found ourselves in.”

And that was weird, wasn’t it? That Rye was going along with their obvious farce. Everything Rye had been doing since he first laid eyes on Conan had been weird. Rye was, if nothing else, a shrewd man. 

So why wasn’t he acting like it?

Oblivious to Rei's mounting suspicion, Kir gave all three of them a look that was nothing short of scalding, but there was little she could say when they were all, somehow, agreeing on the same story. The gun lowered again, and it seemed like that was the best they were going to get.

Avoiding the woman’s accusatory stare, all three of them finally got a better look at the body. It had to be relatively fresh, since they hadn’t even smelt it at first. But the victim looked like just an ordinary man, in a blue-collar uniform stained black with blood.

Inspecting the clear gunshot wound in the victim’s gut, Hiro turned to Rei. “What if it’s..."

They all waited for him to continue. He didn't.

Rei swallowed. He didn't know what Hiro was alluding to, and that kind of concerned him. They were always on the same wavelength. That he had no more idea what Hiro was on to than the other two... what had he missed?

"It's what?" Rei prompted after a stilted silence, and Hiro winced.

"Like, y'know…a curse?”

… 

Rei was way too tired for this.

He took a deep breath, and tried very hard to not sound as deeply and fundamentally aggravated as he actually was. It was a monumental task. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Hiro, the unrepentant bastard, just said, “Think about it… what if we’ll, like, keep stumbling over bodies and shit until we solve the case?”

To the side, Conan visibly perked up, for some reason. And then the little devil actually tried to get closer to the corpse.

In an instant, what should have occurred to any reasonable adult from the very first moment, the simple concept that had been flying blatantly over their desensitized little heads, hit Rei like a runaway freight train.

There was a dead body and they had a child. And they were just letting him look at it!

While Rei once more screamed bloody murder in the blessed privacy of his own mind, casual as anything, Rye snagged Conan right back, handling him like an overly curious kitten and not the very same little gremlin that was ready to bite Rei’s fingers off. 

“How about, instead of ‘Murder She Wrote’ing this, we focus on our own problems.” Rye said. Still rebooting mentally, Rei only vaguely understood the reference and filed it away for later. “In case you forgot, the cops saw us running off with a first-grader. They’re probably still searching for our asses right now.”

Kir gave him another look. Rei reckoned they were all getting used to them. “You mean the cops sniffing around outside?”

The what? Rei exclaimed silently.

“The what?” Hiro exclaimed loudly.

“How do you think I found you idiots?” Forget murder, Rei was quickly learning Kir’s real skill was making people feel like bumbling fools bungling everything up. “There’s a bunch of cops searching all the warehouses on this block.”

Motherfuckers.

He and Hiro exchanged alarmed looks. Now was not the time to get caught—not when they were with two bonafide agents and the child they kidnapped. Their covers would be completely, irreparably blown. 

But, it wasn’t just that—“How’d they find us?!” Rei snarled, swiveling back and forth as he took in all their exits.

“I thought we at least lost them better than that.” Rye said. He’d clearly been thinking along the same lines. The police had lost sight of them early in the chase, and Rye had turned the kid’s phone off. There shouldn’t have been any feasible way to track them to such a specific area. 

Instead of looking to the exits, Kir’s eyes bounced between the three of them, before, just for a moment, her eyes settled on Conan. Then, they flickered away.

“...Take off your shoes.” She said.

Unusually in sync, Rei, Hiro, and Rye all stared at her.

“Why?” Hiro tried.

“Just do it.” 

There was no time to argue. At any moment, they could be busted. Reluctantly, all three of them pulled off their shoes and held them up. Kir inspected each pair. Rei didn’t see anything particularly odd about his own, Rye’s were clunky but practical, and Hiro’s— 

There, set in the grove between heel and sole, was a little flat disk stuck there with bubblegum.

Rei’s breath caught in his throat.

“You’ve been bugged.” Kir whispered. “That’s how they tracked you.”

Hiro’s face had gone completely white.

“By who?” Rei hissed under his breath.

“Gin’s fox, probably.” Rye said, looking almost impressed. And, loathe as Rei was to admit Rye was right about anything ever, it was damn impressive. 

“Shit, that guy’s good. He managed to tag us and without us even seeing him.” 

