Magic is real. Magic. Is. Real. I knew I wasn't hallucinating all those years ago! I was right!

Hakuba Saguru had been repeating combinations of these thoughts like a mantra ever since the heist had ended.

His emotions were torn on how to respond. What he had confirmed changed everything about how he saw the world, which terrified him. If there was ever a case he couldn't solve, should he suspect the involvement of arcane powers or non-human sentient creatures? Could animals secretly talk? Were unicorns and Pegasus and the Greek Pantheon real, too? The possibilities were endless with so many old legends about magic.

But almost equally as strong was the vindication of having been right all along, despite everyone he respected and didn't disbelieving the account of what he'd seen. As he grew up, even he had begun to write off that night as a childish daydream, not that he ever normally had daydreams like that of course.

It also felt surreal, both in that magic was real and that he'd spent so long questioning himself and was on the other side of that, thanks to tonight's heist.

Upon breathlessly opening the door to the museum's rooftop, Hakuba found himself greeted with the sight of the Kaitou Kid. The thief was focused on him instead of the audience like usual. He seemed to be waiting. Fortunately, the crowd below couldn't see either of them from this angle.

"Going by the looks you were giving me earlier, I had a feeling you wanted to talk."

Saguru took a moment to catch his breath as well as recover from the shock of Kid's words. Kaitou Kid was going to stay and talk, just like that? Yes, the thief was right that Saguru had finally made up his mind to at least try to ask Kid something he'd been wondering for a long time, because there was no one else to ask. Still, he doubted this particular Kid would actually be able to help even if he was miraculously willing to give a straight answer. His question involved something that had happened before the original Kid had disappeared. The Kid standing before him now, whom he was sure was his classmate Kuroba Kaito, may not even know about that night.

"You're going to just stop and let me talk to you in the middle of a heist?" Saguru couldn't help being skeptical.

Kid responded with his characteristic grin that meant absolutely nothing. "I have a feeling it's important."

Well then. I won't look a gift horse in the mouth, at least this time.

But if Kuroba was wholly unaware of what had happened and its implications, then he didn't want to involve him. "Is the original Kaitou Kid still alive? There's something I need to ask him."

"What makes you think there's more than one Kid?"

"You're too young to be the one who disappeared eight years ago."

Kid shrugged noncommittally. "If you say so."

"So," Saguru pressed, "Is he still alive?"

Kid paused for a moment. "I wonder…Is this about what happened on the first heist you ever went to?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean," Kid smirked.

Does he know?

Saguru took a moment to recollect his thoughts. "How much do you know about that?"

"I know what happened that night. If that's what this is about, you can ask me, Tantei-kun."

Saguru froze at the nickname, one that had only been used by the previous Kaitou Kid on the night in question.

"Although," Kid added, "I suppose it should be 'Tantei-san' now, shouldn't it? You've become a very successful detective since then, at least when it comes to catching other criminals."

Saguru ignored the jibe for once. He wasn't sure what to do, now that he was here and finally had the chance to ask. He honestly wasn't sure how to go about it. He had to word his questions carefully if he didn't want vague or meaningless answers.

Well actually, if he's serious about this, then he should tell me what I want no matter how I ask it.

He took a breath. "That night, I saw more than a few things that I would have thought impossible, and I…" his tongue froze up. How do I say something like this in a way that doesn't sound ridiculous?

Kid let out a sigh, the first hint of possibly genuine emotion he'd shown all night. His grin was gone. "You want to know if it was real," he stated quietly, "if the world is bigger and crazier than you'd ever dreamed."

There was something intense about Kid's eyes that made Saguru look away. "'Feared' might be a better word, but…yes," the last word was whispered almost pleadingly.

Kid hesitated for a few moments, something no one was used to seeing the thief do. "…Not every person you may run into in life will be human, even if they look it. There are others out there, dangerous creatures that use…magic."

That last word chilled Saguru even more than the mention of the 'creatures'.

"Magic is real, Hakuba."

He gave me a straight answer. So…it was all real.

