:) Enjoy, and thanks again to my readers and reviewers! Working on rewriting/updating my older stuff now and working it into my writing rotation.
"Aoko, really. Opening this thing isn't anywhere near as hard as you're making it out to be." Kaito shook his head as he walked downstairs with Shinichi to help Aoko with the sofa bed she was trying to set up.
"Then help me out and just don't stand there, Bakaito!" She gave Kaito a mock glare as she continued to try and open the bed.
"What do you think I came down here for?" Kaito rolled his eyes in feigned irritation as he walked over. "It would probably also help if you weren't trying to open the wrong end of the bed, you know."
"OH! Does it maybe open like this, Aoko-neesan?" Shinichi decided to turn his little kid dial all the way up to 'disgustingly cute' for Aoko's benefit. Twitching internally, he walked over and pushed what he figured was a release lever and sure enough, the bed sprang out of the couch with a loud 'pop.'
"Wow! Great job, Conan-kun! You figured it out all by yourself!" Aoko finished setting up the bed, then reached over and gave Shinichi a few affectionate pats on the head. "You're such a smart little boy!"
If you laugh I'll 'accidentally' hit you with one of my soccer balls, Kuroba. Mark my words...Shinichi shot Kaito a quick glare after he could tell that the other boy was barely holding in a fit of laughter. This, however, appeared to only egg his friend on further.
"Well, he does hang out with that scientist guy, right - Agasa-hakase or whatever his name is? Some of the guy's brains might have rubbed off on 'em."
It was as this point that Shinichi was very glad Aoko's back was to him. He decided to take advantage of the opportunity and gave Kaito a death glare, followed by popping his soccer ball out of his belt and charging his sneakers up. He then fake-kicked the ball towards Kaito, getting the exact reaction out of the thief that Shinichi had been hoping for. Kaito very quickly moved to the left and ducked behind the sofa bed before he could tell that Shinichi wasn't actually going to kick the ball, causing Aoko to give Kaito a curious look. Shinichi then very quickly deflated and stuffed the ball back into his belt before Aoko turned around. He offered Aoko a brilliant child's smile after she gave him a puzzled look. "Kaito-niisan is funny sometimes, isn't he?"
"I was, uh, looking for that Yamen Kaiba video you brought for Conan," replied Kaito from behind the couch with gritted teeth as he slowly got up with the video in his hand. He was very thankful that he'd managed to find the bag containing the video, or Kaito had no idea how he would have explained his behavior. Visons of a million different pranks he could perform as retaliation were running like wildfire through Kaito's head as he turned on the TV and video player. Not exactly a smart move to pull something like that on me when you're staying in the guest bedroom right next to mine, Kudo. I think some of my pigeons will pay you a visit later after you go to sleep...or maybe it's time for that stash of rotten eggs I've got to find a place right under your pillow. It would be so worth it to clean the bedding in order to extract a little payback, as far as Kaito was concerned.
"Oh, which one is this? My friend Genta has allllllllll of them. They take up this much room on his shelf," remarked Shinichi as he swung his arms wide for emphasis. Yep, Kuroba, I don't know what exact favor I'm going to ask in return yet but you seriously owe me one. Maybe even more than one...
"It's the one with the big scary octopus man!" cried Aoko as she raised her arms above her head and made claws with her hands. "And he looks like this!"
After the movie came on and they settled in to watch, Shinichi kept one eye half on the film and the other eye watching out for pranks from Kaito.
"Psst! Wake up in there! I think she finally fell asleep, Kuroba!"
Kaito woke with a start after he heard Shinichi hissing from the other side of his door, the other boy's low voice accompanied by light knocking on the door. The magician blinked to clear his eyes as he slowly got up out of bed, adjusting the bottoms of his pajama pants before walking over and opening the door with a grumpy, sleepy look on his face. He then waved the shrunken meitantei in, chastising Shinichi in a whisper after Shinichi shut the door slowly. "You realize that Aoko won't stay asleep for long if you keep making that kind of racket, right Kudo?" Kaito then cast a pair of bleary eyes at the digital alarm clock by his bed, willing the numbers into focus and becoming even surlier once he realized what time it was. "And just what is so important that you're getting me up at two in the morning on the one day of the week I actually get to sleep in?" He tapped his foot impatiently.
"We have some files that we need to go over, remember?" Shinichi gave him a serious look and held up the file that he'd smuggled in with him. "I brought this, and you were going to research the file we, uh, borrowed a couple weeks ago." Calling it 'borrowing' was really Shinichi's internal coping mechanism to deal with the fact that he'd actually actively helped to steal said file.
