Chapter 2
Shinichi exited her apartment, carefully locking the door behind her. She exchanged a nod and smile with her elderly neighbour, who was shuffling through his front door, arms laden with groceries. She had only moved in a week or two ago but was already getting used to the place. It was a prettier building than she had expected, with good security and light, airy rooms. Living alone was something that she was used to, but the people there all seemed surprisingly friendly and polite-even the children that she sometimes passed in the hallways were nice, calling greetings in high, piping voices. She remembered being the same height only a month or two ago, speaking in the same manner, playing with children just like them. It gave her a strangely nostalgic feeling.
She sighed and shook the feeling off, pulling the key from the lock. She paused in the act of walking away, looking at the door on her other side. There were no noises coming from there now, no evidence that there was anyone living on the other side of the door. It was mildly confusing, slightly worrying. She felt curiosity stirring in her head. Should she knock on the door and see if they were alright? What if the noises coming from there every other night were not the product of a neighbour engaging in sexual activities, but the noise of a struggle? Should she check up on them?
After a second or two, she dismissed the idea. She'd moved there to relax and heal, and even if the physical wounds were more or less gone, the mental ones weren't. Curiosity had got her into far more embarrassing and dangerous situations than she could count- maybe now would be a good time to ignore it. Besides, she'd never met that neighbour, and wasn't sure that she even wanted to. Someone who made such a racket at night obviously wasn't concerned about the thoughts and feelings of other people- she had the feeling that her concern wouldn't be kindly met.
Feeling a little odd for leaving this mystery unexplored, she turned and left.
Kaito stared at the yellow stains on her hands and gloomily wondered if they would ever come out.
The night before hadn't exactly been restful. She had been up until the early hours of the morning writing the next heist note (which had taken hours to do) and had then accidentally stepped on a box of her newest paint bombs on the way to bed. The sound of them all exploding one after the other, one explosion setting the next one off in a bizarre multi-coloured chain reaction, and her subsequent cursing, had probably woken the entire building. She had paused in the act of scrubbing frantically at the paint decorating the walls of her room when the thought of an irate neighbour calling the police on her occurred to her, but had only heard the faint sound of some late night rerun on TV through the walls. Maybe her neighbour was a night owl anyway?
"Kaito", came a voice from behind her, "what happened to your hands?"
Kaito twisted in her seat to look at her childhood friend, Aoko. The school girl was standing by her own desk, staring the bright yellow stains covering Kaito's hands in confusion and mild concern.
Kaito sent her a bright grin, trying to play it off. "I was trying to repaint my room, but I guess I forgot to wear gloves", she said sheepishly.
Aoko raised an eyebrow. "You were trying to paint your room neon yellow?"
"It would help me get up in the morning! I need to be energetic and ready to face the world!"
"You're too energetic as it is", Aoko muttered, sitting at her desk.
Kaito beamed at her. "Thank you, Aoko! That's one of the nicest things you've ever said to me!"
"BaKaito! That wasn't a compliment!"
"Really? Well, I guess I've decided to take it as one."
"Idiot", Aoko said scathingly, tensing in her seat.
Kaito looked at her calculatingly. Usually, banter like this would lead to a prank of some sort, or maybe a flip of Aoko's skirt...
... but she had a heist to attend to. Better to conserve her energy for that night.
"Kaito?" Now Aoko was looking at her with concern. She, too, had been thinking of their usual routine.
Kaito stretched and yawned, not really having to pretend that she was tired. "The class will be starting soon, Ahoko. You'd better get your books out."
Aoko slammed her hand flat on her desk, making the bag resting on it jump. "BAKAITO! Don't call me that!"
Kaito grinned.
"Shinichi!" Ran's voice broke through Shinichi's consciousness, causing her to jerk upright. "Are you listening to me?"
"Yes", Shinichi lied, not very convincingly by the look on Ran's face.
"I swear to God, you're useless", her childhood friend sighed, flipping a lock of dark hair over her shoulder. "Here I am, taking you out on the weekend and treating you to a lovely meal, and you don't even have the decency to listen to me speak. And you haven't even touched your meal!"
Shinichi looked down at the plate before her and skewered a slice of cucumber. Ran waited until she had put it into her mouth before talking again.
"You know, you haven't been looking well recently. Have you been getting enough sleep?"
Shinichi swallowed the vegetable. "I've been getting some."
Ran looked dissatisfied with this. "Just how much is 'some'?"
Shinichi shrugged, stabbing another slice with her fork and avoiding her eyes. "More than I was getting before."
"Well, at least you're improving", Ran muttered.
Shinichi chewed her food and tried to ignore the concerned look Ran was shooting her.
