Chapter Text
There’s a little shadow that haunts the edge of Takagi’s vision. Another murder case, three suspects, fourth one this month, a simple pattern in things absolutely should not be anywhere common enough to induce anything close to a sample size. He meet his eyes with the shadow. It smiles back at him, flickering and not, before ducking off into a different corner. The murder weapon was a piano wire, pointed out the little shadow.
Sleeping Kogoro cleans up the case just as always, except for the times he doesn’t.
***
Unfurling back the ancient timeline in dusty file cabinets and words of passing mouths, Edogawa Conan’s permanent integration into the department was as swift as it was silent. There was no fanfare, no telltale, unpretentiously a little kid came living with an old detective, the family got tangled in a couple of cases, and suddenly the kid was everywhere he went.
It was a disorienting sight at first, to have a tiny kid seemingly fitting in so easily at such a grizzly murder site, and it should still be under all account, but Takagi is sure he still had a strong sense of morals, it’s just that at some point down the mangled pipeline, the sight has lost its potency. Some days he found himself at ease at the sight of the little cowlick running underfoot at the scene, and the part of him that functions as his common sense dies a little bit every time.
He vaguely remembers from Megure there was another kid like this, older, certainly. And more recently the strange little collection that is the Detective Boys, and the new girl Takagi was almost convinced belonged in the same cohort as Conan. Almost, because despite the cold knife-edge sharp maturity, there's never characteristically unchildlike behavior followed up by awkward coverups. He should’ve known Conan is the only one. There are always children and things that shouldn't belong in a crime scene that ended up in one. Conan waved him over to ask him to fetch something on Kogoro’s behalf. There are anyway. Time runs in a circle on a twelve hour clock.
Normalcy should never be the word for it, he thinks, but it is close. Closer than what they should be comfortable with.
Then the kid proceeded to launch himself over three lanes of active traffic on a death trap of a skateboard far over the speed limit of any city road that isn’t a highway, which the stunt alone must’ve broken at least 10 traffic laws and about 20 more they haven’t invented yet. Not that there was time to wrestle with the implications when everyone was bombshelled with intelligence of a terrorist bombing happening that same evening. And if both Division 1 and 3 decided to let some things slide with a certain key witness afterward, then no one mentioned it.
Then again, the kid is slippery when he wants to— Takagi wished it was more surprising to learn that— and it just felt wrong to track down a 7 year old to give him a ticket for speeding on a skateboard , or something like that according to Yumi.
By the seventh time it happened Yumi exploded.
Right into a milling Division 1 while everyone was on break, busted in a whirlwind of disheveled hair and exasperation to slap down an A3 piece of printing paper, with enough force to have every head in the department swiveling toward– his table.
“Um– “
“I've had enough.” Yumi declared.
Shiratori, surprisingly, was the first to snap out of the shock, vaguely gesturing at the sheet of paper.
“Yumi-san, what is– this, exactly?”
“Betting pool.”
What
“What?” Takagi more so coughed out the words than said it.
“I want to know what on Earth is that little demon spawn. So I'm making it a betting pool.” She has already started pulling out markers and post-it notes from under his cabinets, Takagi duly noted. Though, even as a small crowd began forming around his desk, he'd be damned if he said he's not the least interested. Not quite leaving his seat, the detective tried to awkwardly turn his head to look at the loopy, quick sprawlings in big letters at the top of the page, before their resident patrol officer stepped back with a satisfactory click.
“What the hell is that kid.” Chiba read the words carefully aloud, confusion bled into his voice. In a way, it sure did translate the three bright red question marks following the headline.
“Yep!” Yumi chirped back enthusiastically. Somewhere next to him, he could hear Sato soft snicker at the antics, and by that point, it'd be a herculean task for him to fight off the smile that had taken over his face. After a moment of consideration, Yumi added in smaller text, ‘Sobriety not recommended’.
Shiratori raised his finger and got not quite half a syllable out before getting shushed by a Sharpie point blank at his face. Takagi almost felt bad for him when Yumi, while still maintaining perfect eye contact, wrote down an extra ‘that means you Shiratori’.
“Right. So as the creator of this so-called betting pool, what would be your first bet Miss Yumi?” Sato spoke up beside him with arms crossed over her chest, clearly amused. Unfortunately to the sanity of everyone else, the patrol officer took up the challenge in full force.
“Well, just because you asked oh great Miwako, my bet is on–!”
She slapped down a yellow note, the first of many in the future, scrawled on top a singular word,
‘Isekai’
“That's a horrible guess.”
Oh good god
Their straight-laced colleague emerged from the crowd calmly like a death omen, and both pairs of eyes immediately locked onto their assailant.
“Your answer lacks logical reasoning or common sense, and is based entirely on a relatively new concept introduced in anime as far as I am concerned. Maybe reincarnation would be better in its stead, even.”
Yumi looked like she was about to explode, but she held it back not without great effort. Upon flourishing her hand, she returned fire,
“I think what that little brat can do on a skateboard far defies any form of logic that belonged in this feeble realm of existence. But alas, if my idea is indeed so horrific then what might yours be then genius?”
Still keeping his perfect posture, Shiratori picked up a similar slip and in clean precise black ink strokes, put down ‘prodigy kid with a penchant for detective work’; A sincerely insipid answer only by him. The collective groaning of multiple peers along with Yumi’s devastated sound did not deter him from putting it on the board.
Sato audibly chuckled this time. Taking a sticky note from her table—blue, Takagi remembered—she wrote down ‘Changeling’ with an odd smile in her eyes, a rare one that he would never mistake with anything else even if he tried. It is not a good one.
Sato caught him staring the millisecond he got distracted, because she is anything if not sharp. Feeling the embarrassment crawling up his face at record speed, he tried to divert her attention
“A-ah Sato-san—” She cut off his rambling with a mischievous look, despite him clearly floundering. Execution by means of jealous male colleagues shall wait another day for dear Takagi.
“Oh well how do I explain this?” Sato looked up to the ceiling in a mock thoughtful look. “Changeling, such as in Irish or Scottish legends, are human-like fae left in place of stolen children. They can be identified by a vast level of intelligence and uncanny insights, and may display unusual behaviors when thought to be alone. That and a couple more that tend to vary culture by culture.”
She hummed lightly as she placed her answer down, “Pretty on the nose don’t you think?” “Of-of course” Takagi managed. The female detective turned to everyone in the room.
“Really, I think it'd be more interesting if we do funny answers only.”
Voices murmured throughout the room immediately, discussing answers and opinions and everything in between. Yumi didn't miss a beat to rub it at Shiratori’s face. Soon, little notes of different shades, in various ink colors, line thickness and writing styles populated the white sheet of paper; crowded in where groups placed their own little bets and spread out where people played on their own. Ideas now ranged from ‘case magnet’, ‘Worst blessing ever’ to ‘hired actor for the strangest prank’, people laughing and pointing where someone accidentally made another duplicate the third time in a row.
Maybe it wasn’t so astonishing as it was inevitable that things got to this point. An unstoppable force meets a very much moveable law enforcement agency only by circumstances. Megure's loud cough sent everyone scurrying sheepishly back to their stations— This, this is the circumstance. His boss didn't miss sending a disapproving frown towards his direction. Truly.