There was a pause of a couple seconds before Kaito glowered at the shrunken meitantei, bent down slightly and stuck his pointer finger a few inches from Shinichi's face. "Nope. No way. If you think I'm gonna try and tackle going through all this stuff at two A.M. without some coffee, you're nuts." Kaito then stood up and quietly walked past his friend with body language full of irritation, heading downstairs on tippytoes into the kitchen.
"Oh come on, Kuroba. I bet you're probably up at this hour all the time during your burglaries," remarked Shinichi in a somewhat smug sotto voce as he padded down the carpeted stairs behind the thief.
"There's one big difference right now though," Kaito replied in a low, growly hiss after they finished arriving downstairs. "Usually when I'm pulling off my heists I actually plan on being up at this unearthly hour." He then entered into the kitchen and turned to Shinichi, who had carefully and quietly made himself comfortable on a bar stool. "Want some?"
"Sure, thanks." As Kaito filled a pot with water from the sink at a slow trickle Shinichi began to look around for a light source that wouldn't possibly wake up Aoko, who was dozing not quite ten feet from the pair on the fold-out couch that Kaito had helped her with earlier.
"We can go back upstairs once I've got this water boiled. The coffee's instant." Kaito muttered this under his breath as he very, very carefully extracted two cups and some sugar from a cabinet, putting them on a platter so delicately that everything may as well have been made of spun sugar. He then cranked one of the electric burners on the stove as far as it would go and placed the pot of water on to boil with a practiced hand. "You usually take cream in your coffee? I do."
Shinichi nodded and Kaito slowly creaked open the fridge before extracting a container of cream, trying to keep the door as shut as possible so that light wouldn't creep into the room. Both boys stared at the stove and waited impatiently for the water to boil, hawks waiting to strike the moment the pot began to make any kind of noise. While they waited, Kaito grabbed two spoons, a tablespoon and a large container of vanilla-flavored instant coffee then added the items to the platter. Once the water boiled Kaito pointed Shinichi towards a bottom cupboard, which held a teakettle in it after Shinichi did a little digging. They then both headed back upstairs with the boiling water, Kaito pouring the water into the kettle to keep it hot once they were back in his room.
"Hmm. I may have to see if I can get Ran to start buying this for us," remarked Shinichi post-sip after the two had finished making thier coffees a few minutes later. "It's really not bad at all." He then opened the file folder and opened it to the sparse notes he'd managed to gather on the Organization. "So, like we were discussing earlier, it seems from what I've found so far that all of them take a code name that's some kind of liquor. The other thing they do is pretty much always dress from head to toe in black- I actually think it may be part of a dress code or something for them. They especially seem to like long trench coats and fedoras."
"Tch, top hats are cooler." Kaito grinned at the baleful glare Shinichi gave him before continuing. "And black outfits? Everyone knows white's way better." He then laughed lightly as he reached behind Shinichi's glowering face and produced a 100 yen coin from behind the other boy's ear. "Lighten up a little, Kudo! Your face will freeze like that if you always look that serious."
"Ha, ha." Shinichi realized, though, that that sarcastic laugh had actually been close to a real one. It was weird to him; Kaito had this way of making you laugh even when you didn't want to laugh sometimes. He supposed that it was mostly due to the magnetic, boisterous personality his friend possessed. "But seriously, these guys are everywhere, Kuroba. Probably even in some places you wouldn't even think to look for criminals."
"Well, yeah. Like this guys' pharmaceutical business that that file we grabbed was on, for instance." Kaito tossed Shinichi his own folder, which contained pictures of a large building and a logo on it.. "It sounds like they've had thier claws in it for a while. Kinda creepy to read about them rigging the election of a board of directors for a big public company like that, but from what I could see it was done without any problems. Which is a bad sign about these guys, if you ask me- means they probably know what they're doing and are also pretty good at it." Kaito's expression actually turned serious for a moment.
Shinichi nodded, a grim expression on his face. "That's exactly why trying to actually track them down or catch them is so difficult. These guys are so skilled at hiding and manipulating things behind the scenes that you'd likely never even know they were involved at all most of the time- and that's exactly how they like things." He waved at his stack of papers. "It's taken me months to even manage to gather this much on them."
Kaito looked up at the ceiling and tapped his chin. "Sounds like we'll just have to out-think them then. Shouldn't be too hard for the two of us, right?" Then a grin slowly spread across his face that only took Shinichi a second or two to place- a grin he'd seen under the brim of a white top hat way too many times. "They might be smart, but I think both of us are smarter."
