Author notes: While Zack's story may resonate with a select few—those lucky or cursed enough to brush against godhood—Kudo is the one most readers will find familiar. Especially the ones who appreciate a good detective novel. He is ordinary, yet not; his presence is the quiet tether that keeps our heroes anchored to reality.
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The day began like any other: a dead body, a locked room, no evidence, and Kudo Conan standing in the middle of it all. People always assumed Kudo was the culprit until he extracted a confession—partly to clear his own name, partly to soothe his sanity. Even the corrupt mayor would've thrown him in jail by now if not for the favor he owed him.
The streets were empty; the public preferred front-row seats to crime from the comfort of their couches. After all, technology and laziness always walked hand in hand.
"I don't see it!" the mayor whined, sprawled beside the pool of blood. "Where's the body again?"
"That's what we're trying to figure out, Mayor." His secretary addressed the media with the poise of a seasoned spokeswoman, then leaned in to hiss, "The cameras are pointed right at you, sir."
"So what!" the mayor barked, attempting—and failing—to sit upright. "Kudo does the same, and he's all over the damn news the next day." He subtly waved a hand, begging for help.
Yeah, and he pulls it off by solving the case the next second, she thought, pointedly ignoring him.
She relished watching the mayor squirm; his overfed belly stuffed with stolen funds that blocked both his heart and basic mobility. Pure bliss. And all she needed to do was look clueless, and later, harmless, to avoid his wrath. Being a lady, a hot one at that, had its perks.
It's pathetic how it works every time, she mused, smoothing away a forming frown. Squirm, you little turd. Squirm. She giggled internally.
The cops and media ignored the crime entirely, their attention glued to Maria as she bent over, ensuring the dim-witted mayor's gaze stayed locked on her cleavage and not the mic clipped to her blouse.
"Want something?" she asked, attempting innocence and briefly forgetting just how profoundly stupid her boss was.
The mayor instantly forgot the corpse, the cameras, and even that he was half-stuck on the floor, enjoying the view. The equally clueless media zoomed in on the wrong thing, creating live headlines that demolished her reputation instead of the mayor's.
Maria yanked the mic off her chest the moment she read the stream of drooling comments from men wishing to be said mic.
Once men stop thinking with their dicks, the world might have a chance, she thought, forcing a pleasant smile. She ended the broadcast only after the viewer count plummeted to zero, which happened the second she buttoned up.
"Views are zero," she announced.
That was the mayor's cue to roll onto his belly and try a new, more embarrassing method of getting up.
Poor stumps, Maria thought, briefly pitying his legs before stepping out of reach of the grubby hands stretching toward her for support.
"Ahem! Chief," the mayor croaked, desperate to reclaim his moment. "Coffee," he barked at Maria, soaking in the thin sliver of authority.
"Yes—sir—mayor," Chief Thomson stuttered, his voice more beast than man, eyes darting between the cameras and the blood-stained floor. "The body is gone—missing. As you… all of you…" He points a shivering finger at the camera. "...can see!"
Mayor Meyer thought twice before approaching the behemoth—everyone did. At seven and a half feet tall and stacked with more muscle than a human body should legally allow, Chief Thomson was the mortal world's closest thing to a walking natural disaster.
Maria often wanted to defend him, because only she knew the truth: the dumb beast was all brawn, no brain. She was a model among models, but whatever people assumed, their relationship wasn't the beauty-and-the-beast trope... though from the outside, it absolutely looked like it.
Most people hated Thomson purely out of spite—not for anything he'd done, but for his cosmic cheat code of a metabolism. The man could inhale donuts by the dozen and somehow convert pure sugar into defined, glistening muscle. Not gifted muscle, god-stamped muscle. Meaning: no gym, no protein shakes, no discipline, not even the basic respect of pretending to eat clean. Rumor had it he could live off donuts alone, every sprinkle and glaze transmuted into steel-coiled muscles.
Even Maria cried about it sometimes, silently, in private, where the universe couldn't laugh at her. She was stuck under the weight of politics and her own idiotic desire to help people. Who wouldn't want to live by their own rules? But her fondness for Thomson came from the way he viewed the world: everyone was equal… equally irrelevant. The big lug didn't have a drop of animosity in him, not even toward the people who had tried to kill him—three separate times—all on his birthdays.
"Genius deduction, as always, Chief," Mayor Meyer snorted, puffing himself up. "What's next?"
"Ahem." Thomson cleared his throat, attempting—and failing—to subtly drag his heavy feet toward the mayor. "Conan," he declared, his voice so thunderous it boomed through the mayor's own mic.
