for CoAi / ShinShi week day 3 – Black Organisation, alternative first meeting – by pairingweeks-dcmk on tumblr.

"I've heard that voice before," said Holmes, staring down the dimly lit street.
"Now, I wonder who the deuce that could have been."

And it had been such a great day right until then, too, Shinichi couldn't help but think as he knelt to examine the body where the Mystery Coaster staff had laid it out on the floor.

He could feel a faint tremor running through Ran's usually steady hands where she held onto him, her breath hitching once on a sob. Not crying, then, but still horrified, though he thought there was a good chance that the tears would catch up later.

An understandable reaction, Shinichi supposed, though not one he'd ever shared. (Which probably said something about him, but that was beside the point.)

It had to be said, though – even with all the variously mangled bodies that he'd seen, this particular manner of death probably ranked among the more gruesome ones, if for nothing else but the sheer shock value of actually witnessing firsthand the burst of arterial spray from what had otherwise been a very clean decapitation.

Too clean, in fact, and given the complete lack of the usual tool marks that one would expect around such a wound…

He stood, moving to check the victim's seat. Any accident with enough force to cause such a decapitation was almost certain to have caused some damage to the roller coaster itself – but there was barely a scratch left on the bright yellow paint, let alone a visible dent.

A murder, then.

Shinichi was about to announce as much when a hubbub rose behind them, and he turned to see the portly figure of Megure approaching, displaying his badge to clear a path among the crowd of curious onlookers who'd gathered to gawk at the scene.

The inspector's expression brightened visibly, and Shinichi returned his hearty greeting in kind – Megure was quickly becoming a far more familiar figure than most of Shinichi's teachers at Teitan High, after all, since this was already the third time they were meeting at a crime scene in this week alone.

(Contrary to what Division One and most of the Tokyo metropolitan police apparently thought, Shinichi was aware of the sheer ridiculousness of the rate at which he'd been running into murders over the past few years, especially since that first airplane case.

Of course, there were quite a number of cases where he'd been called in by Megure after the fact, but the majority simply happened to occur wherever he was at the moment, which was… a statistically improbable fraction of the total number of homicides that occurred annually in Tokyo, to say the least.

He'd been able to solve every last one of them, though, which was what really mattered in the end.)

Megure waved the forensic techs over to the scene as Shinichi gave him a quick rundown of the facts, and he agreed that it was murder, rounding up the five suspects – the victim's three companions, and the two people who'd been sitting in the last row of the coaster.

Shinichi knew the first three from briefly meeting them earlier, and had already seen the latter pair in the queue, though he hadn't really studied them beyond nothing the oddness of their attire, especially for amusement park visitors.

Both were dressed almost entirely in black, the man in a hat and suit that only served to emphasise his large build, while the woman wore a dark turtleneck under a black coat that contrasted sharply with her blonde hair. Neither had made any fuss about the murder so far, even when they'd been included in the list of suspects, though the man's face showed alarm that wasn't reflected on hers.

In fact, Shinichi noted with interest, she was sweeping her gaze over the scene even as the man said something urgently to her, analysing it methodically much as he himself was, looking –

– right at him, suddenly, gaze startling and sharp.

Shinichi couldn't help a brief chill at the utterly detached calm he saw there. It was not cruelty, not by a long shot, but there was no warmth there either, in her stance or expression.

Who was she, he wondered, but then a shout went up when a knife was found in the girlfriend's bag, and Shinichi put those thoughts aside in favour of examining the evidence.

He crouched beside the handbag, picking up the knife and the blood-stained handkerchief it had been wrapped in, possibilities running through his head. This couldn't be the murder weapon, it simply wasn't possible to sever a man's neck with this, but then – how else could it have been done?

"3,000 Newtons."

Only long practice of handling crime scene evidence stopped Shinichi from dropping the knife at the sudden voice from his left.