Then suddenly they heard a barely audible, low, quick sound that reminded Saguru of a gun. They turned to face the direction it had come from, an office building that stood a dozen metres away from the museum. Saguru could barely make out a figure in the darkness, standing with his arm outstretched, towards the ground right in front of him.

Kid began to rifle frantically through his pockets. "Go back downstairs and don't come out for a while. I saved your life once, so don't make me have do it again."

That wasn't you. That was your predecessor. "What are you going to do?"

Kid's playful grin returned. "I'm going to go crash the party." By now, he was stationed at the edge of the roof. "Three, two, one…!"

Boom!

There was a bright flash of light coming from an explosion where Kid stood, and then the thief was sent flying off the museum's roof like a bullet. Thanks to the moment of surprise, Saguru couldn't dig out the pair of binoculars he always brought to heists in time to see Kid land, but he breathed a quick sigh of relief when he saw Kid on the distant roof, having a wrestling match with another figure against the wall.

Then he noticed another figure, lying prone and unmoving, whose features he could not make out in the darkness.

He had to get over there. He wasn't sure of what he would do once he got there, but he couldn't just stand here and watch.

He bolted through the door leading downstairs to check on the inspector and the rest of the Kaitou Kid Taskforce. The police were no closer to freeing themselves from a giant oozing blob of…something incredible sticky that Hakuba had narrowly avoided earlier, and there wasn't enough time to stop and help.

He dashed outside, for once not bothering to check his watch and calculate how long he spent battling the current of Kid's fan base outside and procuring the necessary keys to enter the office building. After sprinting up sixteen flights of stairs, he finally reached his goal.

He opened the roof access door just in time to see Kid and his combatant fall off the building, and the latter had a large pair of black wings sprouting from his back.

Saguru ran to the edge of the roof and saw Kid gliding away to the right. The other person was gone.

After staring blankly for about ten seconds, processing what he had just seen (a person with wings), he turned with a sigh, only to witness what was left over from the fight.

What caught his attention first was a large section of black on the otherwise sand-colored pavement, at the corner where the floor met the wall of the small structure framing the stairs. It was covered unevenly in a layer of ash and smelled like a cremation had taken place. Outside of it were dark, glossy flecks that on closer inspection were revealed to be blood. A little ways away from it, near the edge of the roof, was a much bigger pool of blood. Oddly, the blood there smelled like it had also burned and was unusually congealed. A thin, uniform film of drying blood should be present on the surface, slightly thicker around the edges, but here, that film was unevenly thicker significantly closer to the center than it should have been.

Glad that he always kept crime scene supplies on hand, the detective donned disposable latex gloves and helped himself to samples from the large pool of blood and each of the smaller dots (to be thorough) as well as the ash. After taking several pictures, he debated whether to notify the police of what had happened up here, and reluctantly decided not to in the likely case that his samples in the lab would turn up results that would be unexplainable without considering…magic and the like.

Somehow, Saguru had been able to return the keys to the building and come up with an excuse for Nakamouri-keibu for needing them that didn't send the other officers inside to investigate. Something about looking at the whole place from another angle. He didn't quite remember anymore. He'd been too shell-shocked since his conversation with Kid and the events following. Baaya, the nanny who had mostly raised him and was more a mother to him than his real one, was free to pick him up that night, so as he rode home, his mind was occupied replaying that night eight years ago, the night of Hakuba Saguru's first heist.

"Now, bocchama, behave yourself tonight. I know you want to chase the thief with the grownups, but just because your father was irresponsible enough to let you come here doesn't mean you can do whatever you want. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Baaya." An eight-year-old Saguru pouted, feigning disappointment while surreptitiously noting the location of the stairs in the building. The woman must have suspected he was going to try something, because he was ill-behaved little enough that she didn't usually explicitly command him to stay nearby. At least she never spoke to him with a higher-pitched voice like most adults did to children. He'd always found that demeaning.

If all went as planned, he would certainly get the paddle tonight, but it would be well worth it.

And her thinking I may run off certainly won't stop me from doing it.

Baaya had always told him he was stubborn in unhealthy ways like his father. Saguru himself found it insulting to be compared to the lazy man with a politician's smile.

