Pale-faced Ai grabbed Yimi. "Wait. Where are you going?"
"To be, a detective." Yimi suddenly remembered something else and changed direction, heading toward Kudo Shinichi, who had not noticed what was happening.
Ai looked at her in confusion. "What are you doing now?"
"Find him, make him take the needle," Yimi answered.
She had forgotten to bring her Jinchuriki. She needed to drag Kudo Shinichi over so he could take the needle.
"You could use anybody for that... No, investigating cases is the police's responsibility. It has nothing to do with us." Ai clutched Yimi's clothes and instinctively hid behind her as she spoke.
Then she suddenly remembered that she currently looked exactly like Conan. There was no way someone from the Organization could recognize her.
Compared to her, Kudo Shinichi—the person who was supposed to be confirmed dead—was the one in real danger. She had to go warn him.
Ai hurried over to Kudo Shinichi, forcing the two people who had finally worked up the mood to separate at once.
"Conan!" Ran smiled awkwardly. "How did you get here? Did you come alone?"
Alone?
Ai turned around and discovered that Yimi had already disappeared at astonishing speed.
She had been in such a hurry that she forgot to explain things to the kid...
...
The victim was already dead. Yimi's luck was still there, but this time what she stumbled upon was naturally only the culprit cleaning up after the crime.
Around the corner by the restroom, she saw a man throw a handgun into a garbage chute built into the wall.
Having learned from what happened before, Yimi cautiously walked two steps closer, looked up at him, and asked, "Why did you, kill someone?"
"!" Ooba spun around so violently that his pupils nearly blew wide apart.
Someone saw me! But the lighting is this bad...
"What nonsense are you spouting, you little brat?!" Ooba roared at the little girl in front of him without the slightest courtesy, no matter how pitifully cute she looked.
At the same time, he guiltily glanced toward the women's restroom. That woman... the daughter of that bastard president, whom he had managed to win over, could give him the perfect alibi.
She was just a kid under ten. She probably did not even understand what she herself was saying...
"You just, threw the gun in there." Yimi pointed at the garbage chute, very dissatisfied with his attitude. "Why did you, kill someone?"
Ooba was so shocked that even his chronic congestion seemed to clear up twice over. Worse, he could hear high heels approaching from inside the women's restroom.
He clearly did not possess pure Beika blood. Faced with a situation like this, he somehow failed to invent an even better exonerating scheme within three seconds. Plenty of thoughts did flash through his mind, though, including picking the little girl up and throwing her into the garbage chute too.
Obviously that was not realistic. Besides, he had killed that man for revenge. He was not about to go that far.
In his panic, he could not even put on a properly bewildered, innocent expression. All he could do was raise a fist to scare her. "Stop talking nonsense here and get lost. You hear me?"
His movement was a little too big, and the lighting was already extremely dark. His elbow accidentally struck the little girl on the head, and because it had been completely unintentional, he had not held back his strength at all.
Ooba's heart sank. If the little girl sat down and started bawling, there was no way he, the murderer, could hurry up and clear himself. In truth, from the moment this kid saw him throw away the gun, he had no idea how he was supposed to clear himself anyway.
But what happened next surprised him even more. The little girl who had taken an elbow to the head did not make a sound. She simply glared and punched him in the stomach in retaliation.
"Gah!"
Even a little girl's punch hurt badly when it landed there. He clutched his stomach and bent over.
"Ooba-san, where did this horrible brat come from?!" A woman walked out, glaring angrily at Yimi, then reached over to rub Ooba's stomach for him.
Yimi wore a sulky little frown, tucked her little hands away, and walked off.
That man's attitude was terrible. He even hit the kitty. She was not going to ask him why he killed anyone anymore.
At the same time, outside the restaurant, Gin stubbed out his cigarette and seemed to sense something. He glanced back toward the building behind him, but saw nothing.
"Boss, that Bourbon..." His new underling started to ask something, only for Gin to raise a hand and stop him.
