Chapter Seven: Vin

What life have you, if you have not life together?

~ TS Eliot, Choruses from The Rock

When the Judge had given Chris permission to handle the sniper investigation, Vin reflected, he probably hadn't expected it to go like this. This, of course, being the temporary retainer of one teenage detective, one teenage witch and one teenage thief, while working with the interagency alphabet soup (and another teenage detective) to break open the biggest mob-cum-secret-society to be found in recent history.

Some days it was almost like they were ankle deep in teenagers, and he wasn't even the one living at Ezra's apartment. Maybe it was because he currently had Saguru and Akako flanking him through Denver International Airport's baggage claim.

"You're sure walkin' around is the best way to do this? Seems like askin' for trouble." And even with Akako trying to dampen the effects, he found enough trouble without looking for it.

Saguru shrugged. "Kid-kun said we'd find her fastest this way, and he would know."

Akako added with a touch of dry humor, "He also said we would recognize her, but not right away."

"Oh, I expect that any woman capable of being his father's partner for a decade would have far more depth than the average single mother. I'd frankly be more surprised if she didn't do something… interesting."

Akako gave Saguru a sidelong glance. "Involving experience in said father's tools of trade?"

"You think she wouldn't?"

She chuckled. "Point."

The pair had been having similar half-conversations in Japanese around the office for the past week. The secretaries' pool put Chris at four more days before he forbade the language in the bullpen for the case's duration. Vin had put fifty bucks on another two days, and had every intention of joining in the conversations now that he was back in the office waiting for leads to come in. Or at least, he would be after this morning's trip.

"Akako-chaaan!"

Akako's eyes widened in uncharacteristic surprise as she turned and searched for the voice. "Wh… Neesan?"

A dozen yards away, a young woman about Vin's age waved and glided toward them, suitcase rolling behind. Long black hair falling over one eye might have made her seem dark and mysterious in the right setting, but the effect was ruined by the bustle of the airport and her cheerful smile.

"It's so good of you to come pick me up, I might have been lost otherwise."

"But you're… oh." Akako's expression shifted to amused recognition. "Welcome to Denver, obasan."

"Aww," the young woman pouted, voice shifting slightly to a lower timbre. "You're too quick, Akako-chan."

"Yumiko-neesan is filming a miniseries in Yokohama through the end of the month, obasan. She wouldn't abandon her work to come here."

"Well, maybe she should. Colorado is beautiful, especially from the air." Kid's mother turned to smile at Vin, switching to English. "You must be Mr. Tanner."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Well, you can call me Midori." Not her real name, going from Akako's half-squashed reaction, though looking at Saguru you'd never have known. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Glad you made it without a hitch. If you have everything, we can go see your son now."

The woman smiled again—not showing her teeth, but a quiet beaming. "I'm ready."

A few offers to carry the suitcase later, etiquette was satisfied enough for her to allow him to take it, and Vin led the way out to the ATF Vehicle-Pool Suburban. Chris had forbidden using the Jeep to shuttle guests around for some reason. Admittedly, the back seats looked like a pit bull had gone hunting for treats inside the cushions and sometimes the battery died, but she was a perfectly good ride.

The trip to Ezra's passed without incident, and Vin slipped into the curbside space just behind Nathan's Explorer. Upstairs, Nathan answered Vin's soft knock with a relieved smile. "Oh good, more victims."

"Oh dear. He convinced you to play cards?" Saguru asked as they trooped inside and introductions were made.

In the recliner, Kid waved faintly at his mother.

"Hi, Kaasan."

She swiftly crossed the room, taking the teen's face in her hands. "Mon cher…" Leaning in, she pressed her lips to Kid's forehead for a moment, then commanded in flawless French, "No more getting shot at."

"Yes, ma'am," the teen answered with only a bit more accent, and Vin knew he wasn't the only one raising eyebrows in amused surprise as Kid continued with a cheeky grin, "What about getting beaten?"

She switched to English. "Beatings are reserved for myself and your friends, when you need some sense put into your head."

"When does he not?" Saguru quipped.

Kid crooked the fingers of the hand not now ensconced by both of his mother's. "Come here so I can hit you, Hakuba-kun."

Saguru crossed the room, but only to sit on the couch nearby with Akako, well out of Kid's range of movement. "Really, Kid-kun, you make a poor case for not needing sense when you can't keep straight which role belongs to whom."

"It's not mutually exclusive."

"Only in your twisted little mind."

Kid grinned. "I'm contagious."

Amid chuckles from the peanut gallery, Nathan snorted. "What you are is injured and needing rest. You can't smack him unless he's pushing himself too hard—which seems to be a habit," he added, faint glare at odds with Kid's innocent smile.

"It's a family trait," Midori murmured, with a twinkle in her eyes. "I think between all of us, we can manage to keep him out of trouble."

Saguru groaned. "Please don't say that, he'll do something simply to prove the prediction wrong."

"Not when it comes from me. Isn't that right, son?" She angled a smile at Kid that made the question a very definite order. Kid gave a lazy half-salute.

"With sufficient entertainment."

