Current mood:	jubilant
Current music:	So what if I survive and live to tell the tale?
Entry tags:	magic kaito, transformers

[Magic Kaito/Transformers 2007] Made in Japan (2/2)
Continued from Here.

---

He was still dragging when he met Aoko and Hakuba on the way to class, using it as an excuse to lean against Aoko as they walked, letting her support some of his weight. She grumbled about it, but only made a few half-hearted attempts to throw him off. Well, half-hearted for her. She didn’t find a mop or a broom to do something about it. She had the damnest luck at finding one at hand when she really wanted one too.

Hakuba watched them with some amusement. “Late night?” He questioned.

”My part-time job is a bitch.” Kaito said through a yawn. Aoko elbowed him in the ribs for the language. He rested more weight on her, making her stumble and use a word that she’d definitely picked up from her foul-mouthed father. Hah. Like she had room to talk.

They passed by the music store with the poster of Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots, in the windows. Kaito gave it a long wary look as they walked by. “Something wrong?” Aoko asked, noticing his sudden change in attitude.

”Nothing much.” He yawned and rested his head on her for a moment. “Hey, Hakuba?”

”Hm?”

”What would you do, if Transformers were real?” He asked the question airily, trying to pretend like the answer didn’t matter. Blond jokes aside, Hakuba was one of the few people smart enough to give him the occasional run for his money.

Hakuba made a thoughtful sound, touching his chin in a thoughtful manner. “Look up a great deal more often.” He finally concluded.

Aoko shrugged, nearly dislodging Kaito. “They are taller.” She pointed out logically.

”Yes.” Hakuba agreed. “But even when around the Autobots who are more careful around humans, when accidentally stepped on, Transformers do not go –squish-.”

Kaito couldn’t think of a thing to say to that. When you were right, you were right and Hakuba was most certainly right.

”I still would wish to meet one.” Hakuba said with a bit of embarrassed longing.

”No, you don’t.” Kaito muttered into Aoko’s hair. She gave him a confused noise in return that he ignored. “So what if you met the Decepticons first and had to get to the Autobots?” He said with a louder voice.

”You have been reading up on the series, have you not?” Hakuba said with a great deal of amusement. Probably thinking that Kaito didn’t want Hakuba to know more than he did on any particular subject. He shrugged in return, causing himself and Aoko to wobble all over the sidewalk for a moment.

Hakuba chuckled. “The hardest part about sneaking past the Decepticons would probably have to be either the Seeker’s flying abilities or Soundwave’s communication monitoring capabilities. The Seekers could be deterred by staying under cover, away from their visuals. But for Soundwave… you’d either have to maintain radio silence, or have some sort of electronic jamming ability.”

Which would be awesome, but if he was scrambling the electronics around him, how would he surf the internet at the same time?

”Or possibly a white noise generator.” Hakuba added thoughtfully. “Although I am not entirely sure how well they mask other radio waves.”

Kaito made a mental note to look into that as well, just in time to see Hakuba give him a suspicious look. “Although I would think that you should be the last person I mention any of this to.” He added with a bit of bite to his voice. “You probably have already thought of it.”

”I probably should have.” Kaito admitted tiredly as Aoko loudly ranted that Kaito was not the Kid, jostling him off her shoulders. He waited until she calmed down again before leaning on her again. Hakuba gave him a concern look, but dropped the subject.

School was school and by the end of first period, he was giving serious thought to the ‘drawing eyeballs on his eyelids’ thing. He got up as soon as the bell rang and headed down the stairs to where the vending machines were by the cafeteria.

There was a new one, a shiny soda machine proudly proclaiming ‘Mountain Dew’. He would have expected something healthier in the school, like Calipis or CC Lemon, but soda was caffeine and caffeine was his friend right now.

He inserted a couple of coins into the machine and chose something called ‘Code Red’, idly listening to the machine making rumbling sounds as it deposited the can. “A dish fit for gods.” He quoted as he reached down to retrieve the can.

And promptly missed the suddenly sprouted arm that would have taken his head if he’d been standing. He yelped, scrabbling backwards as the vending machine turned into an angry red-eyed four armed monster. Cans of soda flew past him as he got to his feet and ducked around a corner.

”Kuroba?” A familiar voice called as he pressed himself against the wall, a can embedding itself into the wall next to him. He flinched as the bright pink liquid gushed out of the can and down the wall. Hakuba and Aoko appeared, giving him a concerned looks as they took in Kaito’s flustered appearance and the burbling can next to him.

”What happened?!” Aoko squeaked, peering around Hakuba and into the hallway.

”A dish fit for gods.” Kaito shrugged, no longer feeling the need for caffeine, not with his body thrumming with adrenaline and ready to jump at the slightest motion. He glanced around the corner, finding the vending machine a vending machine once more, hissing cans scattered all over the hall.

Hakuba stopped in front of him, giving him a very grave look. “Please do not quote Brutus’ speech encouraging the senate to kill Julius Caesar.” He informed Kaito bluntly. He paused, then added in a quieter tone so Aoko could not hear; “It hits a bit too close for comfort.”

Kaito glanced at the soda can that could have taken off his head. ‘And, gentle friends, let's kill him boldly, but not wrathfully, let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods.’ Right. Perhaps it would have been safer to refer to it as ‘Nectar of the Gods’, even if the title was generally reserved for the dark delicious brew known as coffee.

”I’m going to take a nap up on the rooftop.” He decided. There was no way he was going to be able to focus on classes, so he might as well use his time productively. “Make my excuses to Sensei?”

”Yeah.” Aoko glanced back at the vending machines with a wary look. “Okay.” At least she didn’t think he had something to do with this, although it wouldn’t have been completely out of character for a prank to backfire on him as such.