The setting was inconvenient for drawing a gun. Otherwise, with Gin's personality, stopping someone from talking usually meant pointing a muzzle at their forehead first.
Yet before Gin could explain, the underling suddenly felt as though someone had smashed an elbow into his skull. He staggered sideways, happened to hit the pillar behind him, and passed out cold.
"?"
Gin looked around and saw nothing unusual. He clicked his tongue, almost wishing he could put another bullet through the idiot's forehead himself.
One interruption and the guy rammed himself into a wall. Useless. Keeping him alive only wasted air and got in the way. The Organization was not some place for nobodies to throw princess tantrums.
"..."
Naturally, Gin was not going to settle the man somewhere comfortably or gently carry him back to the car. After dealing with the newcomer, he headed toward the agreed meeting place, only to notice with exceptional sharpness that police cars were approaching.
Had the operation been exposed? No. If the police were coming for the Organization, they would not be this blatant about it—or bring so few officers.
"Meow..." Yimi trudged out of the restaurant in a sulk.
She wanted to go back and use Kudo Shinichi as her Jinchuriki, but after Ai's warning, he had already slipped away. Yimi had completely missed him.
From a distance, Yimi could see that the police seemed to be arriving.
Her ears twitched. She remembered Ai saying that anybody would do for the needle, but every time she had used it on someone else before, she had still failed to complete the mission.
Hmm... Thinking about it, there was only one person she had ever caught while doing the entire voice performance herself. That man had even set a fire and ended up getting killed by her before he could ever make it to the police.
Yimi looked left and right for a randomly selected lucky passerby. The kitty had absurdly high luck, after all... Of course, there was nobody at the entrance right now except Gin, who stood in the shadows frowning toward the police cars. The restaurant's light did not reach where he stood, but that did not make him any less obvious to a cat's eyes.
The kitty raised Conan's Anesthetic Watch. It had already fired one shot, but the reason Conan had left it at the Professor's place was because the Professor had been expanding its magazine. It had only just been finished when Yimi took it away.
The anesthetic needle sank into Gin's neck—the neck of a vicious-looking man who practically radiated killing intent.
...
Bourbon had received an amusing assignment. Apparently Gin had been acting abnormally lately and was suspected of repeatedly changing partners by killing them, so the higher-ups wanted loyal, information-savvy Bourbon to come check whether Gin had developed some kind of manic disorder.
The subtext was simple: Something's wrong with this guy. Go probe him.
It was the funniest order Bourbon had ever heard. He even wondered whether his identity as an undercover agent for Japan's Public Security Bureau had been exposed, and whether the Organization had arranged this meeting so Gin could shoot him.
Even if Gin really did have a problem, he would never expose himself in a dump like this. Besides, the man was practically the Organization's second-in-command.
Gin frequently dealt with traitors or internal members who needed silencing anyway. Killing one or two partners was hardly abnormal for him. Granted, having three die within a few short days did look suspicious, especially when two died on the same day.
Either way, Bourbon had no reason to refuse the assignment, though he would have preferred something involving Akai Shuichi.
So after arriving in Tokyo, he planned to use an intelligence handoff as an excuse to meet Gin. On his way to the rendezvous, however, he found Gin's new partner lying dead on the ground. Since intelligence was his specialty, Bourbon had already investigated the man.
Bourbon narrowed his eyes and gave a cold laugh.
Dead already? Could there actually be something wrong with Gin?
In Bourbon's eyes, nobody in the entire Organization was more of a dyed-in-the-wool criminal than Gin.
He continued forward cautiously. The more he looked at the situation, the more it felt like some setup the Organization had prepared specifically for him, and he began regretting not bringing people to block off the area.
He had expected Gin to be waiting at the agreed corner with a gun in hand. Instead, he spotted him directly along the way.
And Gin was not alone. A whole group of police officers surrounded him.
"I already know who the culprit is, Officer." Gin's voice.
He's still this polite?