badfic_manor | [Private to Sheldon, mildly ridiculously encrypted]

Yeah. What's up?

[Sheldon has the device propped up on a car and is looking to hotwire one for use. With no people around, might as well make full use of his surroundings.]

Eh, some new information, some new complications, and a few things I should probably fill you in on. Less comfortable doing so over the network; should I come to you?

[There's a spark and the car starts.]

Nope. Can't risk you getting hurt with those monsters running around. I'm on my way. Where are you?

Police station roof downtown. I'll see you soon.

[He puts the car in gear and takes off. He didn't bother wasting any time in getting there. He needed the car to get around and since the Kinshin were in heavy concentration where he was located and without his guns, he needed some way to defend himself.

It didn't take him long to reach the police station and quickly exited the car, taking his Blackberry with him. He made his way to the roof and approaches Saguru.]

Fucking traffic.

[His voice depicted no malice but the words certainly did.]

Monsters from here to the other side of town. You have a warning?

I've noticed. At least there's a chunk of them that don't seem inclined to chase along rooftops. [Oh, the things he's picked up chasing Kid; he's watching for anything that IS prone to scaling buildings/flight, and isn't that far from the stairwell entrance.]

I'm sure the normal intel can probably wait until it's more peaceful - I have gotten to meet with some of the people involved, albeit not everyone I'd want - but... well. You know how one of the saving graces has been that people are mostly from scattered enough origins that there aren't many major grudges from outside brought here?

We just had a potential monkey wrench in that arrive, from my world.

[He's leaning against the wind fence on the roof and lights a cigarette.]

Sounds like we're going to be pretty busy with new arrivals and with new threats. Who are they?

All anyone from my world knows is a code name, Gin. You know how secretive Kaitou Kid and Kudo are?

He's a part of the reason. It's a long story. Large, secretive, dangerous organized crime group, very unusual; good at being ghosts, scarily audacious. Wiping out an entire police division that got close to clues audacious, and he's not one of the lesser ones.

I ran into him without realizing who he was at first. On the upside, he's not someone who got to where he is by being stupid; I doubt he's going to entirely trust me, but he'd calmed down from aiming at random targets and will at least get to see that I didn't lie to him about the situation he's in now fast enough, and he seems amenable in some respects to the idea of "common enemy" truces.

On the downside, he's very predatory and vindictive, and has already gone after one of the others from our world on a grudge - he openly stated he'd still take shots at the ones that're targets just for that, even if killing them would be "a waste of ammunition".

It doesn't help that outside of this, as stubborn as he is, Kudo is objective, level-headed, and willing to admit when he's wrong, which otherwise makes him a good person to have involved in the legal system.

I see. And with Kudo on the Force as objective as he is presents a liability to anyone else that allies themselves to Kudo. And this Gin, do you think he would exact his vindication on others that Kudo was in contact with?

What you're saying to me is that he's not to be trusted period. Are you asking me to get in touch with him and see what his motivations are for the time being? After all, ghosts like him and spooks like me don't exactly see eye to eye at times. Don't be surprised if one of us winds up dead if that be the case.

Now I have a question for you. Is he looking at exacting his revenge on Kudo and if so, what are his chances of success?

Right - Kudo's going to have to dodge Gin, and aiming at everyone who MIGHT be connected seems to be normal modus operandi for them. It might depend on his interpretation of the situation, but he's paranoid.
And judging by my conversation with him and some of what I know of the situation, he'll be aiming at Kudo and Kid definitely - both know too much and have interfered in the past, and I'd say he's got good odds of killing either of them if he can catch them. He's an assassin, and a good one. Conan's related to Kudo, and the safety of myself and Aoko depends entirely on how paranoid he is about people connected to the task force that chases Kid once he thinks about that, even with the truce understanding I managed to reach yesterday.

[And...he thinks, about that other comment.] Your discretion. He's dangerous and paranoid, but he's intelligent and can't be careless; even if he pegs you as "a spook", he might listen anyway if you're cautious about how you approach it, in the context of the situation here... but if he thinks there's a trap of some sort, he'll act. Not being visibly connected to any of us would be a point in your favor - I'm going to start being more careful about contact, from now on.

Agreed.

[Sheldon's mind started plotting on how to go about contacting Gin without seeming obvious and without giving implication that he knows Saguru along with the others. He'll take the oblivious approach to matters and pretend that he knows nothing.]

You and I only met this once and we're not on a first name basis should he ask, which I doubt. If by any chance that he were to peg either of us as allies, we're not. From here on, we'll communicate through encryption and you will not speak of me to anyone.

