Soldiers [Detective Conan] [Crow series 1/2]

Number one:

28 July, 2013
Lake Oku-tone, Gunma Prefecture, Japan

"The true culprit is... you, Juniper Carlisle!"

As if on cue, everyone gasps.

And Juniper... (or whatever name she's going by, now) wonders how the fuck things got to be so bad. Like, when exactly things started going so wrong in her life, that she's now in an eerie mansion, being accused of murder by a literal child in a silly little bowtie.

Was it when she decided to go on a vacation with the neighbour's family to this very remote location, just to get out of the house on her thirty-third birthday? 

Was it before that, when she had a one-night-stand with one of the most intimidating people she knew?

Was it before that, when she decided to move into her new apartment on a persistent and potentially suicidal hunch?

Was it before that, when she had to quit her old job after a workplace accident left her wheelchair-bound and she was forced to change her name?

Was it before that, when she accidentally fell a little bit in love with her one coworker who had the most dangerous personality?

Was it before that, when her job relocated her to Japan in the first place, and she absolutely failed to quit smoking?

Was it even before that, when the guy in charge of her division died mysteriously and her entire branch of the company had to dissolve, and she and her old coworkers were split across the world?

Hell, was it even before then, when she, at age fifteen, was scouted by the people who would become her future bosses because she was caught rewiring the security system at a royal palace nearly ten thousand kilometers from here?

"Well, Miss Carlisle? Or should I say..."

Oh, man. She's fucked.

Time to be the soldier the last decade and a half trained her to be.

-x-