Current mood:	mischievous
Current music:	But I swear you're going down, if I survive.

[Magic Kaito/Transformers 2007] Made in Japan (1/2)
Title: Made in Japan
Fandom: Magic Kaito / Transformers 2007 (Sector Seven ARG)
Author: Icka! M. Chif
beta: Em the Gale
Word Count: 18,007 words
Rating: Teen
WARNING: Link Heavy. AU from Kaitou Kid's Miracle Mid-Air Walk.
Author Notes: For the 2008 Spook Me Spook-A-Thon. My prompts were 'Demons, Black SUV Sabbath, The Creeping Terror'.
Music: Brainbug: Nightmare, Hybrid: If I Survive and DJ Starscream: Transformers Decepticons Remix.
Summary: Decepticons want something from the Kaitou Kid.


Japanese Terms:
Oyaji - Disrespectful term for 'Father'.
Kaasan - 'Mother'
Jii-chan - 'Uncle' or 'Grandfather', but 'Jii' really is his name.

---

Maggie Madsen: What'd they get you for?
Sam Witwicky: I bought a car. Turned out to be an alien robot. Who knew?

---

The first sign that something was wrong was when Kid looked down at the severed fuel line of the borrowed Harley Davidson he was riding and realised that fuel did not drip glowing pink.

In the distance the Kaitou Kid could vaguely hear the shrunken detective Edogawa Conan shouting over the sound of flames that rushed towards him. Disconnecting the sidecar with Edogawa and the object of tonight’s heist in it had seemed like a good idea at the time, but he should have known Edogawa wouldn’t just let him go after merely some witty repartee between them. An attempted sleeping dart or a soccer ball to someplace tender -- yet again--, yes. But not a cut fuel line. Nor had he anticipated that the freed sidecar would create sparks as it slid across the road. Sparks which ignited the spilt fuel.

The second sign was when the borrowed Harley Davidson didn’t explode.

Instead it took off like a rocket shot, Kid screaming like a girl as held on to the handlebars for dear life. He’d heard the phrase before, ‘holding on for dear life’, but it’d never seemed quite as real as it did then. If he let go, he’d fly off the speeding Harley and become road pizza. -Not- a noble end for an uncatchable phantom thief.

So therefore, he did the only thing he could do. Hold on and let the motorcycle go wherever it wanted. Thank goodness for the borrowed motorcycle leathers he was wearing as part of the disguise.

Now that was a new thing. Motorcycles going where they wanted. He didn’t even have to bother with trying to balance or keep upright, the bike did it all with a kind of angry rage. Maybe it was possessed. Kind of freaky, kind of cool, very high up on his Weird Shit O’ Meter. Which, considering he was looking for a magical gem that supposedly granted immortality, was a very grand scale indeed.

He clung to the bike and watched as the world sped around them, the bike weaving in and out of traffic as if the cars were merely play toys instead of fast moving objects of superior tonnage. Road signs blurred, passing by too quickly for him to identify where they were going other than ‘out of the city’.

And then as suddenly as the ride began, it stopped. The motorcycle pulled off the freeway at Yokosuka, down several side streets and pulled to a stop at the end of a long line of shipment containers. The docks, Kid registered. Of course, there wasn’t much in Yokosuka except for docks, the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force and the largest United States Navy base. He quickly scurried off the motorcycle, no longer to quite willing to trust it not to do something crazy. Like take off again.

Before he could even attempt to figure out what was going on with the motorcycle, an almost rumbling noise garnered his attention. He looked up to see a huge shadow disconnect itself from the wall, a beam of blood red light glaring down at him like a pair of sinister eyes. Demon, Kid’s brain frantically informed him. Just like the legends, did he know any sutras to chant to calm one down?!

Kid backed up as a huge… demon… thing… stepped into the light. And just kept coming. And coming. Kid quickly reassessed his first impression. Demons were not made entirely out of metal, nor did they look like Gundams come to life. The humanoid robot was easily three… four times his size. And did not look at all particularly friendly.

The normally unflappable Kaitou Kid decided that just this once, it might be appropriate to gawk. Oh, shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit. What ever this was, it was -not- made in Japan.

”Bulletbike.” The giant robot said in English, ignoring Kid for the moment to stare at the Harley. The hairs on the back of Kid’s neck prickled uncomfortably at the sound of the electronic growl. The robot even sounded like a robot, all computerized monotone. ”Depart.”

The motorcycle revved its… his? engine in return before pulling away with a squeal of rubber tires. The large robot watched the motorcycle go before stepping closer into the light. Kid could see a bit more clearly now that the robot was mostly covered in dark blue, almost a black, plates with various mechanical parts shifting underneath. It reminded him of the movies in health class, watching the arteries and tendons on the human body move, only without skin.

Surprisingly enough, that’s what it took to jolt him out of his shock and back into his persona. Poker Face, as his father had taught him. Never let your opponent see what you are feeling on your face. “I don’t believe we’ve ever had the pleasure of being introduced.” He gave a small polite bow, despite the fact that he was not in his traditional white suit and cape, but still dressed in ‘Uncle’ Jirokichi’s motorcycle leathers.

The robot’s head tilted slightly. “Designation: Soundwave.” He rumbled in introduction, a mixture of Japanese and English, before leaning forward slightly, dismissing the matter and Kid was aware of just how very squishy he was.

He smiled in return. “Pleasure to meet you, Soundwave-san. I am-“

”Designation: Interpol Criminal Number 1412. Alias: Kaitou Kid.” The robot red gaze stared at him, as if he were nothing more than a small insect. The size comparison between himself and the big scary robot being not favourable. ”Alias: Kuroba, Kaito. Occupation: Phantom Thief. Occupation: High School Student.”

