Kaito/ Daisuke pairing. I did say I was going to be posting really random fics for a bit ^_^; Daisuke/Kaito for this one. I had a theme for a prompt, but my brain rejected it and wrote this instead, but I'm ok with that.
o*O*o
Sparks scattered through the air and Dark whirled away, a growl of frustration in his throat. "Let me steal you!" he yelled. The Latent Guardian didn't answer with words, but more sparks lit up the night. They were at an impasse and had yet to get close enough to properly see the necklace at all. It was housed in a tower, set in a compartment on top of the roof, around the neck of a statue shaped like the necklace creator's daughter.
They hadn't expected any difficulty with this heist. The necklace was a protective amulet—it attacking anyone had never crossed their minds.
"Why is she so angry?" Daisuke asked.
"Hell if I know!" Dark spun to the side of another attack. Usually artworks were glad to be stolen. "Just let me steal you, you gaudy excuse for costume jewelry!"
"Maybe we should ask her?"
"Great idea, Daisuke," Dark said sarcastically. "Let's ask the necklace that won't let us within thirty feet of it what she's feeling."
"I don't hear you having any ideas."
"Excuse you, I have plenty of ideas, I just have to get close enough to touch the necklace." Dark had a spell at the ready, waiting to shut it down, but he had to get close enough to use it first. "This is ridiculous." He urged Wiz up high. Maybe if they landed on top of the tower compartment from above rather than coming at it from the side or an angle?
Dark knew it was a mistake the second they reached the airspace above the tower and felt the fizzle of magic in the air.
"Oh shit," Dark said right before an arc of sparks clipped him. It surged through him and Wiz both, ripping a pained cry from them as it jittered through their limbs like being hit with real lightning. Dark blinked out and it was suddenly Daisuke and a de-transformed Wiz tumbling through the air.
"Dark—!" Daisuke gasped. He reached for his magic and Dark's presence, but both skimmed away from his touch. It was like his magic was behind a curtain he couldn't push away at all. No way to call wings. He screwed his eyes shut and waited for the impact.
Something slammed into him—from the side not the ground—two tight bands, no, two arms, wrapped around his chest and legs as he found himself in a princess carry, Wiz trapped against Daisuke's stomach.
"Woo, that was close," a voice said by his ear, words half whipped away with the rush of air around them. "Oof, you're lucky you don't weight too much or we'd both be dead."
Daisuke yelped and opened his eyes to see the underside of a man's chin and the corner of a manic smile. White top hat, white glider, white suit—the man holding him glanced down. He had the bluest eyes Daisuke had seen outside of Satoshi's.
"Ugh," Dark groaned in the back of Daisuke's mind.
Daisuke flinched. Dark! What the heck happened?!
"The sparks must have shorted out our magic or something. Hold tight for a sec, I'm going to try to fix it."
Daisuke giggled hysterically. Hold tight? He couldn't really do anything else at the moment but hold on to his rescuer.
"You okay there?" the man asked.
"Fine!" Daisuke said back, voice too high pitched from stress.
"Kaitou Kid at your service, by the way," his rescuer said, giving what Daisuke was pretty sure was a wink. "Dark Mousey I presume?"
"Uh." Panic whirled us in Daisuke's chest.
"Relax, there is in fact honor among thieves; I'm not going to tell anyone anything. I assume we have the same target tonight though?"
"You're after the Latent Guardian?"
"Sapphire the size of a pigeon egg set in gold filigree necklace? Rumored to be haunted? Right up my alley."
Daisuke had heard of Kid—hard not to hear of another phantom thief, but this was the first he'd actually run into him. Kid had left a cryptic note in the paper but Daisuke had assumed he hadn't shown up when the time indicated came and went. Kid must have been waiting to see if Daisuke showed, or maybe dealing with his police escort first. That's what Daisuke and Dark had done.
"You know I expected the legendary thief of generations to be a bit more intimidating." Kid still had a shit eating grin on his face. "Instead I get someone cute."
Daisuke blushed. "Oh hell no," Dark growled in the back of his head, doing whatever it was he was doing faster. Daisuke tried to say something, but what came out instead was "Look out!" as he caught sight of more reddish purple sparks coming their way.
Kid's grin went brittle as he banked to the side. "What the hell is that?"
"The Latent Guardian!" Daisuke said. He clung to Kid's shoulders, Wiz getting even more squished. Tiny claws pricked his belly. It was a lot more disorienting to be flying in someone else's control. "She's angry. Don't let the sparks touch you; they're what knocked me out of the sky."
"What do they do?" Kid asked, all business now.
"Well, I'm not sure, but they knocked out my wings." And knocked out his magic.
