Trump Kingdom

Part 1: Spade's Heart

Raise the Curtain!

"One's concentration as a performer must remain centered on the action of which one is a part. For it is in truth only one's concentration on the imagined reality of the role that can force the audience's attention to that same place." ~Anonymous.

"It doesn't matter where you are on the stage, just as long as you're there." ~author unknown.

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine, everything belongs to Gosho Aoyama. The scene is taken from Detective Conan Episode 190, 205, blah. I do not really know which episode it is in which country or which one counts for this disclaimer. It is however called "The Desperate Revival ~The Black Knight~" or "Inochigake no Fukkatsu ~Kokui no Kishi~" (命がけの復活〜黒衣の騎士〜) and – as everything else except for the plot of this oneshot – belongs to Aoyama-sensei. I'm just playing around here, thanks.

AN: This is a oneshot until I figure out how I want to wing it with the continuation of the story. Sorry, dear readers, but as my muses decided not to throw in any more ideas and the second chapter didn't fit the story any more, I decided to take it down.

I've included a scene transcription as the scene plays out in the episode (so you do not have to look it up again) which is going over directly into the story:

It was a beautiful day; they had been on their way for about a day and had just made it past the first few villages that they were being held up. "Who goes there? Don't you know this is the Bridge Kingdom's princess, Heart?" the leader of the princess Heart's Life Guard demanded of the unknown knights who were blocking the carriage's way. The newcomers did not mean them well, he could tell by the way they were holding themselves already.

"We know that already. We were ordered by the Master Cortet to abduct the princess. To us, it is better if our kingdoms continue this hatred of each other. Get out of the way!"

The head of the princess' Life Guard prepared to negotiate, so he was not ready for the other when he put his words into action immediately upon saying that. With a quick slash of his sword, the leader of the guards was put hors de combat, his followers rendered headless and, therefore, put out of commission with that one strike alone.

The other man did not so much as bat an eye, as he rushed to the carriage and opened the door.

"C'mon!" the attacker roughly pulled out the princess Heart, played by Ran, who let out a startled cry at being manhandled thusly.

Her friend, Kazuha could be heard in the audience, but her voice seemed to come from far away nevertheless, "Ran-chan, use your Karate! You can take care of these freaks!"

Following these words, all of a sudden, one single black-colored feather fell down in the light beam breaking through the trees. All action halted abruptly and silence reigned over the clearing for one short eternity.

"A crow's feather?" one of the attackers dared utter into the confusion that had a tight grip on his fellow travelers in that moment.

More feathers fell, and it dawned on the attacking knights just who it might be that would appear on the scene next.

"It can't be!" this shocked exclamation was followed by a black clad knight jumping right into the attackers, driving the group apart like the wind does with the carefully collected heaps of leaves in autumn. With that one action, he simultaneously brought down his sword and managed to incapacitate one of the attackers.

The newly-arrived knight stayed crouched down as Ran looked him over curiously. Something felt different about that person...

"Th… The Black Cloaked Knight!" The teenage girl blinked bemusedly as one of the opposing knights shouted those words. Was that really one of her classmates' voices?

Ran could hear Kazuha calling from far away, "He's so cool!" but even that appeared to come from farther away than it had been earlier.

"Damn! Retreat, retreat!" Why did even that voice sound a nuance different than any she had heard before? And what of the people playing her guards? Briefly – and, she hoped, inconspicuously –, she looked around, only to make out nothing but darkness all around her, the light of the light beams cancelling out her view of anything else from where she stood just then. Her eyes landed once more on the figure of the Dark Knight who was standing in a protective stance directly in front of her as the attackers fled the scene.

Right. It was her turn now.

"Not just once but twice! Who was it that saved my life again?" She tried to put as much feeling into these lines as she could. Even if she felt a little bit confused, she should not let the audience know.

But then it got even stranger as no answer came from the knight in the short silence that followed. She plowed on regardless.

"Oh, unnamed knight with your black cloak, if you will grant me my wish… Please take off that dark mask and show me your true face!"

Ran got goose bumps when the other still did not answer her, but turned around and in one smooth motion took a step towards her and put his arms around her shoulders and embraced her warmly, while she only managed a half-step back.

What?

Out loud, the girl only managed a slightly strangled "Eh?"

She just knew something was wrong then. But even if she did not know who that was, calling him sensei would most probably not offend him. And, through all that confusion and fuzziness in her head, that was all she could think of to call him, really. "Sensei, this isn't written in the script…" she quietly whispered into his ear, feeling not only confused, but also a touch lost. She did not know what to do.

Still, the unknown knight remained silent.

There was some commotion happening off stage, in the audience and rather far away actually, though the two of them could not make out what was spoken. Again, whispering, Ran turned her head up a bit to look over the knight's shoulder towards the side of the stage where she could barely make out her friend from this new position. Whispering, she mouthed the following words to her friend, "Sonoko, what should I do now?"

Sonoko held up a sign that Ran could hardly read at the distance that she was.

"Keep going" she read the words quietly to herself before once more forming words with her mouth, knowing that her friend would be able to read them from her lips "Are you sure it's ok?"

Sonoko nodded enthusiastically, which brought the image of a nodding dog into Ran's head for a second. It was actually kind of funny and Ran allowed herself to smile slightly, reassured, before she went on with what was obviously turning out to be a monologue, "Oh, might you be Spade?"

