A/N: KIDS THIS IS THE AUTHOR I AM STILL ALIVE. and this fic is also still alive! In fact, the next chapter is in the workings and i've got quite a few more planned before this ends for good. I'm sorry it's been uh...well, it's almost been a year now :P But unfortunately, yours truly was going through a bunch of applications + attempting to graduate so...sorry, this fic has been put on the back burner. If it makes you kids feel any better, I haven't been writing any other fic either lol. But the point is: I WILL BE FINISHING THIS BOI so please be patient with me lolol.

I see all your reviews that say "update" so I'm posting this, both to placate the masses and because I've had it for too long and it's getting stale to reread it. It's only 3k words and didn't cover everything i wanted to cover for this chapter, but it'll do for now. In the future, please refrain from simply commenting "update." Yes, you may think, it worked this time! But I'm an anxious bean and any time I see an ominous "UPDATE" in my inbox i get really shook and stop thinking abt the fic for five years bc coping mechanisms. So yes. Feel free to leave your thoughts, ideas, etc. in the review box, and some "update!"s if you must, but try to refrain to save the authoress from her nervous breakdowns pls.

Guest, who posted 3 reviews. You realize that browsing as a guest means I can't actually reply to anything you say except in an AN lol. But as to your concerns, 1) I'm here, hello, no need to have anyone adopt this fic. 2) I have not yet watched the latest movie because it's not available in my country subbed yet. 3) No idea. I keep being told this fic is a v original concept but I'm sure someone must've done something similar at some point in time? Also anyone is free to take this concept and write spinoffs provided they a) ask me first/link me so i can read it lol b) credit me if they take anything from my specific universe canon. I love different versions of different fic concepts! Go crazy y'all!

Whoo. That was a long AN. I'll shut up now and leave you to your reading. As always, leave a review in the box to feed the authoress's soul :) I make no promises as to when the next update will be since I'm dealing with graduation, and then I'll be travelling to Japan (if you guys want to see them aesthetic adventures, check out my tumblr linked in the account cause that's where posts and pics will go probably), but I do promise that I will finish this fic. It will happen!

A crowd had already gathered at the locked door. Akita-san and Chiyoko appeared to be trying it when Takagi, Heiji, Conan and Keisuke with Ran in tow dashed up the stairs. The older man and the young woman were promptly elbowed out of the way. One second Heiji was lifting his foot and the next second the door was flying off the hinges, hitting the floor with a resounding thud. A startled shout came from behind them. Masayuki-san, having just come out of the room across the hall, was trembling from his sprawled position on the floor.

But that, that was not what caught everyone's attention. What caught everyone's attention was Akita Sumire, slumped over in the corner, a blood red rose at her feet.

Heiji charged over, blazing eyes, to feel for a pulse.

A moment later, he shook his head.

"Time of death," Chiyoko announced through gritted teeth, looking down at her watch. Her fingers were clenched tightly into a fist, her knuckles white. "11:23:45 a.m. No sign of Toyama-san."

With a frustrated grunt, Heiji drove his fist into the floor.

Conan crossed his arms. "Hattori."

"If you're about to start sounding like that damned Brit Hakuba, I'll rip your eyebrows off." The detective of the west growled.

He clenched his jaw, but his voice remained even. "And if you contaminate the crime scene, I will have to throw you out."

"I'd like to see you try."

Takagi cleared his throat.

"Oji-sama," Chiyoko was hoisting Masayuki-san to his feet. "Oji-sama, are you alright?"

"S-she's - "

An English curse floated up the stairs, and then a second round of thundering footsteps came up and Henry and Madoka charged in, shouting. "Kid took it! Kid took the jewel - " Henry stopped at the doorway, eyes growing wide, and Madoka gasped.

Akita-san, expressionless and unreadable, finally opened his mouth to speak. "Takagi-san, have you contacted the police station yet?"

"I've spoken to Megure-keibu. He's got a separate case downtown."

"There are three professional inspectors and a famous high school detective on the scene," Keisuke volunteered from where he was. Ran was perched uneasily on his arm, and he'd covered her eyes, a fact Conan was thankful for. "I'm sure they can handle it."

"Well then," Akita-san's eyes were deep and dark and impenetrable. A mirror of Conan's own gaze, ten years ago, furious hailstorm brewing, rather than sadness. "I had hoped to entertain our guests in better circumstances - but I suppose we're relying on you, Meitantei."

