Chapter Text
Sweat dripped from every pore of his body, and his eyes scanned the room around him. His clammy hands searched desperately for his gun, his knife, his anything that would help him defend against the man who was without a doubt, around the corner.
"What, are you afraid of me?" said a voice behind him, and he felt his heart drop.
He didn't want to turn around-- he couldn't turn around. He was frozen with fear, his eyes stuck wide.
Something cold pressed against his neck-- something that felt like metal. "I'm not one for going into battle," said the bored, boyish voice behind him. "It's really not my thing..."
"T-Then why are you doing this?" he stammered quietly, breathing so heavily that he thought that he would die.
The person behind him let out a strange, whiny, groaning sound. "Becuase the boss said that I have to, and if I don't listen to him, then I'll be out of a job...or probably killed." The voice said it in such an apathetic manner that the man's heart clenched harder.
"L-Let's talk this o-out... i-it's a misunderstanding...," he struggled to say. He raised his hands shakily. "Let's not be--"
"Hasty?" A figure stepped into the dark room, silhouetted by the moon shining through the window behind it. There was a click. "Sorry." The figure lowered its arm, and the metal of a silver handgun glinted in the light. "That's not really the Port Mafia's speed."
• • •
"Mm...this is no fun...," the boyish man whined as he watched his partner drag the recently-incapacitated man's body out of the room.
The partner sighed softly and lifted the body easily. Dragging it seemed to be wasting time to her, too, perhaps.
"Ranpo," she said, her voice calm, "would you start collecting the goods?"
"Nn...do I have to?"
"It would certainly help." She began to walk down the stairs.
He looked around the room. This was absolutely no fun. He could be back at headquarters, eating, sleeping....
He picked his gun up from beside himself and pouted at it. These things were too heavy and dangerous for his liking. Why'd the boss make him come here, anyway?
He uncrossed his legs and grumbled as his knees cried out. He hadn't moved in the past hour. His great detective work had led him to the right place even before the target itself even knew what the right place was, but his boss had, for some inexplicable reason, asked he himself to come and wait for him with his partner.
"I'm a detective," he whined, standing, "not a footsoldier."
Now, what was it that he needed to collect?
Oh, right. The guns that this man had stolen...
"Are you finished, Ranpo-san?" his partner said, and he looked up to see her in the doorway.
He shook his head, and she let out a small laugh. "Fine. I'll help you, then."
• • •
"The doc and Ranpo are back, sir," said the lanky teenager, smiling nervously.
The raven-haired man smiled beneath folded hands. "Good. Was their mission successful, then?"
"A-About that," the teen began, and the raven-haired man raised his eyebrows.
The door slammed open, and a pouty, boyish man stood in the doorway.
"Ah, Ranpo," said the black-haired man, lowering his gloved fingers to the table, "it went well?"
"Boss!" Ranpo whined, approaching the boss.
"R-Ranpo!" the teenaged boy whispered fearfully, reaching out to grab Ranpo as the short man walked past him.
"Why'd you send me on a field mission? I thought we had a deal!" Ranpo complained.
"Fufu," chuckled the boss, and he picked up the glass of red wine that rested to his right. "About you staying in? I thought we'd try something different for a change."
"Well, I don't like it! You owe me!" He crossed his arms.
"You'll have to talk to Kouyou about compensation," the boss said.
"Aw, but that's too much work!" he groused. "I just want some sweets from the shop down the street!"
"You have a salary for that," the boss said, swirling his wine, "or you could ask Atsushi to lend you his money."
The lanky teenager boy looked surprised. "M-Me?"
Ranpo turned to Atsushi. "Atsushi, I want five chocolate--"
The boss chuckled from behind his heavy desk. "I was joking-- I'll have Chuuya go 'kindly ask' the clerk for some candy for you, if you'd like."
Ranpo let out a sound of excitement, and Atsushi let out a breath of relief.
"You may go, Atsushi," the boss said, and the teenager gave a nod and headed out of the door.
• • •
"Ranpo's rather...formidable," Atsushi said quietly, poking at his omelet.
"Why do you say that?" asked his red-haired peer, who struggled to detach his sister from himself long enough to eat his bland meal of white rice.
"Well, for one, he talks to Mori-sama as if he's a sibling or something." Atsushi cut off a bite of the omelet and politely ate it off of his fork. He swallowed before continuing. "And it seems like he can get him to do whatever he asks."
"He can?" The redhaired friend gave his sister a look that read not right now, and she pouted and moved to eat her own meal. "When did you see him do that?"
Atsushi, between the occasional bite of his warm omelet, retold the event that had transpired when he'd gone to see his boss, and his friend looked rather unsurprised.
Atsushi's friend took a bite of his rice. "Ranpo has always been like that. He's not afraid of anything or anyone. He's like Kenji."
"That...doesn't make you weirded out or anything, Tanizaki?" Atsushi raised an eyebrow.
Tanizaki shrugged. "You get used to it after a while."
"He complains too much when he's not got his glasses on, and he gets too cocky when he has them on," Tanizaki's sister huffed. "It's kind of strange-- kinda scary."
"Even scarier when you're on the opposite side of him." Tanizaki shuddered.
• • •
Why Mori had let Ranpo have his own room was anyone's guess.
The lights were off, and the midday sun dimmed and brightened every so often beyond the large, stained glass window patterned with curved shapes that tangled with each other to their destinations on the edges of the window.
Multi-colored wrappers littered the hardwood floor of the cluttered, small place. M&Ms had been spilled all over the floor and would, no doubt, cause the next person to enter to get a nice surprise crushed beneath their feet. Soggy sucker sticks were piled up beside a small desk to the side of the full-sized bed, currently unmade and holding a crosslegged Ranpo devouring a bag of chocolate eggs.
A knock came at the door, and he continued to munch away at his chocolates. If he ignored them long enough, they'd go away.
They knocked again.
And again.
The door opened a slit. "Ranpo?" The voice was that of Doctor Yosano, his partner in the previous task.
"What now?" Ranpo whined.
The doctor poked her head in. She smiled slightly. "Mori wants to see you."
He shoved another chocolate in his mouth.
A larger smile creeped onto her mouth. "He said to tell you that there's another egg that needs cracking," she said.
• • •
Her nails were gone, she had nearly drowned four times, and now, an iron rod so hot that it cast red light onto the face of the woman torturing her.
"Please! Please! Stop! Stop!" the woman on table begged.
"Will you talk?" asked the woman holding the rod.
"Yes! Yes, I swear!" said tortured woman. Her eyes darted between the dark figure sitting crosslegged on the table beside her and the woman backlit by a fireplace who now held the iron rod. "I'll talk, I swear! Let me be! Don't hurt me any more!" Tears rolled down from her eyes like waterfalls, and she tugged frantically at her iron restraints. "I can't take any more of this!"
"Talk, then," the woman holding the rod demanded.
Words spilled from the prisoner on the table's mouth. The words were frantic, like the poor rat knew that these words would save her life.
There was a moment of stillness after she was done, and the only noise were the woman's stifled gasps through her tears.
Finally, someone spoke. "Yosano," the figure sitting on the table sounded like he was speaking through a smile. "She was lying."