Ever since she had returned to her original size, Ran had stuck by her like glue, inviting Shinichi to outings with other people from her school, showing up on her doorstep and pulling her to the park, to go swimming at a leisure centre, to come with her to the library and help with her homework. It was if as she thought that if she let her friend out of her sight for too long she would disappear without a trace. Not that it wasn't a legitimate worry, given Shinichi's sudden and unreliable reappearances and disappearances over the past two years. The detective knew that Ran was poised for her to leave again, and that she was meeting with her as frequently as possible to try to make her stay. It didn't help that Shinichi couldn't tell Ran the reason why she had been gone for so long, no matter how much she wanted to.
Shinichi liked meeting with Ran, but she always ended up feeling guilty.
"Anyway", Ran continued, snapping her from her reverie, "as I was saying, there's a new Kaitou KID heist coming up."
Shinichi frowned "Kaitou who?"
"Kaitou KID. You know, that thief that tells people what he's going to steal before he steals it."
Shinichi continued to stare at her friend blankly. Kaitou KID? She could vaguely remember her father talking about someone like that... "You mean the one who does flashy tricks to confuse the police?"
"Yes, that's the one! You haven't heard of him before? I would have thought that he'd have caught your attention long ago."
Shinichi shrugged, poking a leaf of lettuce with her fork. "I deal with homicide, not thefts", she said simply.
Ran rolled her eyes. "You're so morbid. Anyway, he's throwing a heist soon- it's actually quite near here."
Shinichi continued to pick at her food. "Yeah? You want to go?", she replied disinterestedly.
"Actually, it's Sonoko that wants to go. You know how she is with men in suits", Ran said, a little too casually. An alarm rang in the detective's head.
Shinichi looked up sharply, her eyes narrowing. "Let me guess", she said, "she's dragging you along with her, and you'd like someone to come along and keep you company."
Ran gave her a dazzling smile, one that would have Shinichi's stomach flip and her cheeks flush once upon a time. "If you would be so kind", she said, her voice as sweet as the peal of a bell.
"No", Shinichi said flatly, sitting back in her seat. "No way. I am not going to a heist with you and the fan girl extraordinaire."
"Oh, come on!", Ran wailed, giving up on the dazzling smile. "You've got to come with me! You know what Sonoko's like, she won't take no for an answer!" Suddenly aware that she had been talking about her friend in less of a flattering light, she added, "Not that I don't like being with her, I just-"
"Don't you like Kaitou KID?", Shinichi asked curiously, trying to steer the conversation from Sonoko.
"I- well, I like the tricks he does", Ran said, momentarily distracted by the question. "They can be really beautiful sometimes. But I don't like the crowds, and I don't want to be stuck somewhere waiting for the heist to begin with just Sonoko for company. It'll be cold and wet and I want more people I know." She looked at Shinichi with pleading, pretty blue eyes wide, her brow furrowed. "Please, Shinichi. I'd really like you to come, and I honestly think that it will do you good to go to this heist. I know you like mysteries, and Kaitou KID is one of the biggest ones in Japan!"
Shinichi looked at her friend, seeing the worry in her eyes. She wavered, torn between wanting to stay away from an obviously pointless excursion, and wiping that look of worry and concern from Ran's face.
She sighed.
"No", she said.
Ran's expression darkened and her hands fisted, and Shinichi suddenly remembered that her friend was a black belt in karate. She leaned back from the table with enough force that her chair skidded a few inches away, her hands flying up in a gesture of surrender.
"I'll go!, she squeaked. "I'll go to the heist with you!"
Ran's hand dropped and her face became wreathed in smiles again. "Really? Oh, thank you, Shinichi! KID's heists are actually really entertaining- I promise you'll have fun."
Despite the near-death experience Shinichi had just had, seeing Ran's face light up like a Christmas tree made her glad that she had chosen to go after all.
Ran had lied. This was terrible.
Shinichi looked around gloomily, the crowd pressing in on her at all sides. Shoulders and elbows jostled her roughly, and the sound of hundreds of people talking, cheering, and (for some reason) chanting felt deafening. Ran and Sonoko pushed their way through it all, both evidently used to the sound and sheer amount of people, Ran holding tightly onto her hand to keep them from getting separated. A light sheet of rain drifted down onto them, cold and misty.
"We're here!", Sonoko called back to them, and Shinichi was pulled from the crowd and up the steps of the building before them. She glanced back at the mass of people who were being held back by several men in combat uniform.
"Should we be going inside?", she asked, feeling puzzled. She let go of Ran's hand to squeeze the water from her hair.
"A friend of mine's father is the head of the taskforce in charge of catching KID", Sonoko explained, grabbing her arm to pull her onwards. "She said we could come. Well, she said I could come, but I'm sure she won't mind me bringing you guys along."
"Taskforce? Kaitou KID has his own taskforce?" Shinichi allowed herself to be towed along, aware that she was trailing water and mud over the pretty carpets inside the front hall. Blessed warmth washed over her, and she felt her spirits lift a little.
"Yeah, because he's really hard to catch." Sonoko shot a grin at her over her shoulder, her eyes sparkling with excitement. "My KID-sama is the best thief in the world- he might as well be called the king of thieves!"