Giant Big Scary Robot who knew his real name.

”I see.” He said sombrely. As if this day hadn’t gone to hell in a hand basket already. “And what can I do for you, Soundwave-san?”

”A precious jewel was stolen from us.” Soundwave buzzed, staring at him intently. “Objective: Retrieval. Jewel is held in Okinawa, Japan, for seven of your Earth days. You have until then to retrieve it.”

”… I see.” Kid mused. There were two pet peeves he really hated when it came his nighttime job. One, people trying to use the name of the ‘Kaitou Kid’ for their own purposes. Two, people trying to manipulate him. Usually into stealing for them. “And if I refuse?”

A laser… cannon… thingie twirled on Soundwave’s shoulder. ”Termination.” This was delivered in the same flat monotone that the rest of the giant robot’s words were said in, but somehow sounded much more final.

Kid’s expression didn’t change, but the more primal part in the back of his head twittered in alarm and fear, scrolling through of things he still had yet to accomplish before he died. Kiss Aoko, get Hakuba to smile in amusement instead of snark, thank Nakamori-keibu-“

”Nakamori, Aoko. Hakuba, Saguru. Nakamori, Ginzou.” Soundwave continued, listing off his few friends, much to his horror. “Kuroba-“

”I get it.” He growled, cutting off the list. The robot would terminate those around him before killing him. But what sort of jewel was so important that they needed threats to get it? And what kind of place was holding it that a giant robot couldn’t get into?! The main thing in Okinawa, other than great weather, was American… Military… Bases….

Bloody Hell, as Hakuba would say. He did most emphatically did -not- need this sort of headache.

”And after I get this jewel of yours?” Kid demanded, his tense muscles belaying his rage.

”You will return it to us.” Soundwave informed him. “Disobedience is not an option. Dismissed.”

The giant robot stepped backwards, fading back into the shadows. Kid watched him go, waiting until he was certain that the giant robot was gone before moving to make his way back through the dock yard. There was no sign of the motorcycle either, which meant the two robot.... creatures... thingies... had left him on the wrong side of the largest city in Japan, to get back on his own to Ekoda.

Lovely.

He took stock of his supplies and then reached for the ladder on the side of a crate and began to climb. He could either make his way through the docks and then try to find a train, or he could fly at part of the way home. He had an inflatable dummy of the Kaitou Kid, complete with hangglider on him, he could use that to at least get out of the docks and away from the robots threatening to kill him.

A motorcycle with a mind of its own and a ginormous talking robot. He wondered how they were related, if the motorcycle was like the big guy's son or something. Could the motorcycle talk too?

The idea of needing a human to sneak into what was most likely a military base sat badly with him. Mental images of the Kaitou Kid Task Force attempting to take out Soundwave flickered through his brain and he felt a bitter taste in his mouth. Soundwave would squish them all to easily. It would take more explosives than he was even remotely comfortable with contemplating to take care of it.

He'd only dealt with one sentient robot before, a sort of rouge android built by Ogami-hakase that had tried to replace him. Random teenager on the streets Kuroba Kaito him. At least that had been the original plan, but that had changed once 'Roboto-san' had downloaded his memories and tried to replace him as the Kaitou Kid. And then take over the world, with his face.

He still had nightmares sometimes of the robot with half a human face, gun to his head before the robot shot its own brains out due to a bluff on his part. Roboto-san's last words, asking if he was dying, then insisting that if he died, that meant that he was human-man-man-man-man-man, the words sticking on repeat until the robotic body exploded. Taking out half of a parking garage with it.

Kid shuddered slightly as he shed his 'Uncle Jiroki' costume, too heavy to wear while gliding on a frame that was a little on the light side to carry his weight. He was going to freeze on the way home wearing nothing but a black catsuit, but it was better than walking back.

---

The first thing he did once he got home and shed the Kaitou Kid clothing was take a shower. A nice long hot one, ignoring for the moment that his 'Kaachan wasn't supposed to know that her son was the Kaitou Kid. He suspected she knew, and he suspected that she suspected that he knew, but that was as far as it went.

He debated calling Jii-chan, Oyaji's --the original Kaitou Kid--, elderly assistant, then dismissed that as well. Jii-chan was happy where he was, running his billiard shop. Soundwave hadn't appeared to know about Jii-chan and he'd rather keep it that way.

There were days, when taking up Oyaji's mantle as the Kaitou Kid in order to find Oyaji's killers weighed more heavily than others. Not even out of High School yet and here he was, trying to find a jewel inside a jewel that granted immortality before a large criminal syndicate did. And avoid getting killed in much the same manner Oyaji had.

And now he had giant robots. Giant robots that wanted him to steal some sort of unspecified jewel from an unspecified military base on a island halfway between Japan and Taiwan. Or they'd kill him and his friends. He gave a bitter laugh. He knew this as well, Jack Connery, Interpol Agent and international criminal mastermind named 'Nightmare', had pulled it on him once before, threatening Jii-chan in order to get Kid to steal a pair of black opal earrings.

Jack Connery, Nightmare, had slipped and fallen to his death, after hearing his son call his name. Kid had tried to save him, lost a glove in the processes, but been unable to pull the man back up to safety without Connery's help. And Connery had been unwilling to drop the earrings that meant getting his son into surgery.

Too many deaths. Kaito shivered under the hot spray. Kid was supposed to be non-violent, a teasing jester in white. And yet... things kept happening. People kept dying.

