AN: This was a very difficult chapter to write, for plot and personal reasons. I lost a friend to suicide last month (some time after the previous chapter was posted), so I started writing this chapter in an effort to organize and understand my thoughts. Somehow, through the weird machinations of this world, it was just pure coincidence that the characters in this story were dealing with the fallout of a suicide at the same time as I was. It really do be like that sometimes, I guess. Anyway, this chapter was too hard to write in the manner I usually do (that is, in one sitting and without any editing whatsoever) so the tone and flow might feel a little jerky. I tried my best guys, I really did.

Anyway, as for the plot... just let it follow the course it's going in. This story has a mind of its own, and if we were looking for expert writing to fill in every single plot hole, we wouldn't be this far in on a story called Kaitou Kid 1412 Fanclub Chat Room, now would we? Sorry I suck lmao

"So what did you want us to talk about?" Kudo asked as he handed the menus over to Aoko and Kid. They were seated at a corner booth in the OK Diner, with Kid and Kudo seated on one bench (Kid obviously taking the aisle seat) and Aoko across from them. A few crumbs sat on the table between them, and a collection of smudged water glasses were placed neatly in the center of the table.

Kid took the menu and started lazily flipping through it, seemingly ignoring the question. "Oh, a chocolate milkshake sounds really good right about now..."

"Oi, oi, oi," Kudo said, rolling his eyes before plucking the menu back out of Kid's hands. "My mistake for giving that to you before letting you answer."

Kid groaned. "At least let a guy look at the cheesecake selection before having an important conversation!"

Aoko snapped her fingers in front of Kid's face. She was growing weary of the night and just wanted to curl up in her own bed. It had been a long day and she was ready for it to just be over. "Come on, Kid! I'm tired and I want to go home!"

"Fine, fine." Kid waved the waitress over and peered over at Aoko. "So what do you want?"

"Nothing, I'm good," she said, shaking her head in annoyance.

He raised an eyebrow. "You sure...? I'm paying..."

She felt a vein throb in her head. Her poor blood pressure. "Holy J- are you being serious right now? No, I don't want anything! Just hurry up!"

"Okay, okay," Kid said, then turned to Kudo. "What about you? I'm not paying for you, just to be clear."

Kudo placed his head on the table and mumbled out. "Just order already. You're the only one that wants anything."

Kid sighed and looked back at the waitress. He shrugged his shoulders for perhaps longer than he should have, before telling her, "Alright then, I'm going to have one large chocolate milkshake. No straw, please." He gestured at Aoko. "She'll have a large strawberry milkshake." He finally pointed at Kudo. "He'll have one black coffee."

The waitress wrote the order down, took the menus, and left. Kid looked back at the table to find two angry people glaring at him. They seethed, "We said we didn't want anything."

"Yeah, but it'd be rude for me to eat in front of you guys." Kid explained simply.

"How'd you know I like strawberry milkshakes?" Aoko ventured. After all, how did he know? It wasn't exactly a secret, but it wasn't something she had ever told him.

"It's - because I'm psychic!" Kid announced confidently.

Kudo groaned and wrapped his arms around his head, still planted on the table. "Just hurry up and tell us whatever it was you needed to tell us. I have a headache."

Kid sighed and looked around the diner. It was quiet, and the booths around them were empty. Perfect for a private conversation. "Well, obviously we need to unpack some of the things that happened tonight."

"No, we don't," Kudo yawned. "Nakamori-san didn't see anything happen, and I'm used to this from my line of work. So if you were worried about us, don't be. Right, Nakamori-san?"

"Right," Aoko agreed hesitantly. She wasn't so sure she was going to sleep well that night, but it wasn't something Kid had to stress over. She'd be fine eventually. Hopefully.

"Actually," Kid said. "I was... talking about myself. I'm not - I'm not really used to seeing - things - like - that."

"Oh," Kudo said, straightening up and turning his body to look at Kid better. Aoko's full attention was on him, as well.

