This is going to be a bit different for me doing a 1-shot collection like this but I liked the idea of 1-shots instead of a long story for this particular concept and hope you'll enjoy! :) I'd recommend reading 'Muzai' to understand the background for this first story (a 'cut scene' from Chapter 15 that picks up from where 15 actually ends) but the rest beyond it will all stand on their own.
"Men dressed from head to toe in black?"
Shinichi was somewhat surprised by the master thief's strange question and weird reaction to Shinichi's full description of the pair of jacketed, hatted men that had changed (nearly) his entire life for the worse; as Shinichi had begun to detail what exactly happened to him that rendered his seventeen-year-old body transformed into that of a seven-year-old child the other boy blanched momentarily just enough for the shrunken meitantei to notice it before Kaito sank down into the love seat across the room and studied him with a frown accompanied by a very serious expression, in fact the most serious expression Shinichi had ever seen the other boy wear whether or not Kaitou Kid's monocle had been perched on Kaito's face at the time.
"Yeah," Shinichi replied after he realized that Kaito's question was finished. "Of course I didn't know it during the time that they whacked me over the head and tried to kill me, but they were -are- members of a highly dangerous criminal cartel known as the Black Organization, called that because all their members seem to dress in nothing but black when they're not disguised. Anyhow, after they nearly knocked me out they made me swallow a pill full of something I later found out is called APTX 4869- an experimental poison that's supposed to be foolproof and untraceable. I passed out being absolutely sure that I was going to die, and then when I woke up I looked like this- or I at least found out that I looked like this pretty quickly." Shinichi gestured loosely at his tiny frame. "Some cops found me when they were sweeping stragglers out of Tropical Land hours later. I got very lucky and was able to get out of the station they took me to; after that I found an old family friend, Agasa-hakase, and I managed to convince him that it was me. I've been living with Mouri Kogoro and Mouri Ran ever since under the alias of Edogawa Conan."
"Kudo, ya really sure you should be telling him quite this much?" inquired Heiji tersely after Shinichi had finished, the Osakan meitantei shifting about on the other end of the three-seat couch that Shinichi was also sitting on, very tense looking and definitely not quite comfortable at how much of the cat Shinichi was daring to let out of the bag to Kuroba Kaito of all people, even if they were currently allies. "I mean yeah, we may be working with him temporarily and everything until we figure out these statues and what's going on with them but this guy is still-"
"People dressed exactly like you're describing also killed my father," replied Kaito in a pained, quiet voice as he interrupted Heiji in midsentence, earning stares of open shock from both meitantei in the room. "I don't know if either of you has ever heard of him, you might if you can remember back seven or eight years or if you'd ever seen one of his shows, but he was a very famous magician who died in a 'tragic stage accident' during one of his finales about nine years ago that I found out eventually was no accident. It was a coldly premeditated slaying." He let out a deep breath. "Kuroba Toichi was his name."
Whoa...could the people that killed his father have been the Black Organization as well? It sure sounds like it. But why would they have killed him? Shinichi was still trying to figure out all of the possible implications, especially because his mom had learned some general tricks but most particularly the art of stage makeup from Kuroba Toichi. The last name...Why didn't I think of that sooner? Shinichi also had a few very vague but fond memories associated with the magician from back when he had really been a kid, and he was just trying to fully recall them when Kaito spoke up again.
"They killed my father and made it look like an accident," the magician said darkly, "because of something he wouldn't do for them."
"What's that?" both tantei inquired at the same moment, the question irresistible thanks to how tantalizing and packed with mystery that phrase was; it was like putting a nice, fat piece of raw steak in front of a very hungry dog.
"Follow me," replied Kaito after a few reflective moments to mull things over as he pointed his finger at Shinichi. "Not you, just Kudo," Kaito added shortly and firmly to Heiji as both boys got up off the couch. "Sorry Hattori, but I would like to exercise at least some control over what further information gets out to whom regarding me or my family and since he's the one that got shrunk by the same group of bastards that killed Dad, he wins."