Gods, he was tired.

And he had school in the morning. With Aoko and Hakuba.
He sighed. To stay up all night and do research online, or get a few hours of sleep before school? To sleep or not to sleep, that was the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them? To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream...
Ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come...
Kaito shook his head and turned off the shower. If he was starting to ramble poetic with the Bard, sleep was definitely not going to be a pleasant option. Hells, it wasn't the first time he'd pulled an all-nighter and gone to school before. He had plenty of coffee and caffeinated drinks stored in his locker and his school bag to get him through the day.

He pulled on a pair of sleep pants and decided not to bother with a shirt at the moment. It was only him up this late at night in the house. He wandered around on silent bare feet, grabbing food and a few sodas before retreating back to his room and booting up his laptop. He ate while it started up and connected to the internet.

Biglobe.ne.jp's familiar blue page greeted him. He thought about it and typed in the first thing that came to mind. 'Jaianto Roboto', in katakana. He got listings for a robotics engineering firm that wasn't working anything remotely advanced enough --much less big enough--, an office supply place and some book stores. He tried again, this time in Japanese. 'Ootoko Jinzouningen' in hiragana and kanji. This gained some blog sites.

He sighed, mulling it over for a moment. Soundwave had said his name in English. Not Japanese-slanted English, but American-English, all hard consonants. He tried again, this time in English. 'Giant Robot'. He got the same listings that he had in katakana, only this time with a band he'd never heard of mixed in there. He probably should have, but he didn't exactly have a lot of spare time to donate towards keeping up with popular trends these days.

'Soundwave' in English brought Music labels, guitars and music catalogues.

Kaito chugged some more liquid caffeine, opened up a new browser tabs with google.co.jp, infoseek.co.jp, yahoo.co.jp, nifty.co.jp and excite.co.jp in them and started running the same searches in those, to see if he could uncover something different.

---

Morning brought the evil daystar and school. By that time the caffeine buzz had hit the slight tremors part and he was feeling wide awake and hyper. "Ohayou~!" He sang out as he greeted his best friend in the whole wide world in front of her house.

Aoko, his childhood friend, darling sweet Aoko, she of a terrible temper, gave him a dubious look. He smiled innocently in return. She twitched and continuing to watch him suspiciously.

Ah, sweet normalcy. Life didn’t get much better than a paranoid Aoko, when you knew you hadn’t done anything to piss her off. Although angry Aoko wasn’t so bad either, the way her eyes seemed to sparkle in the light. Sweet Aoko was nice too. Or a chocolate covered Aoko. Oooo, now that was a thought…

”What ever you did, I don’t want to know what it was.” Aoko grumbled, her noise up in the air. “If I don’t know, I don’t have to say anything.”

”That’s probably for the best.” He agreed. She was thinking pranks, he was thinking heists, and he wasn’t going to bother trying to correct her assumption. After all, Aoko loathed the Kaitou Kid with a fiery passion. Her father, Nakamori-keibu, was in charge of the Kaitou Kid Task Force, and they both had the same terrible temper.
She sniffed and they continued walking to school, making small talk about the previous night’s homework. It was mindless yet soothing. Kid was Kid, internationally known and famous, and drooled over by scads of fangirls, but he was Kaito as well. And sometimes he craved the relatively simpler times from before he had discovered that Oyaji was the first Kaitou Kid. Back when all he’d had to worry about was school, Aoko, and ‘Kaasan.

They passed out of the residential areas, passing into the more commercial area that surrounded their school when a poster in front of a local music store made him freeze. At first, he thought his mind was playing tricks on him, the results of having robots on the brain after a night of no sleep and too much caffeine.

There, against the picture of a stormy sky over a city, was the profile of the face that had haunted him all night.

Well, not quite. The eyes were different, pale icy blue instead of angry red, and Soundwave had been dark blue, not a combination red and bright blue. But the odd, inhuman eyes were the same, as was the face shape with the strikingly robotic facial features.

What the HELL was Soundwave doing on a POSTER?!

”Ah, so you are a fan of Transformers as well?” Hakuba’s dry tone behind him made him startle slightly. He turned, cursing his distraction as he spotted the blond half-briton watching him with an amused look on his smug face. Hakuba turned his attention back to the poster. “There has been quite a stir on online about the movie.”

”… Movie?” He echoed dumbly.

”You haven’t heard?” Aoko’s incredulous voice on his other side made him turn to face her. She was looking at him with a shocked expression. “It’s, like, EVERYWHERE!” To emphasise this, she pointed to a passing bus that had a poster of two American teenagers running away from a blue glowing eyeball in the background. He didn’t blame them, he’d run from a glowing blue eyeball too.

”Transformers.” He echoed, reading the katakana logo. “Wait, wasn’t that a children’s show that was on a few years back?” What was the name? Micron Legend? Superlink? Galaxy Force? Unicron? Something. Huge robots that turned into cars and stuff.

”Yes.” Hakuba nodded. “It was also a cartoon in the 1980s. I watched it when I was much younger.” There was a touch of fond nostalgia in his usually smug tone. “First Generation was the best.”

”I didn’t know you watched anime, Hakuba-kun.” Aoko smiled.

”As stated, when I was very young.” Hakuba demurred. “And it is not that strange, Transformers was originally an American cartoon, it wasn’t until years later that it became a Japanese anime.”

Aoko giggled behind her hand, eyes lighting up in a teasing glow. “I think we’ve just discovered Hakuba-kun’s hidden passion.” She whispered conspiratorially to Kaito, who adopted a serious expression as he nodded sagely back. Hakuba huffed in return, his ears turning slightly red in embarrassment. Kaito grinned. Embarrassment was a good look on the usually stoic detective.