Hakuba inclined his head, acknowledging his request. Kaito nodded as he brushed past Hakuba and started heading up the stairs, his mind and limbs feeling heavy. Stupid giant robots. They were worse than guys in black with guns. At least they only showed up when he was dressed in white. Not even school was safe anymore.

”Kuroba?” Hakuba’s hesitant voice stopped him. He glanced back, finding the detective and Aoko watching at him with a worried expression. “If… if there is something -wrong-…” The blond trailed off, looking hesitant.

Kaito took in the tense line of the detective’s body, wondering how much it had cost Hakuba to say that, to offer assistance to someone whom he knew was a criminal. He shook his head. “Nothing you can help with, detective.” He said, adding a bit of a smile to soften the blow. Not with Hakuba and Aoko being used as leverage against him. But it warmed him to know Hakuba thought enough of him to make the offer. “But thank you.”

Hakuba nodded, then let him go, Aoko silently watching him with worried blue eyes. Kaito climbed up the stairs, finding a nice hidden area on the rooftop and dropping into an exhausted yet fitful sleep.

He dreamt of Aoko and Hakuba under Soundwave’s feet, ‘accidentally’ going -squish-.

---

His mindset had not entirely improved by the time he got home, grabbed his laptop and disappeared back into the wilds of Tokyo, this time visiting a Kinko’s in Ueno, hoping the peacefulness of the nearby park would calm his nerves. He thought he spotted Laserbeak once or twice, the pigeons taking flight from their roosts on the phone lines, fleeing something that was bird-shaped.

He set up his laptop with a feeling of tired resignation. Now that he’d had some sleep and the time to reflect on previous actions, he wondered if sending the ascii rose had been the proper response. There was a probability that Dr. Howard had taken it the wrong way, or she had thought he was an impostor, posting as the Kid for kicks. It wasn’t like there was a good way to verify who was behind the screen of any computer.

He logged in and discovered that he’d received a PM in return, shortly after he’d logged off for the day. Resignation was replaced by elation as he scrolled through it, picking out the bits of English that he could. Information. Lots of information.

And lots of warnings. Even through the filter of the language barrier, he could pick up on her alarm and panic. Decepticons –really- did not like humans. ‘Did not like’ as in ‘saw as little more than insects’. If he did the job, regardless if he was successful or not, the chances were he was dead.

Kaito rubbed his forehead, trying to ease the slight pain forming behind his eyes. But if he didn’t do the job, Nakamori-keibu, Hakuba, Aoko and probably ‘Kaasan would be the ones who died. And he really didn’t think he could live with himself if they got killed because of him, knowing that he could have prevented it.

Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t.

Sometimes he wondered if he had a bit of what could be considered a ‘martyr’ complex. Must be that whole ‘wearing white’ thing.

He read through more of it, not liking what he learned of the Decepticons. And then he got to the information on Soundwave. Some of it he’d read before, matching up to his ‘cartoon’ persona, but some of it was new.

And then one sentence made him run cold.

’Mind reader’. Not just for robotics, but for humans as well.

Kaito went back to the other profiles he’d read and realised where he’d made his mistake. He’d thought that with a name like ‘Chip Chase’, Chip was another Autobot, when in reality Chip was a human ally.

No wonder Soundwave had known exactly what buttons of his to push. And who to target.

He closed his eyes, trying to figure out what to do. If he agreed, Soundwave would know, and know his plans. If he disagreed and tried to run, Soundwave would run. ‘Termination’, as the giant robot had said. And there was no guarantee that Soundwave wouldn’t kill his friends and family anyway.

Therefore, he needed a ‘Plan C’. Or plans D-Z², really. All without actually –thinking- about it, because Soundwave would know.

Fucked. He was so royally fucked. And he did not like the feeling one bit. Still, there had to be some way out of it. He’d been in sticky situations before and gotten out in one piece before. Granted, mostly by sheer luck, but he trusted himself and his luck to figure something out.

He skimmed through the information Dr. Howard had sent him. Most of it he had already pieced together from the website, but there was more about ‘Ghost-1’, a spaceship Sector Seven had built in the 1960s, that had had a run-in with the Autobot and Decepticon factions out in the far flung reaches of space. The human crew of the Ghost-1 blew then themselves up in an effort to save Optimus Prime and keep Starscream --how did giant burning balls of space gas cream themselves? English was so confusing-- and the rest of the Decepticons from following them back to Earth and the ‘Allspark’.

Which was either like a Queen Ant and Mother to all the Transformers –and- their planet, or a giant cube. He was kind of confused on that point.

The next sign of the giant robots had been the Mars Rover going crunch in 2003. Evidently space travel wasn’t the fast mode of transportation it was portrayed in the movies. And since the beginning of the year, had been a sharp jump in Transformer activity on Earth, Sector Seven’s count of N.B.E.s going from around 8 to over 120.

No wonder they kept them all numbered.

He sent a brief ‘thank you’ back to Dr. Howard, remembering to write it in English this time and signed it ‘-Kaitou Kid ♡’. Even if she’d been the bearer of bad news, there was no reason not to be polite and do the whole ‘Gentleman Thief’ thing.

Kaito paused, debating heading out and travelling as he had been, but realised it was pretty much futile. Even discounting Lazerbeak, Ratbat, and Ravage keeping an eye on him, there was the whole ‘Mindreading’ thing. Which meant he could have saved himself some money on subway fare and caffeinated drinks.

He briefly debated asking one of the Decepticons for re-imbursement for business expenses, and then dismissed the idea as likely to get himself killed before he even did anything. Soundwave wasn’t known for his sense of humour. Blackmail yes, humour no.

That thought in mind, he opened up the ‘heisei_lupin’ e-mail account, mostly to see if there had been any additional information passed on or if he should close the account. There was one e-mail waiting for him, from a ‘G.Whitmann@Rand.org’. He paused for a moment, wondering if was spam, then ran a quick check on ‘Rand’ before automatically deleting it.