Her phone went off at least six different times in the last quarter of an hour. She was ignoring it in favor of the televised Big Osaka match, because Higo was returning to play in an all-star game and she much preferred watching it as it was broadcasted live than filming it for later. Something about the excitement of the game was better preserved in the heat of the moment.

At the mid-game commercial, however, she picked up her phone, still buzzing from the coffee table, and flicked through her notifications quickly.

Ayumi made up the majority of her texts. A few were from a more timid Mitsuhiko, and then there were the messages from an unknown number. Her guess was that it was likely Kid's assistant, or maybe Bourbon.

With a sigh she flicked to the thread she'd had with the Shounen Tantei-dan. Conan was technically also part of the thread, but he'd muted notifications long ago, and never came on unless he needed something, or one of them badgered him enough to.

The subject of the texts had begun from innocent to full on questioning. At seventeen, subtlety was not exactly very prominent in any of their personalities. She imagined Edogawa-kun must have been similar, the first time round, before subtlety became a necessity if they wanted to survive.

It was refreshing, as it always was for her, to be able to see through these children, who were, perhaps, not quite so young anymore. Not quite so easy to fool, to brush away, but bursting with the same dangerous curiosity that had stayed on since childhood.

They had never discussed this. There was no contingency plan, perhaps because over the years Edogawa-kun simply tired of remembering, but Haibara knew. It was only a matter of time before they figured it out.

Sighing, she pulled up the text from the unknown number instead. Ayumi could wait. Besides, it was likely what she wanted to know was in relation to Edogawa-kun, and Haibara had purposefully stayed away from the Kudou Mansion since the encounter with Kaitou Kid. She herself had been a criminal - her past would haunt her, as long as she was alive, no matter what - but her association with Kid needed to stay secret, from her enemies and her allies. To Edogawa-kun, everyone had a tell, and she wasn't going to risk it.

There was no actual text enclosed in the message, only data, logged neatly in a table.

She pulled it up, squinting at the numbers on the smaller screen. Kid's assistant had found the time to conduct field experiments from a synthesized mock solution. Rudimentary, not quite as elegant as the real thing, and of course, not enough to stimulate too much of an effect, but sufficient enough for modeling. All but one of the lab rats had died.

It puzzled her.

Her hypothesis had always been that only certain people would be able to take the drug and live, backed largely by the long list of the dead she had to personally check. When she'd tried to come up with an antidote the first time, she'd tested on her own blood, and that of Edogawa-kun, but data was frightfully hard to come by.

Kid's assistant seemed to have reached the same conclusion that she had - the only difference in chemical composition between the two different versions of the drug was an increase in the unknown metallic element infused with the leukocytes. Her original drug had only trace amounts - which could be blamed on anything, impurities in the equipement, chemical byproducts. But the modified version gave much more significant numbers. Pandora, perhaps? It would stand to reason that was the case. Whatever the metallic element was, it would be the key to the shrinking.

But if the organization had modified the drug so that the side effect became its sole intent, then why did it still primarily kill? And if they had found or synthesized the compound that made Pandora do what it did - had they found the stone as well?

Whatever the unknown element was, it was meant to reverse the apoptosis the original drug had implemented, at a faster rate than cell death could occur. Haibara could understand the obvious of how this could result in death - for the same reason it was a risk every time Edogawa-kun used to take a temporary antidote. They had been extremely lucky it'd worked. Rapid multiplication was very easily overdone. If the timing was incorrect, it could have been fatal.

But why the organization allowed such a risk at all was a suspicion. The way the element was infused made it seem impossible, but Haibara knew that any chemist worth a damn would've known there was a more elegant way. It would've taken work, but eventually, some more stable balance could've been achieved.

She needed data.

Not her own data, but that of the organization.

It was times like this that she missed her mother, missed the meticulous handwriting that had helped her through the very first steps of developing a drug that kept her and her sister alive.

A deal was a deal, though. No matter what she thought of the situation at the moment, she needed to figure out a way to isolate the unknown element and analyze it first. Kid needed this information for his search - and who knew? Maybe Pandora could give her the missing piece she was looking for.

Then - well, then, she supposed, it would be time to pay Bourbon another visit.

"Ai-chan is up to something."

