Chapter Text
It all happened so quick. One moment Kaito had been running for his life, and now he was in this damned hole.
Darkness surrounded him. All except for the phosphenes when he closed his eyes briefly to stiffle off the dots in his vision. He didn't think he had a concussion but he was still a little out of it.
The sharp smell of wet dirt overwhelmed him. It unfortunately wasn’t enough to cancel out the pain from his ankle, or the general pulsating feeling from falling and absorbing the weight of two people. His chin felt wetter than if there was just dirt. He suspected he might have caught a rock on the way down.
He couldn’t even reach a hand to check for blood, as both his arms were pinned. One was under his own body, and the other was stuck being crushed by the potential corpse on top of him. Although if Kaito had survived and even acted as a cushion for Snake’s impact the bastard was probably fine.
Kaito’s life felt like a cutaway gag, and even he had to try and recount how he got into this mess.
Tonight’s heist wasn’t even his idea of a good time. It had actually been organized by a rich old guy who wanted to show off his fancy mansion in the woods and its brand new security system. To get that attention, he had made a public challenge to Kaitou KID and showed off video of a very shiny, very old gem.
Kaito may not have been exactly required to attend but it did save him the time and trouble of looking for a target by himself, or having Jii do it, which wasn’t ideal when Jii had a business to run.
At least college was a lot more free with attendance then high school was. Since he aced every test and almost every assignment the teachers didn’t have much room to complain. It gave him a lot more free time to research his targets so he actually had to do less heists. Kaito did still like being a showman, but heists took a lot of time to prepare for and properly execute.
It felt better to preform less frequent but more grand performances. Less opportunity for him to be caught was also a factor in the change.
So this heist was an outliner for him nowadays. Nonetheless, Kaito had a problem with a secluded mansion in the past that he wasn’t really wanting a repeat of. Even without an apparent dark past of mass murder, it was such an obvious risk that Kaito would have ignored it. If not for how the gem he had been challenged to steal was boasted as a doublet, and three years into his career as Kaitou KID, even any small lead on Pandora was worth checking out.
It turned out to be a good choice in the end because Snake and part of his team had shown up there. They didn't usually do that anymore unless they thought there was a chance of it being Pandora too. Or maybe if it was a slow day in the crime syndiate office. Kaito wasn't sure.
It should have been easy. It was only Snake and two others. Either because even they didn't think it was the one, and it really was a slow day, or the seclusion would make it impractical to bring all the pet goons there for their daily walk. The other present members of the syndicate tonight were known to Kaito as Lutea, usually a sniper but on the ground today with a handgun, and Falcon, who was Snake’s partner in crime since a year into Kaito’s career as KID.
Being up against three enemies plus the task force should have made this a piece of cake. The so-called security system had been laughable. And the heist itself had gone well. The gem sat in his pocket at this very moment. It would have been a perfectly average day for the hero of this story, him, if the escape had gone as well as the crime had.
The first red flag he had ignored tonight was that it was a little windy. Not a problem if his hang glider was in perfect working order. The second mistake was failing to see in advance if that demon child was on the clock tonight.
Was it okay to make clock jokes that didn’t contain Saguru? It sounded wrong.
Either way, the shinigami had been there, and while nobody had died, it had ended with his glider on the receiving end of a soccer ball. He didn’t trust it in this weather, so he had taken off on foot. Which is when he encountered the three stooges and their guns again.
Not one to like being shot, Kaito had darted off in the other direction after a brief taunting session. If he could make it to the backpack he’d left nearby he had one of Aoko’s old high school uniforms in there to use as an emergency disguise and if he made to the road he had a high chance of getting picked up by someone only prepared for an ‘poor innocent high school girl’
It was a cold night and with all the other exercise he had gotten in today, his body was starting to remind him he was human. His shoulder, which had never set right after the Nightmare incident, was starting to ache just when Snake reappeared out of the shadows from a side he wasn’t looking for. Like a very unpunctual premonition.
Kaito had turned to run, and his foot had caught on a tree root, just as Snake had tackled him. Kaito didn't know if it was broken now, but it did seriously hurt.
From there he could gather from context that they had fallen into some pit hidden by darkness and underbrush.
With a groan, Snake let Kaito know he was still alive and slightly shifted off of him, using a hand that caught a bit on Kaito’s hair to push himself up.
It was going to be a long night, wasn't it.