Now for the heist conclusion and the promised feud. Warning: some characters act OOC in this chapter, but there's an in story reason for it. More on this later.

Many thanks to the one person that reviewed, BTW. :)

Chapter Three

Kid ran through the halls, heading for the roof. After the little girl had blown his disguise, security had increased tremendously, meaning he couldn't get back to the bathroom where he'd hidden his makeup kit. The doors were all blocked off, too, so he couldn't walk out with the rose normally.

That meant he'd have to get to the roof to use his hang glider. Lucky for him it was a nice night and he'd already incapacitated the guards up there. The stairs were guarded as well, so he shimmied into an air vent and crawled up that way. He'd ditched the mask and the wig, but the remainder of his disguise was intact, including the inflatable balloons under his shirt. They made it awkward for him to crawl correctly since he wasn't used to them.

Eventually he made it to the roof. "What an evening!" he complained, crawling out of the vent and stretching.

"Took you long enough," a voice said from behind him. Kid froze for a moment before recovering.

"You waited for me? How sweet!" he said sarcastically, lifting the rose to the moonlight. The big jewel in the base didn't have Pandora, though.

"It was your only way out after I unmasked you," Minami replied. "But you probably should've changed into something else before you got in the vents; I've been waiting almost ten minutes."

Kid responded by dropping more smoke and putting on his costume. "Well, it's not really a problem anymore, Little Miss Detective. How about this?" He walked forward and, with a flourish, put the rose right under Minami's nose. "I'll give you this as an apology for using your face and totally botching your personality. You're really not a tomboy like that other girl?"

Minami took the rose, but didn't say anything for a moment. "No, I'm not," she said at last. Kid, not wanting to stick around, raced to the edge and flew off on his hang glider.

'But that girl was kind of cute, wasn't she?' he thought. 'As an adult, I mean. I think I didn't overdo my disguise on that part."

XXX

Ai Haibara was very surprised when she saw Minami coming back down the stairs with the rose in hand. Well, the fact she had the rose wasn't surprising; it was her odd demeanor that caught her attention. "What happened to you?" Haibara asked as Minami handed over the rose to a cop.

"Nothing too surprising," Minami replied. "The fool didn't take off his disguise before he crawled through the vents, so I had to wait a while for him. I think he made the chest a little big on his disguise."

"Oh, and how would you know that?" Haibara teased.

"It's just a gut feeling," she replied.

'What's up with him…her?' Haibara thought. 'She's so quiet compared to normal.' To her, she said, "Kudo-kun, are you feeling OK? You look weird."

Minami started. "Huh? Oh, I'm fine. I'm just a little distracted."

Haibara didn't get another chance to ask her anything else that night because Kogoro appeared to drag Minami home. 'Well, I'll see her later,' she thought.

Over the next few days, Minami acted pretty normally, so Haibara eventually decided that she'd just overanalyzed the situation. After all, she still wasn't quite used to the fact that a teenage boy was stuck as a little girl, so it was quite possible she just didn't know how to read Minami's emotions very well.

At school three days after the heist, Haibara walked into the classroom to find Ayumi and Minami in a heated argument, which for them was very rare. Normally Mitsuhiko and Genta shut down any arguments between them before they got out of hand. But since Minami was a girl now, the two boys were now looking on fearfully rather than threatening to beat anybody up.

"I'm telling you I put it right here!" said Ayumi, looking through her bag.

"Well I don't have it!" Minami countered.

"So are you saying it grew legs and walked away? I put it in my bag this morning, gave it to you to hold while I tied my shoes, and now it's gone!"

"You lost your stuff and you're automatically blaming me?" Minami asked hotly.

"What are you two doing?" Haibara asked, butting her way into the conversation and shutting them down. Both girls started talking at once, trying to speak over each other. "HEY!" Haibara said loudly, silencing them. "Yoshida-san, what happened?"

Ayumi, looking tearful, explained, "Well, Dad bought me a Kaitou Kid keychain yesterday, so I put it in my bag to show you guys. But now it's gone!" She looked down and tears came to her eyes. "I know I put it in my bag, but since it's not there now it means somebody took it! And the only person who went near my bag is Minami-chan!"

"Edogawa-san, turn out your pockets," Haibara said, turning to the girl.

"Come on, Haibara," said Minami. "You know me better than that."

"I thought I did. Now turn out your pockets." Minami tried to protest more, but Haibara glared at her until she gave in.

"Oh, all right," she said, dumping her stuff on the desk. There was a cell phone, a handkerchief, and a number of other items like change and train tickets, but no keychain. Minami pulled her pockets inside out to prove they were empty. "Are you two happy now?"