"You said that about Edogawa-kun last time," Mitsuhiko pointed out, leaning back in his chair to sip his iced tea.

"So they're both suspicious," Genta shrugged and sat down, dumping an assortment of snacks on the table. "Koala?"

Ayumi took the proffered chocolate filled koala cookie and tore off its ear viciously. "It's not like we're children."

"Ah, admit it," Genta snapped his own koala in half. "You're still upset they didn't tell us about that crime syndicate."

"Am not!" She turned to him, eyebrows shooting up in indignation.

"Are too." He crossed his arms.

"Well," Ayumi rolled her eyes, puffing out her bottom lip as she too, crossed her arms. "Have either of you got anything else interesting?"

"Daisuke-kun's missing tennis racket?"

"We all know his brother's the one 'borrowing' it everyday after school."

"Or," Mitsuhiko said, not bothering to look up from his math booklet. "We could actually do our homework for once."

"Come on! Anyone can tell that Ai-chan and baka-kun are hiding something. They have no life aside from taking down the biggest crime syndicate in Japan, apparently, but the case gets solved and the next thing you know, Edogawa-kun plays caretaker to an amnesiac child that looks like Ran-nee-chan? That's too suspicious to be a coincidence. And Ai-chan's been shutting herself up in that lab for days. She never does that, unless there's a lead she's chasing."

"If it's something we need to know about, they would've told us already."

She turned around to glare at the boys. "You know they've always kept secrets."

Silence.

And really, there wasn't a way to deny that.

Secrets were rife in the lives of Haibara-san and Edogawa-kun, and it had always been that way. With every step they took out of childhood, they realized, from the very beginning, they were of two worlds. Edogawa-kun always hid in the shadows, even before Ran-nee-chan died. After, he practically lived in it. The two of them never told the rest of the tantei-dan where they were going. The ongoing mystery would be to figure out where and what their missing members were up to. Barring that, there was something irrevocably different about the two of them, with their old, old eyes and the weight with which they spoke.

Things simply didn't add up.

"Some secrets should be kept, Ayumi-chan," Mitsuhiko said, quietly.

They were friends, after all. Beyond secrets, beyond suspicion, at the core of it, was that. A detective would not usually blind himself, but in this case, there was little choice. Mitsuhiko knew this, and Ayumi knew this as well. There had to come a point where the truth was not worth what would be lost.

Ayumi met Mitsuhiko's level gaze. "But it could be dangerous." Her shoulders were set square, her head pushed down, tried to convey that she knew what she was doing. "It started there, so it must have something to do with that organization somehow."

After all, it was the last thing she would wish for, that things would change.

Mitsuhiko sighed and closed his notebook, exchanging a glance with Genta over their stubborn friend's head.

"I guess we're doing this?"

Genta shrugged, a grin lifting at his lip as he rolled up his sleeves. "Did we ever really have a choice in the first place?"

Their gazes simultaneously strayed to Ayumi. She grinned back, fierce and bright, long hair swept over her shoulder. Determination set in her every muscle, drawn taut and open and ready.

"Yeah, okay," Mitsuhiko conceded with a sigh. "You're right."

"What I don't understand is how the murderer was able to take Toyama-san in the first place," Takagi paced the room. "We've all witnessed her aikido on various occasions."

"The time frame," Conan answered. "Kazuha-san could not have been here for more than a few minutes before the crime was committed."

"She'll have been drugged," Heiji concluded. "If we construct a timeline of the crime - then, either the murderer drugged Kazuha, and then killed Sumire-san, or Sumire-san was already dead when they knocked her out. The latter is more likely."

"Why?" Keisuke asked from his half crouch by the door.

"No signs of struggle," Chiyoko piped up from the wardrobe she'd been inspecting. "If Sumire-nee-san, who was in the room first, had been the second victim, she would've made noise, or attempted to escape, or something, while the murderer was drugging Kazuha-san."

Conan's gaze turned to her almost immediately. She didn't notice, bending over to check the drawers.

"No good," Heiji gritted out through clenched teeth.

"What is?"

"No sign of the murder weapon." He ran a hand through his hair, mussing it thoroughly. " Or Kazuha."

"We're going to need everyone to establish their alibis," Takagi announced, producing a wire-bound notepad from his jacket to the round of protest. "Believe me, it's easier if we don't go through any meaningless back and forth."