"I just - I've always had a lot of control over these things." Kid was playing with the condensation on his smudged water glass, leaning over the table with his chin sitting like lead in his hand. "I don't like it when people get hurt at my heists. And sometimes they do, and it makes me upset, because I feel like I could have stopped them from getting hurt. But usually I can always go home and tell myself I'm not responsible for what happened, and that I'm not guilty. I mean, I am guilty of other things but not that. But - but when something like this happens - I mean - that girl literally killed herself because of me." He let the quiet words sit in the air for a moment. "It's different. I feel like it's my fault. I could have done something to stop her. And saying it out loud, I know it sounds ridiculous. But at the same time - how can it be anything except my fault?"

They sat in silence for a long time. The waitress came back and placed their drinks in front of them before leaving. Kid was lost in thought and didn't even spare a passing glance at the straw that had been brought along with this order despite his request.

"Well," Kudo began after much contemplation. "I know you're going to argue with me on this, but you shouldn't blame yourself. You're not responsible for her actions."

"I feel like I am, though. I should have stopped her or talked her down. I should gotten to the gun quicker once I knocked it out of her hand. I shouldn't have even knocked it out of her hand, I should have -"

"We both reached for the gun, Kid. You and me. By your logic, we both had the potential to stop her. Does that make it our fault that we weren't able to defy the laws of nature?"

"That's what I do, though," Kid muttered. "People come to see me because I can do super-human things. I can make the impossible possible."

"But you're still just a human," Aoko countered. "All your tricks are exactly that: tricks. You can't expect yourself to actually perform miracles."

Kid looked over at the rest of the diner. A hostess was counting the dollar bills in the cash register and a waitress was taking some couple's order. Somewhere, coffee was pouring out of a percolator. "I just feel like I should have been able to. Or that I shouldn't have made the situation to begin with."

"Are you talking about not being Kid?" Kudo asked. "Because that's the most stupid thing you've said all evening. Obviously, yes, theft is a crime - but you can't honestly believe that you are responsible for that girl taking her own life because you woke up one morning and decided to start being Kaitou Kid, as dumb as that decision might be in its own right."

"Aren't I responsible, though? If Kaitou Kid never existed, she wouldn't have been obsessed with me, and she wouldn't have felt the need to -"

"She was an unstable person. If she didn't do what she did tonight, she might have done something else. Maybe not to you, but to someone else."

"We can't be the judge of that."

"Yes, we can," Kudo persisted. "Somebody that can kill that many people just to have the chance of meeting you is literally the definition of unstable. It doesn't take a detective to deduce that outcome. There is nothing you could have done differently. So, sure, maybe she wouldn't have gone all stalker-crazy on you, per se, but she still would have been one screw away from going off the rails."

Kid sipped on his milkshake finally, hands white as ever. Aoko almost thought he was still wearing his gloves, if it weren't for his blue fingertips. After a thoughtful moment, he responded. "I believe you, but I don't. I know it's crazy. Like I said before, the logical part of me understands - the other part doesn't." He took a long slurp, a contemplative expression on his face. At the end, he said, "I just feel like I could have handled the situation differently. I feel like that's where my responsibility to her was."

"You know," Kudo began, somewhat slowly, as if he wasn't sure how he wanted to say it, "I told Hattori once that if a detective corners a suspect with his deductions and the suspect consequently kills himself, then that detective is no better than a murderer himself. And I still think that's true, but in this case - there was no deduction. There was no time to think. You were in danger and I did what I had to do to stop her from shooting you. I'm the one who scared her. I caught her off guard so you'd have time to disarm her. I knew you'd be able to. I just didn't know where the gun would go. I'd hoped we'd be able to get it away from her - but that was all I could do. I could only hope." Kudo looked at Kid, straight on. "I have no regrets about the actions I took because I know they saved your life."

"At the cost of hers."

"I couldn't know that at the time. I was almost one hundred percent certain I could save your life if I intervened. If I didn't intervene... well, it wasn't looking good for you, I'm going to be honest. I'm not sure if you had a trick up your sleeve - although, I'm sure you would have used it before allowing fifteen security guards to be killed - but I couldn't take that chance. And as for the girl, I knew there was a chance for her to hurt herself once facing imminent capture. I knew by saving your life I would be risking hers. I knew that. But I still opted to intervene and safe your life."

"Why?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Aoko found herself answering, rather than Kudo. Her voice was soft. "That girl would have been at risk to kill herself regardless of whether you were dead or alive. Who knows what she would have done after you were dead? So rather than having two dead -" she trailed off. She could hardly say it. When Kudo explained it, it was logical and comprehensible, but when the words were in her mouth, getting all jumbled up, it seemed somehow inhumane. Unreal... but at the same time so very real.