"Right." Kid swooped in a dive and back up to circle higher on an updraft. He used a glider in a way that shouldn't be possible, more like a hawk than something tied to gravity. Daisuke wondered if he had his own magic. "I'm not sure what your wings are made of, but I'm guessing my glider won't be much better if it gets hit." He glanced at Daisuke again and shifted his grip so he was holding more securely. "Better hold on tight." That time Daisuke was sure it was a wink even though Kid's voice was still serious.
"Ha!" Dark said in the back of Daisuke's mind, and suddenly he wasn't in the back of his mind, Dark was outside and Daisuke was inside and Kid was dropping fast as he held a much larger Dark in his arms. "Oi! Watch the hands! And keep your paws off my property!"
"I'm not your property!" Daisuke yelped. As good as, Dark shot back.
"I wasn't expecting to be holding a grown man!" Kid grouched right back. They flailed a bit more in midair, losing altitude until Dark wormed free with an elbow to Kid's face.
"Wiz!" Dark called, Wiz changing to Dark's wings again. Both thieves banked hard to avoid a scatter of sparks.
Kid came back up rubbing at his jaw. "Wow, what a way to thank someone for saving you." He scowled. "The actual Dark, then?"
"The one and only," Dark said with a smug grin. "Not that you'd know anything about that, copycat Kid."
"Excuse me, I'm not the one who keeps popping up every twenty some years." He seemed pretty calm for someone who had just seen Daisuke transform. He didn't seem too put off by the sparks getting thrown their way either.
Dark wasn't sure if that meant that Kid had seen this sort of thing before or if he just had a real good poker face. "Not sure what the sparks'll do to you, but you should probably avoid them. They hurt like heck even without the magic canceling effect."
"Good thing I don't have magic to cancel," Kid said.
"Really now, Mr. Moonlight Magician?"
"It's sleight of hand," Kid groused back. "Any good thief doesn't need to rely on actual magic." He side eyed Dark.
Dark made a face. "I'm insulted you think all I use is magic. Almost no magic is involved except for my wings." And, well, himself, but that was kind of a given.
Kid snorted. They were circling outside the attack range for the moment at least, so there was nothing to dodge. "What exactly are we working with here?"
"The Latent Guardian, necklace made by Hikari Keiko, originally created as protection for her daughter. Apparently an aggressive fuck!" Dark yelled in the necklace's direction. "The sparks temporarily stop magic and hit like electricity."
"Okay, protective amulet—what was it made to protect from?"
That...was a good question actually. "Threats?" Dark hazarded. "I don't know."
"Well it must feel threatened if it's attacking," Kid said back.
"She," Dark corrected. "The Latent Guardian is a she."
Kid shot him a narrow-eyed look. "She doesn't go by Pandora by any chance?"
"What? No, she's the Latent Guardian; that is her name. Unless she's decided to go by some kind of nickname."
"Oh, good. She doesn't glow red in the moonlight or cry in the presence of a comet?"
Dark stared at the thief, hovering in place for a moment. "Hell no. What the heck kind of thing do you think she is?"
"Then she's not the gem I'm looking for."
"She's not a gem, she's a work of art that happens to have a gem."
"There's a difference?"
"Yes!" It shouldn't bother him, but it did a little. The personhood of works of art was thin enough without someone thinking of them as one piece rather than the whole. That would be like calling the stone in the Agate Links Menou when she had been possessing the necklace as a whole.
Kid managed to give the impression of shrugging even though it wasn't possible with the glider. He circled closer, within the circle and there were no warning sparks.
"Oh!" Daisuke perked up in Dark's mind. "Dark, we're threats!"
"No shit, we're trying to steal it," Dark muttered.
"No, so is Kid, but he's not getting sparked. The necklace is a Hikari work meant to protect a Hikari child. Dark, the Niwa family is a threat to the Hikari family."
"Well crap." That made a certain amount of sense. It also meant that there would be no way of getting close to it. "Now what?"
A second later, Kid called, "I think she's only targeting you!"
"Yeah, just figured that out too," Dark called back.
"I can see if she'll let me steal her?" Kid offered. "Can she be reasoned with?"
"Probably?"
"Great!" He flew toward the tower.
"Oi!" Dark called after him. He was ignored. Dark edged toward the edge of the necklace's range. A few sparks flickered like a warning in his direction. "Do you really think he's going to steal the necklace and give it to us?" Dark asked Daisuke.
"Well, Kid doesn't really keep what he steals," Daisuke said. "So maybe?"
"What the hell does he get out of it though?"
He got the mental equivalent of a shrug back. They watched, tense and frustrated, as Kid landed on the tower with no trouble at all. They could see his mouth moving, but they were too far away to make out whatever he was saying. After a moment, his hand came out of the compartment with a glimmer dangling from his hand.
"Huh." It felt too easy. Come to think of it, what had happened to all the police? Dark had left traps for the officers following him, but what about the ones that had to be following Kid?
