Feb 8, 2011: EDIT: I changed part of Chapter 3: "The Things We Do." You HAVE to go back and reread the conversation that the seven of them (Shinichi, Ran, Kazuha, Aoko, Heiji, Ai and Kaito) have about the Kaitou Kid and the Black Organization. That should clarify who knows what about what in this fic universe. I'm sorry for the confusion! I confused myself! But please go back and reread the middle of chapter 3 before you read this chapter!

Chapter 6: Kudou vs KID:

The Case of the Fantastic Jewels

It was eleven pm, and Aoko sat cross-legged on her dorm room bed, textbooks forgotten beside her, a freshly-washed blanket twisted in her hands. Her eyes were glued to the news live-streaming across the laptop on her knees.

"…Bringing you live to the latest Kaitou Kid heist, which the international thief announced only this morning, with an aerial view of—not a museum or a glamorous mansion, but a crowded dock at Tokyo Seaport…"

The image on the screen switched from the reporter to an enormous cruise liner docked next to two or three smaller ships. A large crowd had gathered around it.

"…The Kid's last heist was three weeks ago when, despite the best efforts of Inspector Nakamori and famous young sleuths Kudou Shinichi and Hattori Heiji, he successfully made off with the Hourglass Diamond—which was, as you'll recall, located three days later at the Beika district Police Station, in young Mr. Kudou's coffee mug…"

Despite the press of tiny policemen on the dock, the thin young man with dark hair standing next to her father, Inspector Nakamori, was easily distinguishable as Shinichi. Heiji wasn't there; he was attending Kazuha's Aikido tournament. They didn't know, like Aoko did, that if all went well this would be the Kid's last heist.

"He didn't say it was Pandora."

"But it might be!"

"They all 'might be,'" Kaito said exasperatedly, rolling his eyes.

Nevertheless, she knew he had prepared for tonight with extra caution.

"…Still not sure what the Kid's intended target is," the journalist's voice was saying over the aerial shot of the dock. "Police assume that the jewel thief's target is aboard the Andvarinaut, the Swedish luxury cruise liner visible here."

Aoko shook her head slowly, the blanket clutched beneath her chin.

Apparently, someone else disagreed with the journalist as well. On Aoko's laptop screen, the slight dark figure that was Kudou Shinichi had slipped away from Inspector Nakamori's side, and was making his way down the dock, not towards toward the Andvarinaut, but to a smaller cargo ship whose name, Hikari no Yama, was barely visible in the corner of the news screen.

The image changed back to the journalist seated at a desk, behind a blurry photograph of the white-clad Kaitou Kid. As the journalist began to recount some of Kid's past heists, the news ticker below was spelling out the note that Kid had faxed to Inspector Nakamori's office just that morning:

I'm after the true jewel tonight…

"One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish—cubic zircona's quite all right; but Zephyr heard my whispered wish: I'm after the true jewel tonight."

Inspector Ginzo Nakamori frowned as he reread the note. "We're missing something," he growled.

His aide rubbed his head. "Cubic zircona's a cheap mineral used in diamond substitutes, and the only diamonds that have come into the port today are aboard the cruise liner, Andvarinaut. We've gathered them all together and put every possible protection on the room."

"It's not like Kid to send a note so last-minute, too," Ginzo said, as if he hadn't heard. "And the nature of the message…it was a fax, and he didn't quite scramble the source enough that we couldn't tell it was from a ship. A ship not too far out from the shore, at that. 'Red fish, blue fish…'"

The aide laughed nervously. "Too bad Kudou-kun couldn't figure it out. Hey—" he peered around the inspector. "Where is he?"
"Who cares?" Ginzo seethed. He clenched his fist. "That stuck-up little brat acts like our jobs are just a hobby for him. He cares more about dead people than catching the Kaitou Kid!"

"A-at least he's polite about it," the aide offered. "He's a very nice, professional young man. Hakuba Saguru always acted as if the police only got in his way. But speaking of Kudou-kun—" the aide craned his neck to look about the crowded dock. "Where'd he go?"