He looked up to see the woman in black standing several paces away, though she was looking straight ahead at the coaster, not him – from this distance he could tell that the turtleneck she was wearing wasn't actually black, but a shade of scarlet so dark it might as well have been. (Which was just as well, Shinichi couldn't help but think, since he was certain that she'd been sitting right behind the victim, so at least some of the blood from the decapitation had to have gotten onto her clothes.)

"The minimum force required to fracture the cervical spine," she continued. "A trained martial artist like that karate black belt friend of yours might've been able to exert that much, but to do something like this…"

Shinichi set the knife back down carefully and stood. "How do you know about Ran?"

"It's not only your business to know things, Kudo-kun." She paused. "Though I didn't do it, in case you're wondering."

"I didn't think you did," Shinichi answered honestly.

"Oh?" She smiled faintly, glancing at him. "Why, do I not look capable of murder to you?"

"You'd go for something cleaner." That bit was obvious, if nothing much else about her was. "This was messy. Personal."

"You're not wrong, I suppose." She turned, looking to where Megure was ordering the officer to detain the girlfriend. "Though I'd appreciate it if you could wrap the case up quickly, my associate and I have somewhere else to be."

"Didn't need you to tell me that," Shinichi muttered before striding forward to stop Megure and accuse the gymnast – who protested, just as he'd expected.

It was only after he'd finished the entire deduction that he noticed that the woman in black was already gone.

Well. He didn't think he'd ever see her again anyway.

.

The sun was already starting to set by the time Shinichi began to walk home with Ran, who was still wiping at her eyes.

He was comforting her (or trying to, at least, though it wasn't looking very successful) when he spotted a movement out the corner of his eye – the black-clad man from earlier, who looked around in a distinctly suspicious manner before disappearing down a small alley between two buildings.

Shinichi didn't even hesitate before running after him, telling Ran to head home first. Taking out his handphone, he switched the camera to night scene mode as he followed the man to the base of the Ferris wheel, and it paid off as he snapped several photos that showed the blackmail deal clearly – digital photos weren't the best form of evidence in court due to the relative ease of doctoring them, but coupled with his eyewitness testimony it would surely be enough –

There was barely time to turn around at the soft footstep behind him, muffled as it was by the grass.

"That will be quite enough, meitantei-san," said a distinctly familiar voice, but Shinichi didn't have time to place it before he felt an arm wrapped around his neck from behind, and another hand holding a cloth over his nose and mouth.

He instinctively held his breath as he tried to fight off the chokehold, but it was too late, the cloyingly sweet taste of the drug already at the back of his throat –

.

Shinichi opened his eyes to find himself propped up into a sitting position, back against the wall he'd been hiding behind.

The woman in black from earlier – he knew he'd recognised her voice, damn it – stood several paces away, regarding him with the same dispassionate calm that she'd had at the crime scene earlier.

"I was hoping it wouldn't come to this," she said in an almost reproving manner. "Why must you insist on sticking your nose into other people's business, Kudo-kun?"

Shinichi tried to answer I'm a detective, that's my job and well if you'd wanted no one to notice then you ought to have asked your subordinate to do a better job of being stealthy (because that's how it was, she was obviously in charge here despite the man having at least fifteen years on her) but all that came out was a garbled string of sounds.

He grimaced, his mouth feeling almost rubbery in its refusal to move as he wanted it to. Damn drugs.

Shinichi thought his meaning must've mostly gotten through anyway, because she sighed and shook her head.

(What had her name even been? Shinichi didn't know – he hadn't been listening when the officers took down their details earlier, though he was now starting to think that whatever answer she'd given was unlikely to have been her real name anyway.)

"Before you complain, let me reassure you that I have drugs that can do far, far worse than this," she said, moving forward to sit down on the grass opposite him. "That was chloroform, by the way, with some modifications of my own to alter the side effects. Including a mild muscle paralytic, as I'm sure you're starting to realise, but you shouldn't be getting the usual migraine afterwards."