"I had a better chance at saving your life than hers, simply put," Kudo concluded. "Do I wish I could have changed what I did so the outcome would have been better? Certainly. Did I know what was going to happen as a result of my actions, though? Absolutely not. So can I hold my past actions against myself, when all I was doing was following utilitarian theory?"

"Utilitarian?" Aoko questioned. It sounded familiar. Perhaps from class?

"Oh, don't you know the trolley problem?" Kudo asked her. She shook her head.

"Imagine an out of control trolley is going to kill five people on a track. If you pull a lever, you can divert the trolley onto another railway - the only issue is, there's still one person on that track. What do you do?"

"I..." Aoko trailed off. "I don't know."

Kid answered before Kudo. "Utilitarianism says to pull the lever, since it perceives saving five lives at the cost of one to be the best option. Conversely, Deontology and Kantianism say not to, as making the conscious decision to kill one person, even to save five, is still murder and is thus morally wrong."

Kudo sipped his coffee before flashing a 'wow I'm surprised this is actually good' face. Once Kid finished his explanation, he tacked on, "The trolley problem can be applied to this case, too. Me intervening was the same as me pulling the lever."

"I still don't understand, though," Kid shook his head. "You say it's comparable to the trolley problem, but it's not. This isn't five lives at the cost of one. This is one life at the cost of another. How can that be justified?"

"Because her death wasn't certain in either scenario. Yours was."

That seemed to hit Kid like a pound of bricks. Aoko watched as he shut down and retreated inwards. Perhaps he had never been faced with his own mortality before?

"Kid," she said in a soothing voice. "Either way, it's over now. We can't change the past."

"I wish I could."

"But you can't," Kudo reaffirmed. "The only thing you can do now is move on. You can dwell on it, you can feel bad about it, hell, you can even blame yourself for it - but you still have to move on and keep going. You owe that to yourself."

Kid's milkshake seemed to have melted completely during the conversation. It looked like ice cream soup.

"Nobody's saying you have to get over it right now," Kudo added. "And nobody's expecting you to, either. But we're both here for you."

Kid stared at the milkshake with cold eyes. Aoko wondered if he had freezing powers that could solidify his milkshake some more now that it was melted. Finally, after a long, quiet silence, he muttered. "Thank you."

"Any time."

Kudo looked at Aoko with a question in his eyes. She tried to guess what it was but couldn't. He gave up on their telepathic conversation and decided to come out with it bluntly. "So I hate to be the bad guy, but is there anything else you wanted to discuss while we're here? After all, it is getting quite late..."

Kid let out his first chuckle in a while. "Where do you need to be going so late at night, tantei-kun? And, I hope you haven't forgotten that I have you reserved until 2 AM - as per your request, after all."

A groan. "Then out with it."

With that, the conversation suddenly seemed to be taking a much less somber tone. Kid grinned at Kudo. "Well, I take it you've figured out my identity by now."

"I have," Kudo said, uncertain where the thief was going with that statement.

Aoko, for her part, was confused. She had remembered Kudo announcing he'd figured out Kid's identity, but he had done it so quickly with so little evidence that she hadn't followed his train of thought and hadn't come upon the same conclusion as him. But perhaps - perhaps her research from earlier had yielded the same results?

"As have I," Aoko added, with a note of distinction. Time to prove to Kid that she could be just as smart as Kudo Shinichi, the Great Detective of the East.

"Ehh?" Kid asked, eyes boggling and face going white. "You - Aoko - what? When did you -? Why didn't you say so earlier?"

Aoko crossed her arms and spoke her deduction with confidence. "It was clear after you told me that there was a Kid before you. I knew there was only one magician who'd have the skill to be Kid and who had died around the time the first Kid disappeared: Kuroba Toichi. So, logically, I connected the dots to the obvious successor."

Kudo seemed surprised by her prowess, as did Kid, who looked like he was positively going to be sick. In a weak voice, he choked out, "And - that was...?"

"Kuroba Toichi's star pupil: Kazumi Sanada."

An indiscernible expression passed over Kid's face. His Poker Face, Aoko knew.