"I'll take it. So," she gave Nathan a much more pleasant smile, "you were playing cards?"

"Yeah, rummy. He was smilin' too much like Ezra when he suggested poker."

"A wise decision," Saguru answered.

"Yeah, well. Hasn't helped my losing streak much." Nathan sat down and picked up his hand, then abruptly turned to Akako. "Oh, before I forget, Chris called not long ago and said you should call him when you got back. Something about 'evaluating your options'."

Akako didn't smile, but she did look satisfied. "Good. He must have finished visiting the morgues. If you'll excuse me, I need to see a man about a corpse… I'll call from the bedroom to avoid disrupting the game."

Midori looked up sharply from studying Kid's hand of cards despite his protests. "You're creating a false Kid?"

Akako nodded. "I don't know how much Kid-kun has told you about me, obasan, but I was the one on the broom."

"Of course. I think perhaps I should join that conversation." She took a breath, heralding a serene smile. "I know what they'll actually be expecting, you see."

For a moment, the room could have been a vacuum. The smile stayed firmly in place, and Vin realized with utter certainty that Kid got his strength of will from both parents, if he was reading the implications right. "I think that'd be just fine, ma'am. Y'all can use my phone, if you don't mind me sittin' in too."

He wanted to be in the planning loop before he was handed a body to dump in a deserted corner of his home neighborhood. As the only member of the seven to live in the poorest area of Denver, colloquially known as Purgatorio, he knew the streets and the people best to make such a plant not only unnoticed, but also believable as a man whose luck had simply run out.

And apparently now, a man much older than they'd anticipated.

"That should be fine, if you agree," Akako allowed, looking at Midori, who nodded. "Well. Enjoy your game, gentlemen."

Kid, Vin noticed as they retreated to the other room, hadn't moved an inch. Instead, he stared at his rummy hand the sort of intensity Vin usually reserved for sighting down a sniper rifle during a bust, ignoring Saguru's look of concern.

The detective didn't seem to deem it worth pursuing, however, because the bedroom door closed on him asking to be dealt in to the game-in-progress.

Chris, at least, answered his phone with typical punctuality. "Larabee."

"It's me, Cowboy. Got some pretty gals here waitin' to talk to you, so you're on speaker."

"Plural?"

"Midori-obasan is here," Akako answered smoothly, "and she made an important point regarding our plan's viability."

Chris's voice dropped to an almost-growl. Surprises were never pleasant in their line of work. "Which is?"

"Something you could not have anticipated, Mr. Larabee." The woman's voice was as smooth and strong as oiled silk. "They're not looking to find my son. They're still trying to murder my husband."

Another long silence passed, broken only by Chris's steady breathing. When he spoke, the gruffness had shaded into the rare commodity of genuine respect. "…You're volunteering to give us a complete description, then."

"I am."

"Go ahead."

She did, voice unwavering, with such detail to her words that Vin could practically see the man standing there in the room, vividly clear from pencil mustache and intangible eye-gleam down to the individual facial wrinkles and elegantly manicured fingernails. The wrinkles would have been mostly absent at 30-odd years, but with the confidence of a consummate makeup and disguise artist (which might explain her son's skill in disguise despite the first Kid having been gone for a decade already), Midori aged the verbal depiction to account for the passage of time. Scars, too; pale lines from a few troublesome tricks gone wrong, a bullet furrow from an early brush with death… and then, without so much as a pause, she began detailing where the body should most likely have faded burn-patterns from his impossible escape.

When they were done, Vin decided, he was buying Midori a drink. Or three.

Chris seemed to agree, because when she finally finished, he thanked her—a phenomenon so rare for those outside the team and Orrin Travis that Vin could count the number for the past year on one hand.

Akako echoed the sentiment as she finished a final scribble in a notebook she'd produced earlier, then added, "I think we can manage the other details between us, if you wish to rejoin Kid-kun."

Midori nodded with a sort of quiet relief. "Thank you for your hard work." She smiled at Akako, switching briefly to Japanese. "Do your best, Akako-chan."

"They'll never know the difference, obasan."

Vin escorted Midori back out, confident that Chris would ensure the return of his phone later. As team leader, Chris's paranoia ran deep that his subordinates always be able to prove at the drop of a hat that they weren't about to turn up... well, dead in an alley.

They reached the living room just in time to see Kid grin widely and lay down a hand of cards. "Gin."

Nathan groaned. "Why am I playing you again?"

"To keep him out of trouble," Saguru answered, gathering the cards to shuffle and re-deal. "Difficult at the best of times, as he tends to spread it around."

"I admit… to nothing," Kid countered, leaning back again into the chair.

"You don't have to." Saguru paused in the act of dealing. "Ah, Mr. Tanner, Midori-san, do you wish to join us?"

"Yes, please." Midori sat down with a smile, as if the previous conversation had never happened.

"Sure, got some time to kill."

A long-suffering sigh came from Nathan. "I'm doomed."

Vin grinned. "We'll go easy on you."

"Speak for yourself." Kid smirked, and the smiles from the other visitors seemed to silently echo the sentiment.