"Hm," Ginzo grunted. "Wonder how Hakuba-kun's doing." He looked back at the note, and his face became once again taught with irritation. "What in the world does 'one fish two fish red fish blue fish' mean?"

Shinichi had to dodge a few reporters on his way through the crowd surrounding the cruise ship Andvarinaut, but once out of the spotlights from the hovering helicopters and away from police officers, journalists, and rabid Kaitou Kid fans, there was no one to stop him from slipping over a guard rail and hopping aboard an almost-empty cargo ship on the same dock.

He made his way across the deck and down a flight of stairs to the ship's hold. There he paused and looked around him with narrowed eyes. A soft moonlight filtered in through the small portholes in the curved walls, illuminating a low-ceilinged, long room full of rows of neatly stacked boxes. Save for the ship's gentle creaking as it rocked in the water, the hold was quiet.

Shinichi licked the sweat off his upper lip and carefully edged his way down the narrow aisle, his fingers already positioned on the stunner button of his watch. He rounded a particularly large stack of crates—and nearly cried out.

A sailor, a youngish man dressed in a brown worksuit, a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, was bending over a small opened crate. He looked around when Shinichi came into view.

"Who are you?" the sailor snapped, still bent over the crate. "How'd you get aboard?"

"I walked in," Shinichi said, his voice very calm, though the back of his neck was damp with sweat.

"Trespassing—?"

"—The question is," Shinichi said over him, "how'd you get aboard?"

The sailor tugged irritably at his baseball cap. "What're you talking about? I work here—"

"I'll tell you," Shinichi interrupted. His finger twitched on the trigger button of his stun-watch—but he kept his arms at his side.

"This ship, the Hikari no Yama, just pulled in a few hours ago. But you've been on it for over twelve hours at least. Haven't you, Kaitou Kid?"

The sailor slowly rose to his feet, his body still half-turned away from Shinichi. In the dim half-light of the hold it was impossible to make out his face.

Shinichi put his hands in his pockets. "That's the reason for the late notice for this heist. You weren't sure what ship your prize was going to be on. So you only confirmed that the Hikari no Yama was the one this morning, just before you sent Inspector Nakamori a faxed message from the captain's cabin. You must have become very familiar with all ships pulling into and out of this particular dock in the past week, because you wrote in your note that you were coming to the 'true jewel.' You didn't mean your target. That was a hint about which ship you were on.

"That's how I knew that this ship, this dinky little cargo ship, instead of the glitzy cruise liner next door, was the one you were on. The cruise ship's name is 'andvarinaut,' a jewel from Norse mythology. It doesn't actually exist. This ship's name, however, 'hikari no yama,' or 'mountain of light,' has the same name as the famous Koh-i-noor diamond from India. People thought it was a legend, but the Koh-i-noor diamond is real. Andvarinaut is not."

The sailor laughed. "That's pretty clever-sounding—but how could the Kid get on board this morning if we just docked a few hours ago? We were miles off the coast."

"Not this morning," Shinichi corrected. "Last night. You used your hang glider, making use of the diurnal local winds which occur at the sea coast. You see, because water heats and cools more slowly than land mass does, after nightfall the ocean is still warm from the day's sun long after the land has already cooled off. Because hot air rises, drawing cool air in to take its place—this is basic high school Earth Science—it creates a breeze going from the land, now cool, out over the ocean, still warm, called a land breeze. As the night goes on, the ocean cools slightly, and the breeze decreases in strength. Then, during the day, it's reversed; the breeze blows primarily from the ocean out over the land. This is called a sea breeze.

"You used your hang glider to ride the land breeze out from Tokyo to this ship. In fact, you must have been doing this for weeks, checking ships to see which one held whatever it is that you're looking for. You landed on each ship under cover of darkness and searched it for your target. If it wasn't there, you'd wait until early morning, and then use the sea breeze to fly back to land.

"Last night, you realized that this ship, the Hikari no Yama, was the one you were searching for. When you confirmed your target was aboard, you finally faxed the Inspector's office, calling the police to the docks tonight. Then all you had to do was hide aboard and wait for the ship to arrive, when you could slip off with whatever's in that safe by your feet."