"Well, I am right, aren't I?" Aoko asked.

Kudo let out a loud laugh. "No, you are wrong. Like, so, so, so, wrong. I'm sorry Nakamori-san but you are just way off the mark on that one. Whew."

"Damn it, tantei-kun," Kid laughed. "I was trying to make up my mind if I wanted to run with that. Guess you made the decision for me. Thanks, I guess."

Aoko felt her face blush a thousand shades redder than ever before. She was wrong?! Then all that investigative work, all those clues... for nothing? Had Chikage-san lied to her? Was everything she thought she knew about Kid a lie? Was Jii even his accomplice or was she wrong about that too?

"But - but I spoke to Chikage-san -"

"You did what now?" Kid sobered quickly and stopped laughing. He ventured, carefully, "What'd she say?"

"She confirmed that Toichi-ojisan was the first Kid, but she didn't tell me anything related to your identity. I just figured the obvious choice would be for you to be Kazumi Sanada."

"Well, he's definitely not," Kudo said, still giggling like a schoolgirl. "He's -"

Kid's hands went over Kudo's mouth in an instant. "Don't you dare, tantei-kun! Or I'll make you pay - dearly."

Kudo batted the thief's hands away, then straightened his shirt after the attack. He eyed the thief carefully. "You know... I'm not really sure what you thought was going to happen after tonight. I mean, I am a detective after all. It's my job to solve crimes..."

And apprehend criminals, Aoko tacked on in her mind. Suddenly the air seemed to sit heavier in her lungs.

"Well, I hoped we could have a stalemate of sorts," Kid stated. "You know my secret identity, I know yours... what more is there to say?"

Aoko coughed. "Secret identity?"

Kid waved her away. "Don't worry about it."

"The difference between us knowing each others' true identities is that you're a criminal," Kudo stated easily. "I have an obligation to the public to bring you in."

Kid narrowed his eyes. "You're not really going to make me resort to blackmailing you, are you?"

"B-blackmail?" Kudo sounded like he was caught off guard.

"I mean... yeah..." Kid snapped his fingers and the capsule from earlier appeared between his fingers. "I could just not give this back to you, and then the problem's solved. Nobody will listen to you without this, after all. And it's not like the amazing Sleeping Kogoro will help you this time."

Aoko tried to find a line in the conversation for her to follow. Something, anything, that made the tiniest bit of sense. But there was nothing, so she kept listening intently, eyes bouncing between the two identical faces as they spoke.

Kudo mused for a bit, staring at Aoko intently. Still staring at her - she was starting to feel a little self conscious, though - he said to Kid, "How about I tell your girlfriend your identity?"

"How about I tell your 'Neechan' yours?"

A twitch. "And how would you do that? Can't exactly dress up as me to tell her that, now can you?" Kudo questioned confidently, but there was an underlying note of panic in his voice. It sounded like he really didn't want his Neechan, whoever she was, to know his identity. "And I know she wouldn't believe some stranger off the street."

"Maybe she would," Kid said. "Do you want to take that chance?"

"You wouldn't d-" Kudo suddenly stopped talking and grabbed his chest. He was sweating profusely and looking considerably paler than a moment ago.

Aoko leaned in to look at him closer. "Kudo-kun, are you alright?"

"Give me the pill, Kid!" he said, reaching for the capsule in Kid's hand.

Kid held it far out of reach from Kudo. "Sorry, no can do!"

Aoko's full attention swung back to Kid. He was really not going to give Kudo that pill? She had no idea what it was for, but for him to look that awful and to look like he was in that much pain... "Kid, cut it out! Give it to him! Stop being an asshole!"

"No, you don't understand. I really can't," Kid said, still fighting off Kudo's weak attempts to reach for the pill. "That creepy little girl told me not to let him take this until six hours after it wears off, otherwise he'll build up a resistance."

"What?!" Aoko asked, still just as confused as before.

"You spoke to her?!" Kudo asked incredulously, somehow finding comprehension in Kid's words where Aoko did not. "What, did she give that to you?"

"Only after I asked. And she owed me - you know, for the Bell Tree Express. Remember that, tantei-kun? Kind of a jerk move, wasn't that?"

