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“Build–” a massive Faraday cage and EMP all the rest, Shiho starts to say, edges of her voice sharpening preemptively in dissatisfaction at the brute force of that solution, but Kudo is already shaking his head.
“Doesn’t work for long enough, and it wasn’t worth the cost.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Which was?”
Kudo gives her a grin, bitter in its dryness. “To be fair, you did warn Hattori that the shielding on his wingpack might fail if he pulled any of his crazier stunts, but we didn’t exactly have time to clear the field of civilians, either.”
Shiho blocks out the associated imagination of everything that too-mild statement implies, and exhales frustration. “Very constructive of you, Kudo-kun. What are you expecting me to do, apart from listening to how everything I’ve tried – will try – has failed?”
He only dips his head in silent acknowledgment of that questioning, and it’s the lack of sarcasm about how she’s usually the pessimistic one that finally convinces the last bit of skepticism left in her, more than anything else this bizarre afternoon since Kudo stumbled over nothing midway through their strategy meeting, blinked, then dragged her away from the others and into her lab without another word.
She can hardly be faulted for the doubt, though; even amidst all the concentrated weirdness they’ve dealt so far, an endlessly-resetting timeloop is really pushing it.
And of course Kudo Shinichi has to be the linchpin of it.
Shiho isn’t even that kind of physicist by specialty, and she still has to admit that it’d be a fascinating study, if not for the inconvenient fact of also being in the middle of the trickiest alien invasion they’ve had in years.
(It’s a thought she’s sure her once-upon-a-timeline selves have also had, though that in turn brings the chill of another possibility: they haven’t had any indication of time distortions in the city, just every other kind of electronic havoc that she’s been trying to corral. There’s every possibility that the originator of this circularity in time isn’t this wave of invaders but instead–
Or it could of course be neither causation nor correlation, just mere coincidence, but the universe has rarely been so benevolent where she’s concerned.)
Kudo’s voice is half-absent when he speaks next. Mechanical, almost. “I’m not dismissing anything out of hand – you’ve had some ideas each time, afterwards, at least – ”
At least when she’d survived long enough to communicate them to him, Shiho reads in the way the rest of his words fall away as he pulls himself upright, turning to her with something that rings hollow in a way he hadn’t looked even after travelling forward decades in the conventional way from everything and everyone he’d ever known. “I’ll help. Just do me a favour?”
She shakes herself from thoughts about the toll such repetitions would’ve taken on any non-enhanced human body (what it means – how much time it means that she can see the shadows of it now, even for him) and spares an eyeroll in his direction. “Time resetting itself doesn’t overwrite whatever favours you already asked every other version of me, you know. Are you quite certain you want to owe me that much?”
It’s an offhand comment, what with most of her mind occupied with the problem at hand, but still Shiho is surprised at the faint laugh it gets in response; might even have mistaken it as genuine, if not for everything that’d come before. “If you manage to solve it this time – promise me you’ll get Ran out safe, no matter what?”
She can’t help stopping to scrutinise him for a moment. “This really isn’t the first time you’ve asked me this.”
He doesn’t say anything, only shrugs, but if Shiho were a betting person (she’s not; it’s unscientific and a misuse of probability) she would’ve placed a considerable sum on the certainty that Kudo Shinichi’s faith in his ability to get Mouri Ran out of any situation they’re in will always be unshakeable.
It’s unpleasantly jarring, to be proven wrong. She channels it into the flick of her hand, holograms springing to life at the gesture. “Then what are you repeating yourself for? Just be prepared to pay up when I succeed. With compound interest,” she specifies for good measure.
Kudo seems unconcerned by that as he lets himself be shooed out of the way. “Thanks, Miyano.”
(“Shut up and go find a corner to reflect on your bad karma.”
“Thought you didn’t believe in that stuff?”
“You tempt me to consider otherwise,” she mutters darkly under her breath, but doesn’t actually chase him out of the lab entirely. It’s just – in the most literal sense – another day of trying to pull a minor miracle in insufficient time, after all.)