"Let's start with us," Chiyoko volunteered. "That should make it easier for my cousins. Oji-sama had to take some business calls, so I was wheeling him up the back to his office, when we heard the scream. We came up the rest of the stairs, to the powder room, and we were trying the door when Hattori-san knocked the door down."

"So you were together the entire time, Chiyoko-san?"

"Yes." Akita-san affirmed with a terse nod.

Conan's gaze lingered on the girl for a second longer.

Takagi flipped the page decisively. "And you, Madoka-kun?"

"I was on my laptop in my room alone," The young man barely looked up from his phone. "But you can check my browser history if you want."

Exasperation flitted briefly into the police detective's face. "His cousin's dead and he's still on his phone?"

Conan ignored Takagi's mumbling. "Henry-san?"

"I was calling a contact in Italy, right up till I came into the sitting room and noticed the jewel was can verify with him, if you'd like."

"Phone records and witnesses can be faked." Heiji crossed his arms. "You were alone too."

Henry didn't deny the fact.

"I'm afraid that I was also alone up until everybody gathered here," Masayuki-san volunteered. "I was organizing the books in the reading room on this floor."

"So no one has a solid alibi except for us and Keisuke-kun," Chiyoko summed up.

"Is there no possibility that perhaps Kid is the murderer?" Akita-san questioned. "After all, the motive seems clear. Killing Sumire-chan would provide ample distraction for him to steal the Jade Rabbit."

"We all know Kaitou Kid doesn't kill," Chiyoko said, a bit too firmly. "Ojii-sama."

"That is true," Takagi-keiji launched into some sort of complicated explanation, but Conan was already going over the case notes in his head.

Everyone was hiding something, that much was easy to tell. In a big, upper-class family, this certainly wasn't uncommon, but it did make eliminating the impossible harder. Madoka and Masayuki-san passed inspection, at first glance. They weren't suspicious enough that he was hooked, not quite yet. Not when there was the others.

Keisuke had a solid alibi, but there was his apparent familiarity with Ran and the fact that he had the same bright mischievous eyes as a certain phantom thief. Murder was off the table, perhaps, but the heist? He had also been the last one up the stairs, and could've plausible stolen the Jade Rabbit before Henry had re-entered the room.

Then there was Chiyoko, who was behaving oddly practiced, considering up till today, her job consisted of paperwork and handling small cases at the station. Being Hattori's fan could have explained how she knew what she was doing, but the way she had announced the estimated time of death down to the millisecond was much too practiced to have been emulated.

And lastly, there was Akita-san. Barring the fact that he'd suggested Kaitou Kid to be the murderer - something that could basically be ignored, because Kid wasn't that kind of a criminal - Conan could feel the old man's gaze burning on the back of his head since the beginning of the investigation - since the beginning of the visit to the mansion, even. There was something unsettling about this man. An aura of decay seemed to hang about him, made Conan distinctly uncomfortable.

Someone had to be lying about something.

He held out his arms. Keisuke shrugged, and handed Ran back to him. Until he could be sure who was the murderer, Ran was staying by his side. Her arms around his neck and her weight in his arms was an assurance, and for a brief moment when she glanced up, her eyes seemed suddenly so old and so knowing that his heart jumped.

"What's going on, Conan-nii-chan?" her voice was smaller now, much like it was when she first came to him.

"...Nothing," he said, as much to her as it was to himself. "Nothing at all."

And nothing would happen to her. He would protect her, with his own body, if necessary.

"Akita-san," Conan walked up to the old man in the wheelchair, "Is there any CCTV in this house?"

"Of course. We've strengthened what security we had as well, to prepare for Kaitou Kid's appearance."

"May we see the tapes, then?"

"Chiyoko can show you. I will refrain, as it can be a hassle to go up these stairs." the old man wheeled himself back to allow Conan and Chiyoko to pass.

"Oi, Edogawa."

He stopped at the unfamiliar syllables. Not once so far had he heard that name from that voice. Ran blinked owlishly, staring at the other detective with openly confused eyes.

Heiji had crossed over to the window, pushing it open and staring out at the bushes below. His gaze was unreadable. "We're doing this separately."

"Hattori?"

"Find the murderer. That's what you're good at."

"And you?"

Heiji turned his head. "I'm going to get my wife back."