"You—"
"—thousand…" Maria cut in, rescuing Thomson—and, by extension, her boss. "Views are still climbing. TEN—"
"WE GET IT! Shh…" The mayor shot her a murderous glare. "Why him?"
"This is the seventh murder," Chief Thomson rumbled, reminding him as gently as a landslide. "If Kudo walks in and solves it within a second—like he always does—both of us will be knee-deep in sh—"
"Shhh!" Maria hissed, slapping a hand over the mayor's mic."We've got kids watching," she sang sweetly, waving at the lens with a hand so perfectly manicured it should've had its own segment.
And it was...
The mayor and the chief followed suit, each more awkward than the last.
"So…" the cameraman prodded, zooming tight on their faces, hungry for drama.
"This is a crime scene," Chief Thomson finally barked, voice echoing like a divine verdict. He turned toward the exit, and his "simple stroll" morphed into a full-scale human bulldozer maneuver. Cameras, reporters, and even a bold intern were swept aside as if gravity itself had chosen a new direction.
The press didn't exit the building so much as flee it.
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Contrary to public belief—which was, frankly, everything and anything, because boredom demanded drama—Kudo wasn't some once-in-a-generation genius. He did what any good detective would, with one crucial difference: he never gave up, no matter the adversity, be it his chief, the mayor, or public opinion trying to stomp on his sanity.
People swore his emerald-brown eyes could scan the ethereal realm; To which he always replied, "Huh-huh!"—exhausted from reminding the media that slapping the word emerald onto a feature didn't make it mythical.
"My nose? A bit sharp and broken several times. If you haven't noticed, I'm a goddamn cop. We get punched a lot. Usually by the public, not criminals. They prefer smarter solutions." Kudo unbuckled his gun from its holster. "And no, that doesn't magically give me a hawk's gaze." He pointed the weapon at the reporters. "Got it? Good. Now, height and weight: field cop. Always fit. Yeah, God stole about two feet out of spite, so I padded it with hilts. From five-ten to barely six. Average in every way."
Each swing of his gun forced the interviewers to nod obediently, only for Kudo to wake up the next day to another article praising him as a god walking the mortal realm.
"And still no raise," he muttered.
"We're not your therapists, you know," a grumpy teen scowled.
"From the looks of it, neither are you kids. So why do I keep finding you at my crime scenes?" Kudo shot the five teenagers a glare, secretly hoping the media was right and his stare alone would make them confess. "I used to wonder whether trouble found you, or you found trouble. But now I'm convinced you meet halfway, which makes it your fault."
"Half, I get. How does that make it completely our fault?" a girl fired back. "Someone needs a math tutor."
"As in yourself!?" a boy with specks teased.
She stomped on his leg, forcing Kudo to break character and roll his eyes. "That's how choices work, and accountability is its only redemption," he said, already walking away; a prudent choice, since starting a debate with teenagers was a battle he refused to wage.
Kudo would never admit it, but he had a soft spot for them, especially since they always had each other's backs, even the perpetually drowsy girl they hauled around like extra luggage. Whether she was an unwilling accomplice or they refused to leave a friend behind, their loyalty was the kind of friendship you didn't see much anymore.
"If they breach my crime scene, I'll have your job," Kudo warned an officer as he stepped inside.
No one can do everything, he reminded himself as he approached the locked room. Sure, the door was bolted from the inside, so what? Once they caught the suspect, he'd fill in the blanks. And if they didn't, he wasn't losing sleep over some showboating criminal's theatrics.
"My job is to catch bad guys, not play along with their twisted puzzles," he muttered, brushing past the mayor.
He definitely wasn't going to mention that he'd been involved since the first case, or that he'd already figured out the locked room was just a distraction.
"Blood?" he asked.
"Tested," Thomson nodded. "Victims." He flipped open the file. "Tack Hol Mess. Age—" He listed off the details.
"Body?"
"Missing," the mayor snapped. "Duh! Why do you think you're here?"
"Him?" Kudo jerked a thumb at Thomson.
"A pain in my… due diligence," Thomson corrected himself with painful awkwardness.
"A pain in my due diligence!?" the mayor hollered, instantly turning the grim atmosphere into a ripple of laughter.
Even Kudo cracked a grin, eyes drifting past the gathered officers toward the doorway, waiting for the kids.
They always showed up right when things got complicated. And every major case, inexplicably, was solved only after their arrival. Coincidence? He thinks not. However, this time, he was determined to catch them in the act.
———<>||<>——— End of Chapter Twenty-nine. ———<>||<>———