”Hey! I’ve got a great idea!” Aoko bounced forward, bridging the space between them and Hakuba. “The movie comes out on 4th August, this Saturday. We’ve got a half day that day, why don’t the three of us go together to see it after school?!”

Kaito blinked, then looked at Hakuba out of the corner of his eyes. Hakuba stared at them for a moment, lips parted, as if he’d been about to say something and had been sidetracked by Aoko’s suggestion. Then he closed his mouth and nodded. “Yes.”

He waited for Hakuba’s ‘But/If’ statements to follow, to politely turn them down, but nothing followed. Simply just ‘yes’. Aoko squeaked, bouncing as she realised that it was Hakuba’s answer. “Kaito?”

”It’s a date!” The words were out of his mouth before he could think to change them. Both Hakuba and Aoko turned to stare at him, their eyes slightly round. He closed his mouth with a snap, plastering a neutral expression on his face.

It wasn’t much of a secret that he liked Aoko. Like as in ‘more than childhood friends’. But she hated the Kaitou Kid, and he was the Kid, which made the whole ‘dating’ idea a really, really bad one. And she didn’t really seem to like him that way, at least as far as he could tell. Hell, she used him as a step stool occasionally.

Hakuba had been living in London when he’d heard about the Kaitou Kid’s re-appearance in Japan and had decided that it was time to move back in with his father, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, in order to chase and hopefully capture the Kid. And had just -happened- to be assigned to Kaito and Aoko’s class.

Actually, Kaito had double checked that one. Coincidence was a bitch sometimes. Especially since it was that same familiarity that helped lead the teenage detective to the theory that Kaito was the Kid.

Kaito also had the sneaking suspicion that Hakuba had more than a bit of a crush on the Kaitou Kid. Travelling half-way across the world wasn’t something someone did –lightly-. And while Hakuba was a snarky pain in the butt bastard, he seemed to consider Kaito some sort of friendly rival and helped him out occasionally. So as long as Hakuba didn’t make too many snippy comments about Kaito being Kid where Aoko could hear, Kaito didn’t comment about catching the detective staring at his ass during gymnastics.

The ‘date’ comment kind of made things a little awkward. He continued to grin stupidly and hoped that someone would say something even stupider to deflect their uncomfortable gawking.

A grey motorcycle with a tacky bright orange sidecar drove by, the driver flickering then fading away completely, the motorcycle driving itself. Kaito followed it with wide eyes. “Did-“ he turned towards the others, pointing to the vanishing vehicle.

”Okay.” Aoko said, over his stuttering. “Saturday afternoon!”

They hadn’t seen it, he realised with a dismayed jolt. Their backs had been facing the street as they looked at him. He’d been the only one to see it. And the sidewalks were empty enough that he doubted if anyone else had seen it either.

Well… At least Bulletbike had found his sidecar again…

“Come on.” Aoko interrupted his thoughts. “We’d better get to school or we’re going to be late.”

”Oh, no. The Horror.” Hakuba deadpanned, obviously relishing the idea of school as much as Kaito did.

”Hakuba-kun!” Aoko scolded and Hakuba smirked slightly, obediently stepping forward in the direction of their school. Aoko rolled her eyes and Kaito smiled, joining them after a glance backwards towards where the bike had vanished. They made their way to school, the idle chatter about homework and upcoming tests slightly calming to his jangled nerves.

School was the usual boring pit it usually was. Kaito’s memory was near-photographic and the teachers rarely varied from the schoolbooks. There were days when he debated only showing up for test days, but that meant not seeing Aoko as often, so he continued to come and play the usual game of pretending to pay attention and focusing his thoughts elsewhere. Usually this meant Kid heists, but today it meant poking the puzzle piece Hakuba had inadvertently given him.

Soundwave had not been a hallucination. Neither had been the motorcycle that drove itself. Yet they had also been an American show in the 80s and new movie coming out.

How could a children’s cartoon be terrifyingly real?

The question bothered him more than he was willing to admit. It didn’t make sense.

And they were stalking him.

Kaito ended up ditching school during lunch, something that was going to bring the wrath of Aoko down on him tomorrow, but he wasn’t going to get answers while studying pre-revolution Japanese history. He stuffed his jacket into his bookbag and took the trains towards Akihabara, finding a relatively cheap internet café and settling down for a couple of hours to check wikipedia.co.jp to verify what Hakuba had told him.

Hakuba had been right, Transformers had been a cartoon starting in 1984, used by Hasbro to promote a new line of Takara’s Japanese Microman toys. Giant alien species that had crash landed somewhere in the American north west several million years ago fleeing from a civil war on their home planet Cybertron, and now stayed to protect and utilize the Earth’s abundant natural resources, of which their planet had been wiped out of. There had been a movie in 1986, which had been used to kill off some of the original ‘Generation 1’ cast and bring in the next set of toys. Characters. Which ever. Popularity had died out towards the early 90s, and the storyline split up, creating a different continuity, depending on which country you were in, Japan, America or the United Kingdom.

There was also a currently running manga in Japan, ‘Kiss Players’, which involved pre-pubescent girls kissing various Transformers to upgrade their weaponry. Sometimes, manga-ka worried Kaito.

Characters were divided up into two factions. ‘Autobots’, who were attempting to protect Earth and worked with the humans, and the Decepticons, who were trying to plunder Earth’s resources to forward their civil war.