Shinichi grinned. "Am I right?"

The sailor tugged his cap low and cocked his head, a brilliant grin of his own visible beneath the brim. "Sounds pretty good to me." He let out a snicker. "You and I are two of a kind, Kudou-san. Do you know that?"
Shinichi kept his hands in his pockets, but his upper lip had started to sweat again. He and the sailor were hardly two meters apart in a crowded cargo hold.

"I do have one question, though," he said. "You must have been checking out several ships coming into this dock in the past few weeks. That's why you only sent the heist note this morning, and why you knew enough about the other ships planning to dock here tonight to use the pun about 'true jewels.' It sounds like you're not sure what you're after. Like you're following a tip." Shinichi frowned. "From my experience with your career, that doesn't seem to be your style."

"I don't like fish," the sailor interrupted, his voice light.

Shinichi paused. "Excuse me?"

"One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. Did you figure out that part of the riddle?"

Shinichi frowned. "The 'fish' lead us to the seaport, and the 'one' and 'two' put together make 'twelve,' the dock we're on."

"Black fish, blue fish," the sailor continued, as if he hadn't heard. "Old fish, new fish. This one has a little car. Say! What a lot of fish there are!"

Shinichi felt his muscles tense. He fingered his stun watch, his eyes narrowed and fixed on the sailor.

But the sailor was still leaning casually against the stacked crates. "Yes," he said. "Some are red. And some are blue. Some are old. And some are new. Some are sad. And some are glad." He stood up straight, and Shinichi caught a glimpse of his profile in the faint light through the porthole.

The sailor tugged his baseball cap further down his face, but Shinichi could feel his eyes on him. "And some are very, very, bad."

In spite of himself, Shinichi felt a chill run down his spine. "Why are you quoting children's books?"

"There are a lot of fish in the sea, tantei-san. Are you sure you've caught them all?"

"The Black Organization," Shinichi breathed. "Are you saying you're connected to them?"

"Isn't that the detective's job to figure out?"

"Then what's your job?" Shinichi snapped. "You'll put on the show, while I work behind the scenes?"

The sailor grinned wider than ever. "Figuring out my job is also part of your job. Speaking of which—

He suddenly scooped up the safe in the open crate at his feet and bolted down the narrow corridor. Shinichi whipped his hands out of his pockets, stun wristwatch ready, but before he could fire both boys noticed the thin, flat, beeping object at the bottom of the robbed crate.

Shinichi rocked back on his heels; his eyes widened—

"A bomb?"

But the sailor reacted as if he had expected it. From the inside of his jumpsuit he produced a dark object that he hurled at the opposite wall of the hold; it exploded against the far wall as the thing in the bottom of the crate at their feet continued to beep, and then Shinichi found his arm in a tight grip.

Smoke was filling the hold from whatever the sailor had thrown; the opposite wall of the ship had been blasted away. The sailor pushed him through the hole, and Shinichi found himself falling—then hands seized him under the arms and he shot forward—

Shinichi craned his head around. The Kaitou Kid, hang glider open, was flying with him over the water.

The Kid's arms were looped under Shinichi's, the safe in his gloved hand pressed to Shinichi's chest.

Before he could speak, or even struggle, the Hikari no Yama exploded behind them.

Both Shinichi and the Kid cried out as a wall of heat bowled them over mid-air. Shinichi felt the arms slip out from beneath him; he tried to grab on, but his fingers only closed around the metal safe, and he plummeted two meters to an abandoned dock as a fireball roared out of the hole that the Kid had just blown in the ship's side.

Shinichi curled into a ball where he had landed and threw his hands over his head. His eyes squeezed shut against the flash of light as the explosion illuminated the entire port and then just as abruptly receded into flames and smoke and darkness.

Shinichi didn't move. His ears were ringing, his whole body shaking. Slowly he uncurled himself and opened his eyes.

