Current location:	US, Arizona, Tucson
Current mood:	jubilant
Current music:	I'll never find someone quite like you , again
Entry tags:	detective conan

[Detective Conan] Touched
Title: Touched
Author: Icka! M. Chif
Word Count: 4,445
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Angst.
Author's Note: O HAI GUYZ. I'M GONNA RIP OUT UR HEART AND STOMP ON IT. Thanks to Wren, Gen and Ellen for listening to me babble about this plunnie and MagicBulletGirl for knowing where to find characters and laughing as I killed them.
Summary: 10 Years in the Future, someone's killing the Shonen Tantei's former classmates.

---

Touched
You say that I am too
So much of what you say is true
I'll never find someone quite like you
Again
I'll never find someone quite like you
Like you

The razors and the dying roses plead
I don't leave you alone
The demi-gods and hungry ghosts of God
God knows I'm not at home

I'll never find someone quite like you
Again
'Touched by V.A.S.T.

---

“The murder is-” Ayumi, the 17 year old Bishishojo Detective of the East pointed at the guilty man. “-You.”

The guilty man cringed, just slightly, but enough to know her deduction was spot on. “Come on…” He laughed nervously, looking at the uniformed officers who were giving him dark looks.

”It was you.” Ayumi said, softer this time. “You couldn’t stand that the farmer took your wife, so you put the farmer in the-“ She paused, looking at the corpse, with his head stuck through the laptop monitor, the word ‘Dell’ prominently displayed on the front “-Computer.” She concluded.

”He didn’t just take my wife!” The guilty man raged. “My wife took my child, the nurse, the cow, the dog, and the cat, that rat!”

”Come along, Chiizu-san.” An officer helped the murderer stand up, placing the cuffs around his wrists. “You can tell us all about it downtown.”

Ayumi felt a gentle pressure around her waist and leaned back against the solid comforting bulk of her boyfriend as they watched the man be led out of the building, ranting all the way. “You alright, Ayumi-chan?” Genta’s usually loud voice was quiet in her ear.

”Yeah.” She nodded. She wasn’t, not really, but she was as right as she could get. The guilty party was caught, the victim could pass on knowing he was avenged.

”You caught him.” He reminded her.

”Yes.” She turned to face Genta, wrapping her arm around his torso. “But in the end, Chiizu stands alone.” No wife, no children, no pets to support him or keep him company. Just a cold dark cell.

Murder was always a sad thing. Not just for the victims or those around, but for everyone involved. This was as true now as when she'd first started solving murders at age seven.

She wondered when people were going to learn.

Genta held her for a moment longer, before giving her another squeeze. “Come on.” He finally said as the police started wandering out. “We’re late for meeting Ai-chan.”

She nodded, stepping away from him and took a deep breath, transfiguring herself into the famous fearless Detective of the East again in preparation of facing the media horde outside. “Yeah.” Ayumi agreed, taking Genta’s hand. She really didn’t know what she’d do without him and his unwavering support. He smiled back, squeezing her hand. “Let’s go.”

+++

Mitsuhiko meet them at the gate, dressed in a dark suit, his hair slicked back and carrying a large bouquet of flowers. "You look very handsome." She smiled, kissing him on the cheek. He ducked his head, cheeks blushing slightly pink.

"Hey!" Genta protested. "What about me?"

"You're always handsome." She grinned, grabbing his tie and pulling him down to kiss him on his cheek as well. His dark skin blushed a nice rose colour. It was flattering, that even after dating for a year that she still had that reaction on him.

"Shall we?" Mitsuhiko asked, offering his hand. She took Mitsuhiko's hand in one of hers, pausing to allow Genta to pick up the bucket of water and ladle before taking his hand as well, feeling the strength in their grips with a flood of warm emotion. Her boys.

They walked in silence through the shaded area. It was quiet here, remote. They'd chosen it for just that purpose. "Hagase's been here already." Ayumi noted as they approached their destination. They nodded, their steps slowing before coming to a stop. "Hello, Ai-chan." Ayumi said quietly.