She broke away from him a bit, his arms still encircling her loosely, and put one hand over her heart. "Long ago, you were banned from this land by my father… but now you've become prince of Trump Kingdom." The princess-actress put her hands onto his shoulders, knowing what the script had in store for them at that moment. She felt a disturbing realization hit her, though, as she chanced another glance over his shoulder, wanting to reassure herself that Sonoko agreed with her choice of advancing the play a bit.

That glance, however, did nothing to reassure her, as she noticed that there seemed to be real trees growing around the clearing, instead of her friend and their classmates standing at the edge of the stage. The stage itself was covered with earth. She froze.

Where did the wooden floor go? What had happened? Her heart hammering in an uneasy rhythm in her ears, she stumbled over her next words for a moment, before deciding that she indeed wanted the play to restart and bring her back to the stage in the gym of her school. It was irrational, yes, but she did not believe her eyes and most assuredly did not want to find out they were somewhere else, so she went on with her text in the script, keeping her eyes on the dark blue mask of the knight hugging her and hoping adamantly that the trees and the earthen floor had just been an illusion – a trick of the eyes that the headlights had played her. Nothing real, nothing more than that.

"If you have not forgotten about our childhood promise… Then please… please show me on these lips."

It would have been hilarious, Ran thought to herself, how the masked person's body froze at those words. Had she not been feeling so decidedly out of her depth here, she would have laughed herself silly at that reaction. But she felt closer to breaking down into hysterical tears than to laughing because apparently she'd been transported somewhere else in the middle of a school play, somewhere unknown to her and she was standing there with a stranger hugging her.

Did she mention that it was a surreal situation yet?

Maybe she would even break down into hysterical laughter, which sounded like a good plan too.

As it was, she settled for clutching the other person closer to her and burying her head into his shoulder. In general, she was trying to shut out the extremely changed surroundings and the very real-sounding birds that she could hear and the wind that she could feel playing with her hair, all the while making a very determined attempt at finding a convenient hole to sink into.

All this time, her thoughts frantically chased one another in her mind. "Somewhere else! How- What- Not supposed to- In a forest! Where in the world-! How the-!" It took her about ten minutes to calm down and finally stop hanging onto the stranger as tightly as she had been.

When she loosened her hold on him a bit, she could feel his hand running comforting circles on her back, which it had apparently been doing for quite a while already, while the other one held her in an embrace, still. She also noticed that they were sitting on the floor – when had she sat down? – and that he was humming softly.

Like a shy animal, she chanced a look at the floor around her. Earth. With grass and flowers growing on it. Real earth, then. Her eyes wandered back to the knight's chest. The humming and the circles on her back had not stopped, but she could feel that the stranger was calmer – reassured, maybe? – having seen her take a peek at the world around her. She was by then a hundred percent sure that it was not Araide-sensei under the mask. She still did not know him, though, and that made her wary.

Cautiously, she edged away from him a bit – it did not do any good, she was still in his arms, after all, but it did calm her mind – and asked, "Who are you?"

Upon having said that, she felt him freeze once more, and at first she mistook it for the answer to her question before he got up swiftly, pulling her with him, and, after picking her up bridal style, he started running off into the woods. Over the din of the forest mixing together with his steps and looking over his shoulder (again), she could just make out indistinct shapes of people (knights maybe?) who had burst into the clearing they had just been resting in grow smaller and smaller in the distance. Angry shouting could be heard.

She decided that she did not want to know what these people had been up to (she had seen the swords they were carrying and brandishing angrily) and that she would trust the stranger.

For now.

Change Of POV: Spade

Again, his vision got blurry around the edges. He shook his head once more, having to fight off nausea each time that he did that. The teenager was annoyed at himself for getting himself shot – it made his immune system look decidedly appetizing to any and all bacteria, apparently, seeing as he was ill as a consequence and feeling quite sick at that very instant – and cursed his body for reacting like that for the nth time that day. It was absolutely no fun to be sick, and with how many times he spent ill and/or in bed, he felt almost justified in asking the bacteria, the state or the pope for compensation. Almost.

Ah, well.

Clearing his thoughts of anything and all trivial, he focused on the task ahead. Namely, he had disguised himself and would be playing the Dark Knight in that school play that Ran was participating in as well. He didn't even have to persuade Sonoko into letting him onstage at all. Upon sight he'd been immediately and enthusiastically ushered behind the stage by the self-proclaimed stage director herself. Sometimes he wondered what the gossipy girl was thinking that he was about to do with Ran.

It was just as well that he'd gotten into costume without anybody the wiser already before she'd caught sight of him. Like this, he'd only had to make a quick grab for the mask before she'd pushed him right behind the curtain. And here he was, now, waiting for his cue. It would probably be his turn soon, so he suppressed a sigh (Again, he would not be meeting Ran face-to-face… - he remembered the stern warning that Ai had given him right before he'd run off after having survived the change into his normal body anew) before he putting on the helmet (Had it been that heavy before?).

Right when he'd put it on, he saw a suspicious-looking person standing right in front of him who most decidedly had not been standing there before and he felt the world tip sideways. The other person was already in the motion of turning around towards him when Shinichi felt unconsciousness claim him. It was when he felt the black blurry parts around the edges of his eye sight close in, that Shinichi was pretty sure that this was not supposed to happen.