Chapter 1: Drop In

A package. Kaito set his book bag down on the concrete step and picked up the plain brown box outside the door to his house. It was addressed to him with the sender address marked on top. Las Vegas, from his mom. He sighed.

What kind of stupid souvenir did she send him this time? At this rate there wouldn't any anything left in Las Vegas for him to see if she kept sending him something from every hotel she passed through. He knew the names of half the casinos on the Strip already without having set foot out of Japan.

Kaito fished out his keys and opened the door. At least the box wasn't heavy. It was a little bigger than a tablet, and maybe as thick as an apple. He tucked it under an arm as he picked up his bag and walked inside.

He got a knife, not one of those used for eating, from a drawer in the kitchen and carefully cut through the packing tape. With that severed, it was easy to pull apart the flaps and open the box.

There were packing peanuts inside. Of course. Because who would ever want to see what someone had actually sent them.

Irritated, Kaito brushed them aside and pulled out what appeared to be a wooden picture frame, stained a deep reddish brown. It would probably have been classy, if someone hadn't strung a die cast replica of the world's largest indoor roller coaster along the top of it.

What was he supposed to do with this? He wasn't much for photos, though when he thought about it something this cheesy was probably right up Aoko's alley. She'd love to have something from Las Vegas, and his mom would forgive him for giving it to Aoko. Probably.

As he held the frame in his hand he realized that the kitchen was getting oddly warm for an autumn afternoon. In fact, it felt like summer, and it was getting hotter the longer he thought about it. He could almost imagine he was hearing a kettle whistle, but it wasn't a kettle, and it sounded like it was coming from above him.

What the hell?

He looked up in time for the whistle to blow out into a full fledged scream as something colorful and blinding opened in the air above him. A shape dropped through and they collided, knocking him to the floor and pushing all the air out of his lungs.

Kaito panted and blinked, just trying to get his eyesight back to the point where he would stop seeing hazy rings of color floating before him. He was vaguely aware that he was still holding the picture frame in his right hand, but his left was pinned by the body of the person, the girl, who had somehow fallen on top of him.

She groaned, apparently not in much better shape than he was, and lifted her head. As soon as their eyes met she jumped off of him, and accidentally kneeing him in the gut, causing him to wheeze.

"I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed.

The girl looked around, fretting, and then noticed she was still holding something that he couldn't quite see due to all the rings still floating in front of him. He couldn't figure out why she found that surprising, but she knelt and took off a backpack, which she opened and put something wide and flat inside.

Kaito groaned and pushed himself up to a sitting position. "What just happened? And how did you get in here?"

He supposed she was kind of cute, probably about his age, with long black hair and an expressive face, but there had to be more to her than that. Her school uniform wasn't one he recognized, and that backpack she had was bigger than what she needed for school. One would think she was going camping.

She looked around the kitchen again as if trying to figure out where she was, and then said, "This is probably going to be hard to believe, but I used a time travel spell."

Kaito forced a laugh, but played it as genuine. All he needed. A friend of Akako's. Another witch. "Are you kidding?"

"No, really!" The girl's eyes widened with earnest. "You are Kaito Kuroba, right?"

"Yes, but this magic spell thing..."

"I'm Himiko. I'm your daughter from the future."

"Okay, that's something creepier than I expected."

She shook her head. "You haven't found Pandora yet, have you? Please tell me you haven't. It's the only thing that's going to save my father... you... in the future."

"Much creepier," he said aloud, but inside his head spun.

Only Jii and the criminal organization that killed his father should know about his mission to find Pandora. Akako knew magic, but she didn't know why he put on the persona of Kaitou Kid and committed the crimes he did. Assuming the girl coming here was some setup of Akako's, there was no way she should know about it.

"Look, I know it's crazy, but you have to believe me." Himiko inhaled deeply, clearly summoning a speech she had rehearsed before. "You're Kaitou Kid, the famous jewel thief. You're looking for a gem with an inclusion, a gem within a gem, called Pandora, that will grant immortality. Grandpa has a secret room in your house where he kept things from his own heists before you took over. Grandma's always traveling. She's loves Las Vegas and she's hardly ever home. You go to Ekoda High School. You're an amateur magician. You hate fish."

Kaito waved a hand to cut her off, and she stopped so abruptly he thought she might choke. Himiko stared at him, lips pressed together, waiting for some kind of ruling. Now that he could take a better look at her he could see the resemblence. The eyes... the nose... It was disconcerting. And she knew way too much about him... and Kaitou Kid.

"So, say I believe you," he said. "What are you trying to do?"

"I need you to steal Pandora before you would in my time, before you destroy it, so we can use it to save your future self. He's dying. And we're also going need my mother's help. I wasn't able to home in on her in this time period, but I know you went to high school with her."

School? Aoko? She was fun to tease, and pretty cute even though he could never tell her that, otherwise she would rib him endlessly about it. Being married to her seemed to be taking things a step too far though. They weren't even dating.