Rand –-short for ‘Research ANd Development’-- Corporation, a non-profit think-tank that focused on non-biased research and analysis for various national securities, including the United States Government.

Interesting. Curiosity piqued, he warily opened the e-mail. And got a message. In English.

Kaito hung his head. Why did everything have to be in ENGLISH?!

Well, on the bright side, with the amount of experience he was getting lately, he shouldn’t have any problems passing English class this year…

He skimmed it getting the gist of the message before he looked at the tempting attachments at the bottom. Glen Whitmann had been contacted by Dr. Howard to help him by supplying information about what it was that the Decepticons wanted him to steal from Okinawa. And that someone named ‘Maggie’ wished him luck.

Which was kind of sweet. Sweet, but strange.

Kaito ran the virus checker on the zipped attachments, then downloaded them to a flashdrive, just in case they were something bad and he had to shut it down quickly. After a paranoid glance around the room, just to make sure that there weren’t any little robots watching that shouldn’t be, he unzipped the first attachment.

To quote the ancient Greek scholar Archimedes as he stepped into his bathtub, Eureka!

Kaito could have kissed whomever these Glen or Maggie characters were. It was blueprints. Blueprints for one of the major bases in Okinawa. The other attachments had base scheduling, security parameters and items being shipped off base in a few days.

The US Military had an agreement with Japan to start reducing the number of forces in Japan and on Okinawa, shifting the men and their equipment to a base in Australia. The ‘jewel’ Soundwave was after was most likely mixed in that batch, hence the deadline for Kaito to find and retrieve it. What better way to smuggle something around then in plain sight?

And if they just ‘happened’ to accidentally lose or misplace it while in transit, who was going to find it from there?

’Kaasan called him down for dinner and he went, his mind a buzz on planning the heist.

---

The dawn of the third day before the deadline sparked bright and lovely, clear blue sky over head and just enough of a breeze to make it comfortable. Kaito kept a thoughtful eye on the sky regardless. Aoko snickered at him and Hakuba took to watching the sky with him when he joined them on the walk to school with a slightly amused air.

"Hey, Hakuba?" Kaito ventured.

"Hrm?"

"How would you prevent someone from reading your mind?" He questioned. "You know, if telepathy existed."

Hakuba made a thoughtful sound. "I suppose..." He ventured. "It would depend on how they were doing it."

"Radio waves."

That earned him a blank look. "Electronic scrambler-?" The blond detective offered with a helpless shrug. Hadn’t they just had this conversation yesterday?

"Hm." Kaito thought it over. A possibility. Although he didn’t doubt that it had been tried before. Although if they were giant robots, scramblers might cancel out more than just radio waves. “Thanks.”

”You are quite welcome.” Hakuba said, giving him a look that screamed that the blond hadn’t forgotten about the incident with the vending machine and therefore was keeping a close, concerned eye on him. It might have been irritating under other circumstances, but Kaito was a bit too distracted with other matters to really worry about it.

”Don’t forget about this afternoon!” Aoko chirped, nudging him. Kaito gave her a blank look. This afternoon? She gave him a look like she –knew- that he’d forgotten whatever it was and was willing to let it slide, but only if he remembered Right This Instant. “Transformers-?”

… The movie. Kaito nearly slapped his forehead with a hand. It was Saturday, their ‘date’ was today. He’d been so distracted trying to figure out a way to get out of doing the heist he’d forgotten about it. Of course, now it seemed kind of silly to go watch something that was the truth masquerading as fiction. “I- LOOK OUT!”

He lunged at Aoko and Hakuba, arms colliding painfully with them both as he knocked them out of the way of a large dark vehicle that had suddenly decided that the sidewalk was now a thoroughfare. A computerized voice whispered as they crashed into the ground: “Final Warning.”

They landed on a tangled heap on the ground, Kaito sitting up as he watched the dark blue almost black van drive away, a feeling of despair sinking in his stomach. Aoko made a small muffled sound to once side of him, struggling to sit upright. “k-Kaito?” She questioned, one hand gripping his arm for balance or comfort or both.

He snapped out of it, looking at his friends on either side of him. “Are you all right?” He asked, distantly relieved to notice that his voice wasn’t trembling as much as it felt like the rest of him was.

”Fine.” Hakuba’s voice was muffled as he attempted to get to his hands and knees without pinning Kaito as well. He’d landed mostly on his stomach, Aoko on her side, both of them pressed up against him. Aoko nodded, echoing the sentiment. He rose, helping them rise, trying to hide the shaking in his hands. He’d almost lost them, just like that. So close, too close, he couldn’t lose them, couldn’t let them pay for his choices, for his crimes.

”Drivers these days.” Aoko’s alarm was quickly replaced by anger and indignation. “They could have seriously hurt someone doing that! What did they think they were doing?!”

A slightly hysterical giggle escaped before Kaito clamped it down. Aoko missed it due to her ranting, but Hakuba had caught the noise, the detective giving him an intense look that screamed he knew that something was up. Kaito gave them a shaky smile. “Let’s get to school, huh?” He said lightly, trying to make a joke from their close call. “At least the drivers can’t get us there.”

He hoped.

Aoko nodded, ranting the entire way there. And Hakuba… Hakuba just followed along silently, a slight frown on his face as he mentally started putting puzzle pieces together. Kaito could follow that mental process along easily enough. Kaito = Kid, sudden paranoia and lines of questioning, this attack, ‘Last Warning’, all of it adding up to a big fat zero. Unless the blond had access to giant autonomous robotic organisms from outer space, there was no way Hakuba was even approaching the right ballpark.

