So. New story? I had a plotbunny. It escaped the hutch and ran rampant. I tried to corral it, really I did, but...

(Also, fanfiction. Does this count as a disclaimer?)

(Not) Supernatural

(1)
Vampire

Nakamori growled from where he—along with half of the Taskforce members that had been called for duty this heist—were hanging in a net five feet off the floor in a tangle of limbs and resigned sighs. He couldn't get enough air for a proper shout, half-squished by one of the bulkier (as in tank-like) members of his force who was mostly on top of him.

Damn thief.

Kid was, dare he say it, ecstatic. Kudo Shinichi had shown up for the first time in four years for the actual chase, after that ridiculous flyby at the Ekoda Clock Tower. (Sure the boy had shown up a few other times, but those were for more dangerous criminals using Kid or Kid's heists as cover.) Not only that, but the boy had pointed out the thief with a thirty second glance around the room and a smirk that looked entirely too Kid-like for Nakamori's comfort.

He dropped the soccer ball he'd brought with him (which had started out as a 'what the hell' moment when Nakamori had first spotted the detective) and kicked it at a seemingly random Taskforce member, at least as accurately as that little Kid Killer cousin of his. Well, Edogawa had to have learned it somewhere, he supposed.

Kid had yelped, dived sideways, and ditched the disguise in a puff of pink smoke that knocked out every real Taskforce member within eight meters.

The chase had begun.

It ended with Hakuba Saguru duct-taped to the wall, Nakamori and his fellow unfortunates hanging from the ceiling, and the rest of the force scattered in varying states of color and consciousness. All those still awake were taped to something, florescent pink clashingly bright against riot gear.

Kudo was the only one both conscious and free, and he dropped to one knee to touch his heel in a move that seemed oddly practiced. Come to think, he'd seen Edogawa make that gesture—some kind of habitual luck ritual? The kid had packed a mean kick after every time he did it. But Kudo didn't have anything to kick…

Kid backed up, eyes wide and smile turning very nervous despite the obvious lack of projectiles, "Now, Meitantei, no need to be hasty—"

"After all the times you've used me as a disguise and gotten me in trouble with Ran?" Kudo smirked, reminiscent of a shark with a very cornered fish, "I do believe this qualifies as payback, Kid."

Nakamori wasn't sure what happened, but there was a hiss as Kudo stood and suddenly he was kicking something that he certainly hadn't had before and Kid flattened himself as low as he could while the something hit the stone wall behind him with a resounding crack.

Chunks of granite fell to the floor, a spherical indent centered in the middle of spiderwebbing cracks that spilled smaller chips and dust down the wall.

Kudo made an interested sound, eyeing the damage that had everyone in the room but himself stunned utterly silent, because a rapidly deflating soccer ball flopped out of the indent.

Kudo had just broken a granite wall by kicking a soccer ball at it, what the actual hell?

"It seems I need to be more careful," Kudo mused, walking around the still-prone and very wide-eyed Kid to run a finger across one of the cracks, rubbing the grey powder between his fingers. "I believe I haven't gotten used to the… differences yet. And as I don't actually want to kill you, Kaitou Kid-san, perhaps I shouldn't be coming to your heists for a few more weeks, hm?"

Kudo had been missing—no, not missing, working undercover—for nearly four years. After his return, he'd acknowledged being part of the takedown of a multi-national criminal organization, which had both media and police trying to watch his every move.

Two weeks ago, he'd gone legitimately missing, and Mouri Ran had filed a report.

He'd turned up two days later, pale, shaking, and claiming to not remember anything. He'd refused hospital treatment, but allowed himself to be checked over by an Araide Tomoaki, who had determined him to be somewhat hypovolemic—not enough to require a transfusion—but otherwise reasonably healthy.

Put together with what had just happened, it sounded like something out of a Western horror story.

"R-right," Kid stood up cautiously, the stutter noticeable as he took three steps back towards the windows.

Kudo's head whipped towards him just as he lifted one fist, and the detective's expression went startlingly sharp as he lunged, "Kid! Down!"

Smoke and shattering glass, quickly followed by Kid's voice: "Meitantei!"

A cough, worryingly wet. "Get out of here, Kid! It's you they're shooting at!"

"Meitantei-" protesting and worried. Kid didn't worry without cause. Rarely even with it—

The smoke was still too thick to see through, and Nakamori couldn't help but struggle against the netting. Shooting plus glass-shatter plus Kid-worry meant Kudo had been hit. Wet cough meant hit bad. "Call backup and an ambulance!" he snarled upwards, hoping at least one of those still awake could reach a phone.

Kudo snarled at nearly the same time, a terrifying sound with the bubbling wetness to it. "There are too many people in line with the window! Someone else will get hit next time! Go!"