"If anything happens to Kudo-" began Heiji threateningly as he finished standing up, but Kaito cut him off with a glare.
"Oh come on Hattori! What am I going to do, kidnap him and hold him for ransom so that you won't reveal my identity or something?" Kaito rolled his eyes in annoyance before crossing his arms and standing in a slightly defensive stance, obviously angry with the Osakan for thinking such a thing. "I take my number one rule very seriously, and I don't appreciate what you just insinuated. Besides, have you forgotten about that fact that I have a lot more at stake in the investigation we're working on than either of you? I'm the one getting framed for murder. Why would I want to-"
"It's alright, Hattori." Shinichi physically stepped in between the pair while making the comment to Heiji and then looked up at both other boys in turn. "Now calm down, both of you." Shinichi was desperately trying to defuse the very tense situation before a brawl broke out; he knew that angry glint in Heiji's viridian eyes all too well, the one that was generally followed by a criminal getting whacked over the head with either a kendo bokken or something that could closely enough substitute for the purpose of said whacking. "Just show me what you want to show me," Shinichi added to Kaito as he felt a sweat drop began tricking down the side of his head. The last thing we need right now is for a fight to break out between you two...
Kaito nodded, and Shinichi and Kaito then exited Jii's living room while Heiji thunked back down onto the couch in a sulky huff, as angry at being denied information, the lifeblood of a tantei, as he was at the fact that Shinichi hadn't either a) insisted he be allowed to come along or b) ask that Heiji at least be allowed to know whatever it was that Kaito was going to say once they left.
"Back this way," the thief said while he waved his hand towards a tiny back room off of the hallway of the older man's house. "I'll show you a picture of Dad to start things off." With that, they finished entering a room that had a rather large picture of a magician in a full white, crisp outfit hanging centered on its wall. "This is Dad- Kuroba Toichi," said Kaito while his voice swelled with pride before he stepped forward and carefully tapped three different spots on the frame surrounding the picture, then gently poked each of the three doves in the picture. That was when the picture suddenly made a loud grinding noise before it completely spun on its axis, revealing a vastly different picture- one of a very familiar appearing white-clad thief, but whose face looked much older.
"That," explained Kaito simply as he began thunking the picture's frame in three spots that varied from the first set of taps and pressing the cards instead of the doves this time, "is also Dad." He figured that the meitantei standing next to him was more than intelligent enough to put two and two together after that statement and seeing Toichi as Kid in the painting, so he didn't elaborate any further and waited for whatever questions Shinichi would ask after the other boy finished assembling the mental puzzle pieces. Kaito wasn't too shocked when the question came mere moments after his second statement.
"They killed him because he wouldn't steal something for them, right?"
Kaito nodded as this time, the picture actually began sliding over to the left, revealing a medium-sized hole in the wall where the painting used to be. "That's exactly it. C'mon back here, it's way smaller than the room I normally get to work in at home but it does the job in a pinch. Hurry, the door will only stay open for a few more seconds." Kaito entered the hole and then helped Shinichi up into it. "Sorry, the whole point of this being designed this way was to keep out curious kids in case by some amazing chance they ever managed to hit that thing in the right places," he snickered, earning a death glare from the tiny meitantei after Kaito had set him back down on the other side while the painting slid back into place.
"So what exactly was it that they wanted him to steal?" asked Shinichi after he spent a few minutes just wandering around the back room while Kaito busied himself with checking on the condition of a few of his toys, Shinichi taking in all of the tricks and gadgets packed into nearly every square inch of the room and amazed that Kaito had managed to cram so much into the room.
"Pandora."
"What is that exactly?" Shinichi finally asked after the thief didn't seem to be forthcoming with anything else.