There were days when he wished that he could talk to someone other than Jii-chan about all the Kid stuff. Oyaji’s old assistant was a great old guy, the Uncle he’d never known and all that, but sometimes he was a bit too caught up in the whole ‘Son of Toichi’ thing to actually see Kaito. And somehow he couldn’t see dropping by Jii-chan’s billiard shop and commenting ‘oh yeah, by the way? I’m being stalked by huge robots for my thief talents or they’ll kill me and everyone I know. They might anyway for shits and giggles. How’s your day going?’

He sighed and squashed down the feeling of isolation and despair that threatened to bubble up. This was his path, the path he’d chosen and there was no turning back now. The only thing he could do was minimize the damage.

Which meant that Aoko and Hakuba had to get out of this alive.

He got to his seat in class on automatic pilot, his mind running over the problems. Not doing the heist was no longer an option; Soundwave had driven that home, quite literally. He still needed to get to Okinawa, which at this point meant flying. Not trying to hide his actions from the psycho killer robots made things easier, it’d be almost certainly expected of him to fly, just to save time.

But this meant that he’d have to pack for getting through airport security and x-ray exams. Minimal metal equipment then, fortunately, they were doing wonderful things in ceramics that were just as good as their iron equivalents. Any electronics had to be small --which they generally were anyway-- and easily disguised as something else. He still wasn’t going to use the Kid suit for this, and he wanted to go back over the blueprints before he decided on if he needed the hang-glider or not. Sleeping gas and a gas mask wouldn’t go awry.

He made his mental lists and plans, getting a rough idea of what needed to be done. By the time he finally had a rough plan of action and started looking around again, it was second period. Fortunately, no one seemed to have noticed. Probably because he’d been doing a zombie impression the day before.

Hakuba was still staring at him, but his expression was more concerned than wary, the big fat zero obviously disturbing the detective. He still needed to figure out what to do with Hakuba, Aoko and Nakamori-keibu. Possibly ‘Kaasan and Jii-chan too.

But… he couldn’t do that while at school. Which meant ditching class for the third time in less a week. If he had been going to be staying in Ekoda after this, it might have worried him. He thought about it for a bit, trying to figure out the best way to escape when he realised that he had the perfect opportunity to do something he always wanted to do AND perfect excuse get out of school at the same time.

”Hey, Aoko.” She turned at the sound of his voice and he quickly leaned forward, pressing his lips against hers. It was a light kiss, barely more than a brush of butterfly wings, but it was headily electrifying too. It was his first real kiss and her first kiss and he, the world famous Kaitou Kid, was too nervous to do more than that. So he sat back with a small smile on his face, the taste of her berry chapstick on his lips and giddily mentally counted down to the imminent explosion. Three… two… one…

”KAI-TO~” It was like the roar of the Valkyries and he couldn’t help but to grin as the almost physical battle aura hits. A mop was summoned from somewhere and he ducked to avoid the first strike which left a substantial dent in the table where he had been a moment ago. He flipped, he twisted, he turned, he used his classmates’ heads and desks as springboards, all the while avoiding Aoko’s mop. He heard a few sighs of relief, it had been a while since the last time he riled Aoko up enough to chase him around the classroom and the familiar patterns of dodging and striking were comfortable. A few bets went on in the background about if she’d finally be able to nail him this time.

She never had and she was never going to, but he found the continued hope amusing.

He stretched the game out a little longer than he usually would, enough so that Aoko was actually starting to breathe a little hard and beginning to be pickier in her swings. She wasn’t swinging blindly anymore, which made her a bit trickier to handle. He waited until she swung, the mop hitting the ground before he ducked in again, wrapping his arms around her in a loose embrace as he dropped a smoke bomb, obscuring them both in pale pink smoke. She stiffened, unable to raise the mop to strike again. “Kaito?” She said, her voice breathless and confused but unafraid. This wasn’t usually how their dance usually went.

There were so many things he wanted to say to her, confessions, taunts, apologies, but the words stuck in his throat. So he kissed her again. It was firmer, her lips slightly open from saying his name and he had enough time to wish that this was the first of many before he dove out of the window he’d opened earlier during the chase for a quick escape down to the lawn via the window ledges.

The taste of berry chapstick stayed with him for hours.

---

”It’s bad, isn’t it?” Hakuba’s voice was composed, the blond not turning away from the computer he was working on to look at Kaito’s sudden appearance in his laboratory doorway. Kaito knew that there should have been no sound, no movement on the cameras to signify his presence, but Hakuba was experienced when it came to him and his patterns. The detective had probably been anticipating, or at least hoping, that Kaito would make an appearance.

Kaito, leaning against the doorjamb, his duffel at his feet, didn’t bother to pretend he didn’t know what Hakuba was talking about. “Yeah.”

”Aoko was worried about you.” Hakuba finally leaned back in the chair, turning it so he was in profile, his blond hair glowing white from the computer monitor. “After your disappearance.”

Yeah. Because he usually went around kissing his best friend. ”You’ll have to apologise on my behalf.”

A pinched look flickered across the detective’s face. “Very bad then.” Hakuba muttered, making the mental jump that Kaito wouldn’t be around to apologise in person.

”Yes.”

”Regardless.” Hakuba turned to pin Kaito with his fierce gaze. ”My offer of assistance remains open.”

Kaito tilted his head in acknowledgement before making a flashdrive appear with a flick of his wrist. He tossed it to Hakuba, who caught it with one hand. “Here.” Everything he’d recorded thus far, the websites, the videos, his messages with Dr. Howard, the e-mail and attachments from Glen Whitmann. There was a second one in the mail for Nakamori-keibu, minus the references to the giant robots, just that the Kid was being blackmailed by a cyber-terrorist and that Nakamori-keibu and his daughter’s lives were at stake. Hopefully enough to get them protected. A third one was hidden in Jii-chan’s billiard hall.

”The files are time locked for 24 hours.” Kaito continued. He would be in Okinawa by then, hopefully with the ‘jewel’. “Until then, don’t think about it too much.”

