Kimiko: If I get any facts wrong, it's because I'm just a fangirl writing this. I'm not a professional and I definitely don't have access to Gosho Aoyama's coolness, though I wish I did. Ooo…I could be close to Kaito and Shinichi and Heiji…

Blue Friday

Even after Mr. Akai assured them that he would call them as soon as he cracked the encryption on the files, the students still waited in his apartment for a while, wondering what to do. They all wanted to find out as much as they could about the 'Blue Friday' event so they could prevent it. Especially Heiji.

Heiji's father was a policeman. A superintendent.

Shinichi wanted to do something to help Heiji feel better, but the group gathered in Mr. Akai's living room was feeling so much dread that the very air seemed to leak apprehension. After all, there was only so much that seven high school students and one slightly eccentric teacher could do to resist terrorists.

Heiji decided that the best thing to do for now was to let Eisuke, Genta, Ayumi and Mitsuhiko leave for home. As much as they wanted to stay, they did know there was nothing they could do until Mr. Akai finished the task of making the files they needed accessible to them. So they went out in pairs again, just to be safe. They still weren't sure if the guys in black were looking around the city.

Shinichi and Kaito were going to stay at Mr. Akai's place for the day. Shinichi left a message for their mother using Kaito's phone to let her know. Right now, however, the three boys were lounging on the sofa and armchairs in Mr. Akai's living room. They hadn't said anything since Shinichi finished the call, and were silently brooding on their own thoughts. The room was just as melancholy as before, but now it was emptier.

Kaito couldn't stand the atmosphere. He had already felt enough seriousness packed into one morning to last a month. He quietly stood up and walked around. He looked for something to relieve the tension. He needed something he could manipulate. Wandering into another room, he spotted a shelf filled with books and other mementos. Kaito scanned up and down this, looking for something in particular.

There it was—a deck of playing cards. Kaito picked it up and headed back to the living room. The others looked up in slow recognition as he sat down close to Mr. Akai's coffee table and began shuffling.

"Hey, Shinichi, pick a card, any card," he said.

"Hey, I saw that!" Shinichi exclaimed. Kaito looked up innocently.

"Oh~, what is it you saw?"

"Don't play that," Shinichi grabbed at Kaito's wrist. "You—" he broke off when half the deck flew out of Kaito's sleeve, landing on the coffee table and covering the rest of the cards. For what seemed like the twentieth time since they started, Heiji burst into uncontrollable laughter.

"Oh, God, you two are so funny!" He dropped his own cards and grabbed his sides as he fell backwards onto the floor. "You guys should be in a comedy act together! It's too funny!" Shinichi spun around to face Heiji.

He shut his mouth tightly, crossed his arms, and scowled in an attempt to hide his embarrassment and mortification at being called funny. He demanded, "Maybe Kaito's amusing to you, but I don't see how I am. He's just a trickster who likes to mess with people to get a reaction. He—"

"Oh, stop! Stop, please!" Tears were coming out of Heiji's eyes. He was gasping for breath in between his spasms of laughter. "L-look behind you, Kuroba,"

Shinichi was just barely able to catch sight of his brother behind him, having combed down his hair in an imitation of his own and silently imitating every action Shinichi made. Shinichi scowled again. Kaito grinned goofily, and then became Shinichi's mirror image again. Shinichi yelled in frustration. He grabbed a sofa cushion and tried to swing it at Kaito, but he ducked under it and danced away. Shinichi threw it across the room in an attempt to hit him, but Kaito expertly dodged it again and it hit Heiji, who by now was so lost in the moment to care. Kaito continued hopping around the room, while Shinichi tried to attack him with various [thankfully non-breakable] objects and Heiji laughed at the antics.

Mr. Akai was now standing in the doorway. He had finished the decoding, but if he mentioned it to them now, it would ruin all of Kaito Kuroba's efforts. This was good for all three of the boys.

He managed to raise his voice so they could hear him. "It's probably going to take a while, so you guys just go home and I'll bring the results to school on Monday." Kaito was now wrestling with Shinichi and Heiji had recovered well enough to listen. "Just come a little early so I can tell you everything. And be sure to include those others." Heiji nodded, still wiping tears out of his eyes.

It took at least twenty more minutes to recover long enough to leave the apartment, though.

The next day…

Once everyone had arrived in the classroom, Mr. Akai started to speak. "I'll just run through the basics for now. The terrorists are called Organized Cry. They're going to bomb the main police headquarters and try to sneak into the secondary headquarters while the city tries to respond to the attacks. The whole thing should start at 12:00 noon. According to the information we have, one team is going to plant a car bomb in front, a second team will rush in with firearms after them and a third is the main bombing team. Their plan is to force a way through the back entrance while the police's attention is occupied. They'll set their bombs in the elevators and plan to set them off at exactly 1:10 in the afternoon. It's supposed to mock the emergency number, like September 11 in America. After the bombing, at 1:15, apparently, the fourth and fifth teams are going to begin their move against the second building. One team will take control from the bottom floor up and the other will come in a helicopter to pick them up once that team has the information they want."

"Did they mention what they're trying to find in the second police headquarters?" Shinichi asked.