Ai-chan didn't respond. Of course, she never did anymore. Ai-chan was as silent as her newly cleaned grave. There was an offering of fresh fruit waiting as well.

Genta poured water over the stones anyway as Mitsuhiko added new flowers to the grave. Ayumi pulled incense out of her purse and set it in the stand before pulling out matches. They did their tasks quickly and efficiently with the ease of practise. Ayumi passed the matches to her boys once their tasks were done and they lit the incense, silently praying.

It was ten years ago today that they'd lost both Ai-chan and Conan. Ai-chan had dropped dead the same day that Conan had collapsed and been put in the hospital. They'd had to run around, pleading with Jodie-sensei to finally see him.

It was a week before Conan woke up. They visited him everyday, watching the strange white mist that surrounded him as his body stretched and grew. In the end, Conan was no more, but Ran-neechan had her Shin'ichi-niichan back.

Shin'ichi-niichan and Ran-neechan had to flee after that. Ayumi hadn't found out until afterwards that Ai-chan was found with a bullet hole between her eyes, her brains sprayed across the ground. She'd been shot after she'd died from the same drug that had transformed Conan into Shin'ichi-niichan.

Shin'ichi-niichan had explained it to her, in quiet raw tones as Ran-neechan packed under FBI guard. How he'd been a famous teenage detective and his arrogance had lead him to not watching his back while witnessing two men in black, whom he'd identified as murderers earlier. They'd poisoned him, the poison shrinking him instead of killing him. How he hidden with Ran-neechan and Mouri-san. How he'd become friends with the Shonen Tantei without meaning to, trying to guard them, watch over them. How sorry he was for dragging them into his mess.

He didn't make it to Ai-chan's funeral. The FBI had cleared it for him to come, but he'd gotten caught up in a case and arrived too late.

Ran-neechan chose to go with Shin'ichi-niichan, travelling to America to hide from the people that had shrunk him. She'd smiled at her when Ayumi asked why she was going, saying that even Holmes needed a Watson.

They traveled now, solving mysteries where ever they went, Ran-neechan writing down their adventures, both current and Shin'ichi-niichan's adventures as Conan. It was being published as a manga and had become an popular anime in recent years, spawning several movies. There was even talk of turning int into a live action movie. Ayumi, Genta and Mitsuhiko even showed up in it, with a few changes so no one would recognise them.

Agasa-hagase kind of died after Ai-chan's death, turning distant. He still smiled and spent time with them, helping them on the cases that still dropped in their laps without Conan around, but it was like something in him had died as well. Ai-chan had been like a daughter to him and he mourned her loss deeper than anyone else.

Mitsuhiko, Ayumi, and Genta had banded together, clinging to each other to get through everything. Mitsuhiko was the brains, he was the scientific genius. Ayumi was the intuitive one, able to put the pieces together while Genta was their strong man. That wasn't to say that Genta was stupid, he was excellent at finding clues that they sometimes over looked, but he wasn't quite as good at it as Ayumi or Mitsuhiko were and was content to watch their backs, so that Shin'ichi-niichan's mistake was never repeated.

Ayumi loved being held in Genta's arms. She liked to tease him about being swept off her feet, which he'd usually cheerfull oblige her with, picking her up apparent ease, like she was still the same small girl she'd been years ago.

They glanced at each other, reaching for each other's hands and holding tight.

"I still miss her." Mitsuhiko said quietly, his voice cracking. Ayumi pulled Mitsuhiko towards her, resting his head on her shoulder, Genta wrapping his arms around them both, the three of them grieving together for their missing pieces.

+++

Walking into their classroom, Ayumi was surprised to see a desk with flowers on it. She stopped, Genta bumping into her and Mitsuhiko bumping into him. "Isn't that Amemiya Shouko's desk?" Mitsuhiko questions, leaning around Genta.

She and Genta nod. "What happened to Shouko-san?" She asks, grabbing a classmate.

