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2025-04-18
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Child's Play

Summary:

Conan catches a Strange Lady spying. She is, in fact, very strange indeed....

Unfinished fragment.

Notes:

Rurouni Kenshin, Detective Conan, and the World of Darkness all belong to various people who are not me. I'm not sure who I can pin the idea for this story on, but when I find them…. ;)

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

"That strange lady is watching Yahiko-kun again."

Strange lady. Kamiya Kaoru smiled wryly, even as she faded farther into the azalea bushes, away from the perceptive little seven-year-old human girl on the playground swings. Two of the three boys who always seemed to be with the girl blinked, and shrugged; the third, in glasses, frowned, as if he'd almost seen her. I guess I am that.

But that's not Yahiko.

Her fingers twitched, itching for her bokken, as the little fetch crawled into one of the play-tunnels, stolen shadow twisting behind it. It looked like Yahiko. Sounded like Yahiko. Even acted - to his besotted parents, at least - like her former young student. And maybe it was just a coincidence that it chose to play in a known gateway to the Thorns….

But it wasn't Yahiko. Hadn't been for nearly a year now.

A week ago, behind the Myoujin's house, she'd found a dove dead in the alley. Neck snapped, feathers pulled out and daubed with blood.

You don't know the fetch did it. You don't know.

And killing it won't bring Yahiko back….

Kaoru bit her knuckles, fighting back flashes of diamond rivers, paintings in blood, rose-petal sheets laced with thorns. Like everyone else she knew who'd been taken, she could only remember fragments of Makai. But it was enough. Yahiko was there, where she wouldn't leave her worst enemy; in that land of soul-killing beauty and cruelty, losing more of himself with each passing hour. And there was nothing she could do to help him.

Nothing, except watch over the creature of shadow and Glamour left in his place, and pray.

And with this fake Battousai on the loose, I'm running short on time to do even that….

"Are you Yahiko-kun's aunt?"

"Ack!" Kaoru told her traitor heart to slow down, her fingers to let go of the spell-cloaked bokken, and her feet to stay here and now. This wasn't a youkai attack, or any other nightmare that had crawled out of the Thorns. This was just a very quiet, very sneaky little kid. Who wasn't a fetch. She hoped. "Don't do that!"

"Well, are you?" Soccer ball tucked in one arm, keen blue eyes peered at her from behind glass. "'Cause Mitsuhiko thinks that's the most logical conclusion and Ayumi thinks you're too pretty even if you are weird and Genta's too busy eating eel to even see you."

"And what do you think?" Kaoru shot back. He didn't feel like magic. There was no way he could see her bokken, or the raven feathers peeking out of her gi sleeves, or even her Hedgespun gi and hakama, under their Mask of mortal jeans and white blouse.

"I think you're watching him." The suspicion in his voice vanished as if it had never been, wiped away by a wide, childish smile. "Which would be bad, 'cause Ran-nee-san says strangers can be dangerous for little kids! But you're too pretty to be a stranger, right?"

Pretty. Yeah. Wish I wasn't. "I'm Kaoru. I'm… I was Yahiko's kendo instructor."

"I'm Conan." An innocent, owlish blink. "Whoa! Yahiko knows kendo?"

"He used to," Kaoru said absently, glancing out of the cover of the bushes just long enough to make sure the fetch didn't have them in sight. Even the most human fetch could get paranoid about those they could see weren't wholly human, and she didn't want to give it more reason to make trouble.

"You mean he doesn't now?" The soccer ball twirled under his arm. "Like amnesia, or something?"

He's a kid. What can it hurt? And she desperately wanted to tell somebody. Someone besides Sano and Dr. Gensai, who knew because they knew; like her, they'd been taken, and like her they'd fought their own ways home. "Last year… his parents say he had a fever. And when it broke - well, the first time his parents brought him back to class, he started screaming that I wasn't me anymore. He won't come near me." Because he can see what I am….

Notes:

This old idea ended up having way too many moving parts to pull off. But I originally planned for Himura Kenshin to make it back out of the Makai with Yahiko, using the kid’s fresher tie to the mortal world to come out alive here and now, instead of aging centuries in an instant and dying. (As Changeling: the Lost says some changelings manage to do; surviving, even if it’s not the time they were lost from.)

I know I meant for the Kaitou Kid to get taken and Conan to have to track him down; the Kid ending up a white dove Beastkin while the little detective ended up a Lurkglider gargoyle Darkling. No idea what I had planned for Yahiko and Sano....