A helicopter searchlight blazed over him to train on the smoking wreckage that was now the Hikari no Yama. He winced, blinked, rolled over onto his stomach but then couldn't breathe and rolled again onto his back, chest heaving, his hands clasped to his ears. Now more lights were shooting across the sky, and Shinichi couldn't keep his eyes open against the glare. He tilted his head to the side and stared instead at the smoking hull not twenty meters from him. A few brave policemen were trying to board it.

After a moment Shinichi realized that his cell phone was vibrating in his pocket. Shinichi fished it out with trembling fingers, then rolled over onto his stomach and pressed one hand against his ear as he pressed his cell phone up to the other.

"Kudou here."

"Kudou-kun!" the voice on the cell phone was tinny and distant to his ears. "You're alive! What happened? Are you okay?"

Even through the ringing in his ears and the roar of the horrified crowd further down the dock, Shinichi recognized Aoko's voice.

"I'm okay," he mumbled.

"—Oh thank God—And…"

Shinichi made a motion as if to stand but then quickly decided against it and pressed the phone still more tightly to his ear. "Think he's okay, too…the Kid. He got me out." Shinichi coughed. "Did he—"

"Of course not!" Aoko shrieked, fury now tingeing her sobs. "It was them!"

"Who is—"

"Shinichi-kun, you've got to go after him. They're here, they're after him!"

"Aoko-chan…" Shinichi muttered, blinking furiously. His head was throbbing. He turned his head and his eyes fell on the small safe lying by his side.

"Please, Shinichi!" Aoko's voice had become hysterical; she was speaking very quickly as she sobbed, "I'm watching on the news; I saw which way he went—the officers on the ground don't know yet, they're not moving, so it has to be you. He needs your help, I know he does—"

Shinichi pushed himself up to his knees, his eyes still on the fallen safe. "Who are you talking about—"

"Kaito!" Aoko shrieked. "Kaito, it's Kaito, Shinichi-kun, please, it's him, please help him…"

Shinichi jumped to his feet, then let out a moan and clapped his free hand to his aching forehead. "Which—which way did he go, Aoko-chan?"
"N-northwest," she stammered. "A few docks down. Be careful—"

Shinichi snapped his phone closed, scooped up the safe and spun around—not towards the bright lights and loud crowds near the Andvarinaut, but, face pale and teeth gritted, he directed himself away towards the darker, emptier side of the seaport.

This side of the seaport was far less polished than the dock on which the cruise liner Andvarinaut had moored. The docks were narrower, the buildings dirtier and more crowded. Shinichi jogged lightly down the pier, his finger on his stun watch when he rounded a corner—and saw the Kaitou Kid not twenty meters in front of him.

Shinichi dove back around the building. The Kid hadn't noticed him, Shinichi thought; he had been looking in a different direction, as if speaking to someone in an alley on the other side of the building that Shinichi couldn't see.

Then, his back pressed to the wall, Shinichi slowly peered out of the shadows.

The Kid stood at the end of a long, narrow dock, shining like a beacon over the dark water. His right, monocled side was facing Shinichi in profile. The end of the dock was dented as if the Kid had crashed into it, and the pants legs of Kid's suit were dirty. His hands were raised.

"Are you going to shoot me?" the Kid said cheerfully, as if anticipating the punch line of an excellent joke.

"You don't have it?" snarled a voice from around the corner. "You lost it?"

"Why did you bomb the ship?" Kid said, his hands still raised.

Shinichi set down the safe and craned his head closer to hear.

"Like I said, the Organization hasn't been the same since your pals tore up the head honchos two years ago." The voice was that of a man, low and gruff. "I figured there'd be some trap. Thanks for checking it out for me."

"I expect you don't care that innocent people have just died," the Kid said cooly. "But you're a fool, Snake. You've called attention to yourself. Now it'll be even easier for me to crack you wide open."

"Doesn't matter," the man said. "The ship's ledgers had to be destroyed in any case. And you can't blame me for hoping you'd slip up. It'd be like killing two birds with one stone. In any case, the blame will fall on you first, and by the time they deduce someone else was present, I'll have already disappeared with the gem. Which brings us back to the first point."