"Accident." The student says with the authority of one who has heard the rumour mill already. The voice is lowered, so they have to lean in to hear the juicy bits. "She was mugged while running errands. Heard she was stabbed to death. No one saw anything."

"Oh, no." Ayumi clasped her hands over her mouth. Shouko was such a sweet girl, worried about stray kittens and lost animals. Almost everyone knew that if they found a stray animal to let Shouko know, she'd help find them a home.

The student nodded and kept on walking, message delivered. Genta put a hand on Ayumi's shoulder, Mitsuhiko herding them to the side so they got out of the doorway. "Should we investigate?" Genta questioned. Ayumi and Mitsuhiko exchanged looks and nodded. They'd check with the police afterwards and see what leads had been tracked down so far, see if they could lend their assistance.

Some police officers were wary about working with them, but they had over a decade of experience with crime scenes and murders, more than some officers. The CSI labs were already attempting to recruit Mitsuhiko, straight out of High School for his experience with chemicals.

They took their seats, silent as each one was lost in their own thoughts. They knew, probably better than the rest of their classmates, that people died all the time. It just seemed to happen a little to often around them.

"Didn't you used to go to go to the same elementary school as Shouko-san?" The Class President asked Ayumi.

Ayumi nodded. "We met her because she was rescuing kittens." Ayumi volunteered. "I'll bring my yearbooks tomorrow, you can see her back then."

"Thanks."

Ayumi nodded back, waving it off. The bell rang and there was a scramble for their seats before the teacher stepped inside.

+++

She brought her elementary school yearbooks the next day, Genta helpfully carrying her bag for her. She piled the books on her desk, the Class President flipping through them. A few of their classmates who had also gone to Beika Elementary gathered around, flipping through the books and chatting about former classmates. Who had moved away, who had died.

Genta frowned, catching her attention and she stepped away from the group. "Something wrong?" She whispered as he held their first grade yearbook, held open to their class, before Koyabashi-sensei had taken over the class.

"How many of them are still around?" He said, his voice quiet and rough.

"What?"

Genta pulled her a little farther away, pointing to various classmate photos on the page. "How many of our classmates..."

"No, no, I heard you." She took the book from him, frowning. b
The list continued, on and on. Over half of their classmates from their first year in elementary school were dead or missing, including Ai-chan and Conan.

"Just a second." She ducked into the crowd, borrowing the yearbook from their second year. She flipped to their class, finding some of the same smiling faces as were in the first book, some not. Some of the classmates from that year were no longer with them as well. She remembered one of them clearly, a kidnapping case gone horribly wrong.

"That's not normal." She whispered. Some deaths, okay. But this was abnormal, -highly- abnormal, even for Beika. Which she knew for statistical fact, was highly abnormal for the rest of the country.

"No." He shook his head.

"We need to talk to Megure-keibu." Ayumi closed the books. "Something is wrong."

+++

Megure-keibu was still where he had always been, Chief Inspector. He was happy where he was and did a good job at it. Shiratori-keibu had risen happily in the ranks, taking over Matsumoto's role as Superintendent, handling the politics of the job like a shark in the water. Shiratori-keibu struck a good balance between politics and his underlings interests in getting the job done.

Ayumi was anticipating sage advice, rock-hard conviction. She was not expecting their eyes to widen in shock as they realised the same thing that Genta had.

"That's not normal." Shiratori-keibu deadpanned.

"No." Mitsuhiko agreed, putting his mobile phone away after crunching some numbers. "It's statistically improbable as well."

Megure-keibu grunted. "Unless it's not an accident." He growled into his mustache, arms crossed as he glared at the yearbooks, the black boxes drawn around the missing and deceased. The pattern continued throughout their school years, to the current year. The numbers decreased the more recent it got, but there were an awful lot of black boxes. "Someone's killing them off on purpose."

One of Shiratori-keibu's eyebrows went up. "Serial killer?"

"In Beika?" Satou-san snorted as she walked passed, a cup of coffee in her hand. "Wouldn't be the first."

It was kind of scary, when put that way.

"The question would be..." Shiratori-keibu rubbed his chin. "Who is it and why are they targeting Beika Elementary?"