He’d have to be, to have eluded Gin for so long. As much as Rei despised the gray-haired scumbag bleeding his country dry, he gave credit where credit was due. Gin was a veritable monster. No one escaped him. Hell, their target would have to be practically invisible to have managed to survive so long. Impossible to find, impossible to track, impossible to pin down; someone so elusive that they could lay a trap within a trap. Otherwise, they’d have to be able to hide in plain sight, to shirk all suspicion without even a grain of doubt, like—

No, Rei put an end to that train of thought before it could get any further derailed by complete, utter insanity. The thought was completely preposterous. 

Plain and simple, that was stupid. 

There was more reasonable explanations.

In the meantime, they needed to ditch the bug and then get the fuck out. 

“Save it. We’ve gotta get out of here. I don’t know about you guys, but I’d rather not be caught red-handed with a corpse.” Rye was already putting his shoes back on as he spoke, maneuvering Conan in his grip like a champ so he could lace his boots back up one-handed.

Definitely an older brother. 

Kir tried to take Conan off his hands with a fussy frown, scowling indignantly when Rye ignored her.

Definitely an older sister.

Rei was learning so much about his coworkers today.

Hiro hooked a fingernail into the sticky mess under his shoe and tried to pry the tracker off. The tracker barely budged. They all stared as precious seconds ticked by as he struggled to get his fingers around the bug. 

“...” He tried again.

“...” And again.

“...I can’t get it off.” He gave up. Hiro looked at Rei helplessly. Rei stared back.

“There’s no time. The cops will be searching this shithole any minute now!” Kir snapped, giving up on lifting Conan off Rye and turning her ire upon them. “Just ditch the shoe and let’s get out of here!”

“But…” Hiro protested. Rei sympathized; those were good shoes. The comfortable kind that were perfect for both long stakeouts and treks through the woods to blow up some safehouses. Those sneakers had seen their fair share of bloodstains and mudslides and trash chutes, they deserved to at least—

Rye reached out, snagged the sneaker right from Hiro’s hands, and with all the aim of an expert marksman, pitched it right into the distant rafters.

“My shoe…” Hiro muttered mournfully as Rei dragged him out by the hood.

They exited the warehouse into a dingy, dark alley that made them all very glad for the group’s strict, color-coordinated dress code. Despite the police beginning to crowd just two dozen meters away, beginning to converge on the warehouse they’d just abandoned, all four of them were well concealed.  

Escaping the alley and getting past the cops in broad daylight was another matter entirely. All the black leather in the world couldn’t help them get past a SWAT team and three squads worth of uniformed officers. 

“How the hell are we going to get out of this one?” Hiro asked, glancing at the dangling fire escape at the other end of the alley. It didn’t look particularly helpful, and there wasn’t time for all four of them to scale it silently. Not before the squad entering the warehouse worked their way through the warehouse and popped out of the very same exit they were loitering around.

“We need a distraction of some sort.” Rye said. His olive eyes were narrowed as he took the situation in, eventually following Hiro’s gaze to the fire escape even as Conan wiggled out of his arms. “Something to draw them away long enough for us to get up there.”

Which was a good enough start to a plan, but where the hell were they supposed to find a distraction? They didn’t have anything but guns, and a full-on firefight wasn’t an option. Rei wasn’t about to let Rye snipe Tokyo’s finest, his cover be damned. 

But what other options did they even have? They’d been royally fucked over at every single turn and at this point, maybe the wisest thing to do really was turn themselves fucking in and hope handing over two highranked criminals saved their asses from the unholy fury that was going rain down from the higher-ups. They just had to accept they’d failed and the bad guys won and they’d lost a stupid fucking shoe on top of it all and it was going to be fucking embarrassing explaining that, wasn’t it—

“I’ve got an idea!” A chirpy voice brought a swift end to his mental tirade. He glanced downwards to find a childish hand tugging at his leg. Conan stared up at him with bright eyes and a beaming smile, pointing at his own chubby cheeks with nothing short of complete, utter enthusiasm. “Hit me!”

What the fuck, Rei’s brain helpfully supplied.

His absolute incomprehension dampened Conan’s exuberance. Discarding Rei as useless, the child promptly turned to his next target with a truly devastatingly cute pout. 

“Hit me.”

Rye barely seemed to register the demand. Honestly, it looked like he had checked out of reality entirely, the lucky bastard. 

With little hands curled into fists, Conan huffed in Hiro’s direction. “Come on! Hard enough to bruise!”