He'd done his research thoroughly before this night. He knew how the Kaitou Kid Taskforce, the small subdivision responsible for dealing with the thief's activities, didn't seem to learn from their mistakes in their attempts to capture their quarry, and he didn't expect that to change.

That was why he was going to catch the thief first, his way. And his way was one that no police officer could implement.

Over the years, Saguru had noticed and had become annoyed many times at the fact that adults didn't take children seriously. So the Kaitou Kid probably wouldn't, either, and that would cause his downfall at Saguru's hands.

Unfortunately, because of his official status as No One Important, there was no way for him to enter the building and prepare a trap of some kind. He was only allowed to be there at all because his father had come and told Inspector Nakamouri Ginzo, the loud, excitable man in charge of the task force, that Saguru wanted to be a police officer one day (which was vaguely true), after which he left his son in Baaya's care and the inspector begrudgingly warned them to stay clear of the exhibit and stay out of the way. Thus everything he used would have to be brought in on his person with little time for preparation. His methods were further limited by the kinds of materials he would be able to get his hands on.

His plan was this: lose Baaya, sneak up to the roof where Kid always goes eventually and wait, then pretend to be lost and have Kid take pity on him (it was worth his pride in this case), thus disarming him mentally. Then when Kid approached him, he would strike. His biggest advantage was something the task force no longer had a chance at: deception and surprise.

Much like the thief himself. But he wasn't thinking about that.

Just the thought of executing his plan made him smile predatorily, but he managed to hide it before Baaya took notice.

Losing her normally wasn't easy, but the thief loved to create chaos, and Saguru had counted on this in his plan. As soon as the room went up in blue smoke, he took his chance and made a run for the stairs.

After sprinting up a few flights of steps, he stopped to listen for anyone following. Hearing none, he slowed his pace to a walk to catch his breath. He may need it for his confrontation with Kid soon, and he'd never been the athletic type. The kinds of sports and other physical activities available in school were boring to him, not to mention that they required cooperating with the other boys, who never ceased to tease him mercilessly for the shape of his eyes. Not that it hurt him anymore, it was simply annoying, and why put up with it when there were so many other interesting things to do, like read about Sherlock Holmes, a character with whom he could actually identify?

At first, the bullying had bothered him, when he was littler. He knew he looked strange. His hair and skin tone were clearly European, and his face looked Asian except that it was a little broader. But it hadn't taken him long to realize that the others kids were too stupid to keep up with what he had to say anyway (his vocabulary was impressive for his age, thanks to Baaya and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), and after that he began to appreciate his more obvious differences. He didn't want to fit in or have anything in common with them now. No, he was fine with Watson, his faithful hawk, the only one he felt he could truly speak to about anything and everything, who always listened attentively even if she didn't know what her owner was saying.

Thinking that maybe he would have a better time here in Japan, Saguru's parents had just moved him, Baaya and Watson here to Ekoda, Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan (a suburb of Tokyo, Japan) last week from his mother's country home in Kirton, Ipswich, Suffolk, UK. Upon their arrival and settling in, his father spent thirty-four minutes and twenty-two-point-four-nine seconds (according to the pocket watch given to him by his beloved grandfather, who came to England to visit him often) chatting awkwardly ("Did you know I met your mother while visiting my cousin at his White Horse Lodge in Kirton?" "Yes father."), before finally retreating back to the depths of his home office.

As Saguru had expected, he hadn't done any better getting along with people his age here. In fact, it was worse. The kids here made fun of everything the ones in Ipswich hadn't: his hair and accent primarily. (Personally, Saguru had always taken pride in the fact that he could speak two languages, which was more than any of them could.)

Then a few days ago, Baaya made known to Saguru the existence of a strange thief who went around stealing priceless objects and inviting the police to come stop him if they could. He had jumped at the chance to capture a real criminal and gain some respect, which led him to the current situation.

Saguru had just arrived at the top of the last flight of stairs. Upon exiting to the roof, he couldn't help but stare at what he saw.

The view of the city from thirty-two stories up was simply amazing.

He'd been high up like this before, but the landscapes at those times had been mostly nature scenes. Here, the nighttime city view reminded him of what the sky may look like if he possessed telescopic vision. Dots of light covered the area in every possible color.