Autobots had blue optics, Decepticons had red optics. Which told him a lot about Soundwave right there, if the cartoon was reflecting reality accurately. Or whatever passed for reality these days.

By that point, the caffeine rush was starting to fade, so Kaito caught a train back to Edoka and barely made it safely home to fall face first into bed to sleep until ‘Kaasan woke him up for dinner a few hours later. Not nearly enough sleep, but enough that he could function somewhat coherently. Enough to make it through the meal and carry on a reasonably articulate conversation.

After dinner, he went back upstairs and pulled out his laptop again, this time running a search on the new Transformers movie. This time the internet was a lot more friendly than his searches the previous night, the top hits yielding Paramount’s official Japanese movie site and AOL Japan’s movie site. These Transformers looked a lot closer to what Soundwave had looked like, not at all like their blocky cartoon shapes.

He could find no reference to Soundwave in the movie cast however. Optimus Prime, Jazz, Ratchet, Ironhide, Bumblebee, Megatron, Starscream, Blackout, Destroyer, Bonecrusher, Barricade and Frenzy, yes. Soundwave, no.

He did stumble upon several pictures from the cartoon and anime of Soundwave, which just had him boggling. The blocky animated shapes did little to convey the sheer presence of such a large and detailed ‘Autonomous Robotic Organisms from the planet Cybertron’.

Satisfied that he was on the correct trail at last, he changed back into his pyjamas and fell back into bed, sleeping until his alarm went off, rousting him out of bed for school.

Blargh.

---

He met Aoko on the way to school, who scolded him for ditching class like that. The tirade had thankfully wound down by the time they were met by Hakuba, who gave him a few sideways glances, taking in Kaito’s quiet mood and no doubt wondering if there was a Kid heist looming on the future that the detective needed to prepare for as well. Which, there kind of was, only not one that the good detective would be involved in.

He kept an eye on the traffic, but did not see any more riderless vehicles.

Kaito’s silence continued during school, mentally drawing up lists of things he needed to prepare for. Discovering more about Soundwave, the mysterious jewel and their tie-in to a cartoon that was almost 25 years old was up on the top of the list. Locating said jewel, planning the actual heist and subsequent escape came just below that. He wasn’t going to steal anything hazardous and just hand it over to an unknown alien of questionable origin.

Ergo, the search for more information.

There were days when he wondered if he’d made the right lifestyle choice being a gentleman thief. It seemed like he spent more time trying to play detective than actually stealing things.

He went straight home after school, stopping long enough to change clothing and grabbing his laptop again, heading back towards the Metropolitan areas. He briefly debated stopping in Beika, then decided against it. Beika was where Edogawa lived, and it would be just his luck to run into Edogawa during one of the numerous murders that seemed to follow the shrunken detective around. He went up to Ikebukuro, finding a coffee shop with free wi-fi and settling down with caffeinated energy.

He couldn’t find anything on ‘Bulletbike’, other than he was some sort of Decepticon bounty hunter. Soundwave on the other hand had a mass of information. He was Megatron’s Right Hand Man and Communications Officer, master of manipulating radio waves. He was known for eavesdropping, blackmailing, and brainwashing someone named ‘Chip’.

Lovely.

It also brought up the question on what Soundwave’s other mode was. A giant microcassette recorder wasn’t exactly… subtle. From what he’d seen, the Autobots tended to be just that, automobiles. Deceptions tended to be anything they needed to be from military vehicles to jets to multiple robots that combined to become a giant camera that took pictures.

He flipped back through the pictures he could find of the Transformers from the live action movie. Perhaps a car as well? Cars were a luxury around here tended to draw attention, especially large ones, but a helicopter or a jet would draw even more attention.

The question about how close the cartoon was to real life raised its head again and he sat back with a frown, sipping his coffee. That part still bothered him. He sighed and idly scanned google’s image search while he let his thoughts drift, trying to put the pieces into some sort of order that would make sense.

None did. However, the image search did pull up several very blurry pictures of what looked like giant robots in the middle of a city. He started clicking links, finding news articles attached to the images.

Unfortunately, all in English.

While he knew enough English to show off occasionally --and pick up various cuss words from Hakuba-- he wasn’t entirely comfortable with it. The sentence structure was all weird too, ‘subject-verb-object’ instead of ‘subject-object-verb’. Not to mention all the idiomatic slang and the mismatch of various other languages thrown in. What was that one comment Hakuba had made once? ‘English followed other languages down dark alleys, knocked them over and went through their pockets for loose grammar’-? Something like that.

Kaito sighed and opened up Nifty’s translation program. It led for some odd translations sometimes, but it was better than trying to sound it out on his own. He pulled up another site he’d found thanks to Hakuba while back, when the half-Briton was having trouble re-acclimating from English to Japanese, Japan Online Dictionary. The site was in English, but having the Romaji letters turn into understandable Katakana and Hiragana when entered into the search box was helpful.

Asteroids had landed in Los Angeles, taking out a massive chunk of Dodger Stadium, part of a car dealership and some other buildings in the downtown and residential areas. A few pictures had been taken of the smoking pits, but as it was point out, asteroids didn’t just up and walk away, leaving behind massive non-terrestrial footprints. Hence, aliens.

The massive global communications blackout the previous year was also attributed to them, according to the more alien-inclined sites. Kaito remembered that, his phone hadn’t worked for half a day. The news had attributed it to the work of a cascading failure and people had touted stricter controls over the networks, but in the end, as long as everyone could pick up a phone and call, it passed over fairly quickly.

… Too quickly, now that he thought about it.

