A Boss Worthy of Sympathy
"You didn't leave either, did you? Your FBI boys may run roughshod over Japan all you like, but I imagine it would be rather hard to explain being caught at a shootout without filing a report first. And that partner of yours..." Morikawa Shiro flicked a glance in the direction he meant. "Judy, was it? She's been shot. If you don't do something about that soon, do be careful she doesn't bleed out." He paid no mind to the sirens wailing ever closer, and with Calvados already gone, he had no lingering concerns to hold him back—only his battle of wills with Akai Shuichi.
"Spare me your concern. If the police catch us, it's a bit of paperwork at worst. But if you fail to get away in time and get taken? You're finished. The Organization doesn't rescue its people out of the goodness of its heart—at least Gin wouldn't. Are you sure you don't want to hurry up and run?"
Akai Shuichi knew he wasn't going to take down the man before him today, and he had no intention of dragging things out any further. Judy was genuinely hurt; he needed to break away from the battlefield, check on her condition, and if he moved fast enough, slip out before the police arrived and spare himself the headaches.
Morikawa Shiro read the intent off him easily. With every Organization member on-site now safely withdrawn, he had no desire to linger here either.
He still needed to catch up to Vermouth and see how she was doing—he'd noticed that one person was missing from the scene. The woman lost her mind the moment she ran into those two children. He'd better go after her before she truly managed to trip over her own feet into a ditch.
Akai Shuichi suddenly took a vicious kick aimed at his chest, and only a split-second reaction let him block it with his elbow. Feeling the force behind it, he knew that if he'd been any slower, several of his ribs would have been shattered. Though he'd escaped serious harm, the blow drove him stumbling backward, tearing open the distance between them.
Under those circumstances, Akai Shuichi found himself, rather absurdly, thinking of a kick he'd once seen a young girl deliver on a bus. There was something eerily similar about the two. The difference was that the mugger back then had been sent flying without the slightest chance to resist, while he—at least had enough ability to block it and avoid following that man's example.
Still—were all young people this dangerous these days?
Noticing that his opponent was preparing to leave, Akai Shuichi let out a small breath of relief, yet still wanted to learn something—anything—about this adversary. He raised his voice. "By the way, after all that fighting, I never got your codename in the Organization. What should I call you next time?"
Morikawa Shiro glanced back over his shoulder before departing, feeling a flicker of admiration for a man who wouldn't stop gathering intel even at a moment like this. He didn't ignore the question either, offering only one reply: "Next time we meet."
Hearing that answer, Akai Shuichi rubbed his aching elbow and murmured under his breath, "Then let's hope I don't run into you again on the next operation against the Black Organization..."
By now he could see the faint outlines of police cruisers in the distance. Akai Shuichi wasted no more time; he did what he could for Judy's wounds and made his exit just ahead of the arriving squad cars.
Elsewhere, Morikawa Shiro followed the trail of Vermouth's retreat and found her at the very moment she was firing a bullet into her own thigh to stay conscious.
He let out a sigh. He'd known from the start that Vermouth wouldn't come out ahead against that little boy. Never mind that she couldn't bring herself to hurt the child—by all appearances, that kid was the protagonist of this world. Against him, Vermouth never stood a chance.
But actually witnessing this scene, Morikawa Shiro genuinely felt a pang of sympathy for their boss. His own case hardly counted—he'd never joined the Organization in earnest to begin with—but Rum had his own hidden agenda, Gin had been asking questions before, never mind the handful of moles he knew were buried inside the Organization... and now even Vermouth, the one the boss leaned on so heavily, was harboring divided loyalties...
Which was to say—that old man really was a failure as a human being...
Vermouth still had her uses, and Morikawa Shiro wasn't about to leave her to die. The moment she finally tore her attention away from that little boy, realized someone else was beside her, and turned around, he tossed her a vial of potion.
"So this is the potion from the deal?" Recovering from the shock of a man materializing at her side, Vermouth found herself holding a familiar bottle—identical to the one Kaeya had handed Gin back then—and knew exactly what it contained. After the reflexive question, she didn't even wait for Cointreau's answer. She drank it down.
Sure enough, the wound had already begun to knit. But since Cointreau had brought only a low-grade potion, the improvement was modest at best—enough that she could walk, though a full recovery was still a long way off. Under the circumstances, however, it worked out perfectly: the ache in her wound would keep Vermouth conscious, without hampering her movements too badly.
Morikawa Shiro looked over at Edogawa Conan—clothes slashed by a dagger, the electrodes of his heart monitor ripped clean away—and raised an eyebrow with a smile. "Someone really took quite the beating, it seems."
He had no intention of dwelling on the subject—this outcome had been foreseen long ago. Instead, he made a proposal. "Well, you did drive here. And seeing the state of you, I won't even bother saying we should finish off that kid. Toss the little brat out of the car and let's go."
With that, he moved to open the door and dump Conan out onto the street.
"Wait!" Vermouth instinctively stopped Cointreau's hand. Met with his exasperated look, she could only grit her teeth and explain. "I'm worried this car has been compromised—there could be a wiretap, or a tracker. It's better if we don't leave in this one..."
Cointreau knew Vermouth cared for that little boy, but he hadn't realized her concern extended to worrying about him catching a chill while lying under the open sky. He was half tempted to ask whether she saw herself as the kid's mother now...
He didn't intend to challenge her excuse. Leaving the car behind made little difference to him—after all, he wasn't the one wounded, and he wasn't the one who'd be dragging an injured leg along the road.
He had given Vermouth the potion for her injuries. That was charity enough. She could hardly expect him to sweetly offer her an arm for the walk.
"Heh..."
Cointreau gave a mocking snort, shut the car door, and turned on his heel. If Vermouth still got herself caught under these conditions, then helping her had lost all value anyway.
Watching Cointreau simply walk away without the slightest intention of lending her a hand, Vermouth was left a little speechless. She was, whatever else could be said, a great beauty—so why did every man she ran into lately seem to have no trace of a gentleman's manners?
Not long after Vermouth had gone her own way, Dr. Agasa arrived by car, following the locator on Conan's body—and there he found the boy, draped in someone's coat.
Thank goodness Cointreau hadn't witnessed that scene. He might have become even more speechless over Vermouth's favoritism.