But back to business.

He had brought a satchel with him, ignored until now as he removed it and dug through it, readying his equipment. He wished for not the first time that evening that he had found a way to smuggle Watson in with him.

"Well well, I didn't know someone was meeting me up here."

Saguru spun around to see a figure dressed in a white suit, complete with cape, top hat and monocle, watching him with a sparkle in his one visible eye.

The Kaitou Kid. Saguru hadn't heard him arrive.

Recapturing his confidence, Saguru put on his best pity-me face and about-to-cry voice. "Do you know where my baaya is? I was with her earlier, but then I got lost…" He paused for a moment to let his words and innocent vibe sink in. "Please, oniisan, I don't know where to go."

"Don't cry," the thief took the bait and came to kneel in front of him, but not quite close enough for Saguru to make out his face properly. "What's your name, boy?"

Saguru was worried the thief might connect the name with his father, but he didn't have time to make one up now. "Hakuba Saguru."

"Don't worry, Saguru-chan, we'll find your nanny in no time!" With that, the magician produced a pink rose and held it out to him. Saguru was both inwardly bristling at what he felt was a condescending honorific and a little wary of taking anything from the trickster, but didn't let them show and he accepted the rose with his left hand, keeping the device on his right hidden.

"Wow, that was cool, oniisan!" And maybe Saguru meant it, just a little.

The man smiled again. "Well then, shall we go?" Kid held out a gloved hand.

Then Saguru realized that he had gotten a little caught up in the act. He'd already had a chance to strike when the thief held out the flower to him. It mildly annoyed him that the thief had so easily distracted him, but he was now presented with another opportunity to spring his trap. No matter.

Saguru's right hand rushed out to grab Kid's. The hand buzzer connected and Kid, looking somewhere behind him, let out the smallest sound of surprise. Not bothering to hide his grin, Saguru immediately drew a small can of pepper spray from his jacket pocket.

He was just about to do the thief in when the energy in his body seemed to vanish.

Everything after that happened too fast to keep track. His whole body felt too heavy. His fingers failed to keep a hold on the pepper spray and it fell to the ground with a clatter. He was about to slump over when he felt a pair of arms around him, and then he was moving for just a few seconds until he felt the person carrying him land on his feet and bundle Saguru closer to him while pressing on his back, which had begun to hurt more than anything Saguru had experienced before. At some point, the hand buzzer had been removed.

"Come out, you cowards," Kid, the one carrying him, called out with a voice dripping with quiet malice. "I can see where you are."

Saguru hated being oblivious to what was happening around him, so he made the effort to turn his head to look out curiously despite the pain. He could see that they were now positioned on top of the room housing the stairs. There was no one on the rooftop below.

Then he heard a quiet buzzing sound, steadily growing louder until it hurt his ears a little. At the same time, a large, dark object faded into view. It carried a few lights on it, only providing dim light even after the object was entirely opaque, but it was enough. Saguru stared.

How did a helicopter just…appear out of nowhere?!

Three figures in black jumped from the helicopter, opening large wings to land gracefully. What…are they?

"That's more like it." Kid said with some dark emotion.

The…creatures on either side held up small guns aimed at Saguru and Kid. The third, a woman with flowing white-blonde hair, simply stood with her arms crossed, smiling.

"This ends tonight, unless you wish to see another child die in front of your eyes."

Kid's hold tightened around Saguru, pushing the child into a position that forced him to face the thief's jacket again. "Why did you shoot him?"

Saguru's brain stuttered.

"It was an accident," the woman answered, "He was between you and us, and young Calvados here was unfortunate enough to miss his mark. We'll make sure that doesn't happen again."

"What-"

"No more talking. Turn around and drop your card gun."

Kid slowly turned.

But Saguru never heard the card gun hit the floor. Instead, he heard the quick sound of it shooting, then Kid jumped and they were falling for a few seconds, until Saguru's breath was taken away when their decent came to a halt. They were gliding through the sky.

That was when Saguru's body gave up on staying conscious.

Saguru awoke on something comfortable. He was lying on his stomach and something was pressing on his back, which now throbbed, but didn't feel like it was on fire anymore. He opened his eyes.