Another American city, also towards the West Coast, had apparently been ground zero for a fierce battle between the two robotic forces, despite the reports that it had been a ‘Terrorist Attack’. What sort of terrorists were unknown, but the posted photos were of what looked like the shadows of giant humanoids.

Yeah. Terrorists. 30 foot tall Terrorists. Made -so- much sense. Not.

He made his way through several articles before getting a headache both from the translations and from the blatant double-speak and rampant paranoia going on. No one actually claimed credit for the attacks, but fingers were pointing everywhere. Surprisingly, ‘aliens did it’ came up a lot less frequently on the major news networks than he would have hoped. Pity, that.

Since the images had brought him more luck than text had, he went to the next step: jp.youtube.com. Checking Nico Nico Douga was tempting, but the popular video-bbs site tended to crack down on the copyrighted and licensed stuff, like he was currently looking for.

He found the Japanese language trailer for the movie, with the introduction by Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg. Which, if he had been approaching this as just a movie, would have been kick-ass. No wonder Aoko and Hakuba were looking forward to it.

Then he found the first teaser trailer for the movie and felt his paranoia kick back in. He had to replay it a few time, writing down the english script and running it through Nifty to make sure he had it right. In 2003, the Mars Probe mission had been scrapped, but what people hadn’t been told was that it had sent back 13 seconds of footage. The last of which was the back-lit form of a Transformer.

Looking at the movie footage, it was easy to identify the giant mechanical creature as ‘Bumblebee’.

But what if...

Kaito bit his lip and entered ‘Real Transformers’, in English into the search box. He got a bunch of random hits, an emo pink dancing ladybug, lots of transforming dancing cars, a dancing bicycle, and commercials from around the world of various office and household objects transforming.

And then he struck pay dirt. A home video of a robot Tyrannosaurus Rex stomping through a construction site while a siren wailed in the background. The front of the movie identified the robot as ‘N.B.E. 08, Evidence Log 11.15.06’, with an ‘S7’ logo attached. A related video advertised ‘Transformers: Sector Seven G1 Secret Video’.

It was footage from a website, someone clicking various video clips. N.B.E. 08, the Tyrannosaurus Rex made a reappearance, followed by N.B.E. 115, a video camera coming to life during a birthday party. N.B.E. 125 was a bug in the forest who was more than met the eye, N.B.E. 57, some sort of data card that turned into a Pterodactyl. And then there was his favourite, Unidentified N.B.E. A684 '3-point match to N.B.E. 02', which was security camera footage of an underground garage, where a VW Bug transformed and walked over the car parked in front of it before leaving the garage.

N.B.E. 57 made the hairs on the back of his neck prick up. He knew that bird. Aoko had pointed it out to him at school, commenting on the bird on the windowsill’s funny crest. He had dismissed it at the time, but now...

He went back to the Transformer character sites. Soundwave was supposed to have something called ‘Recordicons’ or ‘Cassettrons’ or ‘Cassetticons’ something like that. -small- transforming robots that he carried around with him that acted as spies.

It was hard to miss which one it was. Laserbeak.

A soft squeaking noise, almost like a snicker made him look up. There, tucked back in a corner, was a small bat. With glowing red eyes.

Kaito glanced back at the computer monitor, coming up with a quick answer. Ratbat.

He’d been sloppy, he realised with a sharp pang. He’d been on the lookout for vehicles following him, trucks or motorcycles, not small flying creatures. And according to the list, Soundwave had a -lot- of little robots that he carried around with him to do his bidding.

Kaito quickly saved his search history to a flashdrive and packed everything up, heading towards the subway, this time keeping one eye up towards the sky. There were more things in the Tokyo lights than he realised, paranoia setting in.

He caught the subway from Ikebukuro to Shibuya, temporarily hiding in a bathroom to pull out a hat out of his backpack and take off his jacket and stash it in his backpack as a quick disguise, then went from Shibuya to Shinjuku. The lights were bright in the tall buildings of Shinjuku and he wasn’t sure if he could see anyone or not. He found a 24-hour Manga Land, a comic book and internet shop. There, he got a small cubicle and settled down to search some more, this time keeping an eye out for small moving things.

Before he’d been distracted by Laserbeak and Ratbat, had been wondering what ‘N.B.E’ stood for, as well as ‘Sector Seven’, so in they went into the search engines. ‘N.B.E.’ brought up some laboratories --a possible lead-- and an American Basketball group and the National Bank of Egypt. It was also the abbreviation for ‘North by East’, but while interesting, wasn’t helpful.

’Sector Seven’ brought another rock band, Canadian this time, and ‘SectorSeven.org, which required a password.

It also came up with a website, Stop Sector Seven at Buzznet.

Unfortunately, all in English. Again. Kaito resisted the urge to ask Hakuba for his help with the research, this would go -so- much faster with a native speaker. He ignored the impending headache and translated the mission statement, grateful that this one was much easier to translate than the news articles.

While he didn’t doubt the detective’s willingness to help, he did worry about what it could mean for the blond’s safety. It was bad enough that Hakuba’s life was already being used as leverage against Kid, he didn’t need the blond jumpy and looking strangely at vehicles as well. Or using it as a chance to dig up substantial proof of Kaito’s night job.

’ Stop Sector Seven. The truth is all around us. But Sector Seven does everything it can to subvert, distort, and discredit. We must build a community of the knowing. We must shine a light on Sector Seven's lies. Find the evidence and bring it here for all to see.’