"Like I'd give it to you," the Kid chuckled.

Shinichi heard the sound of a gun cocking.

"Don't make me make this personal. I know who you are—took me a while, what with the chaos the Kudou boy caused, but I've got an idea now. I know the girl you've been seeing, that cute little college student. The inspector's daughter."

Even behind the opaque monocle, Shinichi saw an expression flash across Kid's pale face. His hands dropped—

Shinichi jumped up. "Over here, officers!" he shouted, shining the beam of his wristwatch light around the corner.

A gunshot went off; the bullet whizzed through the Kid's top hat. In the light from his watch Shinichi caught a quick glimpse of a man in an overcoat with a thick handlebar mustache, his dark, cold eyes blinking in the sudden brightness. The man's pistol glinted, then Shinichi threw himself down as gunshots cracked over his head.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Kaitou Kid make a throwing motion with his right arm as he extended his left—the sleeve of which was blotched with red—A grapple line shot out from his sleeve to a building behind him. Shinichi aimed his watch at Kid, then dug a hand into his inside jacket pocket, pulled out a revolver of his own, and fired two shots down the alley where the trenchcoated man had stood.

In the next instant, the gunshots had ceased, Kid had flown to the top of the distant building, and Shinichi rolled back to his cover behind the building.

The alley before him was empty; the faint sound of vanishing footsteps faded away beneath the soft lapping of the agitated waves against the docks.

Shinichi stood. The pier was deserted once again; the only evidence of the brief, baffling conversation he had just heard was the damaged dock into which the Kid had crashed, and a small, white paper airplane that had landed on the pier before him.

Shinichi stepped forward and opened it.

Thanks. But don't do that again. The note was signed with a caricature of a Kaitou Kid face grimacing at a fish with a handlebar mustache.

Shinichi pocketed the note and his gun. Head still ringing, he slowly turned and picked up the small black safe.

"…Pandora Gem?" he said aloud, considering the safe.

A clattering noise sounded behind him. Shinichi whipped around—but the dock appeared empty once again.

Shinichi frowned, scooped up the safe, and ran as fast as he could back to the crowded pier.

"Sorry," he muttered under his breath as he ran, his eyes flashing in the darkness, "but you can't keep me out of this one…Kuroba."

**Next Chapter: High (Tea) Time. Because you knew he was bound to show up sooner or later…

A/N:

Oh, hey, look, a plot! What do you know! And speaking of plot, I hope you reread chapter 3 before reading this one, because I changed the setup for the plot that that chapter establishes.

I'm sorry about the edits. I had confused myself with who knows what about what. See, when this fic started in my head, chapter 1 was supposed to be a funny one-shot: 'Oh, what if Heiji knows Kaito's secret, and Aoko knows—awkwardness galore!' I laughed to myself and thought it was over—but then Aoko and Kaito came back into my head demanding an angsty romantic exploration of the dark side of Aoko knowing Kaito's secret. Then I just kept writing these chapters without any real plot idea in mind. I got up to about chapter 8 or 9 before I realized that I was in way over my head and would have to figure out how it was going to end before I could continue. So when I finally figured that out, I went back and edited the first chapters. But I wasn't careful enough with Chapter 3. So I had to go back and change it before I could continue.

Basically I realized that Shinichi, and his experience against the Black Org, is going to have to play a slightly larger role than I thought. I still don't intend to go into the specifics of how Shinichi gets his body back and defeats Gin et. al., partly because this is Kaito and Aoko's story, and partly because I don't write Shinichi very well, but there's going to be more flashbacks. So this story won't be told in a very linear fashion, but hopefully it works.

Please review, and tell me if you're confused! I've got a more detailed plan now, and some other characters are going to be sharing some of their information in the next two chapters. One of these is Ai, and another one you may be able to guess from the next chapter's title…

**Title note: Because 'fantastic' comes from the Latin word 'fantasticus,' meaning 'imaginary'—get it? Fantastic jewels, imaginary jewels…Hah hah…Ahem. Anyway, please review!