"Your class no less." Megure-keibu gave them a grave look. "You have gained some enemies-"

"But not enough to explain this." Ayumi tapped her finger on a page, inadvertently pointing to Conan's smiling face. "It's the first grade class especially. Why would anyone target that class specifically?" Some of the black boxes carried through until this past year, which meant that if they were dealing with a serial killer, they were waiting years to kill.

"Do you think-?" Megure-keibu shot Shiratori-keibu a significant look.

Shiratori-keibu shook his head. "We haven't seen hide nor hair of the mysterious organisation in years. We can check with the FBI though."

"Maybe get in touch with Kudo-kun, see how he's doing." Megure-keibu rubbed his chin.

"It -could- just be a series of accidents." Mitsuhiko pointed out.

"-Except it doesn't feel right." Genta finished up. They exchanged looks. Next stop, the most recent crime scene.

"We'll check things out on our end." Ayumi promised Megure-keibu with a smile to hide her discomfort as they gathered the books up and put them in the backpack. Genta took the bag from her and slung it over his shoulder. "And get back to you with what we find."

"Be careful." Shiratori-keibu stopped them. "If someone is targeting your old class..."

"That's what they've got me for." Genta assured him, half boast, half promise. They waved and promised to be careful as they headed out.

+++

The back alley didn't reveal much. It looked your standard crime scene, the tape still up to keep people from gawking and all three read it like they would a novel. Shouko had walked in from the other end, stopping by the dumpster where the box that had obviously once held kittens. The killer had approached her from the other side of the dumpster, they had talked, there was a scuffle.

A flash of blade, blood splattered on the wall as it cut her throat. There, she had fallen, clutching her neck in hopes of stopping the blood. Footprint where the killer had rifled through her bag, taken her small amount of cash before fleeing. There, small kitten paw prints as they had investigated her dying body.

Ayumi wondered what happened to the cats.

"This was a set-up." The words were heavy on her tongue. Someone had planned to kill her here, hence the kittens. Mitsuhiko and Genta nodded, their own faces grave, having come to the same conclusion.

"Which means the others were probably also set-ups." Mitsuhiko mused.

Genta punched the wall. "What kind of psycho does this?!" He demanded hotly. She rested a hand on his arm, feeling the tension inside, feeling him make the effort to relax. He eventually calmed down, looking at her with worried eyes. Mitsuhiko watched them, something dark in his expression that felt a lot like anger. She too was angry.

"We'll get them." She soothed, shooting Mitsuhiko a weak grin. "We'll catch them. It's what we do."

"Yeah." Genta agreed, slinging an arm around her shoulders. "Let's go track them down."

+++

Who ever it was, knew how to hide their trails. The knife was found in a nearby gutter, mixed in with the rubbish and washed clean from the recent storms. The footprints were impossible to follow once they left the alley. Ayumi almost felt suspicious of the footprints inside the alley, while they were free of blood, they were almost a little too easy to follow, with a distinctive shuffle. The person they were looking for was tall and skinny, with some sort of injury to their left leg. Right handed, from the slash on the neck.

Past that, they didn't have anything to go by. The crime scene was clean, not even a stray hair to be found. Which too, was suspicious.

They parted ways about dinner time, still having to eat and schoolwork to do. Genta walked her to her apartment building door, she kissing his lips and his rough cheek as he gave her a hug good night. "Sleep well." She whispered into his ear. "I love you."

"Love you too, Ayumi-chan." He whispered back, squeezeing her hand before he turned to head back to the Kojima Family Liquor Store. She watched him until she couldn't see him anymore before heading up stairs.

+++

The next morning, she woke up to a phone call that Genta was dead.

Her first reaction was stunned disbelief. She had just seen him the night before, kissed him goodnight. He couldn't be dead.

Satou-san met her at the door of her family's apartment, her eyes deep with sympathy. "No." Ayumi choked upon seeing the older woman, her role model still after all these years. "He couldn't be."

