Shigeru waited expectantly for the impressed looks and envious comments he was sure would come from Conan and Ai, but neither of them seemed particularly awed by his revelation. He frowned in confusion—didn't these two kids understand how amazing it was to have a relative on the Defense Team? GUTS was practically legendary among children their age.
"Shigeru, is your phone broken?" Conan asked when he noticed the boy had been staring at his device for several long seconds without doing anything.
"No, no! I'll call right now," Shigeru said quickly, embarrassed by the delay. His fingers moved swiftly across the screen as he dialed the internal number.
Ai watched the interaction with barely concealed amusement. These two boys were certainly not ordinary children, that much was clear.
In the GUTS command center, the communication console chimed with an incoming call.
"Command Center, this is Rena," the communications officer answered professionally, expecting a routine report from one of the patrol units.
Instead, she heard a young voice on the other end. "Um, hello? I'm looking for Shinjo. This is Shigeru."
Rena blinked in surprise. "Shinjo, there's a child named Shigeru calling for you."
"Huh? Shigeru?" Shinjo looked up from the tactical display he'd been studying with Horii. "I didn't expect that kid to actually call headquarters." He shook his head ruefully—he probably shouldn't have given his young cousin the internal number, but the boy had been so persistent.
The other GUTS members chuckled at Shinjo's expression as he reluctantly walked over to take the call.
"Hey there, Shigeru," Shinjo said, trying to sound casual despite his slight irritation at being called at work.
"Uncle!" Shigeru's excited voice came through clearly.
"I've told you a hundred times—even though I'm older than you, I'm still your cousin, not your uncle!" Shinjo protested. Having Shigeru call him 'cousin' helped him feel younger, but the boy seemed determined to make him feel ancient with that 'uncle' business.
The rest of the GUTS team couldn't help but smile at the familiar family banter between the two. It was a running joke in the command center.
"Uncle, this is really important! I saw the Crow Man!" Shigeru's voice took on an urgent tone, completely ignoring the title correction.
"What? The Crow Man?" Shinjo's demeanor immediately shifted to professional concern. Whatever family dynamics they had, if Shigeru was reporting something dangerous, he needed to take it seriously.
Shigeru quickly explained what he'd witnessed—the strange creature with the crow's head, the businessman who'd simply vanished in a beam of blue light, everything they'd seen in terrifying detail.
Horii quickly pulled up a digital map displaying recent disappearance reports. "The police are still treating these as isolated missing persons cases," he said quietly to Captain Iruma. "They haven't connected them to any kind of alien activity."
"Shigeru, where are you right now?" Shinjo asked, his voice tight with worry. The thought of his young cousin being anywhere near such a dangerous creature made his stomach clench.
"Be careful!"
Suddenly, another child's voice shouted through the phone—not Shigeru's, but someone else entirely.
The warning came just in time. While Shigeru had been focused on his phone call, the Crow Man had silently returned, emerging from the shadows with that same unnatural grace they'd witnessed earlier. The alien creature raised its strange weapon, the device already beginning to emit that ominous blue glow.
Conan reacted on pure instinct, throwing himself sideways into Shigeru and knocking him out of the beam's path. Both boys tumbled to the ground, and Shigeru's phone went skittering across the pavement with a sharp crack.
The Crow Man's head tilted with predatory interest, those unnatural eyes focusing on its new targets. Seeing that its first attack had failed, the creature raised its weapon again, this time aiming more carefully.
Shigeru, still disoriented from the tackle, couldn't scramble away fast enough. The blue light enveloped him, and his form flickered and faded until nothing remained but empty air.
"Shigeru!" Conan shouted in horror, watching his new ally simply disappear.
"Damn it!" Without hesitation, Conan pressed the activation switch on his specially modified sneakers. The mechanisms whirred to life, and a soccer ball materialized from the shoe's hidden compartment. Drawing on all the power Dr. Agasa had built into the device, Conan delivered a devastating kick that sent the ball flying like a missile.
The impact caught the Crow Man squarely in the chest, sending the creature staggering backward. But even as it regained its footing, Conan could see it wasn't seriously injured—just surprised.
"Haibara, run!" he yelled to Ai, who had been watching the confrontation with calculating eyes.
Ai didn't hesitate. She grabbed Shigeru's fallen phone from the pavement and sprinted toward the dense trees at the park's edge. She understood the tactical situation perfectly—if they were all captured, there would be no one left to get help. Someone had to escape.