"I knew you were capable of saving your skin, or I wouldn't have set you up like that," Kudo protested through pants. He sounded terrible. "And I thought it'd make us even after you tasered me."

Kid rolled his eyes. "It was low voltage, get over it."

"It knocked me out!"

"Big deal, you've knocked out every person in a fifty mile radius with that watch of yours," Kid said. He snapped his fingers and the pill disappeared. "No pill for you!"

Kudo seemed to have an attack of sorts and grabbed at his heart, slinking against the booth bench. Sweat was rolling down his face like a tidal wave had crashed into him. Through clenched teeth, he choked out, "Well, at least let me leave, then! You know I can't - very - well -"

Kid was quiet for a beat, presumably contemplating the situation at hand. "Do you promise not to say a word?"

"Of course - not," Kudo grunted. "I'm a - detective - after all."

"Then you're staying put, right here," Kid said, crossing his arms.

Another attack overcame Kudo. He let out an torturous, agonizing scream at the top of his lungs, before passing out and falling face first onto the table. Everything in the diner clambered to a dead silence at that moment, and the diners at the other tables turned to look at them. Kid, quick thinking as ever, poked his head out of the booth, and with an apologetic wave, dismissed their concerns, saying, "Ooooh, this milkshake is just so good I had to scream about it! ARRRGHHHHHHH!"

He whipped back around to come face to face with a seething Aoko. "What the fuck?!"

"He's going to be fine, don't worry," Kid said, examining the unconscious teen next to him. He seemed unsure, however.

"Based on the conversation you guys were having, is this - normal? For him?" Aoko asked.

"I think?" Kid pressed the back of his hand against Kudo's forehead. "Jeez, he's burning up..."

"What do you mean, 'I think'?" Aoko shouted. A lone diner turned his head, but his gaze lingered for less than a second before returning to his business. Apparently the diner was growing accustomed to their booth's outbursts.

Kid picked up the detective's limp wrist and held his fingers on it, checking for a pulse. "I mean, his creepy friend mentioned something like this would happen, but I'm not sure if this is what she -"

He was interrupted by a sizzling sound coming from the Kudo's body. He was still writhing, slightly, despite being unconscious. To Aoko, it was very disturbing to watch, what with him still dressed up as Kaito. It was almost as if she was watching Kaito get tortured. Finally a cloud of steam rose up from under his shirt collar and slowly, before their eyes -

Kudo shrunk.

"What the fuck," Aoko commented, once again. She lifted her eyes briefly to Kid's, and asked, yet again, "What the fuck?"

"That was -" Kid said with concern, eyebrows flying fifty feet in the air, "- not quite what I was expecting. Hell, I knew what to expect and I still wasn't expecting that."

"Is this related to that pill?" Aoko asked. Then, peering at Kudo further... "Wait, why does he look so familiar?"

"Um," Kid mumbled.

"Is Kudo-kun actually the Kid Killer, Edogawa Conan?"

"Jeez, Aoko, keep your voice down," he hushed her. "And yes, he is."

"What? How?"

Kudo - Conan - stirred and sat up slowly, as if waking from a dream. "Where am I?"

"Welcome back, tantei-kun," Kid said, rather hesitantly.

Aoko watched Conan look down at his shrunken body, now swimming in Kaito's clothes. "Ehhh?" His head shot up and with horrified eyes he looked at Aoko. "You - you - saw -"

"It's alright, Aoko won't tell anyone," Kid said, realizing the other two were too speechless to contribute anything meaningful to the conversation. Somehow, in the back of her mind, Aoko found it funny that Kid was playing peacemaker for a crisis he created.

"That's not the issue here!" Conan said in a severe tone, apparently following the same thought process as Aoko but finding it markedly less funny than she. "You just put everyone in this diner in great danger, Kid!"

"And how exactly did I do that? Is Neechan going to come and kick our butts after you finally tell her and she finds out we knew who you were? That doesn't make much sense."

"Idiot, did you think I was keeping my identity a secret just because I was afraid Ran would yell at me?" Conan berated the thief, an icy fear biting through his words. "This is a matter of life and death!"

"Big whoop, I eat matters of life and death for breakfast," Kid said dismissively.

Aoko was a little concerned, though. She didn't want to be mixed in with whatever great danger Conan was talking about. One dangerous situation was enough for her that night. "What do you mean, Edogawa-kun - err, Kudo-kun?"