A curse and a gust of wind, thinning the smoke enough for Nakamori to make out the figure kneeling, one hand pressed against his chest. Not enough to see how bad, but 'chest' and 'cough' meant at least a nicked lung, if not outright perforated.

Another cough, and Kudo turned his head to spit as the smoke continued to clear, the lurid red obvious in the glare of the overheads. He forced himself to his feet, unsteady but not as much so as Nakamori would have expected. "Ow," the detective grumbled, a dark splotch across the back of his thin summer jacket. Center-right, and definite lung-shot.

Nakamori felt cold despite the bodies crushed against his by tight webbing as Kudo turned, one hand pressing against a slow-spreading blood splotch on the front of his chest while he wiped at the blood trickling from the corner of his mouth with the other, "Don't call an ambulance," he countered, eyes on Hakuba, whom Nakamori could see had managed to work an arm free of tape to get at his phone. "Not a good idea, believe me. I'll call my own little vampire scientist, thanks."

Not the word Nakamori had wanted to hear, because suddenly the supernatural wasn't looking quite so unreal. Several of the others made little alarmed sounds.

Kudo shook his head and stumbled over to a pillar, steps growing steadier with each meter passed, then tugged something and the net was lowered surprisingly gently to the floor. "Sniper's long gone," Kudo added tiredly, coughing again before spitting out another mouthful of blood. A breath, less wet, and he continued. "Sub-faction from the group I helped pin. I should have known Snake and the ones he managed to get out wouldn't give up just because their employers got taken down."

Nakamori didn't know what to say and Hakuba made a hesitant sound, "Kudo-san?"

"Mm. I'll be fine, Hakuba-san. Bullet was through-and-through—and I'd prefer if no doctors got their hands on my blood, Keibu-san. Treat it as though it holds… let's go with the HIV virus, for comparable level of relative danger. It's not something that should be spread around."

Erk, was about the only thought he could get working.

"Are you a vampire?"

Nakamori didn't know who'd asked that. Nakamori didn't want to know who'd asked that. "Don't answer that," he snapped. "Kudo, I don't know or care what the hell is going on with you, but if you have any kind of condition that makes you dangerous and fast-healing, damn well keep it to yourself."

Kudo raised an eyebrow at him, a hint of amusement behind the gesture. "Of course, Keibu-san. The world needs not to know, after all."

Nakamori shuddered.

xxxx

In point of fact, Kudo Shinichi was not a vampire. No, it was an interesting and unexpected side-effect to having the virulent poison APTX 4869 introduced into his system followed by the antidote to said virulent poison. His healing rate had been supercharged. Cell division speed had been increased by almost a power of three around injured tissue—not tripled, but a power of three.

Haibara had been running tests ever since that little tidbit had shown up. They'd found out by accident and reluctantly let Araide know about a poison/antidote combination with a possibly fortunate, possibly unfortunate side effect, though not the actual effect that the poison had on him (or Haibara). Haibara had opted not to take the antidote, and was thus free of antidote side-effects.

As for the 'accident'…

Well, he hadn't been missing for two days by choice. His luck, as usual, had him happening on a crime—this time in planning rather than just passed—and he'd taken four bullets; two to his chest, one each to the abdomen and thigh. He'd been sure he was going to die, but he'd woken up eighteen hours later still alive and in significantly less pain than he should have been.

It took him a few minutes to figure out what was happening, but his phone had been smashed and while he'd been in less pain, he still wasn't going to be going anywhere at that moment. They'd dumped him in a forest, but hadn't gone through his things. Which was good, because he'd needed the pocket knife to dig the bullet out of his thigh. Some painful checking had proved the other three had gone through entirely, and the fact that he seriously looked like he'd been healing—untreated, but healing—for weeks had him more than a little concerned about hospitals.

When he'd stumbled out of the forest, the clothes he'd been wearing buried and his spare set (because it paid to have a spare set, with his luck) badly scruffed but not bloody, he'd been woozy and tired and distinctively not dead.

The bullets that had gone through his chest that time had been lung-shots, too (thankfully same side, and he didn't drown), so he wasn't all that concerned about dropping dead on the way home. Hell, he was even still standing.

Although he needed to watch the power on his Shinichi-sized Agasa-tampered shoes. If they could get child-sized legs to crack concrete at higher powers, it made sense that even using relatively low power would have the adult-sized Shinichi's kicks even more deadly. Which was why he'd aimed to miss, actually, because he hadn't wanted to hit Kid as much as scare him.

Still, the fact that he was more-or-less fine after having been shot in the lung and had kicked a piece of non-violent sports equipment hard enough to partially crush granite… Okay, yeah, he could see where the man who'd asked had come up with 'vampire'. Not to mention what he'd called Haibara…

Precinct gossip was going to be all over that one.

xxxx