I don't own Detective Conan/Magic Kaito.

Pairings: Canon (Shinichi/Ran, Heiji/Kazuha, Kaito/Aoko)

Summary: There's a serial killer on the loose in Tokyo. His pattern? Each victim represents a piece from the game of chess. His victims? Famous detectives, as well as the one person dearest to each of them. As the killer swiftly works his way through his hit list, it becomes apparent that his list culminates with his true target: Kudou Shinichi. But that isn't what concerns the shrunken detective most; he also has reason to believe that the killer knows his identity. Could the killer simply be a deranged psychopath bent on revenge for some perceived wrong that Shinichi had committed? Or could he be from the Black Organization itself? And what does Kaitou KID have to do with all of this?

Just a quick side note: the first half of this chapter is first person so you can't tell the gender of the culprit, but the rest of the story will be 3rd person.

…I guess that about covers it. On with the story!

-Checkmate-

I uncapped the black marker and set the tip to the sleek surface of the photograph, clenching the cap in my teeth. A grin slowly slid across my face as I methodically drew a slash across the photo, upper right corner to lower left. I observed without a hint of remorse that the woman in the photograph had been pretty. I hadn't been able to tell what she had looked like the last time I met her; I had jumped her from behind, and it had been especially dark to begin with, considering it had been a night of a new moon. She hadn't put up much of a fight, but she was still more difficult than her detective counterpart; I had underestimated the amount of strength needed to strangle a middle-aged woman with a chain of plastic beads, and overestimated the amount needed to run a robust male through with an iron stake.

I placed the woman's picture atop that of my other victim, her former lover. The stacked pair of marked photographs rested beside a second stack, five times larger and made up of unmarked photos. My hit list.

I reached for an envelope before hesitating; my basement was too dark to write. Scrambling for the remote, I switched on the television set in the corner. I was going to anyway—they should have found the bodies by now.

"This just in…" The anchorwoman for this particular news channel was blonde, but didn't have a foreign accent; she was most likely of a mixed background. I usually preferred to watch Mizunashi Rena, but any station would do this time. "…Mogi Harufumi, a well-known detective, was found dead in his home only hours ago. The police are ruling it as a homicide, and based on the traces of iron found on his clothes, they have determined the murder weapon to be an iron cross with at least one point sharpened into a stake. The body was discovered only forty minutes after the discovery of the body of his fiancé, Fujioka Rei. The police are assuming that the murders are connected, though the woman seems to have been strangled as opposed to stabbed. If they are, in fact, connected, the letter found in Fujioka Rei's home may shed some light on the situation. It lacks a return address and appears to be some sort of code, which investigators have yet to crack."

A photograph of the code appeared in the upper left corner of the screen; I chuckled to myself. Never before had my codes gotten publicity like this. And this one wasn't even much of a code; a base knowledge of English etymology would do to solve it. But I had made it easier on purpose; what fun is a game if the players can't get past the first level?

And now was the time to begin preparation of the second level. I handled the envelope with gloved hands as I slipped the next code inside and affixed the typed address sticker of my next victim to the front.

The countdown had begun. The only question now was how many would die before the rest would understand the pattern.

xXx

"What's the code?" Edogawa Conan questioned eagerly before Mouri Kogoro had even put down the phone.

"Oi! Were you eavesdropping?" Mouri glared at the nosy freeloader. When had he gotten there, anyway? When Megure-keibu had called asking for advice about the code from that recent double homicide, Conan had been in his room….

The boy ignored him. "Well, what is it? I didn't hear."

Mouri shrugged. "It probably has nothing to do with the murders."

Conan almost rolled his eyes at the excuse—by now he had come to understand that when Mouri claimed that something was irrelevant, it usually meant that he didn't understand it.

"So what is it? Just for fun," the shrunken teenager tried to ask as innocently as possible.

Mouri hesitated, but finally grabbed a stray beer-stained napkin from the corner of his desk, clicked a pen, and scrawled "THE GREEK 'OVERSEER'" in English across his makeshift paper. "This," he grunted irritably. "See? It doesn't make a bit of sense. The most we can get out of it is that the culprit can speak English."

"Did anyone check what 'overseer' is in Greek?" At Mouri's blank look, Conan elaborated: "The 'overseer' part is in quotations, see? Maybe mentioning 'Greek' is a clue to translate it."

"…Hm. I guess we can see what it is, but I don't think it'll get us anywhere," Mouri muttered with a touch of annoyance as he reached for his computer.

"It's 'episkopos.'"

Mouri froze. "What did you just say?"

"'Overseer' in Greek. It's 'episkopos.'"

Mouri's eye twitched. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but quickly snapped it shut. He sighed, resolving to, once again, let it go. "…I suppose you saw that on TV?"

"Uh…yeah! It was a really cool show about ancient civilizations. They talked about Rome, too!" Conan giggled nervously. Actually, I learned that word when I went to Athens a few years ago on spring break with my parents. It was carved into a wall, along with a bunch of other words, and I asked Otou-san what they meant. We spent the next hour trying to hunt down someone who could tell us what the phrase was in Japanese (or at least English), so now I know exactly how to say "I saw the overseer yesterday in the temple" in Greek. Talk about lucky breaks...

"Whatever," Mouri huffed. "I still don't see what that has to do with anything."

"Well, the Latin word episcopus is derived from episkopos. In ancient Rome, episcopus was the title given to officials of the Catholic Church who governed over regions of the Church—modern-day bishops. The fact that the clue's in English probably means that the answer's in English, so 'bishop' is the answer!" ...Learned that one when I started studying Latin (I dropped it after a year, but that's irrelevant).

There was a stunned silence. Then, "I wasn't asking you!"

"But—ow!"

"Otou-san!" At that moment, Ran stepped through the door, having returned from shopping with Sonoko just in time to witness Conan moaning on the floor, nursing the lump on his head. She rushed to the boy and began to caringly massage his head where he had been hit. "Are you alright, Conan-kun?"

Conan nodded, his cheeks slightly pink in embarrassment.

"Otou-san! Why would you hit him?" Ran shot an outraged glare at her father and wrapped her arms protectively around her surrogate little brother.

"He was getting in the way," Mouri huffed, affronted but still a bit wary—he knew that if his daughter became angry enough, she would have no qualms about practicing her flipping axe kick on her own father….Sure, she would apologize later, but that wouldn't dull the pain.

"But Ran-neechan, I solved it!" Conan whined, desperately appealing to the person most likely to trust him. "I solved the code! Oji-san needs to call the police back!"

Ran's eyes wandered from Conan to her father, than back to Conan.

"…What code?"