"Call me Edogawa Conan when I look like this," Conan said sharply. "And I can't even tell you two about the danger, otherwise I'd be putting you in even more danger!"

"Pshh," Kid said. "As if my life could get any more dangerous."

"Mine could," Aoko muttered, before clapping her hands over her mouth as two pairs of blue eyes flew to her. Her worried thoughts were supposed to stay as they were: thoughts.

Kid's face filled with shock, then realization, and then, slowly, too slowly, regret. "Aoko - oh, jeez, Aoko, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to get you caught up in all this tonight."

"Why couldn't you have let him go home?" Aoko asked quietly, tears threatening to fall. So was that it? Was she just speaking her thoughts now? "Why are you involving me in this?"

Surprisingly, the thief couldn't seem to come up with a single good response.

Conan aimed an angry glare at the thief. "At least I have enough sense not to endanger the people I care about."

"Well, it's not like we know what danger you're talking about anyway," Kid defended. "How could I know how dangerous this is if you won't tell us?"

"Idiot!" Conan said. "You both have targets on your backs now for simply knowing about even this!"

"Wait, what?" Kid asked, paling considerably. "I didn't think it was that serious!"

Aoko's face was just as white as Kid's, and her mind was running a mile a minute. Luckily, she wasn't getting bogged down by trying to deny the danger she was now apparently in. She believed Kudo/Conan if he believed they were in danger. But just what was the danger? Might as well ask... "What danger are we talking about here?"

"I can't tell you," Conan said darkly. "You'd be in even more danger if you knew."

"Does this have to do with the Bell Tree Express?"

Conan didn't say a word to that.

"What the hell, tantei-kun?" Kid said nervously. "Those guys are so dangerous! Why the hell wouldn't you tell me about this sooner?!"

"You didn't need to know!"

"Okay, wait a minute." Kid said. He put his hands on the table and took a slow, careful breath. "So. Your brilliant detective brain decided that I was absolutely fine fending those guys off for you by myself and literally standing at gunpoint in front of them, but dare I ask for a little clarification, suddenly it's none of my business? They blew up a train, tantei-kun! They could've blown me up!"

"But they didn't," Conan pointed out simply.

"Yeah, because I had my hang-glider!"

Conan nodded. "I knew you'd be prepared."

Kid let out an absurdly quiet, strangled scream in frustration. "So you just expected me to blindly help you fight these guys? Really?"

"Oi, oi," Conan said, rolling his eyes. "I didn't want to involve you in the first place. But as for tonight - even if I were to tell you anything about the situation, I wouldn't have ever wanted Nakamori-san involved in this."

"Well, I'm involved now," Aoko said, waving a hand to remind the boys that she was still there. "And if the situation is as dangerous as you guys are saying... I agree with Kid, I think we deserve to know what we just got ourselves into."

"See, tantei-kun? I think you owe us an explanation," Kid said.

Conan sighed and leaned back in the booth. It looked like he had run out of arguments and was cornered at the end of the maze he had constructed. "Fine. But I can't tell you guys anything here. We need somewhere much more private."

"Where can we go?" Kid asked.

"Why not your house?" Conan asked innocently. Aoko blinked in amazement at his acting skills. He was really good at acting like the naive little kid he looked like. Too bad the two people he was performing for at the moment saw right through his act - right down to that sharp, piercing intensity hidden behind his playful tone. Kudo Shinichi, child or not, was not a force to be dismissed.

"Absolutely not," Kid said immediately.

"Well, my house is occupied right now," Conan said. "And I don't want to have to explain why I'm talking to you two to Haibara and the Professor right now."

Kid chuckled. For some reason, Aoko equated his laugh with winter bells. He said, "No offense, tantei-kun, but talking to that creepy little girl is the last thing I want to do right now."

"I think she'll love it if I tell her you said that." Conan then looked towards Aoko thoughtfully. "Anyway, I assume we can't go to your house because of your father."

She nodded in agreement. And besides - Kid had already been in her house once too many times today. It wasn't that she didn't want him around, it just jolted the hell out of her nervous system and put her on high alert whenever he was in her house. The fear of being found out was absolutely too much.

"So that leaves only your place," Conan said, returning his cold gaze to Kid's eyes.