”That is like saying ‘Do not think about purple walruses’.” Hakuba murmured, clutching the small flashdrive.

Kaito immediately thought about purple walruses.

… Oh.

Hakuba snickered. “I take it that your request has something to do with the line of inquiry about telepaths?” He said lightly, just enough smug saccharine in his tone to remind Kaito why he vehemently loathed the good detective sometimes.

”Yes.” Kaito bit back a sarcastic comment in return, going for the unvarnished truth. He didn’t have the time for a verbal sparring match, he still had a train to catch to get to the airport.

He got a very dry, blank look in return. Kaito shrugged. “’O day and night, but this is wondrous strange! And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’”

”Hamlet.” Hakuba said quietly, his expression thoughtful. If things didn’t make sense to him now, it would later, Kaito had enough faith in him for that. Despite his rather stuff-shirt attitude, Hakuba did possess a very flexible mind.

”Anyway, I just wanted to stop by to tell you to watch your back.” He picked up the duffel at his feet, slinging it over his shoulder. “Especially around crazy vehicles.” Not drivers, vehicles. He figured Hakuba would catch on to that eventually. “Later.”

”A moment, if you would.” Kaito paused at Hakuba’s words, glancing back. The detective rose out of his seat, striding over, an odd indecipherable look in his eyes. Kaito turned and waited as Hakuba stopped in front of him, just inside Kaito’s personal space bubble.

”Yes?” Kaito asked, wondering if Hakuba was going to pull out a pair of handcuffs and slap them on him. Instead, Hakuba reached up, brushing some of Kaito’s hair out of his face before cupping Kaito’s cheek with a calloused hand.

”If I might…” Hakuba said carefully, slowly leaning forward and kissing Kaito. It was different from kissing Aoko, firm where Aoko was soft, yet still surprisingly tender. Hakuba drew away before Kaito could analyse it further. “For luck.” He said awkwardly as he released Kaito and stepped back.

Kaito blinked at Hakuba, his mind informing him that he’d just had two first kisses today. First real kiss and first kiss with a guy. Huh. Maybe he should have aimed for getting laid instead.

”For luck.” Kaito agreed, giving Hakuba a peaceful grin that set Hakuba at ease. He’d just kissed a guy and it did not suck. Kaito’d still prefer kissing Aoko, --he’d prefer Aoko over most people anyway-- but he made a mental note at that for future possibilities. Oooo… Kissing Hakuba AND Aoko. At the same time. It’d be complicated, but that’d be sweet. “Take care of yourself, Hakuba.”

”You too.” Hakuba gave him a faint smile that did not hold any of the blond’s usual sarcasm. “I’ll watch out for Aoko while you’re gone.”

Kaito breathed a small mental sigh of relief. ”Thank you.” He said gratefully, feeling better knowing that someone other than her father would be there for Aoko, even if Hakuba was operating under the belief that he’d be back. Possibly, a very distant maybe that Kaito wasn’t willing to voice, lest he broke it.

Kaito nodded, giving Hakuba a small playful bow and left the Hakuba Laboratory.

---

The reason for wanting a human to break into the Okinawa Military Base became evident the deeper he got into the base. For one thing, he didn’t think giant electromagnets were a part of your standard military security. Nor high quantities of liquid nitrogen. Or massive electronic scramblers, rendering Kid’s own little toys obsolete. It was a good thing he’d left a lot of his metal stuff at home, or he’d end up stuck to something uncomfortable and that’d just suck.

Whatever they had in this base had a lot of people nervous. And by a lot, he meant ‘the massive amounts of guards milling around’ to make up for the lack of big fancy electronic weaponry. Fortunately for him, increasing the number of guards was an old trick of the Kaitou Kid Taskforce and he’d learned to use it to his advantage, blending in with the masses of faceless guards. Which meant knocking out the unfortunate ‘Lieutenant Vic Mellors’ in bathroom --you’d think the Task Force would have picked up on this trick of his, but they never seemed to-- and borrowing his uniform. Fortunately, disguises were small and easy for him to carry around, as long as no one looked too close.

From there, it was a simple matter to stroll through the complex like he knew where he was going until he got to the high security area. There, he went into another bathroom, ditched the Air Force uniform, and hid in a stall until a lab tech wandered in, complaining about the state of the toilets on this side of the base. A quick dose of sleeping gas later and suddenly the same lab tech was at the gates to the high security, complaining that they had to go pee really bad and couldn’t stand the bathrooms over here.

A laugh and a wave got Kid buzzed through that barrier and he was right where he wanted to be. He made his way through the scientific areas, dropping off the files where they were supposed to go, just to confuse people once they found the unconscious lab tech, then wandered around like a zombie for a bit muttering about coffee.

He’d pulled that trick at police stations before. It worked there too.

After laying down a sufficient number of false trails and people who had seen ‘him’ wandering around, he shed that disguise too and took to the ceiling crawl spaces dressed in black pants and turtleneck, various belts and pouches strapped to his back and legs. And his monocle. It just didn’t feel right, sneaking around without the monocle.

The crawl spaces were full of tricks, traps and alarms, but he had warnings for a great majority of them, and practise with the rest of them. At least this place didn’t have dogs. He always seemed to get small yappy things chasing him.

Kid paused a few times to orientate himself and get landmarks. It was one thing to see a map of where you were going, but another thing to find the exact same way through a bunch of small dark tunnels. He couldn’t use his night vision goggles without getting a headache from it, the interference too great from whatever they were using to scramble electronics. He’d seen people in the labs working on computers, so that area was most likely shielded, just not the areas around it.

He wondered how much of a problem that posed to Soundwave. It was kind of freeing, realising that for the first time in over a week, there was no chance of anyone reading his thoughts. Hah.