"There were a lot of traps," Daisuke said, though he sounded doubtful that they would have caught everyone.
No matter, though. They weren't there to interfere and that was enough.
Kid glided back in Dark's direction. The necklace in his hand stayed quiet and spark free even as the distance closed between them. "Land?" Kid called.
Dark headed for the open courtyard beneath the tower where there was more than enough room for Kid to land safely. Both thieves landed deceptively lightly, though it had to be a heck of a lot harder for Kid to pull off with a glider than it was for Dark borrowing Wiz's wings.
"This has to be one of the weirder moments of my life," Kid said conversationally as he straightened, glider folding away by some unseen mechanism to leave behind a white cape. The Latent Guardian was held out in front of him, still dangling from its chain. It glowed slightly, an arc of light the same color of the sparks dancing over its surface. Kid wrinkled his nose slightly, disrupting the otherwise perfect mask of smug confidence. "She is really loud in my head," he said, "and doesn't like you at all."
"What, so she'd rather stay on a statue all alone or go with you?" Dark crossed his arms. Wiz clung to his shoulder, muzzle peeking over it to watch with bright eyes.
"No, she'll go with you. She'd just really unhappy about it," Kid said. He grimaced as another ripple of light and a few tiny sparks leapt off the necklace's surface. "Also, she says you won't be able to use magic at all when you're holding her. I'm pretty sure she was made specifically to cancel you out."
"Of course she was," Dark grumbled. He held out a hand. "Welcome to the family, Latent Guardian. Emiko's gonna love you." Kid passed over the chain, and the second it touched Dark's skin, he and Wiz shrank into Daisuke again.
Daisuke took the chain from Kid. The Latent Guardian had an almost burning presence in his hand and brushed roughly against his mind like sandpaper against balsa wood. "Ow. Please don't. I have no intention of hurting anyone from the Hikari family. Actually, I'm friends with one of them, so please don't get angry." The presence pulled back, but Daisuke got the distinct impression of skepticism from it. He sighed, relieved. "Thank you. And thank you," he added, looking at Kid.
"A day's work for a gentleman thief," Kid said with a theatrical bow that made his cape flutter. He was back to being borderline flirtatious again. "If I could ask for a favor in return?"
"Depends on the favor." Daisuke gripped the Latent Guardian's chain tighter, just in case Kid decided to take her back if he didn't agree to whatever the favor was.
"Keep and eye and ear out for a gem called Pandora." Kid straightened. His smirk fell away to something more serious, light reflecting off his monocle and making his expression less readable. "It's a gemstone of some sort, will glow red in the moonlight, and is rumored to grant immortality."
"Rumored to grant immortality," Dark echoed. "Wonder what he wants that for. Sounds like bad news."
"I don't expect you to steal it," Kid continued. "Just if you hear of it, pass it along. There's some nasty people trying to get their hands on it, and it just wouldn't be right for them to steal such a lovely sparkly thing like that before I could." He smiled, but Daisuke was willing to bet that inside he was the furthest from smiling he'd been the whole evening.
"Dark?" Daisuke whispered.
"...Not very likely we're going to hear of it, and he did pass back the necklace. Didn't even try to use her as a bargaining chip. I don't see why not."
"Okay," Daisuke said louder. "We'll keep an eye out for Pandora."
A much more genuine smile softened Kid's expression. He bounced on the balls of his feet. "Great!"
Daisuke had a split second to wonder what the hell was happening before the other thief was in his personal space and kissing him on the cheek. Daisuke squeaked, gripping the Latent Guardian's chain so hard it was cutting into his fingers.
"Thank you for the lovely evening," Kid purred, "despite the gem not being the target I was after. We'll have to keep in touch, one thief to another."
"Ah...eh?" Daisuke said, unable to do much more than make increasingly embarrassing squeaky sounds. His face felt like it was on fire.
Kid winked and then there was a burst of smoke like something out of a bad ninja movie. When it cleared, Kid was gone.
"...What just happened?" Daisuke asked the empty air.
"I'm going to punch that guy if we see him again," Dark said. "In the face."
"Why did he...? Why."
"Hell if I know. He's gone now. Though he left you a present..."
At Dark's mental nudge, Daisuke reached up and pulled a red carnation from behind his ear. It had a slip of paper tied to its stem with a phone number and email address written on it in uniform script. The worst part about it, Daisuke decided, was that he couldn't tell how serious any of that had been.
"Go home," Dark advised. "Sleep. It'll all be like a weird dream tomorrow."
"Sure." Daisuke moved toward home on automatic. At least he had the necklace?
"If we see him again, I'm unmasking him just to even the playing field."
Daisuke thought he heard a faint sneeze in the distance. Oh well. He had the target, he hadn't been caught by Satoshi, and Mom would probably like the flower just as much as she liked being handed the target.