I will act if he makes his move and I will not hesitate to stop him. Should we be in the same room, you don't know me and I don't know you. If he were to kill me, don't try to stop him. We're in the market of gathering information and anything he does is just for that purpose. I'll watch him and I'll approach when I see an opening. For now, I'll keep my contact to only encryption and meeting face to face is going to be kept to a minimum.

At the moment, he doesn't know me or about me which is good. That means it'll be easier for me to get inside. This can take time. His types are not beyond me. I know his type pretty well. Do you suspect him knowing what this place is already?

[And if having John here wasn't bad enough, having new people come in with a different motive is going to make matters tough.]

[He nods to Sheldon's plan.] To some extent, if I do NOTHING it'd be suspicious - but I won't do anything I wouldn't do for a random stranger. I've been pretending not to know one of their targets and pretending I didn't know they exist for a year now, so. [He shrugs.]

I told him a little - I wasn't about to tip that I had a guess who he worked for, and I didn't realize he was from my world until after I'd already gone to approach him. That we'd been abducted by the "Author", none of us knew how, and no-one had any luck on escape routes. He was agitated and looking for someone to question on that; if he picked on someone who was less calm with a gun in their face, there would've probably been a death already, instead of the one injury there is so far - he did attack Conan after my encounter with him, and we've had to move the kid to somewhere hidden to take care of him, we're still finding out just why. He might suspect Conan's relation to Shinichi, I don't know.

As far as my conversation with him goes, I'm more interested in finding a way out and dealing with the Author than making accusations.

Okay.

[He lights up a cigarette and thinks a little about how to do this without drawing suspicion to himself and keeping others safe.]

So you know him first hand. Does he trust you enough to keep talking?

[There was a heavy consideration that if Conan was attacked it was certainly a possibility that others could be on that list in the near future. It was better to listen to someone that had first hand knowledge than work on his own at the risk of getting caught himself and getting others killed in the process.]

Best be ready should the worst happen and I like my pants around my waist and not my ankles on the dancefloor, dig.

Not much. He knows who I am - I'm not exactly invisible back home, it's not hard; international detective, my record's not hard to trace, I've had media attention before, and my father's the Tokyo police chief - that was how I knew he was from my world, he recognized me and commented on it. He might respect a truce here on the grounds of a common enemy, but as soon as I go home, I'm going to have the world's biggest target sign on my back, and I can't feasibly distance myself from the people I know from home who're targets; I've been trying to keep things off the radar, but if he figures out I'm protecting Conan, I don't think my conversation with him will matter. I can probably interact with him, but it's not friendly.

Doesn't help that I'm known as one of the main investigators of the Kaitou Kid case. The big unspoken secret that maybe three people on the task force are aware of, and none will say out loud, is that Kid has an agenda, and it involves interfering with them - baiting them into the path of the spotlights and the cops, even. I get away with being on it without noticing the disturbing patterns to Kid getting shot at by playing a little obsessively stupid to the public eye, but I'm not sure how well my slight of hand on my motives would hold up to someone like him in closer proximity. Doesn't help that Kid's about the only thefts on my record; I'm mostly murders, serial killers, and more unusual cases.

I also think "trust enough to keep talking" is a loose thing with him in general.

Okay, a better question would be do you think that he could be stringing you along just to bait you into revealing more about yourself without you knowing it? Let's face it, he knows you know this Kite Kid and Conan and you did state that getting me inside wasn't such a good idea, he's most likely looking for the same things we are.

[He moves away from the fence and toward the stairwell, leaning against the brick.]

So this kid's been doing bad things to draw out criminals of a more nefarious nature. Interesting concept and a rather brazen tactic, don't you think?

Entirely likely. I'd rather deal with him as little as possible, to be honest - I'm in a position to be nothing more than a target, and if he's been keeping that crew secret, all you have going for you is the "common enemy" factor.
...We might be short on ways to keep an eye on him directly - any contact we would trust to relay, he wouldn't.

[He shrugs.] Kid is a magician more than a thief. Magicians work by misdirection and playing with perceptions. To most of the world, he's a glorified prankster and public nuisance at worst; he's only visible when he chooses to be, and when he chooses to be, under normal circumstances, there'd be a huge number of police, choppers, reporters, people coming to watch...

So the only chance they have to get a shot at him, is right in the middle of many spotlights, the law, and the media. Very brazen, but oddly effective; the spotlight is his greatest protection and his greatest weapon. He's brought down smaller time crooks than them with it. His heist here was probably more of a prank and practice than anything, and it was a pale shadow of what he normally does.

[At least he knows more than he did before and knowing that Kaitou isn't that much of a threat made him feel a little better about going after the main baddies.]

I see. Well, if Kid presents a target or rather a distraction to the police, he can't be allowed to get involved if there's real work that needs to be done. How many have gotten away from his pranks, if any? He sounds like a liability to me.