Shinichi levelled a withering glare at her that communicated his distinct lack of gratefulness at this development – the migraines he'd gotten after the few times he'd been knocked out with chloroform were a pain, true, but he'd much rather to not have been drugged in the first place.

She ignored him. "This is what will happen. You're going to come quietly back with us, without trying any of the heroics I'm sure you're very fond of."

"Why should I go with you?" Shinichi managed to say around the cottony numbness in his mouth.

"Your friend... Mouri Ran-san, was it?" She paused, though not long enough for him to answer. "I'd hate to meet her under more unfortunate circumstances."

It wasn't even much of a threat by most standards, but Shinichi remembered with a slow creeping horror their conversation at the Mystery Coaster earlier, and the flash of anger felt like it was burning away the remnants of the drug in his veins. "Don't you dare hurt Ran."

"Believe it or not, I don't want to. So don't make me."

She sounded sincere – but just about anyone could if they tried hard enough, he'd learned that all too well, and her expression was almost unreadable in the dark shadow of the wall.

Shinichi tried anyway, forcing his eyes to focus, to search for even the slightest hint of deception in what was visible of her features – and she let him, sitting in what he could almost have sworn was an amused silence before she finally stood several minutes later.

(He wondered briefly if it was her patience or the muscle paralytic that was wearing thin, though he strongly suspected it was the latter.)

She held out a hand to him. "Do we have a deal, Kudo-kun?"

Shinichi didn't move to take it, instead tilting his head back a little to meet her gaze as he spoke. "What's your name?"

It had partly been to stall – his words had come out quite clearly, which meant that he'd been correct about the paralytic, good – but Shinichi felt oddly gratified to hear what was definitely a muted huff of laughter from her.

"What, will we be exchanging phone numbers next?" she retorted, sarcasm clear as day. "And why do you think that I'd give you a real name, anyway?"

"I don't," Shinichi answered honestly, with a shrug. "Unless you'd prefer me to keep calling you the 'woman in black', though..."

She blinked. Twice.

"Seriously?" She sighed. "Let me assure you, Kudo-kun, that my usual choice in clothes is considerably better than your taste in names. And you can call me Sherry. That's – "

" – your codename, I suppose. And you're sure that I'm the one who's terrible at naming things here?" Shinichi flexed his fingers slightly, holding back a wince at returning sensation of pins and needles. "Do you call yourselves the Bar in Black? Or the Liquor Cabinet?"

The woman – Sherry, he corrected himself – gave him a look that was part amusement and mostly irritation, before pointedly extending her hand to him again. "If you would, Kudo-kun? I know full well that you're stalling."

"Or you'll kill me?" he asked, the question mostly rhetorical, and it was her turn to shrug, with a nonchalance that suggested she would also hide the body where no one would be able to find it.

Probably more successfully than most of the murderers he'd encountered, too, Shinichi thought as he reached out to take her hand. "And here I was, thinking that you might be reluctant to do it, now that we're acquainted and all."

Sherry pulled him up easily – she was stronger than she looked, he noted with some surprise, and the faint pattern of callouses on her hand suggested regular handgun use – and motioned for him to walk between the two of them before she responded. "Hardly. I think it's only made the option rather more attractive, in fact."

Shinichi spluttered in indignation.

END...?

...uh. this was written (or at least intended) as part of a much longer WIP that's been in my drafts for quite a while, but then I saw the literally perfect prompt and couldn't resist finishing up this bit to post. so there maaaaaay be more (with some semblance of plot even, gasp) where this came from, eventually? if I ever get around to working on the rest, that is.

anyway – this isn't as thoroughly edited as usual, but hope y'all enjoyed! it's kind of a reversal of my other fic (terra incognita, not intentionally though), and proof of the fact that I am apparently incapable of writing anything serious featuring these two without it devolving into snarky semi-crack at some point.

quote and title from ASiB (where else) because we all know I can't title to save my life otherwise.