Still, if he was going to marry Aoko, he supposed it wouldn't be bad. He could do worse. She'd tease him a lot, but he knew she liked to look after him. Aoko was always feeding him and he was at the Nakamori house almost every other day, to the point that her father didn't think twice about seeing him.

"There's a slight problem with that," he said. "You see, your mom doesn't have any idea that I'm Kaitou Kid, and I'm pretty sure she's going to flip if she finds out." Am I going to tell her that someday? he wondered. "So if you meet her you have to keep all this stuff about time travel and Kaitou Kid a secret, okay? It's something that I'd have to break slowly."

And preferably long after Pandora was taken care of.

"Then you know where she is?" she asked.

"I think so," said Kaito, "we walked home together. Why do you need her?"

"To help you steal Pandora."

That was one way to get his attention, though he had no idea how Aoko could manage that. "And you can convince her to help steal Pandora without her finding out the identity of Kaitou Kid?"

Himiko nodded vigorously. "I'm sure can. It'll be easy."

Kaito supposed she must have rehearsed a speech for that too. "I suppose I can call her."

"So you're already friends even if you're not dating?"

He smiled. "Yeah, we've been friends a long time. If she's free, I can have her over in a few minutes."

"Please." Himiko clasped her hands, her expression hopeful.

She seemed like a sweet girl. He could see her being Aoko's daughter, though she seemed to physically resemble him more. She must've gotten her personality from her mother. Pushy, and sweet.

Kaito finally picked himself off the floor and put the silly roller coaster picture frame back in its shipping container before taking out his phone. He dialed Aoko's number. "Hey? Are you free?"

Of course she wasn't. She wanted to study now that she'd gotten home, taken her shoes off, and gone up to her room, and why was Kaito calling her? Did he forget something? It wasn't as if they hadn't walked home together. He could have said something sooner.

She was impossible.

Kaito looked at Himiko, who was eagerly expecting a result other than what Kaito was hearing on the other end of the phone. "Well, the thing is," he said, "I have someone over who really wants to meet you and..." He needed a better excuse than that. Himiko reached in her backpack and pulled out a plastic-covered plate laden with cookies. She mimed eating them. "...she brought some snacks to share."

That changed things. She'd be right over.

Kaito hung up and looked warily at Himiko. "That's not really why you packed cookies is it? Just to bait your mom into coming over?"

"I wasn't exactly sure what sort of circumstances I'd find myself in, so I brought plenty of food, including cookies. They're a nice way to get people to trust you."

Sneaky girl. If everything else hadn't leaned towards her being his daughter, this was the cincher.

"Your mom should be over soon. She lives right next door, so we need to get our stories straight. We can't exactly say you're my daughter from the future," said Kaito, "so how about we say you're my cousin? It'll explain any family resemblence."

"Got it," she said.

The doorbell rang and Himiko hustled into a seat at the kitchen table as if that was where she had been sitting. She removed the plastic covering from the cookies and quickly stuffed two in her mouth and chewed so the plate looked like it had been eaten from.

Kaito opened the door and gestured for Aoko to come inside. "Thanks for coming. I was talking about our day at school and my cousin Himiko said she really wanted to meet you."

It was a short walk to the kitchen. Aoko knew the way and arrived a few steps ahead of him. She looked at Himiko sitting at the table and his daughter—ugh, it was going to take time to get used to calling her that—waved invitingly. Himiko did not look like she had just crammed two cookies in her mouth, at least if one didn't notice the large swallow she just took.

"Hello, Himiko," said Aoko. "Thanks for inviting me over. Did you make those?"

Himiko nodded and smiled broadly. "I did! Please, have some. I made way too many for just me and Kaito. They're chocolate chip. Very soft."

Aoko took a seat across from Himiko as Kaito walked over to the cabinets to get her a plate. If there was one thing Himiko had missed in her rush, it was plates.

"I've wanted to meet you ever since Kaito told me about you," said Himiko. "You're really talented.

Talented wasn't the word Kaito would have used, except maybe for devouring sweets.

"Thank you," said Aoko. He could feel the daggers she must be staring into his back. She probably knew exactly what he'd been thinking. "I had no idea Kaito could say something nice about anyone."

"If you don't mind," said Himiko, "could I ask you for a demonstration?"

"A demonstration?" Aoko echoed. "Of what?"

"You don't need to be shy about it." Himiko laughed brightly. "Show me one of your magic spells. Whichever one is your favorite, Akako."

Kaito froze.

A/N: This is a bit more of a crack story than I usually write (time travel?!), but once I got the idea I realized that this could be a lot of fun. Now that the premise is down, the rest of the story will be handled more seriously as the characters deal with the situation.

For when it matters, Magic Kaito 1412 is primary canon for this story. So Aoko and Kaito are next door neighbors and Akako's hair color is black.

For those new to my writing, I typically post a new chapter every week. You can look for them late on Saturday or sometime Sunday morning depending on your timezone. For those who have followed me over from my Guilty Crown work, don't worry, I'm not leaving. This story is something I had to set aside while working on Imperfectly Forged and now that it's done I wanted to get this one out of my system. I'll be returning when time allows.