… Although now that he thought about it, he should have possibly checked out some of the Transformers porn sites and then thought those images directly at the Decepticon. Except that meant he’d have those images stuck in his head too and… well… no. Anatomically impossible was anatomically impossible and he wasn’t going to go there just now.

Only getting sidetracked a few times --because he did NOT get ‘lost’, merely took scenic routes to confuse anyone who might be tracking him--, he finally wound his way to the central area that Witmann had marked as most likely to be where this jewel was. Witmann had even been so kind as to mark it with a giant red ‘X’ on the files. Which was either a ‘we really want this outta there’ thing or an Admiral Ackbar ‘it’s a trap!’ thing.

He circled the area the best he could, trying to figure out if it was a trap or not, but didn’t find anyone in the area. Most of the people he’d seen had been on the outside of the complex, trying to keep people out. Which lead him to the conclusion that they were waiting for some sort of attack of the Giant Robot kind and therefore not anticipating an intruder of the human kind.

Smart, on Soundwave’s part.

Unfortunately, whomever had designed this had made sure that the room was completely isolated from the rest of the complex. Which meant getting as close as he could and burning a hole in the roof or breaking in the front entrance. Thick walls meant it’d take a while to get through it, while the front door was a bank vault style door, complete with large fancy tumbler.

Right.

He pulled out a gas mask and slipped it on to disguise his face before dropping down to the corridor. He didn’t hear any alarms go off, so he quickly set about opening the tumblers to the door. He had more experience with pick-locks than safe-style locks, but they still weren’t too much of a deterrent. After several pulse pounding minutes, he got the large metal door open and slipped inside.

In the centre of the room was a large mechanical looking sphere, easily half again his height. Pipes and wires trailing from it, sprawling across the room as various devices monitored it, causing small lights to blink.

What the hell kind of jewel was this?!

He swallowed, wondering if he had brought a large enough pack to carry it. Hopefully it wasn’t radioactive or anything, he hadn’t thought to bring any lead lined containers…

The trigger to open the sphere was easy enough to find, a small stand with a series of buttons and levers on it. He pulled one of the levers down, the sphere cracking open with a hiss, releasing some sort of gas that made him grateful he was wearing the gasmask. Another lever raised the top half of the sphere up to the ceiling, allowing Kid to see what was inside.

A teenage boy, barely older than Kid himself, lay inside, dressed in what looked to be a grey tee-shirt and sweatpants. He was strapped down to what looked like a modified dentist’s chair, wires taped all over his body that lead to more monitoring devices on the inside. He looked sort of like the American guy on the movie posters, the one running away from the giant blue eyeball.

What. The fuck.

Then the boy opened his eyes and Kid got an even larger surprise. Glowing eyes. No iris or pupil, just a pure solid strange shade of blue-silver-gold, but he got the feeling the guy was looking right at him.

Kid put his hands up in as soothing manner as he could. “I’m not here to hurt you.” He said carefully. Oh, shit oh shit oh shit. This wasn’t a jewel, this was a human, only it was some sort of really freaky human and he seriously hoped that glowing eyes didn’t mean laser vision that could fry him where he stood. Although the confused look he got sort of maybe hopefully discounted whole ‘frying him where he stood’ thing.

The guy opened his mouth, saying something in the dry raspy tone of someone who hadn’t spoken in way too long. Kid couldn’t understand most of it except for the word ‘English’.

”English?” Kid echoed. He paused, trying to find the English words. “Do you speak?” He asked hesitantly. British? American? Australian?

”Yeah.” The guy croaked. “Who’re you?”

”Thief.” Kid settled on. After the past several days he was better at reading and writing English than he was speaking it. Oh, this was going to be SUCH a headache. “I am not here to wound you.”

He got a blank look as the guy mouthed Kid’s words. “Hurt me?” He echoed.

”Not hurt.” Kid insisted. Stupid foreign language.

”Can you get me out?” The guy said slowly, making it easier for Kid to process. “Not hurt you either.”

Kid shrugged. Might as well. He didn’t like the idea of being penned up in here, if the situations were reversed. He started undoing the buckles around the guy’s legs. “Name?” He questioned.

”Sam.” The guy said, craning his neck to watch him. “Sam Wi-“ The rest was a bunch of strange foreign consonants that Kid decided he wasn’t even going to attempt to reproduce.

“Sam.” Kid repeated, rising to free the arm restraints. Kid pointed to his nose. “Kid.”

”Kid-?” Sam echoed, making it sound like a question.

”Jewel Thief.” Kid explained the best he could, cursing his lack of vocabulary. “I… sent. By Giant Robot. For jewel stolen from them.” Yeah, did that sound as inane to Sam as it did to him-?

”Giant Robot…” Sam echoed, looking at him in something akin to alarm. “Transformer?” The word sounded harsher in the American’s mouth than it did when Aoko and Hakuba said it, full of sharp sounds.

Kid got the band around the waist undone as he made a face. ”Decepticon.”

Sam froze, literally tensing under Kid’s hands. “Which?”

”Soundwave.”

Sam said a very naughty word in English and started ripping the wires off of him, ignoring the tape attempting to take chunks of skin off in the process. In the background, Kid could hear some sort of siren go off. They must have tripped some sort of trigger. Dammit.

”Must go.” Kid urged, stepping back and scanning the room for anything resembling a gem. There were too many metal components and cases around, any of which could have held something as small as a jewel. It wasn’t like large precious stones were COMMON. Dammit, dammit, dammit. They were all dead. He needed to find that jewel or Hakuba and Aoko and everyone….

”Grab that!” Sam interrupted his mental panicking, frantically pointing to something in the bottom half of the sphere. Sam was holding something that looked like a large metal ostrich egg in one arm, the silvery surface covered in what looked like circuit boards patterns. Kid glanced around and found a similar looking egg tangled in a nest of wires. There was another one farther behind and at more frantic flailing on Sam’s part, he grabbed that as well.