"Think about it, tantei-kun; I know you're smarter than that." Kaito turned from his current delicate work of oiling his glider's interlocking pieces and offered a grin. "What do I steal? And then return, eventually?"
"Jewels and gems." Shinichi frowned as he thought about it for a few more moments. "But if it's money gotten through selling them that they're after, surely there are far more-"
"They're not after Pandora because of money. Of course, neither am I but that's beside the point." Kaito shook his head as put his glider off to the side and then began to work on repairing one of his countless Kaitou Kid-lookalike blowup dolls that had had a rather rough landing after he'd used it to lead the police off on a wild goose chase away from his getaway vehicle, the thief pulling out bond adhesive and a roll of white and tan heavy-duty patching material meant for inflatable rafts and things of that nature. "It's supposed to be able to grant immortality."
"Immortality? But how?" Shinichi's brows were knitted in confusion.
"It's said that if you take Pandora outdoors under the moon while the Volley's Comet passes overhead, which happens once every 10,000 years, it will shed 'tears' that if consumed make you unable to die," Kaito explained as he began cutting the pieces he would need to repair the lookalike doll. "Unfortunately I have no idea what Pandora looks like, but if you hold it up under moonlight a smaller red gem is supposed to appear within it- a jewel within a jewel. Which is why I go after only larger jewels and gems, ones that have the possibility of containing another jewel in them. And then once I've stolen the gem, I usually try and wait for the full moon and hold it up to the moonlight to see if another gem is inside of it. Finally, I return the gem once I've verified that it's not Pandora." He made a face. "Which is sometimes more of a pain than the initial theft, really. People tend to amp up thier security after they've been stolen from."
"But that Pandora story sounds like some kind of child's fairy tale," Shinichi muttered, still slightly dazed and confused. The whole thing sounded so illogical! "It sure sounds like the Black Organization is taking it seriously enough, though..." He looked over at the other boy sadly for a moment, realizing that that may have brought up unpleasant memories of his father's death. In the next instant, his eyes became intense. "At least I finally understand two things that were bugging me ever since I started tailing you. Well, three actually."
"Hmm?" This noise was uttered through a mouthful of patch material, Kaito not even lifting his eyes from his current task.
"Why you always return what you steal, and why the time that you return the items varies so wildly from theft to theft. I'd never seen a thief that didn't seem to want to gain anything from thier thefts before." As Shinichi picked up a stray playing card off the ground he added "And why you steal to begin with" right before the card bent slightly and vaporized into a puff of smoke in his hand, the activated miniature smoke bomb hidden within the card having been triggered and quickly filling the small hidden workplace with billowing white smoke that totally covered Shinichi.
"Nice going, you set off one of my smokescreen cards" coughed Kaito through watering eyes as he stumbled over to the back of the painting that led into the room and pulled a small lever, which reopened the entrance as the thick smoke came pouring out through the open hole. Both boys exited the room, still coughing madly.
"What the hell'd you do, experiment with new explosives you were gonna use at a heist or something?" demanded Heiji as he entered the room and surveyed the smoke-filled room and coughing pair. "All of a sudden I see this thick white smoke come driftin' into the living room..."
"Kudo set off one of my smokescreen cards on accident," Kaito managed to get out through a final, less severe bout of coughing before glancing down at Shinichi with a half-meant glare. "First rule," he began in a lighthearted tone. "Don't ever just pick things up that are laying around one of my workrooms like that. Hell, I still don't know what all is hidden in some of those places and what some of the stuff does." Then the magician-thief looked down again for a bit at Shinichi's vaguely stunned, somewhat white-dyed, horror-filled expression and emitted a loud, bracing round of laughter that caused the other two to laugh riotously as well, in spite of themselves.
"So, Kudo and I were talking," began Heiji to Kaito ten minutes later after Shinichi had finished his attempt to clean the white residue off of him as best he could. "We think that we need to get that idiot Hakuba back on track, and a good way to do that would be to plan a fake heist."