Haibara hadn't really suspected her of theft, but she'd played along to put Ayumi's mind at ease. But her keychain was still missing, and she wouldn't feel better until it was found. "Yoshida-san, did anything else happen this morning?"

"No, not really. Well, I tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and nearly fell, but Genta-kun caught me."

Haibara glanced over at Genta, who quickly stood up and turned out his pockets, too. Again, there was no keychain. Haibara looked at Mitsuhiko, who quickly followed suit. He didn't have it, either.

"Are you sure it didn't just fall under your books or something?" Haibara asked Ayumi. Ayumi put her bag on her desk and rooted through it again, but came up empty. "Well, if you don't have it, and nobody has it in their pockets, then it's either in somebody's bag or it got thrown out when you tripped."

"No way…" said Ayumi sadly. Then she got a determined look on her face. "But I'm going to go look!"

"Wait, Yoshida-san," said Haibara, getting an idea. "Let's get the other three to go." Turning to them, she said, "Leave all your stuff here so we can search it while you three go search the route you took. If you all go, nobody can do anything suspicious."

The three of them looked at each other before getting up and leaving. "Now we just need to decide whose bag to search first," said Haibara.

"Rock-paper-scissors?" Ayumi suggested.

XXX

Minami was still annoyed, and for good reason. Ayumi should've known better than to just accuse her of stealing something of hers. Minami admitted she could've handled the situation better by not getting confrontational, but the fact the argument had happened at all was what was bugging her.

Why did she get so fired up, anyways? Normally she would've just said no and tried to help her out.

"Oh, isn't that it?" Mitsuhiko asked, pointing. They ran to the location and sure enough, poking out from under a vending machine, was the keychain.

Minami bent over and picked it up. It was pretty standard for Kid merchandise, but it was kind of cute in its own way. It being a chibi version of Kid probably helped with that. It had the initials A.Y. written in marker on the feet. "Looks like it is," she said, showing it to them. "We should probably head back now before class starts."

The guys agreed, so they turned around and headed back to the school. On the way, Minami sent a text to Ayumi saying they'd found it. 'But what is this feeling?' she thought, hitting the send button. It had started during the heist, but wasn't going away any time soon. The bad part was that she couldn't identify just what kind of feeling it was. It was like she was impressed yet annoyed at the same time, and her heart kept racing. She didn't even know just what had happened to her to trigger it in the first place. She eventually decided to just put the whole thing out of her mind.

The three of them arrived back at school just in the nick of time. The errand had only taken fifteen minutes, so luckily nobody had noticed they'd left. "Here you go, Ayumi-chan!" Minami said, handing her the keychain.

"Oh, thank you!" she exclaimed, her face lighting up. "And…I'm sorry for just accusing you earlier without proof. I guess I was just freaked out."

Minami, who knew how Ayumi normally acted, had figured that, but she had also gotten emotionally riled up for some reason. "Well, it's my fault, too, Ayumi-chan. I shouldn't have started that argument in the first place. So, are we OK now?"

"Yes!" said Ayumi, smiling. "But I still feel bad about accusing you. How about this? After school today, we'll both go and get you a keychain of your own! Or something else if you want that."

Minami was very surprised. "You don't have to do that, Ayumi-chan!"

"No, but I want to! You'll come right?" She grabbed Minami by the hand and stared into her eyes.

"Uh, sure," said Minami, not having the heart to back out.

"You'll come, too, right Ai-chan?" Ayumi asked, looking at Haibara.

Now it was her turn to act surprised. "But Yoshida-san, you didn't do anything to me."

"But you're my friend, Ai-chan! Isn't that reason enough to want to hang out?"

"That's right, Ai-chan," Minami teased, purposely calling her by her name. "Do you have something else to do or something?"

Haibara glared at Minami sharply before saying, "Well, when you put it that way, I suppose I don't have a choice, do I?"

"Then I'll go too!" said Mitsuhiko.

"Me too!" Genta added.

But Ayumi turned to them and said, "I didn't know you guys cared about something like this. You two like keychains?"

The two guys looked at each other before making 'Uh' noises and not really saying anything.

'They're don't want to go for the keychains!' Minami thought.

Just then Miss Kobayashi entered the room, signaling the start of the school day.

Can anybody guess the reason Minami's acting so weird? Maybe that rose actually does have magical powers or something. :P

Anyways, next chapter details the shopping trip along with Haibara going all Jersey Shore on a sleazeball. OK, not really, but it's still worth reading, right? It's not every day she gets that mad over something. But what could that be?