“Uh,” Hiro said, very intelligently, “is this a trap?”

“I’m saying, I’ll distract the police. If the kid they’re looking for shows up with bruises on his face and kicks up a fuss, there’s no way they’ll notice you guys sneaking away.” 

The silence was deafening. And rightfully so. Because Rei had so many damn questions, he was pretty sure if he opened his mouth the words would all come stumbling out in Wingdings.

“Come on! I’ll cry really loud to cover up any noise the ladder makes when you pull it down!”

What sort of kid came up with shit like this?

How the hell did they get themselves in this situation?

Why was their kidnappee offering to aid and abet them?

Where the hell were this kid’s goddamn parents?

“It’s a good idea…” Rye said, very slowly. “In theory.”

“You just have to slap me a few times or something.” Conan said, like it was easy. “Come on, it’s fine.”

Rei opened his mouth, shut it, and then promptly defaulted to his most base instincts. “Rye can do it.”

The moment the words were out of his mouth, the man was staring at him. Rei had no idea Rye was capable of looking like a sad, kicked dog, but the green eyes that turned mournfully his way certainly gave that impression. 

Rei shrugged at him, feeling helpless. It wasn’t like either he or Hiro could do such a thing so easily. At least Rye was a big, bad criminal. Slapping a baby a couple times probably wouldn’t be the worst thing he’d ever done.

Still, Rye didn’t make any move towards Conan, just standing there, doing his best impression of a particularly pitiful statue. Nobody even bothered to look at Kir. Her disapproval was very much palpable in the air.

“Fine, I’ll do it.” Rei swallowed his discomfort and lifted his hand. The other three just watched, not even blinking anymore. Kir was outright glaring, her mouth set in a furious line that just dared him to move another centimeter.

Conan looked up at him expectantly. With those big eyes, and the oversized glasses, not even a trace of fear in his gaze— 

“Forget it, let’s just make a break for it!”

“Good idea!”

And that was when they booked it for the ladder, leaving a six year old abandoned on the sidewalk, gaping after them.

“Hey! Hold on! Guys! Guys! ”

Chapter Text

They somehow managed to make their escape.

Somehow, because Rei wasn’t quite sure how they managed it. It certainly wasn’t skill or wit or super secret agent training that got them through, because Rei didn't make good use of his except to answer questions like can I jump that far and if we jump from this ledge, will we break more than three bones?

But despite their less than elegant escape, nobody came after them. 

“Did we lose them?” Hiro gasped, struggling to catch his breath against the edge of a wall.

They had, though Rei wasn’t sure lost was the right word. There hadn’t seemed to be much pursuit at all. 

“Maybe,” Rye said. He was carefully monitoring the buildings around them for potential hostiles, but there was nothing. “We shouldn’t linger though.” 

“Right. Considering our luck today…”

Rei winced at that. “There’s no bodies lying around, right?”

Four sets of justifiably paranoid eyes combed over the area. It was a semi-secluded pavilion stuck between some ratty business offices. The buildings and some struggling trees worked together to block out all sunlight, leaving the place dim and murky. Some poor schmuck of an office worker was eating a late lunch on the concrete benches, but it was otherwise empty. As far as hiding spots went, it was dreary and miserable, but nothing immediately struck them as dead.

When no corpses miraculously appeared, they all eased.

“That’s a problem I never imagined myself having.” Kir sighed, pinching between her eyes, and Rye lit up a cigarette and took a deep breath of cancerous chemicals. The two of them all but collapsed on a table, looking for all the world like they couldn’t be bothered any longer. “I’ll text someone to come pick us up.”

Fair. Rei wasn’t exactly eager to try and make the trip back to the car through cop infested streets himself. His legs were shaking with exertion, even as he leaned against the stone garden wall.

Hiro slumped alongside him with a groan. “Think Conan’s gonna be okay?” He kept his voice low so the other two wouldn't hear, but still Rei kept a careful eye on them, just in case.

“For now, at least.” They’d somehow managed to get the kid out of immediate danger, but that didn’t change the fact that both Kir and Rye were aware of his existence. He and Hiro would have to somehow convince them to leave the kid out of their reports, lest someone higher up decided to snip the loose end. “We’ll figure the rest out later. All we can do is wait for pickup and hope the police don’t find us first.”

“It’s fine, the police aren’t coming.” Conan chirped. “They can’t track you anymore.”