Satou-san held her while she sobbed, whispering the details that Takagi and the rest of the police force had uncovered. Genta had been at the train station this morning when someone had pushed him. He'd been hit by two trains express trains going in opposite directions, the station closed down while they attempted to clean up the huge smear that was the remains of his body.

They were still trying to track down who pushed him. That was the problem with too many witnesses, no one ever saw anything.

What he'd been doing at the train station that early was a mystery, since the ticket he'd had in his pocket wasn't for anywhere in Beika.

Ayumi spent the rest of the day home, crying as if her heart would break.

+++

The next day, she was dry of tears. The hurt was still there and achingly raw, but it wasn't crippling anymore, fuelled her rage and her drive to catch whoever was doing this.

Satou-san and Takagi-san were by her side as soon as she stepped inside the Metropolotian Police Headquarters, requesting to go through the files on her former classmates deaths. They didn't offer her any pity, or treated her like spun glass like the rest of the department did, for which she was quietly grateful.

There were tiny inconsistencies in some of the reports that caught her attention. The brakes on Sakamoto Takuma's bicycle had been tampered with, traces of acid eating through the cable. Funemoto Touji's parent's car had similarly been tampered with, the same chemical residue on the car's underside. Higashio Maria had traces of a sleeping agent in her blood that the original officers had deduced were from cold medicine.

Mitsuhiko arrived after school, going over her conclusions with his scientific eye, agreeing with her. There was a pattern there. The first murders had been distance, little things that caused fatal accidents, while the more recent deaths had been face to face. Shouko's throat had been cut. Genta had been pushed.

The killer had been escalating over the past ten years. So slowly and with such a variety in techniques that no one had even noticed that there was a killer at all.

Other cold cases involving children their age were opened up and examined to see if there were any tie-ins. Mitsuhiko studied those, dismissing most of them rapidly, adding a couple of them to the pile, including one that looked like a suicide, a girl having cut her wrists in the bathtub.

The case was given top priority in the Headquarters, the sheer amount of numbers and the insidiousness of it creating a buzz. It was also personal, Genta, Ayumi and Mitsuhiko had grown up with the men and women of the Metropolitan Police Force. There wasn't an officer who didn't know them.

They were going to get the killer and bring him or her to justice.

+++

The idea that it was someone in that first grade class was brought up and hashed about for several days. Of the original class, over half were dead, which narrowed it down considerably. Of the remaining children, some were in the area, some were not. People were tracked down as suspects, reports poured over, trying to get the pieces to fit.

A timeline was put up, with victims, cause of death, location and their dates. Ai-chan and Conan were put up and taken down, depending on who was staring at the board at the time. It didn't alter the lack pattern either way, it still didn't make sense.

Motive made no sense either. Money obviously wasn't it. Gender and relative age made no difference. The idea that someone was killing -children- made the case more repulsive than most.

Mitsuhiko was like a rock throughout it, calm and collected, analysing the data with a steadfast efficiency that Ayumi envied. It was almost like nothing about the case actually touched him, regardless that these were his friends and classmates they were talking about.

That detached calm churned Ayumi's gut as she looked over the files one more time, ignoring Satou-san's carefully dropped 'hints' that Ayumi pack up and head home for the night. Mitsuhiko smiled at Ayumi, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry about the serial killer." He said gravely. "He's not going to kill you too. I promise." There was something dark in the way he said the last part that made her gut churn.

"You promise?" She echoed, something breaking in her voice as things started finally shifting in her head, something building in her gut.

"Yes." He said sincerely, cupping her cheek in one warm palm. "I promise."

"Mitsuhiko..." She was aware of something warm sliding down her cheek, intermingling with his touch on her face. She felt kind of nauseous, something rolling uncomfortably around in her insides. "Why did you do it?"

Mitsuhiko was a genius with chemicals. He'd known which cases were the killer and which one wasn't. He was in their class. He was familiar with crime scenes, enough to make sure he didn't leave any traces behind.

She just couldn't figure out why he'd done it.

