Untitled Con Artists AU (1/?)
2012 Three sentence AU writing sessions with tinyangl, anamuan & coffeeandice.
Last spam for the night, I swear. Edited but unbeta’d.
Misdirection
pg-13. 1946. Ninomiya Kazunari, Horikita Maki, Sakurai Sho, Kuroki Meisa.
Prompt: Nino/Maki as con artists, Sho/Meisa as the agents that catch them or try to
“Internationally wanted con artists? Them? No way.” Superintendent Sakurai squints suspiciously at the two portraits on the table. “I mean, him I can understand, with those beady eyes and mousy smile-I don’t like the look of him at all. But her? She looks so sweet and innocent. I can’t believe she’d ever be in with the likes of him.”
“Oh, don’t be such a romantic, Sakurai, you should never judge a book by its cover. It may very well get you killed one day.”
Sakurai glances sideways at the slight of a woman next to him: six years his junior with hair tumbling straight down in waves of untamed, un-ponytailed black; arms crossed in sleeves that look just a smidge too large; eyebrows drawn and far too intense to exist on a face so young. “Duly noted, Chief Constable Kuroki.”
*
“You don’t have to do this, you can turn him in, get a reduced sentence-if you help us catch him, we might even be able to offer you total amnesty,” Sho says calmly, although it’s hard to be calm when he’s aiming a gun in the face of the most beautiful criminal he’s ever seen. “I don’t want to shoot, I don’t have to shoot, but you need to promise me that you’re leaving this life-him-behind once and for all.”
“Sorry, Sakurai-sama, I can’t agree to that,” Maki says in a sweetly sad voice, hands raised above her head, a gleaming bracelet dangling off of one thin wrist. The sight is even more heartbreaking because her hair is in pigtails and she is dressed in a high school student’s uniform and, had he not known Horikita Maki was actually the same age as Chief Constable Kuroki, he would think she’s the spitting image of a girl just on the precipice of adulthood, wavering between bad decisions and worse decisions in a world where innocence simply cannot exist.
“Why?!” Sakurai cries, outraged, hands trembling with anger at the gun he must continue to point at her. “Why are you so loyal to that man? He left you! He disappeared from the crime scene and left you with a fake, so why can’t you give up this life and turn him in after he’s already done the same to you?”
“Because I know he will come for me.”
“How can you-d-don’t lower your hands!”
But Maki continues to hold his gaze with her hypnotically large brown eyes, lowering her hands until they are side by side and she can work the latch off of the almost perfect replica of the famous Murakami bracelet. “Catch!” she says, throwing the bracelet at him, which bursts in a shower of smoke and confetti and sparkling cubic zirconium and in the shock of the moment, Sakurai lowers his gun and Nino swings down the alleyway on a tattered rope hanging from the sky.
“You all right, Maki-chan?” Nino asks casually, hanging with one foot on the bottom rung of the rope, the other tucked casually over his ankle.
“Was almost stood up and shot at, but other than that I’m peachy.”
“Atta girl.” Nino chuckles, hoisting her up by the waist and keeping an arm around her as she wraps both around his neck. Once she’s secure, he finally turns to Sakurai and winks. “All right there, Superintendent Sakurai?”
“Y-y-you!” Sakurai splutters, forgetting for the moment he has a gun in his hands.
“Great to see you, too, Superintendent, but the little lady and I have got to attend to some business now.” A wink of real diamonds disappears under a jacket sleeve. “We’ll have to catch you-some other time!”
Right on cue, a gust of wind barrels down over Sakurai’s head and the sound of propellers fills his ears. “A helicopter?!” And with that realization, Nino and Maki take flight, zooming past him-over him-and one particularly pointed boot toe slams into his temple.
“You-I-you’re too old to still be wearing high school uniforms, Ninomiyaaaaaaaaaaa!” is the only thing Sakurai manages to yell before the roar drowns out his voice. Ignoring the pounding on the side of his head, he steadies his hands, narrows his eyes, and takes aim, firing three rounds.
Water spits out pathetically from its end, splashing back onto his face from gravity.
The last sight Sakurai sees, just before they disappear completely into the night sky, is a familiar silver pistol, twirling and twirling.
Later, Chief Constable Kuroki hands him a cup of coffee and pats him on the shoulder. “Don’t beat yourself up too much-they’re internationally wanted for a reason.”
“No, it’s my fault,” Sakurai admits, trying to shake the image of her face from his mind. “I underestimated her. I thought I could-I could have died, couldn’t I?”
“They’re not really the killing type, so no, not this time. Not them.” She looks at him pointedly. “Not yet.”
“So Ninomiya somehow gave you and the squad the slip, too, huh?” Sakurai sighs, settling back into his chair and cracking his neck. “Who is this Ninomiya to think he can outrun the best police force in the world forever?”
Chief Constable Kuroki doesn’t reply, just slams her gun point down onto the table, aimed at the forehead of Ninomiya’s cheekily grinning face. Up close, Sakurai is surprised to see the sparkle of a diamond on her left ring finger.
*
“So you caught me, do what you will with my body!” Nino exclaims, hands raised and body bared, eyes black and cunning behind crescent slits.