Conan tried to lead the Crow Man away from Ai's escape route, zigzagging between the park benches and playground equipment. But he quickly discovered he'd underestimated his opponent's capabilities. The creature moved with inhuman speed and precision, cutting off his escape routes with ease.
He'd only managed a few dozen steps when the blue light caught him from behind. The last thing Conan saw was Ai disappearing safely into the tree line before his own vision flickered and faded.
The Crow Man surveyed the area where the third child had vanished, its head swiveling with mechanical precision. After a moment, it seemed to dismiss the escaped target as unimportant. Perhaps this was simply the arrogance that came with technological superiority—after all, on the Crow People's home world, humans had never been anything more than slaves and test subjects.
Back in the GUTS command center, the phone line had gone ominously silent after Shigeru's desperate warning. The sounds of struggle, shouting, and what might have been some kind of impact had carried clearly through the connection before cutting to static.
"Shigeru! Shigeru!" Shinjo called into the phone, his voice growing more desperate with each unanswered shout. Maybe, just maybe, his cousin was still there, still safe somehow.
The steady dial tone that finally answered him crushed that hope completely.
"Damn it!" Shinjo slammed his fist down on the console, the impact echoing through the suddenly tense command center.
"Horii, trace Shigeru's phone location immediately!" he ordered, spinning toward the technical station.
"Already on it," came the quick reply. "The signal originated from B2 Regional Park, but the phone appears to be offline now."
"Captain?" Shinjo turned to Megumi Iruma, his expression a mixture of professional duty and personal desperation.
Captain Iruma was about to give the deployment order when another call came through to the command center.
"Shigeru!" Shinjo grabbed the phone eagerly, but the voice that answered wasn't his cousin's.
"I'm not Shigeru. My name is Haibara Ai," came a quiet, controlled voice—definitely a young girl, but one who seemed remarkably composed given the circumstances. "Shigeru and my friend Conan were just captured by the Crow Man."
"Conan? Ai?" Daigo looked up sharply from his position at the tactical display. He hadn't expected to hear those familiar names.
"Team Member Daigo, do you know these children?" Captain Iruma asked immediately, noting his reaction.
"Yes, they're friends of mine," Daigo confirmed, his expression growing serious. If Conan and Ai were involved in this situation, it meant Po and the others were probably nearby—and that meant the situation was even more complicated than they'd realized.
"Ai, listen carefully," Shinjo said into the phone, forcing his voice to remain calm and professional. "Stay exactly where you are and keep yourself hidden. We're coming to get you right now."
"Understood," Ai replied simply before the line went dead.
"Team Member Shinjo, Team Member Daigo—deploy immediately and bring Ai back safely," Captain Iruma ordered without hesitation.
"Yes, ma'am!"
Both men grabbed their helmets and headed for the hangar at a run.
More than forty minutes later, Shinjo and Daigo arrived at B2 Regional Park in their patrol vehicle. The park looked peaceful in the moonlight, giving no hint of the alien abduction that had occurred there less than an hour ago.
"Ai!" Shinjo called out, his hand resting on his sidearm as he scanned the shadows between the trees.
"Ai!" Daigo joined in, both men moving with practiced caution through the park's winding paths.
They had been searching for several minutes when a rustling sound came from a dense cluster of bushes near the playground. A small figure emerged—a girl with auburn hair, her clothes torn and dirty from crawling through undergrowth, looking thoroughly disheveled but alert.
"Ai!" Daigo hurried over to her, relief evident in his voice.
"Are you hurt?" he asked, quickly checking her for injuries.
"I'm fine," Ai replied, brushing leaves from her hair. "Just some scratches from tree branches while I was hiding." Despite her young appearance, her voice carried a maturity that reminded Daigo she was far from an ordinary child.
"We need to get you back to base immediately," Shinjo said, constantly scanning their surroundings. "The Crow Man could return at any time, and you're the only witness we have."
Though every instinct screamed at him to search for Shigeru immediately, Shinjo knew that securing their witness had to take priority. Ai's testimony might be the key to finding not just his cousin, but all the missing people.
"I understand," Ai said simply, recognizing the tactical necessity even if she didn't like abandoning Conan and Shigeru.
The two GUTS members quickly escorted her to their vehicle and headed back to headquarters at maximum speed, each of them hoping they weren't already too late to save the captured children.