”What is?” He questioned, holding up one of the eggs as he quickly moved to the massive door, Sam following behind.

”It’s… “ Sam faltered, cradling the two eggs in his arms like they were infants or something. “They’re important.”

Important how? Perhaps this was the jewel? Broken into four parts? He had flashbacks to the Inuyasha series, collecting the shards of the Shikon no Tama.

He could hear people heading their direction. “Up!” He ordered, pointing the ceiling tile. Sam looked up with those weird white-silver eyes. Kid stuck the eggs into his mostly empty backpack, then cupped his hands together. “Up.” He ordered again. Sam nodded, taking a step back before jumping forwards, putting a foot in Kid’s hands, Kid tossing the larger teen upwards the best he could.

Sam shoved one of the eggs through the ceiling tile, knocking it out of the way before catching the edge under his arms and dangling for a moment. Kid grabbed his feet and shoved, pushing the guy up and into the access space before jumping and pulling himself through. Shoving Sam out of the way, he put the ceiling tile back just as the steps got closer. There were no shouts about looking up, so he hoped they were safe for a moment.

Sam’s strange eyes really did glow in the dark, illuminating the enclosed area, which was pretty cool, if freaky. Kid took off the gas mask, motioning for silence. Sam nodded back, the two of them spending several breathless moments as people ran back and forth below them, shouting and barking orders. The noise died down and Kid motioned for Sam to follow him. They made their way through the crawlspaces, moving as stealthily as cats and just as jumpy as well. Kid had to close his eyes, trying to remember alternate routes of the complex, there was no way he could smuggle Sam out as he’d snuck in.

He had just gotten them up to an air duct on a rooftop when another alarm started sounding again. He glanced backward to find Sam staring down at his knee resting on top of a thin cord that Kid had moved over without thinking. A trip wire alarm, no need for fancy electronic motion sensors.

”Move! Move! Move! Move!” Sam hissed in increasing panic and Kid nodded, not bothering with subtly anymore as he kicked his way through the thin metal grill blocking their way out. He shimmied through and looked around the flat open top before moving to the building’s edge. Only two stories up, there wasn’t enough height for him to really use the hang-glider, even if he had it with him. He looked out past the fence, catching a glimpse of glowing red lights before someone below shouted and bright lights blinded his vision as was he bathed in the spotlights.

Soundwave was out there, and Kid didn’t have the ‘jewel’. He was dead if Soundwave got a hold of him, he was dead if the military gets him. Whatever Sam is, he’s obviously beyond classified and Kid was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to know about him at all. Dead, dead dead.

And then Sam pushed him off the edge of the roof.

There was a brief moment of sheer disbelieve --he’d just been PUSHED off the ROOF-- and a tearing ripping sound filled the air as something grabbed him around the torso. It took monumental effort to turn his head away from the rapidly approaching ground to glance behind him in time to see large bat wings flare out of his shoulder blades, silver metal with a thin translucent bronze skin stretched out between the long ‘fingers’, glowing blue gems at the joints.

Just as suddenly as his decent began, it reversed, Kid flying higher into the air. Something rolled over his shoulder and he grabbed one of the eggs before it fell, clutching it to his chest. And then nearly dropped it again as a small dark turtle head, with two tiny horns over each eye popped its head out of the round metal and squealed in joy as they flew over the fences surrounding the compound.

He squeaked in surprise. A laugh echoed out to one side and he glanced over to find Sam holding onto a large copper bird inset with glowing red gems with one hand, a silver robotic cat with jets on its sides wrapped around his other arm, holding him in midair. “It’s okay!” Sam grinned, eyes sparkling almost gold in excitement.

”Ah.” Kid moved his mouth for a moment. “Okay.” He was willing to go with the flow for the moment. It was better than falling. The turtle in his arms looked up at him with pale slightly glowing eyes, making happy burbling noises at him, almost like a toddler would.

Red lights moved in the distance, coming closer to them as they touched down in a small field outside the compound, off of US Military property. They weren’t out of the danger zone yet, and there was no guarantee the Military would stop at its borders. Bullets certainly didn’t.

The bird settled down onto Sam’s shoulder, making cooing noises as the cat dropped to the ground and tumbled around in the grass like it’d just found its new favourite play toy. Kid looked down at the turtle in his arms, then at a ripping noise, over his shoulder in time to see the remnants of his backpack get shredded by what looked remarkably like a silver dragon, its blue eyes peering at him in curiosity. Oh-kay. Weird. Not in a bad way, but weird. “Arigatou?” He offered as the mechanical dragon tried to look up his nose.

Sam laughed and Kid shook his head, batting the dragon’s questing face away. “We need move, before-“

The ground trembled a bit as Soundwave appeared in the glare of the Military Bases’ lights. ”Ninmu Kanryo” Soundwave informed him as he stopped waaaay too close to them for personal comfort, then said it again in English, probably for Sam’s benefit. ”Mission Accomplished.”

Kid just looked up at the giant dark blue robot in confusion. He didn’t have the ‘jewel’, he couldn’t find the blasted thing! All he’d found was a guy whom someone had obviously been performing some sort of experiments on and robot eggs that hatched into creatures from mythology.

The white kitten hissed at something as more glowing eyes turned into recognisable figures, Ravage, Lazerbeak and Ratbat making their appearances. A fourth small bipedal figure joined them as well, another one of Soundwave’s minions. Kid wondered if he’d missed seeing that before, if it had been disguised as anything he would have recognised. The rest of Sam’s eggs made growling noises as well, the bird and the kitten sticking close to Sam as the dragon on Kid’s back flared its wings.

Dead, dead, dead, he was soooooo –dead-. And not in the happy fun time way either. He tensed, preparing to dodge or run, the turtle still in his arms.

