Chapter Ten: A Few More Shenanigans

A/N: Thanks to everyone who's read, reviewed, followed, and favorited thus-far! Here's some more stupid fun for ya~! ;D

Conan awoke rather early on a Sunday morning to find Dopey sitting on his forehead, staring down at the young detective. Conan peered up at the bird, sighed, and reached to grab it. He sat up with the bird cupped in his hands and noticed a slip of paper once again tied to the bird's leg with a little blue ribbon.

"Sorry for sending Dopey over so early: He deemed it positively necessary to wake me up at four this morning to let him out. He looks forward to these visits all week every week: I would complain, but it's better than him moping about all the day long, don't you agree?

(◕⌣↼)~

He's put on weight again despite the diet I have him on, the little mongrel, so try to keep him from eating bread or sweets or regular human-type foods, if you can. He tends to be rather insistent on disobeying; I'm sure you know all about it by now.

(´ω｀；)

Thanks again for looking after him. Major improvement~!

-KK

_l_l_

(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:~Magic~･ﾟ✧"

Conan rolled his eyes and crawled out of bed, retrieving his glasses and carrying Dopey downstairs with him. He set the dove on his shoulder as he stepped into the kitchen, yawning along the way.

Ran was busy making a Sunday-morning Western-style breakfast, as she tended to do on Sundays as a special treat. She didn't notice Conan's presence until he pulled up a chair at the table, the wooden legs squealing lightly on the tiled floor.

"Oh, Conan! You're up early for a Sunday, and I see Dopey's here already too." She'd opened the window at the front of the agency half an hour ago to let the dove in, but she hadn't expected him to actually stop by so early.

Ran paused in the process of making biscuits to retrieve a small bowl of seeds from the pantry, which she set on the table as means for the dove's breakfast. Dopey hopped down to them off Conan's shoulder while Conan flopped his arms onto the table and rested his head in them; the detective never had thought of himself as a morning person, he was want to stay up late and sleep in late, so he was far from bushy-tailed and bright-eyed before seven in the morning on a weekend.

Ran finished their Western breakfast of biscuits, slightly-runny scrambled eggs, bacon, orange juice, and diced fruit salad over the course of the next hour and served it. She dragged her father down to breakfast around seven-thirty to eat and they all sat rather quietly to partake in their breakfast, the boys still sluggish and sleepy-eyed. Dopey tried to pick at Conan's biscuit at one point but, keeping in mind what KID said about Dopey's diet, the young detective refused to give him any and pushed the bird away from it, scolding it lightly and reminding it that KID would be disappointed in both of them if he found out.

For the most part, the people all sat quietly through breakfast... But Dopey was lively as could be. A diurnal bird's natural instinct is to be particularly active around sunrise, and Dopey was no exception. He was downright beatific due to being allowed to come by so early on his new favorite day of the week, and greeted the new day as many birds often did; with song.

Dopey was a lovely singer in his own mind, but most others wouldn't agree with him. While he wasn't horrible, his pitch was still a squeaky-high whistle and, most importantly, his pure excitement at times like these made his bird-song rather erratic and garbled. Sometimes, when he was calm, he actually was a beautiful sounding bird, but that was rarely the case, and never when he was so jovial. Perhaps he would have known how bad he sounded in the mornings if not for the fact that Kaito, as well, always seemed to enjoy Dopey's morning songs. The dove had no way of knowing that Kaito loved his bird-song purely because it meant the bird was happy and healthy; he couldn't care less what his dove actually sounded like, so Dopey's singing always put a smile on his face regardless of the sound.

Ran was at least trying to remain neutral to it, but Conan was looking pretty distinctly annoyed, and Mouri Kogoro was quickly becoming downright pissed off.

Dopey was pacing back and forth on the empty spaces of the table, looking around at the increasing amount of sunlight filtering into the room as the sun rose higher above the horizon, making joyful whistles and chirps as his talons pattered back and forth on the wooden table-top.

After a minute of this Conan groaned, and a vein on Kogoro's forehead was bulging. Ran overall tried to pretend she hadn't noticed anything, but occasionally sent worried glances at her father. Finally, he snapped.

"HEY! It's too early in the morning for this! SHUT UP!"

Dopey fell quiet for a moment, tilted his head as he looked at the man, and then decided that Kogoro must be trying to sing with him, since he was being loud now too. Having come to this conclusion, Dopey chirped very merrily and hopped up closer to him, standing on the rim of his plate and chirping repeatedly, bobbing his head up-and-down, back-and-forth, stepping side-to-side, set into motion in a happy little dance. Conan immediately lost his annoyance at this and Ran smiled because, aww, damn that was cute~!

Kogoro's brow twitched and he still looked pissed, but he fell quiet for a while and just stared. Dopey did look incredibly happy, and as studies often showed, happiness is contagious. The older detective didn't end up being happy, per-say, but he did huff in annoyance and decide to leave the bird alone, instead shooing it off his plate with a wave of his hand and light push before returning to eating, Dopey still pacing about the table. As soon as he was done eating he bolted, off to watch TV with the volume up until Dopey finally stopped singing fifteen minutes later.

The dove would have kept singing for another half-hour, until the sun was wholly in the sky and not balanced on the horizon, but something else distracted him, as something usually did. He had a rather short attention span...

What caught his attention this time was Conan's glasses. As the sun rose enough to shine directly through the window, casting beams far enough down the walls to hit Conan's round-rimmed glasses directly, the light gleamed off of them, and Dopey suddenly had a single penetrating thought: "Shiny!"