“Right, right,” Hiro nodded, looking down at his now filthy sock—

Wait.

Conan?

Conan?

“Conan?!” Hiro shrieked.

At the table, Rye jolted upright at the shout, and preceded to choke on his cigarette. Likewise, Kir was staring with abject horror Rei deeply sympathized with, because, yes, that was Conan hopping up onto the garden wall, adorable little glasses and cheeky smile and all.

“What the fuck.” Rei whispered, his brain forgoing all the hows, because a whole lot of puzzle piece didn’t know he had were clicking together and the resulting picture was fucking insane. “No way.”

“You didn’t find the second bug, so I just told my partner to stop helping them track you.” Conan said, completely incomprehensibly. “I figured you guys could use the handicap.”

Rei’s brain was just scrolling question marks. He couldn’t believe it. It was absurd. He didn’t know what he was even feeling. Disbelief. Horror. A bizarre mix of betrayal and a copious amount of what the fuck.

“I mean, really? Four career criminals, and not a single one of you can hit a child?” Conan rolled his eyes in a manner that was distinctly unchild-like. His voice, his sentence structure, his entire affectation was completely different. And of course it was. The little shit had been playing them all right from the start.

“Shut up.” Rei said. His hands were shaking. Rye and Kir were right there.

Conan ignored him. “Are you sure you’re not in the wrong line of work?”

 “I said shut up, Conan-kun.” He reached for his gun. 

“Oh yeah, now I feel so threatened.” Conan muttered sarcastically. Then, with a deadpan gaze: “You guys suck at this. You’re the worst bad guys ever.”

At this point, Rei really didn’t think he could argue with that. But he wanted to. And more than that, he wanted to punch the shit out of something. Part of him hoped Rye and Kir did make a move, from over where they were half out of their seats, so he’d have the excuse to do something violent. For better or worse, though, they were both stunned dumb. Maybe even scared.  

“But…” Hiro whispered. “But if you’re…then…”

The fox. Gin’s goddamn motherfucking fox. It made no fucking sense but also made perfect fucking sense. They’d found the kid where the fox was supposed to be, after all. And then there was the phone, and the bubble gum, and the cafe.

What. The. Fuck.

“Why?” Rei snapped. He could feel his composure hanging by a thin thread, just one wrong tug away from breaking entirely. “After all those tricks to escape, why the hell would you follow us here?”

He’d made a clean get-away. They hadn’t suspected a thing. He had a second tracking device planted on them. It was the best possible outcome for him, one that left him with a multitude of options for his next move. The only stupid one would be to follow them here, alone, and reveal himself to a group of armed, merciless killers.

As if the whole reality of the situation wasn't completely insane, Conan frowned at him, dead serious. Gone were the sheepish smiles and wide eyes, leaving behind nothing but a cool gaze. “There’s something I think you all should know.”

Kir’s phone chirped, a cheerful little sound of complete dissonance.

“Oh god,” she said in perfect American English. “Vermouth’s here.”

Rei was moving before the words even properly registered. He shoved Conan right in the chest and the child toppled over the wall like he weighed nothing at all, vanishing behind the edge and hitting the dirt on the other side with a tiny little oof.

Not a moment too soon, Vermouth’s typical drawl came from behind him. “There you all are.”

Rei turned with his heart in his throat. Rye and Kir were on their feet but frozen with wide eyes. Beyond them, on the other side of the table, was Vermouth in a police officer uniform, her lips purple with lipstick and blond hair hidden underneath a dark wig.

She probably hadn’t seen anything from that angle; Conan was small, and Rei had been positioned right in front of him. So long as the brat stayed down, Vermouth wouldn’t even know he was there. 

Unless one of the two bona fide agents that had just witnessed Rei aiding and abetting their enemy in an act of straight undeniable treachery spoke up, of course.

It was fine. Totally fine. Under control. He had dirt on all three of them now. He just had to survive long enough to blackmail them all into submission.

“Ye—yeah.” Kir spoke first, and Rei turned to stare at her, trying to imbue his gaze with all the immense malice as he was capable of. Fucking fear me, bitch, he conveyed with his eyes. I will take all of you down with me. 

Kir peeked at him from the corner of her eye, keeping her face turned towards Vermouth. Then she said, “is the car over there? We should get out of here.”

“No need to rush.” Vermouth smiled. “Let’s have a little chat first.”