“No more games, Ninomiya. I’ve got the perimeter surrounded and an entire squadron of men closing in. There is no escape, but if you so much as twitch I will shoot.”
“Come now, Kuroki-chan, you don’t really want to shoot me, do you?”
“No.” Kuroki admits, pulling the safety. “I want to kill you.”
“I see.”
Nino shrugs his shoulders lightly and Kuroki focuses the gun on his forehead, lowers her face and narrows her eyebrows, a feral grin on her lips. “That looked like a twitch to me.”
“Well, as much as I enjoy your company-and I do so enjoy it-I’m going to get on now.” He waggles his eyebrows at her. “I’m late for a very important date.”
“Don’t make me laugh. I might pull the trigger.”
“It wasn’t a joke.”
“There’s no way it’s real. You’re all talk and bravado and abra ca fucking dabra, but when the smoke clears and the cards are down you have nothing, Ninomiya, nothing. There’s nothing up your sleeves anymore.” She allows herself a bitter smile. “There’s nothing to keep me from shooting you dead right here, right now.”
“Oh, but you won’t, Kuroki.”
“And why not?”
“You were always a sucker for a pretty face.” In an instant he’s right beside her, pressing a kiss against her cheek. She whirls around and shoots blindly, three ricochets echo off the walls but one hits him in the side. “And a good shot.”
“N-Nino.”
There’s a gust of wind and the sound of propellers and she thinks, we didn’t order a helicopter, but then a rope ladder lowers directly in front of her-in front of him-and he grasps a rung with one hand, the other pressed against his side. “Told you it was real.”
And then he’s being whisked higher and higher and Kuroki hisses, fires the last of her rounds into the sky. With her left hand she reaches for her backup handgun, fires two more rounds and manages to tear one side of the ladder. But it is too little too late. He has climbed into the helicopter, but not without some help.
“Three of them,” Kuroki breathes, heart hammering in her chest at the lead. “There are three of them.”
“It’s not real,” Kazu says bitterly, “but it’s the best I could come up with. Happy birthday.”
Meisa doesn’t understand his bitterness, is content to marvel at the shining, beautiful ring he’s placed in her eager hands. The cut is precise and the ring is a perfect fit. “What are you so angry about, it’s beautiful. Mizuki-san would be proud.” She takes one of his hands in hers and lays the other on top, adjusting so she can still see the ring on her right hand.
“I’m angry because you deserve diamonds, Meisa, real diamonds. I’m angry because I can’t buy you diamonds. I’m angry because you have to settle for a cheap piece of glass. I’m angry because there are people with so much more than us, the Mizuki’s of the world-they have so much extra, and they lavish in it-waste it-while we have to suffer and beg every day of our lives and-”
“I don’t need diamonds, Kazu, I’ve never needed diamonds.” She wants so much for him to understand, for him to let go of his persecution mania. “I just need you. Just take me with you wherever you go and I’ll be happy.”
“We’re not kids anymore, Meisa, we can’t keep believing that’s enough. That’s what they want us to think.”
She slaps him across the face and he drops to his knees and gasps. “Nice shot.”
“We’re not enough? That’s what they want us to think? Or that’s what you think?”
“Meisa, try to understand-I’m saying this for you-”
“Well I don’t want that. And I-I don’t want this.” She takes the ring off her finger and wonders how something so beautiful could become so ugly in an instant. She throws it at his feet and stalks away, doesn’t look back once. She hopes this will teach him something.
Kazu disappears the next day, leaving only a note and a ring. “We’ve got to grow up sometime.”
Kazu’s disappearance coincides with the news of a robbery at Mizuki’s Fine Jewelry.
“Just a bit of money stolen from the petty cash drawer,” Mizuki announces at the press conference. “I don’t keep the real money in the store, of course, and only I have the key to the jewelry. Not a ring misplaced there was. Yes, this time the criminal was outsmarted by a simple jeweler-”
Meisa shuts the television off at that, scrapes together enough fare to take the bus out of town and into the city, where she finds her way to a pawn shop.
“Yes, beautifully cut, it is,” he says, appraising the ring with a tiny microscope. “A real fine diamond ring you’ve got there, Kuroki-san.”
*
Nino spots them first, presses closer until they’re mere heartbeats away and whispers don’t move in her ear, sending a shiver right through her magenta trench coat, and the millions of dollars worth of diamonds hastily sewn into the lining. His eyes are dark, flickering between all of their planned exit strategies and calculating all the risks and percent success rates possible in the literal time it takes to blink. Quick, give me a kiss.
What? She’s so startled she can only turn her face to look up at him and he takes the chance to swoop down and press his lips against hers-soft, warm, Nino-and her eyes involuntarily flutter closed. Minutes later he pulls away and rests his forehead against hers; his breath is warm over her eyelashes. Are they still looking at us?
Yes.
It was worth a shot. Plan Houdini.
H-houdini?!
Houdini. On three, follow my lead.
But we never-together?
He takes her hand and leads her into a quick bow before winking at the detective pair and twirling her into his arms.
Three.
A great cloud of smoke envelopes them whole.
And now we disappear.