"Well," Mr. Akai said, rubbing his temples, "Apparently, the more information they can get the better. They don't seem to care: records, names, places, schedules. I think they mostly want to strike a blow on the city, by handicapping its police. They didn't exactly list their mission statement." He pulled the flash drive out of his pocket and handed it back to Shinichi. "I think this mostly had their plans. It doesn't include many names, but it's pretty detailed on times and actions. Here, I already made a few backup copies."

Shinichi took the drive and looked over at Heiji. "We should probably give it to the police to warn them."

"Wait, there's one thing that I've been wondering," Ayumi interrupted. "Wouldn't those people, the Organized Cry, have decided to change their plans? I mean, they know Shinichi has their information."

Mr. Akai shook his head. "The encryption on that would have taken the police at least a week to break, even if they called in someone else. Besides, these types of people get guys to watch the police stations for precisely that possibility. If it seems like the police are in on it, they call off the entire thing."

"Isn't that a good thing?" Mitsuhiko asked. "If they call it off, no one has to get hurt."

"But the terrorists would still be out there." Genta pointed out. "We have to let only a few people that we trust know ahead of time, so it isn't heard by the wrong people and discovered. This is a chance for the police to take these people down without too much damage."

"And Organized Cry isn't going to change their plans, even if they were suspicious of me." Shinichi added. "They're too confident in their abilities. At Tropical Land, they didn't even bother to check the drive until after I left. They don't see us as an issue. Besides, as long as I stay under the radar, they won't suspect me of telling anyone. Remember, they're still waiting for us to respond back to their demands. And we've alerted the phone company, so they have no way of contacting us now."

"But, Kuroba," Heiji argued. "There are still at least two problems. What if they see you coming to school?"

"I can answer that!" Kaito cried out, hugging his brother's neck from behind. "Mom's driving us to and from school this week. And just in case, I brought this!" He slid a pair of glasses with large lenses onto his brother's face. Shinichi flinched as it was put on, then blinked. "And I have one for me too!" Kaito concluded, showing them his own pair of slightly similar glasses.

The group looked at them. They still looked like twins, but they looked just different enough from the glasses-less Kuroba twins to keep people from drawing connections.

"We can also change our hairstyles if you think we should," Shinichi said.

Mr. Akai smiled. "You probably don't need to. Just be careful this week." A thought occurred to him. "Oh, right, the makeup day for the museum trip is Friday." The students were hit with a wave of different emotions. It could either be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how closely the teachers were watching. They also wanted to help bring the terrorists to justice, not be stuck at a museum. "Don't worry," Mr. Akai reassured. "I can help you slip out of the museum in time to help stop Blue Friday from happening. But right now, Mr. Hattori, you need to get that drive to your dad. Make sure he knows what's at stake here and tell him to be careful of whoever he tells."

Heiji nodded. "I will."

The morning bell rang. Eisuke jumped and a few of the students were somewhat surprised. They had been so focused that they almost forgot about school.

"Oh, remember to keep taking your studies seriously," Mr. Akai added with a predatory half-smile. "I can't just let you slack off while you're preoccupied with criminals. And Mr. Hattori, if you teenagers are going to be at the headquarters on Friday, I'd like to be there also. I'll help you with this all the way."

Friday, the day of the event, 'Blue Friday'

Both Heiji and Mr. Akai were as good as their words. Heizou Hattori spread the word to only the people who absolutely had to know and agreed to allow them to help as long as they were not near the places where gunfire would most likely take place. And Mr. Akai, with a reluctant Ms. Haibara's help, managed to get them away from the museum.

As they were driving towards the secondary headquarters building in Mr. Akai's Chevy, Heiji and Shinichi discussed strategy.

"We're going to be in two teams, one at each building." Heiji explained. "I've already considered the groups and based off our strengths, I came up with how we can split up. The secondary HQ team will be Tsuburaya, Hondou and Kuroba, uh, both of you. Me, Mr. Akai, Kojima and Yoshida will be at the main HQ. That's okay with everyone, right?" No one argued.

Shinichi followed. "The main HQ team has to help the police in any way they can. And if they have it under control, they have to listen to whatever the police say. But remember, we can't draw out the other teams unless a bomb goes off somewhere. But, if the situation's bad, the bomb squad will probably have to make the sacrifice of losing the chance to catch half the terrorists so they can save the people at the main HQ. Remember, these bombs won't just destroy the police building. They'll affect the whole vicinity."

"Okay," Mr. Akai said. "And what is the other team doing?"

"We'll be helping the police spring the trap on the fourth team of terrorists and luring the fifth team into landing with their helicopter. The headquarters has to be almost empty so the terrorists enter in the first place. The police will keep their best men there, so it'll be relatively simple to stop the fourth team. The problem is getting the fifth team to think it's okay to land. I still haven't figured out that part."

The car was silent for about half a minute. The headquarters loomed closer and closer in the windshield.

When Kaito, Shinichi, Mitsuhiko and Eisuke finally got out, they all felt the same. The last reading on the clock said 11:37. There was no time for hesitation anymore. Blue Friday was about to start.

Kimiko: I know this ends on a cliffhanger, so I'm putting two chapters on at the same time! Actually I wanted three, but I don't think I'll have it done in time.

Flanagan: That's okay. And I'm sure the readers understand that you spent extra time working on more chapters to make them happy.