Chapter 22: Please Call Me Shinichi Kudo

Encounters between people are imbued with a sense of wonder, and all manner of strange cases are shrouded in mystery. To meet you here is truly fate.

Tonight’s stage is the city shrouded in night, where evil lurks in the darkness, seeping into every crack. The only one who sees the truth is a detective with the appearance of a child but a mind far beyond his years—the famed Detective Lu… Luke.

It suddenly occurred to Luke that he and the illustrious Conan had quite a bit in common.

Both had been transformed from adults into seven-year-old children.

Both could ride a skateboard.

Wherever Conan went, murders would follow, earning him the nickname “the Grim Reaper Elementary Student.” He excelled at solving crimes.

Wherever Luke went, explosions ensued. He excelled at committing them.

“From now on, just call me Shinichi Kudo.”

“Would you like to update your profile?” Christina’s voice inquired.

“Uh… I was joking,” Luke replied, breaking into a cold sweat. “By the way, where are Matt and Foggy right now?”

“One hundred meters ahead, hiding in a tree,” came the response.

“Not a bad hiding spot…”

At that moment, Luke was seated in the cockpit of his Windstorm aerial mech, circling high above, shadowing Daredevil and Foggy on their way. He had two objectives tonight. The first was to secretly protect Matt and Foggy, stepping in to assist if necessary. The second was to find an opportunity to procure some firearms.

Luke was well aware of Daredevil’s preternaturally sensitive hearing, so he maintained a careful distance, following from the skies, his small craft and the darkness providing ample cover. He was confident that Daredevil’s human radar wouldn’t detect him.

Below, two grown men were perched in the branches of a dense street-side tree, waiting in ambush for the blind courier transporting baby formula.

“Three people coming from the west. None of them blind.”

“A car just arrived.”

“Someone approaching from the south.”

Daredevil was always precise with his intelligence. In the pitch-black night, he was like a bat, painting a world of burning flames in his mind with every sound around him. Footsteps, car horns, snatches of conversation from nearby apartments—even at a distance, he caught them all with clarity. It was a world both vast and cacophonous.

Through years of training, Daredevil had learned to filter out the irrelevant. Tonight, the only things he needed to track were the movements of the gangs and the likely appearance of the blind courier.

“He’s here,” Daredevil whispered from the tree.

It was a while before Foggy spotted a lone figure slowly making his way from the other end of the street.

The man wore a backpack, using a white cane to tap constantly before him. As he drew closer, his jet-black sunglasses came into view—clearly, he was blind.

Daredevil and Foggy exchanged a silent glance, then crept down from the tree to follow at a distance.

High above, Luke piloted the aerial mech, trailing them from the sky.

None of them knew that tonight was fated to be anything but peaceful…

Lately, as night fell, the usual loiterers of Hell’s Kitchen would vanish without a trace, as if sensing the calm before a storm. The blind man, walking alone down the deserted street, stood out all the more.

He had East Asian features—in fact, he was of Chinese descent.

From what Luke knew, Madame Gao had many such blind couriers in her employ—all blinded by her, forced to work in secret factories processing tainted baby formula.

Madame Gao was exceedingly cunning. She used the blind to transport her poisoned product, so even if they were caught, they wouldn’t know the factory’s location. Nor would they know what they were actually processing.

Thus, Madame Gao’s underground operation in New York remained well concealed; only a handful of her partners, such as Kingpin, knew of its existence.

Luke remembered that Madame Gao worked with Kingpin, as well as with Russians and Japanese. She handled the upstream processing and distribution, while the Russians managed downstream sales.

Daredevil’s intelligence came from investigating the Russians; their destination tonight was one of the Russians’ secret strongholds.

They tailed the blind courier to the site—a facility that, from the outside, appeared to be a food processing plant. The main gate was closed, but a side door remained open, guarded by a burly, tattooed man with his hands in his pockets.

The tattooed guard ignored the blind man and let him inside without question.

From above, Luke glanced at a sudden report from the mech’s scanner and was momentarily puzzled. “Strange—the X-ray scan shows the blind man’s bag doesn’t contain baby formula?”

At that moment, on the street below—

“He’s inside. Let’s go in too,” Foggy whispered.

“Wait…” Daredevil suddenly held him back.

“What’s wrong?” Foggy asked.

Daredevil’s face was clouded with doubt. “Something’s not right…”

His extraordinary senses had finally detected the anomaly. The blind man wasn’t carrying what he expected. He sensed something entirely different in the backpack.

And then—BOOM!

The sudden explosion made the ground tremble, and the violent shockwave nearly sent Daredevil and Foggy flying.

Stunned, they saw the Russians’ stronghold engulfed in flames. The factory windows shattered as fire burst from them, illuminating the entire street.

“What… what just happened?!” Foggy stammered in shock.

“The blind man wasn’t carrying baby formula—he was carrying a bomb! It was detonated inside!” Daredevil “saw” it all; even he was dumbfounded and perplexed.

Hell’s Kitchen erupted in chaos in an instant.

The undercurrents, dormant for days, finally broke the surface!

The blind courier, expecting to deliver tainted formula as usual, instead delivered a bomb that obliterated a group of Russians. This was a declaration of war.

Who would dare strike at the Russians?

Luke guessed it was almost certainly Kingpin’s doing.

Watching from above, Luke was also stunned for a long moment before murmuring, “Looks like tonight’s show is just getting started.”

This was a major Russian stronghold. Having suffered such a blow, the Russians would not let it pass.

It was as if cold water had been poured into a boiling cauldron—Hell’s Kitchen exploded into pandemonium. Countless gang members poured from the shadows like ants, flooding the streets and opening fire on their rivals!

They had been preparing for days; each carried submachine guns and rifles, ammunition in abundance. Anyone who wasn’t an ally was gunned down on sight.

The rattle of gunfire echoed through every street and alley, jolting countless residents from their sleep.

Ordinary people cowered in their homes, trembling: What now? How are we supposed to live like this? Damn these gangs!

Factions surged forth, converging rapidly on the area. The factory’s vicinity was destined to become the main battleground.

Daredevil and Foggy soon found themselves beset on all sides. Neither had anticipated that events would spiral so suddenly out of control.

A furious mob of Russians, brandishing AK-47s, poured out of their vehicles and, without hesitation, opened fire on the two of them—when a white mech dropped from the sky, shielding them from the hail of bullets.

“You two go. I’ll hold them off,” a voice resonated from within the mech.

“Who… who are you?” Foggy stammered, stunned by the sight of this… robot?

Luke replied with a single word: “A friend.”