KID-sama?
"And that's meant to be a good thing?", she asked.
"We're here!", Sonoko sang, ignoring Shinichi's comment. They went through a set of doors into a room filled with men like the ones they had seen outside- bulky with black padded uniform and wearing helmets with visors that were currently pulled up. In the middle of it all was a moustachioed man in a grey suit and tie, barking orders at the taskforce from under his bristly facial hair. Shinichi winced as a particularly loud yell reached her ears.
"Oh, looks like Aoko-chan isn't here yet", Sonoko said, sounding a little disappointed.
"Is she a Kaitou KID fan too?", Shinichi asked, dreading an affirmative.
"No, she's pretty much anti-KID", Sonoko said, her nose wrinkling a little. "But when you get around that, she's a really nice person." She spoke as though not liking the antics of a thief was a major personality failing.
Shinichi grimaced and looked at Ran, who smiled at her. "Exciting, isn't it?", she said cheerfully, having to raise her voice a little to be heard over the noise.
Shinichi supposed that she agreed. There was an electric feeling of anticipation in the air, and it was rising with each passing second. It felt as though there was a pressure building up in the room, leading up to an explosion of some sort.
Speaking of building pressure...
Shinichi tapped Ran on her shoulder and tried to say quietly, "I'm going to the toilet."
"What?", Ran yelled over the growing noise.
"I said I'm going to the toilet! I'll be back in a second!"
"What?"
Shinichi gave up and walked towards the door, aware of other people pouring into the room. Were they letting the fans in? How were they all going to fit into the room?
Shinichi walked into the hallway and set off to find the toilets.
Five minutes later, Shinichi was thoroughly lost. She had got directions from an embarrassed taskforce member (why was he embarrassed? Everybody needed to pee at some point), and then followed a series of signs to the toilets. It was a pretty place, all white tiles and lightly perfumed, and Shinichi took her time in there, unwilling to return to the fan-filled room and the ear-drum-crushing noise. Eventually, she had sighed and decided that it was time to go back.
That was when she got lost. She had retraced her footsteps for about five minutes before realizing that she must have taken a wrong turning or two since leaving the toilets. She had tried to double back but ended up in a section of the building that she hadn't even seen before. She had heard before that the owner of the place collected such jewels as the one Kaitou KID was after, but she hadn't realized the extent of the man's passion for shiny rocks. There were display cases in several of the rooms leading off from the corridor she had found herself in, some of them climate-controlled to prevent damage to the treasures inside. Shinichi wandered out of a room filled with stacks of paper- this guy really needed to sort out his filing system- and looked around hopelessly. She wasn't really worried about missing KID's heist, considering that he seemed to be just an overly-arrogant thief (what was with those heist notes? Just how cocky do you have to be to notify the police of when you intend to steal?), but she knew that Ran would probably karate-kick her into the next week if she missed it. No way would she believe that she had got lost- it just didn't fit in with her genius detective image.
Damn my complete lack of a sense of direction.
Shinichi opened another door and peeked in. The room, like all of the other ones, was empty. Another display case stood in the middle of the room, the jewel within it twinkling gently in the light from the hallway. Shinichi let the door swing closed behind her and walked up to the case, squinting slightly through the gloom to see what it was. It was hard to tell in this light, but it was... red? It was cut prettily into a multi-faceted shape, vaguely rounded so that it looked like a huge red egg. Was it a ruby? Could you get rubies that big?
Well, the jewel sure was pretty, but that didn't change the fact that the room didn't lead to an exit. Shinichi, now having given up on getting back to the heist on time to see the thief, turned away and walked to the door.
There was a clang from behind her.
Shinichi jumped, adrenaline immediately shooting through her viens and making her heart pump. She whirled around, backing up until she was pressed against the wall. She had forgotten where the door was, and one hand groped for it while she stared into the darkness. Was there a light switch in the room? Shinichi wasn't entirely sure that she actually wanted to see what had made the noise. She could just make out a rectangle on the far wall that seemed darker than the wall around it. An air vent?
Her question was answered when the grill of the vent was punched outwards, skidding against the floor until it hit the bottom of the display case. A figure dressed in white emerged from the hole in the wall, straightening to reveal a top hat and a mantle that unfurled prettily, strangely unstained by its trip through an air vent.
KID grinned and said, "And there we have a successful infiltration!"
Shinichi gaped at the figure that smirked to itself with self congratulations.
Uh oh.
A/N
Sooo, this is my second chapter. You like? Drop me a review to let me know ^.^
Also, I've noticed something about most Detective Conan fanfics- Shinichi is almost always portrayed as really quiet, a late sleeper with a birdlike appetite, and a strong wish to be as far away from other humans as possible. Why is that? If it's canon, then I totally missed it. So, I'm going to try to avoid those characteristics a little :)