Mitsuhiko startled slightly, not removing his touch. "Do what?" He said, voice confused. Too confused. Too practised.

"Why did you kill them?" Her ears practically buzzed as something finally snapped inside of her as she shoved him away, rising from her chair, knocking it backwards. "WHY DID YOU KILL GENTA?!"

He stared at her with wide round eyes, his mouth a perfect oval as she glared at him, hands clenched into fists at her sides. She was distantly aware of everything coming to a halt around them, but it was unimportant.

And then he twitched. It was a small movement, starting at the corner of his mouth. And then he tilted his head back and started laughing. There was a high-pitched quality to it, one she had heard many times and equated to insanity.

"WHY?!"

"HE CALLED ME A PSYCHO!!" He roared back, his posture tall. "ME!"

"YOU KILLED THEM!" She shrieked. "Conan-kun taught you better than that!"

"DON'T SAY THAT NAME!" He screamed, his hair falling out of the mousse that usually held it out of his face as he sliced the air between them with a hand. "She died for him, trying to get the dosage right to cure him! An he couldn't even bother to make it to her funeral."

The idea that Mitsuhiko might be just a little bit unstable started to flicker through her mind. "Conan had a case!" She shot back.

"It was a BURGLARY." Mitsuhiko spat. "The police practically had the case wrapped up when he showed up. He chose grandstanding over Ai-kun!"

And then he'd promptly left with Ran-neechan, to America, where Mitsuhiko couldn't touch him. "And what about the others?" She growled. "What did they do?!"

"They made fun of Ai-kun!"

... Mitsuhiko loved Ai-kun, she remembered. Back when they were seven.

"So you KILLED them?!" She shrieked.

"WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO?!" He demanded.

"SOMETHING ELSE!" She waved her arms in the air as she screamed.

They stared at each other, both of them breathing hard, at an impasse.

A large thick hand clamped down on Mitsuhiko's shoulder, startling both of them. "Tsuburaya Mitsuhiko." Megure-keibu said gravely. "You're under arrest on multiple accounts of murder."

To Ayumi's shock, that seemed to pull Mitsuhiko together, turning him from this strange psycho into her old friend. He smiled politely at Megure-keibu. "Of course. I assume you want a statement as well."

"That would be appreciated." Megure-keibu said with a straight face as Takagi-san snapped the handcuffs on Mitsuhiko's wrists.

Mitsuhiko laughed, asking as if they were taking him to a tea party as they lead him away. "Took you long enough to figure it out." He smirked.

Ayumi collapsed in her chair, her heart in her throat. How had she not seen it?! It had been right in front of her face the entire time!

Satou-san put a hand on Ayumi's shoulder, offering her private support. "It's not you." She whispered. "He had us all fooled."

Somehow, that didn't make her feel better.

It didn't bring anyone back either.

+++

She visited Mitsuhiko once in jail. He looked surprisingly good for someone who was incarcerated. He laughed at her quiet inquiries, stating that this suited him just fine.

Mitsuhiko was quite happy to be Moriarty, The Prince of Crime, building his Empire from inside the jail.

Ayumi wasn't going to let him do that. She'd been fooled once, she was never going to be fooled again.

Where ever there was a Moriarty, there needed to be a Holmes.

And she was just the girl for the job.

-fin-

---

Amemiya Shouko - vol 49, file 506-507
Sakamoto Takuma and Higashio Maria - volume 53, file 548-549
Funemoto Touji - vol 53, file 553

-Idea came at the beginning of last month, musing about how the Shonen Tantei might grow up and remembering what little I was able to pick up the back story for Inspector Akechi from the Kindaichi Shōnen no Jikenbo, where his best friend was a killer when he was back in high school.
Mitsuhiko became the serial killer because he's the brightest of the three Shonen Tantei, INCREDIBLY smart for kid, but is constantly over-shown by Conan, who has ten years more experience than him, even though no one knows that.
And then the evil genius cliche came into play, because being over looked is something that a lot of geniuses have a very hard time dealing with. So the fic is really more about him, than Genta and Ayumi. ^^;;