"Yep, doomed."

They didn't end up playing more than a few hands before Akako returned to the room, bearing the cell phone. "Ah, Vin-san? I'm supposed to ensure you receive this on pain of a mountain of paperwork for both of us."

Vin winced, knowing full well that Chris meant the threat, and took it gladly. "You need a ride in to the office now?"

"If you could. This should be put in place tonight, to appear authentic enough."

"Right." To Saguru, he added, "You coming, or staying put today?"

Saguru's gaze darted to Kid to Midori and back to the cards in less than a second.

"I'll tag along, if you don't mind. I had a few questions for JD." He set the cards down as Midori smiled at him, a silent thank-you for the relative privacy of only Nathan's company. "Just give me a moment to gather things."

Vin grinned. "Great. We'll have time to drive Chris up the wall later."

Nathan groaned. "Vin!"

As it turned out, annoying Chris took an abrupt backseat while Saguru and Akako were still occupied with JD and Chris. His phone rang.

"Tanner."

"Is this line secure?" The question was in Japanese, spoken by a familiar voice. Except said voice belonged to an old Ranger buddy whom he'd last talked to at an interagency training conference three years before and who had supposedly died on a deep-cover assignment six damn months ago. Vin pulled the phone away to check the caller ID—number withheld—and gave it a suspicious look before returning the receiver to his ear.

"As secure as humanly possible. …Akai?"

"Afternoon, Vin." The bastard had the audacity to sound amused.

"You sound pretty good for a corpse, Red."

"Rumors of my death were highly exaggerated. If official. You looked me up recently?"

"Re-establishin' contacts does that. No one in your bureau thought to tell me until I tried to find you."

"You didn't have reason to be looking before now, and we've been watching to see who tries to confirm my status."

Vin had to chuckle. "Dead, and you're still bait."

"Sorry to worry you. I'm supposed to have been executed by a mob of crows in Japan."

Vin narrowed his eyes. "Everything comes back to there, seems like."

"Mmm. Only my team lead and you know the truth, so keep it under your hat. But if you're working this case too, now, we need to talk about who to trust and who to target."

Vin's grin would have sent any secretary, snitch, or minor crime lord running for the hills. "Then let's get started. I've still gotta make time to harass my boss later."

"You would."

The bastards never knew what hit them.

Vin surveyed the hotel banquet hall with a satisfied smile, watching the Japanese police mingle with the various American and British law enforcement members visiting Tokyo on the collective Kudou-Hakuba dime for this celebration. After all the paperwork had been turned in to become a headache for the folks at or above Travis's paygrade, the Shin'ichi kid had asked Chris to let Team Seven be flown in to celebrate. The chance to see how Kid was holding up since he'd left with his mother after the worst of his convalescence was over had apparently been enough for Chris to say yes. Being met at the airport by a sparkling grin and introductions to Kaito and Mizuki Kuroba had already made the trip well worth it—even before tonight's free booze.

Now that the requisite speeches, thank yous, and congratulations were out of the way, the party had truly started. Buck was competing with a British Secret Service agent to be the first to flirt with every woman at the party, Josiah and Nathan were deep in discussion with Mizuki and Shinichi's parents, and Chris was commiserating with a great-aunt of Saguru's that Ezra had identified with some awe as the head of MI6.

When informed that he really shouldn't have clearance to know that, the undercover agent had merely grinned. "I plead the fifth."

He and Vin sat at one of the tables as Kaito shuffled a deck of cards with more flourishes than a Las Vegas dealer, surrounded by Saguru, Akako, Shin'ichi, Shin'ichi's friend Heiji, Akai, and Akai's colleague Jodie, who seemed to be at the table both on her merits as a decent cardsharp and by virtue of not having allowed Akai out of arm's reach all night. She still hadn't quite forgiven him for dying.

Kaito's girlfriend Aoko seemed to be in a similar boat—minus the card playing, since she admitted to not being able to bluff. Sitting out of the impending poker tournament rather than mingling with the crowd didn't seem to bother her, going by how close her chair sat to Kaito's as she chatted quietly with Akako. She looked up, catching him watching her, and offered a smile. Given how she'd bowed to Ezra and Nathan a hair deeper than the rest of the team upon meeting them, Vin was betting she'd probably seen Kaito's scars and heard some version of the story. It was nice to be appreciated.

"All right, gentlemen," Kaito announced, dealing the hands out. "First round is non-coin, no raises." He looked over at Vin, flashing a particularly sharp grin. "How do you feel about wagering those photos of Standish-san in a dress, Tanner-san?"

Vin found himself grinning back. "I might be persuaded."

Ezra's cry of outrage was drowned out by laughter.

~Fin.

Yes, this story is finished. Thanks to all who stuck with me these last two years, especially WolfDaughter for occasionally poking the bunnies back into gear, and Ellen and Snickerer for betaing. I hope you all enjoyed this little foray into character interaction.

Yumiko Koizumi is a single-reference actress character from the Pop-Artist Karaoke Murder Case in DC.

Please review!

Ocianne

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