Let’s not. Rei’s back was burning, hyper aware of Conan’s damning general existence behind him. Of every word said. Of the whole lot of nothing Rye was saying. Of Kir attempting to cover for him.

“We can debrief in the car.” Rye offered, and Rei let a little of his breath escape through his nose. 

“We can.” Vermouth agreed, magnanimous as she approached Rye. At the crook of her finger, Rye surrendered his cigarette. Vermouth held it to her lips and took a long inhale. Then she blew the smoke right into his face. “Of course, if you don’t mind that Gin’s in the car.”  

She said it so flippantly, it could almost be mistaken for something other than a warning. 

“If that’s alright with all of you, then sure, be my guest. Let’s take this to the car, and maybe then the nice little place Gin’s arranged for you.” Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Fucking fuck. “Or, we could all take a seat and enjoy a smoke together.”

Needless to say, they all sat down. Rei could practically feel how stiff Hiro was next to him, and Kir was looking several shades too pale. Rye alone seemed unfazed, clearly just biding his time until he revealed the truth to Vermouth.

Just try it, asshole. I dare you. 

“I wanted to play a little game.” Vermouth crossed one impossibly long leg over the other. “Let’s start with you, Kir.” Pale blue met pale blue as the two women faced each other. Vermouth, completely relaxed, and Kir, coiled like a viper in wait. “Who do you think the traitor is?”

“Traitor?” Kir repeated, just shy of breathless, and the word bounced around Rei’s head like a pinball, lighting up every sliver of his cortex with fight or flight along the way. 

She was onto them. She was so fucking on to them. 

“Oh, don’t play dumb.” Vermouth said, unwavering. Maybe the blackmail he had on her wasn’t as good as he thought, if this was her play. “Everyone’s come to the same conclusion at this point.” 

Vermouth took another drag on her ill-gotten cigarette with one hand, and with the other pulled out her gun. The movement was so smooth and natural that it didn’t even register in his head until it was too late. The barrel casually drifted between the four of them in turns, like some sick game of spin the bottle, just teasing at stopping before carrying on to the next target.

Rei resolutely pretended that he did not see a little tuft of hair sticking up from behind the wall. That he did not see said cowlick moving steadily to the left. That he didn’t feel his blood pressure rising. 

Unaware of the little menace on the move, Vermouth continued her sick game. “All these far fetched tales of some unseen fox on our tails, all our ruined operations, everything to do with Sherry.” She paid extra malicious attention to the last part, her tone dripping with derision. “That person already suspected, and today’s operation proved it. There is no fox. There never was.” Vermouth shrugged, the cigarette sitting elegantly between her fingers as she laughed. Then, without so much as a pause, she said, “but there is a rat.”

Rei could see where she was coming from. It was a solid theory, more solid than some hypothetical and seemingly intangible hunter, and certainly more solid than a hyper intelligent six year old with advanced spy equipment. It was also like getting the correct answer on a math test despite using the completely wrong method. She was right, their organization was 100% totally compromised, except for the funny little fact that he and Hiro had literally not done any of that. Because Conan was somehow real and far worse than anything they'd ever imagined.

Oblivious to all of those complicating factors, Vermouth continued. “So, Kir, tell me.” The barrel of the gun finally stopped, pointed directly at Kir’s heart. “Who is the traitor?”

Vermouth’s tone dripped with condescension. She already knew the answer, and she wanted them all to know it. 

Kir knew the answer too. She’d seen Rei hide Conan. All she had to do was open her mouth and say it, and the gun would move on to its rightful target. But Kir was silent, her hands clenched into fists in her lap. 

“Come on, don’t be shy. It’s obvious.” Vermouth tilted her head to the side, looking every part a predator observing her prey. Still, Kir said nothing. “Alright. How about you then, Scotch?” Her piercing gaze and deadly firearm turned to Hiro next. 

Hiro stared back, his throat bobbing almost imperceptibly.

“Or maybe you, Bourbon? You’re a clever one, aren’t you? Surely you already know exactly who the traitor is.”

Rei could feel a bead of sweat creeping down his neck. The gun turning to him was a relief, since it meant it wasn’t pointed at Hiro anymore. He knew what he had to do, too. Kir and Rye had witnessed his treachery, but they had no proof of Hiro’s. If he played this right, only one of them had to go down.

He opened his mouth.

“It’s me.” Hiro said. “I’m the spy.”