He was situated on a couch that he'd never seen before. In view was a tiled kitchen and wooden stairs adjacent to the carpeted room he was in.

"Hey, look who's awake!" Kid seemed back to his previously cheery demeanor.

How did we get away? He used his glider, right? But there was a helicopter, and it would have followed us.

"Where- Oww!" Saguru's question was interrupted when he tried to move.

"Sit still," Kid chided in a whisper, "You were shot, remember?"

Oh yeah.

He, Hakuba Saguru, eight years old, had been shot. With a gun.

Of course he knew that gun shots were excessively painful, but…wow. It had hurt a lot. Strange, though…

"Why doesn't it hurt as much now?" Saguru asked, only partially aware that he copied Kid in his volume.

"Because I'm helping you get better. I'm a magician, remember?"

"No, I really want to know."

Kid chuckled. "Don't believe me, Saguru-chan?"

"Don't call me that!"

"Don't like it?"

"No, because my mother calls me that."

Kid paused in whatever he was doing, though he still pressed Saguru's wound. "You're not like most kids, are you?" he said lightheartedly, "Then again, most kids love my magic shows and wouldn't be trying to electrocute and pepper spray me."

Saguru closed his eyes. "You're a criminal. So you should be in jail. And when I'm bigger and grownups will actually listen to me, I'll put you there myself."

"Just because I've broken the law means I should be in jail? What about saving your life? I couldn't do that from jail, could I?"

Saguru stopped.

Why did he save me? And now he's here, tending to me. He could have left me and gone wherever he goes after a heist. Or if this is his house, then it would be dangerous for him to bring me here.

Seeming to read his mind, Kid spoke. "At your age, everything in the world looks black or white, right or wrong." His voice was almost devoid of emotion save for a small tinge of sadness. "When you get older, you'll realize that most things aren't that simple. Most of the world is grey. Why did I save you, you ask?... Do I need a reason to save a life?

"You think I'm one of the bad guys just because I've broken the law. But sometimes a person has to go outside it to do the right thing. There are good people who break it sometimes, too. I'll let you in on a little secret: the law is made based on what people agree is right, but it's not a perfect system."

Saguru absorbed the thief's words silently, thinking of his dad and remembering the times he wondered how a man like that became a superintendent. "Because the people who make and enforce those laws aren't perfect, either."

"That's right," Kid replied quietly.

They sank into silence as Kid worked.

Then Saguru heard light footsteps coming from somewhere to his left. He looked up, moving only his eyes this time.

It was a young girl, perhaps Saguru's age. Her shoulder-length hair was brown and messy as it fell over the top of her pink pajamas. Her face was like that of an angry bull as she brandished a mop.

"What are YOU doing here, you thief?!"

"Good evening, ojou-san."

"Aoko's gonna catch you, and then my dad's gonna throw you in prison, where bad guys belong!"

"Now, young lady, there's no need to get violent." Kid's voice was a little strained.

The girl released a battle cry and charged.

"Farewell, Tantei-kun!" Kid called, as he opened a window and disappeared. The girl followed him up to the window, yelling after him, "And stay out!"

'Tantei-kun'? Well, that's much better than 'Saguru-chan'.

He of course wanted to be a detective, after reading Sherlock Holmes as much as he did. But he'd doubted he would be able to achieve the level of athletic ability required. But after tonight, he wanted it even more. He would be a detective who studied the minds of criminals to see what exactly made someone like the Kaitou Kid tick.

After staring out the window a little longer, the girl closed it, turned around, and noticed Saguru for the first time.

"Oh! Aoko didn't see you there! Aoko's name's Nakamouri Aoko! Nice to meet you! Were you kidnapped by that evil thief?"

It hadn't taken long for young Aoko to realize that Saguru was injured and call her father. Saguru's clothes had been stained with his drying blood, but when Nakamouri-keibu arrived and took a look, he had said there were only some bad bruises, but no broken skin, and took him home to get a spanking from Baaya and his mother's insistence over the phone that he returned to England (which he refused). Saguru hadn't seen his wound or heard a gunshot that night, but he doubted the thief would lie to him about being shot.