Soundwave ignored all this, his attention riveted on Sam. ”The Allspark-” The Transformer rumbled, reaching a large mechanical hand towards the other teenager.

… Wait.
What?

He didn’t have any time to process this before Soundwave suddenly went flying over their heads, into the perimeter fence for the American base. There was a bit of a rumble, then Soundwave was jerked backwards, pinned to one of the giant electro magnets that was hanging from a crane, one of the many that littered the base. A second later, his minions joined him, hitting the magnet and Soundwave with echoing clangs.

Okay. Not dead.

… That certainly called for a change in plans…

Kid looked back to find another Transformer, smaller than Soundwave by at least a third, staring down at them with blue optics. Kid had another brief ‘Oh Shit’ moment as he wondered if this one was going to grab them as well before a whirring clicking noise filled the air, the robot turning into a black Camaro with two dull gold racing stripes down the centre of it.

Sam’s face split into a wide grin as he stepped forward, hugging the side of the car, resting his cheek against the top of the vehicle. “Bumblebee.” He murmured, his voice cracking with a mixture of emotions. Relief, affection, concern.

The car, or at least its radio, sang back at him. ”And I~ will always looooove youuuuu~”

Sam kicked at a tire. Whitney Houston’s dulcet tones abruptly stopped. Kid wasn’t sure if he was relieved or not.

The driver’s side door opened a crack, the radio changing to a new tune. “Saddle up!” An American cowboy drawled.

”Yeah.” Sam turned towards Kid and motioned to the passenger seat, a peaceful look on his face. “You wanna come?”

Kid thought about it for maybe half a second. Chances were that Soundwave was going to kill him regardless of what he did. Hakuba and both Nakamori were warned and he’d left ‘Kaasan two notes, one explaining everything and a suicide note, just in case she needed a cover for his dead body. He wasn’t planning on returning to Ekoda any time soon anyway, --having not really expected to survive in the first place-- lest he bring the wrath of the Decepticons down on his friends and family’s collective heads.

So he might as well take the chance and make the best of it.

“Yes.” He agreed, trotting over to the black vehicle. The passenger side door opened for him and they both slid inside, the small mechanical animals following after. The doors slammed shut and the car revved its engine, and then took off, the acceleration pressing them back into the seats.

Sam leaned forward and wrapped his arms around the steering wheel. “God, I missed you, Bee.” He murmured to the car. The car, Bumblebee, somehow made a reassuring rumble back, despite the speeds they were tearing through the streets with. Kid quickly did his seatbelt and braced himself, the dragon and the turtle clinging to him for balance.

”Had a dream.” Sam continued softly. “It was a nice dream. Megatron was destroyed. You asked to stay with me and I agreed. And then we were all there on the Lookout, you, me, Mikaela and the others. Optimus sent out a message to space that you were here, you were waiting.”

Bumblebee made a sad noise. Kid took that as things didn’t turn out quite that way. “Allspark?” Kid echoed as the dragon explored his ear.

Sam turned his head towards him, still resting his forehead against the top of the steering wheel. “The Allspark creates life.” Sam said slowly, exhaustion colouring his voice. “Megatron… Became anti-life, he killed everything he touched. The Allspark… -knew- this, I guess. It kind of, I dunno, ‘talked’ to me when I was carrying it around after Bee handed it to me. Even though Megatron would have killed everything, the Allspark couldn’t go against its base programming and un-create him.”

”So… You became Allspark?” Kid puzzled. The dragon tried to eat some of his hair and he batted it away.

”Yeah. Sort of.” Sam closed his eyes, his eyelids blocking out the glow. “Version 2.0, for Earth or something. I didn’t want Bee… the others… to die. So made it a deal. My programming would let me kill Megatron, but I didn’t have the power. It had the power but couldn’t kill. So we kinda… merged or something. I dunno. It’s complicated.”

So Sam could create --Kid batted the dragon away from his hair again-- and possibly un-create life as well. Power of life and death. Talk about scary.

”And them?” Kid asked, holding up the turtle. The turtle had its front legs out of the eggshell and waved them happily, apparently content to stay half-hatched, unlike his robotic brethren.

Sam shrugged. “Was lonely. Bee wasn’t there.” Bee let out a mechanical whine, expressing his own loneliness and despair at that fact. Sam smiled slightly and patted the dashboard. “Not your fault.”

From the engine’s growl, Bee obviously disagreed. “It’s not.” Sam patted the dashboard again. “Anyway. Idea came from an exorcist or a temple or something they had one of the few times I woke up. There were these four guardian beasts or something and I guess I thought it was a good idea at the time.”

And so his first act upon being able to create life was to create the Four Heavenly Creatures from Chinese mythology. Suzaku the Red Phoenix of the South, Byakko the White Tiger of the West, Genbu the Black Turtle of the North and Seiryuu the Blue Dragon of the East.

Kid smiled, a thought flickering past as he batted the little dragon’s head away from attempting to climb into his nostrils.

“Hey.” Kid said, holding the turtle and the dragon out to Sam with a broad grin. The tiny reptiles blinked innocently at Sam, cooing happily.

“Made in Japan.”

-fin-

---

18,000 words to set up the ending line!!! I REGRET NOTHING!!!

Dr. Howard, Agent X and Sector Seven.org were all part of a viral Transformers Alternate Reality Game before the first movie opened. For more information, check here. There is also a wiki set up just for the game, which has not been updated in a while.

The current password for Sectorseven.org is 'Deceptibot'. Go check it out, it's massively freaky.

According to Maggie's bio both she and Glen went to work at Rand after the movie.

Soundwave is confirmed for Movie 2. As of this posting, there's been no verification on a 'ground' form, so he'll have to remain as is until we see otherwise.

If this song has anything to do with it, there'll be a sequel to follow, from Sam's point of view, what happens next and the divergences from the end of the Transformers Movie.