Another paranoid glance around and finding nothing, he began to explore the Buzzenet site. ‘Sector Seven’ was apparently an American Government organisation bent on hiding the fact that robotic aliens lived among us. Someone called ‘Agent X’, who was one of the front runners for leaking secrets out of ‘Sector Seven’ had a series of podcasts. Agent X had a bit of an electronic buzz masking his voice, making him sound a tad like Soundwave. He didn’t get much out of the podcasts, save for a reference to someone called ‘Megaman’, --which he was pretty sure was the American name of ‘Rockman’--, Sector Seven’s agreement with Takara to hide the truth in plain sight behind toys and animation, and that Agent X had found Sector Seven’s headquarters, mentioning something about someone named ‘Hoover’.

… Wasn’t Hoover a vacuum cleaner?
He ran a quick search and ran across another music group he wasn’t familiar with, Hoover’s Ooover. There was also an entry for ‘Hoover Dam’.

Oh. Well, that made more sense. The articles also helped explain a lot of his confusion. He was approaching this knowing that these Transformers were real, and thus was boggled by the not-quite fiction of the cartoons. But to the masses, the cartoon was the ‘reality’ and the notion of giant sentient robots living among them being a bizarre fantasy. Completely different mind set.

Agent X warned about not being the same on the next message, and then turned female. Which, yeah. Was definitely not the same.

... Right. He moved on, checking out a list that RisingDragon11, one of the mods on the Stop Sector Seven forum, had posted. It was a list of everything they knew about Sector Seven, written in a timeline format. Kaito rubbed his eyes, wishing once again that the information was in his native tongue, it would have made things SO much easier.

On the plus side, it did explain that ‘N.B.E.’ stood for ‘Non-Biological Entities’, which was really just a fancy term for ‘Alien’. Why they couldn’t use the simpler term, he didn’t know.

RisingDragon11 and the other mod, Methusalen, seemed to post the most imperative information out of everyone on the board, although there were others ‘Masterfwiffo’ seemed to be another man on the inside, posting video clips. ‘Powers’ and ‘Dr. Howard’ were featured in a few clips, Howard having some troubles with her employers, Sector Seven, and pretty much getting the run around. Eventually she was detained and escaped through Agent X’s assistance, to then become the new Agent X.

He stumbled upon a forum thread by someone named ‘Cod3x’, asking for help and Methusalen told them to seek assistance from Dr. Howard, aka ‘Sciencehottie35’ on the forum.

Well… It couldn’t hurt.

After a moment’s confusion, he clicked on the ‘Register’ button, and found himself wondering what the hell to do for a screen name. It had to be in English, that much was obvious. After some blurry hyper-caffeinated thoughts, he typed in ‘PhantomKid’. Might as well stick with the blatantly obvious, since this was a sort-of heist. And if they put the pieces together, playing on his reputation might help.

For the birthdate, he put in the 14th day of the 12th month, then the year Oyaji first appeared as the Kaitou Kid. Just because he could. Heh. He sent the e-mail to his ‘heisei_lupin’ e-mail account, which he used as a puppet account for Kaitou Kid stuff. And if they bothered to check, it was enough clues as to who he was.

Kaito scanned the area again as he waited for the e-mail to go through to complete registration, mentally composing the letter in his head. He knew what he wanted to say, but he didn’t have all of the words for all the questions he wanted to ask.

Finally, as he clicked on the links that finished the registration, he settled on the simplest question he could think of. Pulling up the private message system, he typed carefully typed it out, then ran it through the nifty translation, to make sure his question came out the way he wanted it to.

’What does Soundwave desire in Okinawa?’

Maybe not exactly right, but close enough. As he sent off the PM, a yawn blindsided him and he realised that the subway trains had already stopped running. Argh. He saved the information he’d gathered onto a flashdrive, then copied his internet history onto a document and sent it to a different e-mail account before wiping his internet history from the computer. Close contact with detectives made him paranoid about covering his tracks, especially with equipment that his mother, Jiichan and Aoko had easy access to.

… It’d also made him paranoid about cleaning out his pockets before doing laundry. Fancy jewellery did not wash well and it was a bitch to try to come up with a good somewhat -legal- explanation for it being in his possession…

He yawned and stretched, doing another check around the cubicle for moving things or random objects that shouldn’t be there and found nothing. Good. He had a few hours before the subways opened at 5am, and four days before the ‘dead’ line, so to speak.

Kaito still needed to plan how to get Okinawa. He opened up his browser again, starting up a new internet search. It was a 44 hour ferry ride from Tokyo to the main city of Okinawa, Naha. And that was -if- he could catch one that was leaving this week, there were only six or seven trips a month. Taking the Shinkansen down to Miyazaki, Kagoshima or Shibushi down in the southern Kyushu region was a possibility as well, but it was still anywhere from 17-25 hours to Naha from any of those cities by ferry, not including the half-day train ride.

Which left flying. This was too last minute of a trip to get the good discount prices, which meant it was going to be pricey, regardless if he flew out of either Haneda or Narita airports in Tokyo, or if he flew out of somewhere south, like Fukuoka, Nagoya or Osaka. Which meant this was going to be a costly heist. The problem with flying was the security, metal detectors were emphatically not a thief’s best friend. Not that he was going to be dragging the whole Kaitou Kid kit along with him, although the hangglider might be useful for this.

Sometimes he wished that Oyaji had been a –normal- thief and he could sell what he stole. It’d make life so much easier.

And once he got to Okinawa, he still had to narrow down which base this mysterious objection was on as well. While Okinawa wasn’t the largest island chain, American Military still occupied about 30% of the land. That was a lot of space to cover.