So the question in his mind was: what happened to the wound?

Then his eight-year old self had remembered the other unearthly events that night and wondered if magic was real.

But it couldn't be… right? But if it wasn't, what the hell happened that night?

He spent years going back and forth on what he thought about that, on how much was adrenaline and childish imagination and how much was real. What happened from his perspective only made sense if it was real, but there was a part of him that wanted a second opinion from the only one who could give it.

But the Kaitou Kid wasn't heard from again after that heist. Not for eight years. And then when he did reappear, Saguru took some time to get his courage up to ask, only to discover that it wasn't the Kaitou Kid at all, at least not the same one. Then he thought of an alternative plan, and finally carried it out tonight.

But even with Kuroba's words… after seeing those winged people twice now, it was beyond reasonable doubt.

He had been shot that night by invisible people in a silent, invisible helicopter, and the previous Kid had done…something with magic to heal him.

Upon arriving home, Baaya had graciously dropped him off at his grandfather's famous laboratory next door per his instruction, at which point he locked himself in and set to work on the samples he had snuck out of the heist. He started a DNA analysis scan for each blood sample, then a material analysis of the ash.

The results on the ash came back first. It hadn't been plant material, but an animal or a human being. Or…whatever that prone, unmoving figure had been.

So the body was somehow burnt to nothing while he was fighting the other one? Or there was something I missed.

The blood tests had taken long enough for him to at least try to grab a short nap (it was after midnight by that point, and Saguru was a morning person), but eventually his patience paid off.

As he suspected, the samples from the small flecks of blood were identical, and not human. In fact, the billion-yen machine in front of him didn't know what it was, save a warm-blooded vertebrate mammal. The other blood sample came back almost-identical as well, ninety-nine-point-five-two-percent in fact, so Saguru would have assumed all the blood came from the same person had he not seen another figure lying where the large pool was. That degree of genetic variation was about the same as between two humans, but genetic analysis was never one-hundred-percent accurate.

Which meant that both of them were the same type of creature, except that only one had wings. Maybe the other's hadn't grown in yet, or he'd lost them at some point…? Are they born with wings or do they grow in later…?

It was surreal that he was even considering things of this nature.

Worse yet, I have no assurance that none of this blood came from Kuroba.

Kid had been fighting, strange as that was, so some of the blood might be his. Or it might not.

Again, I feel that I may be missing an important fact.

But what was he going to do with the information he did have? There wasn't much he could do short of approaching Kuroba directly. But even if he did, what would the point be? Talking about this with his classmate as Kid had been amazing enough, but as Kuroba, the chances of his being helpful were even less. And what would Saguru say? He'd confirmed that magic was real and there were non-human people that were trying to kill the thief, but their dynamic itself had not changed. And he definitely couldn't tell anyone else about this.

After storing the samples in a section that only he had a key to, the weary teenager returned to his lonely mansion of a house and fell into bed, letting his mind wander elsewhere.

I hope Kuroba is alright. It would seem he's got more on his plate than even I thought. Maybe I should go easy on him tomorrow.

In fact, what was the point of publically accusing Kuroba of being Kid at all? It didn't help anything but Saguru's ego. Pathetic.

Maybe I should try to help him instead.

The whispered thought came into being before he knew what was happening. At first he was alarmed by it, but as it lingered it began to make more sense.

Kuroba was going up against some awful people that probably used magic. If Kuroba was arrested, even if he did stay in prison, wouldn't his enemies do something to get at him there, where he would have a harder time fighting back? Probably.

I never did find out what happened to the first Kid. Kuroba dodged that question, just like the first Kid did when I asked how my wound stopped hurting as much. What if that Kid was killed by those winged people from that night?

And these enemies clearly weren't a problem that the police could handle. Did these people have their own form of hidden law enforcement? Regardless, Kuroba seemed an asset to facing them, so incarcerating him now just didn't make sense anymore.

In summary, because magic was real, he couldn't let himself (or anyone else) arrest Kuroba just yet. He didn't know how or when to reveal these new intentions, so he would just lay low for a little while until he was finished reacting to everything and could think properly again.