"A fake heist? How exactly do you mean?" inquired the other boy, who was still in the room that contained his father's picture trying to clean the last of the residue from the smokescreen up, scrubbing the carpet as best he could with his hands and knees.
"I mean do what ya normally do, send a note and everything, but don't show up." Heiji followed this by leaning against the wooden doorframe casually and taking a sip of the orange soda he'd just pilfered from Jii's fridge.
Kaito looked up from his work and gave the Osakan a questioning glance. "And what good would that possibly do? Except serve the purpose of distracting Hakuba even further from trying to figure out the stupid statues?" With an irritated huff, he returned to his chore.
"Well, once he shows up, see, he finds that you've left another note there and then-"
"Besides," Kaito broke in with a gleeful grin, "there's an actual heist that we should probably be placing our energies into planning. Right, Kudo?" He glanced over at Shinichi, who was also trying to help clean up the mess.
"Well, I don't know about a heist," Shinichi said warily with a guarded glance to Kaito, "but there was just a special on TV about another one of the statues- it's in a secure facility across town. It might be a good idea to see if we can get out hands on it and investigate it."
"Oh, dear, not another smoke bomb accident, Kaito." Jii's sad tone emitted from the doorway, where he currently stood behind Heiji. "How many times have I said-"
"Hey, Conan here was a newbie and I didn't warn him about the stuff layin' around here, you old jokester. My fault," replied Kaito with a wide grin that he directed towards Shinichi, then Jii.
"I'm sorry, Konsuke-ojisan," said Shinichi in as sweet and innocent as voice as he could muster. So he must not have ever told Jii who I really am, and he obviously doesn't want Jii to know that he let me in the back room. There was actually an almost palpable sense of relief; Shinichi didn't like too many people knowing who he really was because he felt that anyone who knew he was really the Heisei Holmes was placed in immediate danger thanks to the Black Organization. But Heiji...Heiji could defend himself without question. And Kaito...Well, he was Kaitou Kid, the slipperiest, most cunning thief alive. And as nervous as it had made Shinichi initially after finding that the other boy knew who he really was, the realization that he finally had someone else that he could drop his child's mask around besides his friend nearly three hours away in Osaka had actually brought Shinichi vast and equal measures of comfort and relief.
Shinichi also realized that Kaito had probably discussed things with him in that back room that were very painful for him, things that he rarely talked about at all while keeping that prankster, jokester face of a façade up almost all the time for the benefit of everyone around him, hiding his private pain in the meantime. And who else do I know that has to almost constantly wear a mask and lie all the time to nearly everyone he's close to? Gee, let me think about that one...Plus there was also the fact that both of them had had their lives so completely devastated by the Black Organization, though Shinichi felt that Kaito's losing a father to them certainly defaulted the greater amount of pain, suffering and agony to the thief. Yeah I have to go back to elementary school and live like a kid again, which is a royal pain at times, but I at least still have both my parents...
"So, what was this about a statue at another place nearby?" asked Jii as he rubbed his hands together gleefully. "I smell some fun brewing. Am I right, Kaito?"
"My new friend and I were just discussing that with Hattori here," replied Kaito as he pointed to Shinichi, who suddenly wore a surprised, contemplative look, before getting up off the floor. "Hattori must've been taking a nap or something when the special ran-" here he paused to elegantly, expertly duck out of the path of the now-empty soda can that Heiji viciously chucked at him like a fastball over Jii's right shoulder- "but there's another one of these weird Buddha statues at a storage place across town."
A tantei and a thief, friends? Shinichi supposed that stranger, weirder things had happened in the world. He got up himself and offered Kaito a brief, genuine smile that was returned by the magician with equal sincerity and abruptness. Both then turned to Heiji, who had begun to talk.
"Well, Mr. Master Thief, let's get planning this thing already if we're gonna do it" muttered Heiji as he leveled a glare at Kaito.