That he pulled the spotlight to?

...Basically just them, and not for lack of trying - he's given some of their agents a few close calls. He's not subtle about sharing his spotlight with evidence against someone when he's got their number, and god help you if you try to pawn off a murder on him. The smarter cops on the task force and I have a bit of a never-spoken understanding that we're there less for him per se, and more to play hawk to his falconer.
I doubt he'd try his normal tactics against them here; the population base and situation is all wrong, and no magician sets up an act they can't control.

Sounds like you're pimping him up than giving me any information that's pertinent to what we're dealing with. We don't have a police force with that kind of equipment so really his usefullness on those acts are moot. Maybe he'll work well against those from his world but not to the general Manor population. His stunts could be seen as....flamboyantly annoying. No offense.

Has he actually worked in busting crime or is he just doing this because he can?

[He does pause, considering his own biases for a minute.] Not here, no. And yes, he is flamboyantly annoying - even though I know part of it, there, is the sleight of hand to not spur them to do something excessively horrible. If he tries here, I may not do something that would compromise his identity like hand him over to the cops here, but I will make sure he's unconscious and out of the way instead of baiting them.

He's led the cops to a handful that had managed to dodge notice - a few murderers, one group of very organized and violent armed robbers, a smuggling ring that was into black-market fraud. I'm sure there's more to it than his agenda, but ... there's some details about the history and his pattern that're more than I want to go into right now that point toward interfering with Them and getting Them caught without ending up another corpse on their list, being his main purpose. I'm not sure whether or not he'd keep it up, once he finds whatever they're after and gets them drug into the open. [Of course, knowing Kaito....:| ]

I highly doubt that we'll have to worry about drug smuggling rings here. Again, you're drifting into the bias of selling him up. The Author has other agendas, other plans and seeing us fail in our hope to restore the balance isn't something I would like to think about.

Now, this is the part that I'm going to ask you to think outside of your world for a moment. How much have you noticed outside your realm that seems the biggest threat...other than the obvious plots the Author likes to throw at us?

Being a good detective means looking at all angles and not just what you see in front of you. You're good enough to know the difference.

[He nods.] I'll see if I can't manage to keep him quiet, here, or convince him to go with quieter tactics - I know he's capable. [That is slightly grumpy, and there's a sidelong glare off at a nameless third party.]

[Aand... he slumps a little, and starts ticking off, very clearly lapsing into A Report.] I've gotten a few eliminations. There's a few people I want to try and track down, still; I'm assuming that what's posted is only the tip of the iceberg, and the worst threat isn't going to be someone noticeable, it's going to be someone quiet, who can sway the undecideds into thinking open disrespect and conflict is the answer. The obvious loud grudges aren't it, and it might even be possible to get Shiki to put a hold on his bitterness if there's enough reason - him I can talk to, no guarantees he'll agree with me, but I have some respect, and I don't think he actually wants this to turn into another bloody hellhole like where he's from. He's just very embittered, very cynical, and has traded most of his principles for survival.

Mello might put people off inadvertently. He does seem genuinely committed to an actual justice system for the right reasons, even if he is temperamental. I don't know what his story is, but I'll eat my watch if his background isn't organized crime, and the ways of dealing with people that get to be reflex there don't engender trust in others. I'm still trying to find a way to get in contact with "L", although at least they're trusting me enough to be in their loop. Beyond some neutral parties to play greeter and diplomat, they need someone who can be an approachable face - Mello would probably make people paranoid, and Kudo can't do well at that without Gin slaughtering him...it's just a matter of finding a good candidate that they'd accept.

The other side is slower to get in contact with, although I rather expected that. I doubt we'll find any theoretical masterminds among the more vocal of the irritated neutrals, although they might find themselves unwitting pawns.

[He folds his arms, closing that off.]

Edited 2010-11-22 03:27 (UTC)

[Sheldon saw this as a sign that he wasn't willing to discuss any further what he knows and decides to leave it at that. It was enough for now.]

You and I never spoke of this.

[He started to walk toward the stair case and moved through as if nothing happened. It was the same thing that Sheldon already knew and he wasn't about to get inside any factions nor greeting committees for any of it. That wasn't his purpose.]

Then consider myself a pawn.

[With that, he opened the door.]

If you want to get a hold of an unseen force, be unseen yourself and he may consider.

Right.

[And he pauses; he's going to wait for Sheldon to be on his way, and probably end up leaving by a route other than the stairs.]

...Good luck.

If I find anything else, I'll find a way to get it to you.

You too.

[He changes his mind and decides to use the fire escape. Moving toward the ledge, he drops down and lands with a soft thud.]

[Private to Sheldon, mildly ridiculously encrypted]

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