It was too bad he didn’t have ‘l33+ haXX0r’ skills, the ability to –find- and then hack into the systems he needed to in order to get the information he sought. Or know a hacker that he could ask.

He stretched his arms over his head, vertebrae popping in his back. Time for a break. He put the computer to sleep and wandered out into the hall, his stiff legs protesting the movement. Geh. Yeah, definitely too long in one place. He was used to a lot more activity.

Kaito got a coffee out of a vending machine in the hall, looking out the window at the lights of Shinjuku. It was kind of pretty, in a ‘city never sleeps’ sort of way.

Movement along one rooftop, the smooth reflection of light where there should be none caught his attention. He warily tracked it as something slunk across the rooftop, then paused at the corner, the glare of two red lights looking in his direction.

A robotic panther. Ravage, another one of Soundwave’s minion-bots. He tensed and ducked out of view of the window, although for all he knew, they had heat sensors that could track him regardless.

He sincerely doubted that any of the smaller Decepticons were going to hurt him, it’d defeat the whole purpose of getting a human to do their dirty work. But at the same time, it made his spine crawl at someone following him, tracking him like some sort of creeping terror.

Kaito wasn’t sure if that was a thief thing, a magician thing, or a healthy sense of paranoia after having being shot at by the guys who killed Oyaji so many times. But either way, he did –not- like it.

He quickly finished his coffee and headed back to the cubicle . His first reaction at someone… something following him like this was to flee, keep moving. But it was sleepless o’clock, there were no crowds for him to hide among and few places open with people in them. No, he was better off staying here for a few more hours, until the office workers started moving.

Still, he hated it.

Kaito sighed and strolled back to the cubicle , doing a now almost routine check for small intelligent mechanoids that shouldn’t be there before starting the computer back up again. For paranoia’s sake, he would have rather moved and attached to the internet via a different ISP, but if they knew where he was, they knew where he was. Ignoring twitching hands, he logged back into the Buzznet account, just to see if there was more information he could glean from the strange silly language that was English.

To his surprise, he already had a PM back. He checked the clock. The States were anywhere from 13 to 16 hours behind Japan, depending on where Dr. Howard was, it was just shortly before or well after midnight for her. Evidently he wasn’t the only night owl around.

The message was a request for more information, and how Kaito knew that Soundwave was after something in Okinawa.

Kaito thought it over, trying to figure out how to explain it without waving big banners proclaiming that he was the Kid. There was a fine line about using his reputation as the Kaitou Kid to slip in through doors and using it to bash doors down that didn’t need to be. Much more could be accomplished through subtle means than brash ones.

He hit ‘reply’ and typed out the entire conversation he’d had with Soundwave, in chat format.

[Soundwave] Depart. Bulletbike.
*Bulletbike leaves
[ Thief] I don’t believe we’ve ever had the pleasure of being introduced-
[Soundwave] Designation: Soundwave.
[Thief] Pleasure to meet you, Soundwave-san. I am-“
[Soundwave] Designation: Interpol Criminal Number 1412. Occupation: Phantom Thief.
[Thief] …I see. And what can I do for you, Soundwave-san?
[Soundwave] A precious jewel was stolen from us. Objective: Retrieval. Jewel is held in Okinawa, Japan, for seven of your Earth days. You have until then to retrieve it.
[Thief] And if I refuse?
[Soundwave] Termination
*Soundwave lists people’s names
[Thief] I get it. And after I get this jewel of yours?
[Soundwave] You will return it to us. Disobedience is not an option. Dismissed.
*Soundwave leaves.

Well, the entire conversation, minus any identifiers as to who he or any of his associates were, anyway. After all, secret identity thing aside, he was a fundamentally honest thief. Sent warning notices to the nice crazy police officers and everything.

But in retrospect, the conversation looked like some sort of hokey badly written science-fiction. Kaito made a face, going back over the transcript.

Oh, well. It would have to do.

He was about to hit ‘send’ when he realised he’d made a mistake. He’d typed the entire conversation exactly as he remembered it… In Japanese. With a groan, he pulled up the nifty translator and translated the entire thing, fixing what sentences looked off to him.

Stupid English Language.

He sent off both copies, the Japanese and the translation with an irritated click of the mouse. If she wanted a better translation, she could overcome the language barrier herself.

Message sent, he went back to surfing the net for cheap flights to Naha. Too bad there wasn’t another airport on the island he could fly to, just to muddle his destination.

While waiting for a page that was taking forever to load, he clicked back to the Buzznet site. He had another PM back already.

’Are you the Kaitou Kid?

Give the lady a rose! Yes, he was the Goddamn Kaitou Kid. He rolled his eyes, doodled out a quick caricature of the Kaitou Kid, the one he used for signatures, used the webcam on the computer to take a photo, cropped it, uploaded it to the picture account attached to the e-mail address and stuck it up as his icon before sending back a short and sweet message:

’ @}-,--'— ‘

Ascii art was fun. And went outside of language barriers. What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet...’

He set his head down on the desk, his head starting to ache in a way that caffeine couldn’t touch. Yeah. Past time for sleep. Gods, when this was over, he was going to sleep for a day straight. An occasional all nighter was one thing, but two this close was starting to push it a bit. And he’d probably need to do it again in the next couple of days.

Skipping school was starting to sound good. Maybe he could draw fake eyes on top of his eyelids to sleep during class and Aoko wouldn’t notice…

A quick glance at the clock showed that the trains were due to start running soon, he had just enough time to go grab something out of a vending machine, get home, take an all too brief nap and get to school.

And he had less than four days to figure out what the hell to do.

---

Continue on to Part 2