As Conan was going to set his dishes in the sink, his glasses refracted the light in just such a way that Dopey realized exactly how shiny they were and decided they were worth taking. He bounded off the table and fluttered straight at Conan's face. Conan panicked a bit as white encompassed his vision. He almost smacked the bird away on instinct, but caught himself just in time and instead slowed his motions, carefully trying to cover his face and force the bird off. It was too late though: Dopey's talons caught hold of the bridge of the glasses and he carried them off, out of the kitchen and into the agency's main floor.

"Dopey, no, bring those back!" The bird heeded him no mind as it flew off and eventually settled with the glasses on top of a large cabinet on the main agency floor. Kogoro glanced up from the TV every few moments to see what was going on, his interest drawn by the scene unfurling in his place of business and relaxation.

Conan groaned as he realized the bird, and now his glasses, were too high for him to reach them. He looked to Ran, who was standing in the doorway between the agency and the kitchen: She was giggling, hiding her smile behind a hand, but didn't move to help him.

Conan sighed and looked back up at the bird. "Dopey, I need those." Dopey peered down at him before pecking at the glass of one of the lenses.

Conan grunted as he pulled up a chair to stand on, bracing it against the cabinet and standing on his tip-toes to try and reach the bird. He was ultimately unsuccessful. 'Being short again sucks...'

This is the scene the Detective Boys walked in on: Conan trying to tempt Dopey down with bread, trying to reach up from the chair, and asking Ran repeatedly to help him, only for her to say Dopey would bring them down when he was ready.

Once the other Detective Boys were in the mix, they finally managed to retrieve the lost spectacles. With Conan on Genta's shoulders and Genta on the chair, Ayumi and Mitsuhiko holding the chair steady while Ai watched, they managed to pull the bird and pilfered specs down. Leave it to a KID dove to steal something shiny….

It didn't even end there. For the rest of the day, at the park and out about the town, Dopey continued to snatch the glasses whenever the light glinted off them and attracted his attention. The Detective Boys ended up chasing the bird down using Conan's skateboard all around town for half the day, and by the end of it all Dopey was even more exhausted than usual.

Conan took a shower that night, dressed in his pajamas, and went down to the agency floor to see if Dopey had gone home yet.

When he saw Dopey, his heart nearly stopped. His eyes went wide and he raced over to the couch.

Dopey was laying on his back on the couch, legs up in the air and wings spread out to his sides. Conan had seen birds lay like this before, and every time, they were dead.

'Oh God, Dopey! KID is going to eviscerate me!' He was too accustomed to death for the loss of a bird to reduce him to tears, but his heart still ached at the loss of his new friend, and his detective instincts instantly kicked in. He wanted to know what the Hell had happened, what could possibly have gone wrong to kill the bird who had been young and healthy an hour before.

With slightly shaking hands, Conan reached out to lift the bird, to look him over in search of any injuries. As soon as his fingers came in contact with the bird Dopey's eyes blinked open and his head lifted to look at him. Conan stiffened and the two of them stared at each other for a few moments.

Conan sighed in relief. "Dopey, you stupid bird, I thought you were dead! What was that all about?! Were you just playing dead to scare me or what? Because that's not funny!"

Dopey's eyes blinked sleepily. He rolled, tucking his wings back against his body where previously they had been spread and relaxed at his sides. He rotated until he was back on his feet before snuggling into the couch, his feathers puffed out and relaxed as he peered up at Conan questioningly, his head tilted slightly sideways.

"…. You just sleep up-side-down like that, don't you?" Dopey chirped. "Of course you do..."

Conan groaned, wrote a quick note, attached it to Dopey's leg, picked up the bird, walked over to the open window, and tossed Dopey out. The bird complained.

"It's late, go home!" Conan shut the window and Dopey flew away with a huffy chirp. Conan shook his head in fond exasperation and went off to bed.

A/N: *:~Magic~･ﾟ✧" - I actually have my own IRL Kaito, and it makes me the most ecstatic person ever. I have this young boy I hang out with, you can call him my Little Bro for all intents and purposes, and when he was younger he looked and acted like Dipper from Gravity Falls. Now that he's starting high school and growing, he both startlingly looks like Kaito (messy brown hair, same build, minus the eye color) and he's A MAGICIAN~! He saw how much I love magic and started teaching himself. I was elated, of course, so I buy him any clothes and resources he needs (including a lock-pick set he's gotten pretty good with, though of course he won't actually become a thief, he just likes going places he isn't allowed and showing off for me, lol). He just started high school, where he now has free dress, and every day he dresses in a button-up shirt, slacks, a vest, and has a tie, plus he carries a few tricks on him at all times (and his lock-picks, of course).

He told me that on his first day of school he had a bunch of people look at him and how he dresses and ask "what are you, a rich prick or something?" All condescending and everything, to which he would reply "no, I'm a magician." He said it's funny how people instantly go from trying to pick on him to being starry-eyed and saying "oooh, really? Show me a trick!" And then he does a trick, and they think he's amazing, and it's great. I'm like the luckiest person on the planet: My Little Bro was Dipper when he was younger, and grew into being freaking Kaito, and my Little Sister was and probably forever will be Mabel, like really startlingly they are alike to these characters. It's uncanny! My Little Bro also said he wants to cosplay as KID next year and do tricks at the convention I take them to every year. It's going to be soooo epic, we're going to host a panel and he'll put on a show. I'll try to take some video and post it when the time comes. XD

Alright, another Author's Personal Anecdote done. I'll try to update again soon... I honestly have the next chapter written already and just need to edit and post it... I love Dopey... Anyway, please review~!