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Heizou had to hand it to the Kujou lackeys—they were good.
Of course, Heizou suspected that something was amiss the second they knocked on his door. There were three of them, for one thing, which was far too many people to send for a message, even an urgent one. Secondly, Heizou was not dumb. He knew of the corruption within the Tenyrou Commission, especially involving the treason of Kujou Takayuki. Heizou also had a list of suspects regarding those who might be more loyal to the former Commissioner than to the Commission; two of the three visitors were on that list, and Heizou was not particularly surprised by the third.
His intuition told him that the visit was bad news. A trap, of some sort. Or perhaps a vetting process, although it was terribly impractical to do that outside of the police station. So, Heizou remained vigilant of their intentions. While a part of him wanted to simply throw them out so that he could resume making katsu dish, because he was not looking forward to the sticky matter of his loyalty and the loyalty of his comrades, Heizou stilled his hand. This was an opportunity to get answers from them, too, after all. He just needed to play along.
Not… Not that he got very far. Heizou will admit that they surprised him. Especially Fukuda. Since Fukuda was technically his superior, it gave him an advantage; Heizou could not make the first move—at least not so blatantly.
Heizou wasn’t expecting him to do something as rash as jamming a needle in his neck.
Unfortunately, it was a little hard to compensate for the frankly insane action when said needle was some sort of tranquilizer. A powerful one, too. Heizou could not even remember hitting the floor.
When he woke up, he was in a completely different environment. Wooden, dim—there was a single light, dangling from a flat ceiling—and a little cold. Heizou recognized a dojo-design when he saw one, from the columns to the floorboards. It wasn’t the gym, however; if Heizou hazarded a guess, it could be a storage room.
As for Heizou himself… His arms were cuffed in front of him, and a cuff was around his left ankle as well. On his wrists were police-grade handcuffs; on his ankle, an old-fashioned iron manacle.
He also felt like shit. Heavy, listless. His body was sore in a way he could not immediately explain, and his head was stuffed with cotton.
A prick of pain in his elbow caught his attention, however, and Heizou did his best to bend his arms and get a good luck at the cause: a mostly healed puncture wound, in the crook of his elbow.
Something had been administered into his bloodstream. Heizou thought of the tranquilizer to the neck, the grogginess that permeated his being… He had been kept asleep.
It was hard to tell how long. Heizou couldn’t say he was an expert at judging the extent of his hunger, or his dehydration—he just knew he wasn’t out of commission quite yet.
His mind raced through probable reasons as to why the likely treasonous doushin would a) do something so rash as to drug and kidnap him, without prior aggravation, and b) target him specifically. There were no prior disappearances within the Commission that Heizou knew of, so he was the first. Was this a string case, and they wanted to remove the detective first? Or was this isolated to him?
It was hard to think when his eyes would not even focus completely and his body still felt like lead, but Heizou was not one to give up. Fortunately, the room was still, and the area was devoid of footsteps. He was alone. For now. The sedative likely wore off sooner than they expected—meaning that, soon, he would get a visitor with answers…or more sedatives.
Why keep him sedated? Why keep him at all? Kidnapping was enacted for a variety of reasons, but considering the culprit, he could narrow down the possibilities. They wanted him out of the way, or they wanted answers they knew he was not going to give willingly. Using him as a hostage was also a viable option. They could leverage his safety for promise of power; however, he wasn’t all that valuable as a hostage, save for the fact that he would be the one looking for a hostage, and perhaps they did not want to contend with him. He was flattered at the prospect, but it wasn’t likely.
Information was the most probable suspect; otherwise, keeping him alive was not that beneficial. (Unless they had planned to keep him sedated and out of the way; though even then, he had seen their faces, and he would have the means to arrest them afterward.)
Fukuda had access to all of the Commission’s case reports, however—and Heizou’s reports weren’t all that bad. No, he was looking for something that Heizou had and didn’t report. Something that he would be certain that Heizou had, because it was terrible form to be this rash and not be sure.
It took a moment for Heizou to consider all of the options until he landed on the obvious one.
The poison.
It was official record that Heizou had been one of the ones to inspect Kujou Takayuki’s belongings, as per protocol following his arrest. He had searched the warehouse. And, Heizou had found the torn notebook page—though he never submitted it as evidence.
If someone close to Takayuki knew of its existence, they would know it was missing. Heizou was, indeed, a likely suspect. There weren’t many clever people in the Commission, and it was cleverly hidden.
But the page was not all that important by itself. It was just the recipe.
Unless.
Heizou mentally kicked himself. Of course! Takayuki’s henchmen may know of the page’s existence, but not its contents.
They wanted the recipe.
The only things capable of granting that were the page itself, which Heizou had hidden away, or… Heizou. Because he had surely read it.
The realization sunk in his gut with dread. They had acted against Heizou, but he was still alive. That meant that they were willing to out themselves to him, but if they could find the notebook—or whatever they sought, since Heizou could not make an absolute statement quite yet—without him, then leaving him alive was nothing short of dangerous.
They needed him.
But only until they got their answers. Then, Heizou was fully disposable.
He knew what was coming, and the success of that conclusion rang hollow at what it promised.
Heizou was going to be tortured until he was finished, unless he could find a way to escape.
This was going to suck.
—o0o—
Heizou was right.
Of course he was right. He was a brilliant detective, after all.
He…would have liked to be wrong, though. Just this once.
They pretended otherwise, but Heizou wasn’t fooled. It was a sloppy farce, too. Two men in uniform came in and frog-marched him to another room. Heizou memorized the route, and every other corridor and room he could see. They set him down at a good impression of an interrogation room, but Heizou had already seen enough of the building: it was an old shogunate training facility.
He didn’t let them carry on with the fake arrest for long, though. Perhaps it was because Heizou was in a bad mood, knowing how bad their position was, but he wanted to watch them squirm. Just a little. If he could make them nervous enough, then they would slip, and he could escape. They foolishly left him his legs, after all, if they flanked him.
“Fukuda Sato,” Heizou said, cutting him off while also inferring that he knew full well who he was. “Why bother wasting time like this? I know what you want. So. Get on with it.”
Was Heizou looking forward to it? No. Of course. But it had been impossible to get out of the ankle cuff when he was alone in the room, and Heizou wasn’t confident he could make a run for it now—not without making them lower their guard. And if Heizou was complacent to their treatment? That would do it.
Hopefully.
In the meantime, it was satisfying to watch his soon-to-be-tormentor look like a beached fish. Turns out, prompting this sort of thing made them hesitant to follow through. Good to know.
That is, until somebody slammed his head into the desk.
“Don’t get cheeky! Fine, you wanna be smart? Then tell us where that recipe you stole is!”
So it began.