Kid returned his look as best as he could. Aoko almost laughed at his effort to seem intimidating and serious - he looked constipated! "I already said no."

"Then I won't tell you guys anything." Conan said, crossing his arms. "It's just not safe to converse about this in public."

Aoko wracked her brain for any other location they could go to where they wouldn't be disturbed. The school? The night janitor might overhear. Her house? Already nixed, for obvious reasons - including, most notably, her father's sole presence. The park by her house? Probably full of teen delinquents. She looked at Kid and willed him to have more success than her coming up with a private location for their discussion.

"Well - I can't," Kid said, scratching his head. "I don't know of any places that would be private that I would trust having you two in. Like. I can't exactly have you two - you, especially, tantei-kun - snooping around my hide-out."

"Kid," Conan said suddenly, a wide grin spreading across his face. "You know, if you bring me to your hide-out, I will definitely snoop around. I can't even promise that I'll try not to."

Kid nodded at the rather obvious statement. "Yeah, I know. Which is why I can't -"

"But if you let me see your hide-out, I promise I won't tell anyone your identity."

The air seemed to be sucked out of the room. Kid stared, open-mouthed, at Conan, who was still grinning as widely as before. "What's the catch? And what's with the change of heart?"

"Seeing the mysterious Kaitou Kid's lair?" Conan exclaimed, giddy as a - well, child - in a candy store. "Who could pass up the opportunity to see that?"

Aoko had to admit she was intrigued, as well. She decided to stay quiet and let Conan do the convincing, as it seemed her had the most leverage at the moment and was doing a good job of convincing Kid already.

"I - I can't -" Kid stumbled around, trying to find the words to put together to tell them exactly why he couldn't have them see his hide-out. Or, as Conan had aptly called it, his lair.

"Of course you can," Conan said. "If we move this conversation there, I'll tell you about the Bell Tree Express."

"And you won't tell anyone my identity?" Kid questioned suspiciously. It didn't seem like a fair trade-off. "What will you get in exchange?"

"Like I said, who could pass up the opportunity to see Kid's home base? I'll definitely snoop around the place," Conan explained. "But the ultimate deal is that I won't tell anyone your identity if you don't tell anyone mine."

"That seems awfully unlike you, though," Kid said, still confused about the proposition. "How can you be saying that you won't be trying to catch me anymore?"

Conan held up one finger and tsk'd slowly. "I never said I'd give up on chasing you. I'm going to catch you one day, fair and square. And on that day, I'll unmask you and show everyone who you really are."

Kid smiled at long last, finally catching on. "Sounds like a fair deal to me, then."

As much as watching the two strike a deal with each other was entertaining, Aoko couldn't help but think they were getting a bit ahead of themselves. How was Kid planning on bringing them all to his lair? She coughed once, interrupting the flow of their conversation. "Um, so how are we going to get to your lair, Kid?"

"We'll walk there, obviously," Kid said simply. Aoko knew better. She knew him too well - he had something up his sleeve. A glance at Conan showed he was equally suspicious.

"Let's go, then," Aoko said warily.

And go they did. They paid their bill - and contrary to Kid's original declaration, he did pay for the three of them - and left the diner. For as long as they had sat there talking, once they had their minds made up as to where to go for their private conversation, they were rather fast moving. Down the sidewalk they walked, going in some direction that sparked Aoko with some mystical excitement as she realized they were headed in the direction of Kid's secret lair. Kid was beside her, and his hand was warm in hers as they strode along. Conan marched behind them in his too-big-for-him clothes, his piercing blue eyes watching Kid and her like a hawk. He was probably convinced Kid was going to pull some funny business. Aoko didn't blame him. She had the same thought.

A car whizzed by them, letting out a cloud of smoke as its wheels screeched against the pavement. Its exhaust cloud traveled up to her nose, its strong scent somehow lulling her mind into a fog. Suddenly she felt a little groggy. What time was it again - two in the morning? Much too late for her to be awake, at any rate. Blinking tired eyes over at Kid, who was walking beside her, she felt him squeeze her hand and they stopped walking. She wasn't even angry to see he had a gas mask pulled over his face. Turning around to check on the shrunken detective, she found that Conan was already fast asleep on the pavement.

Letting out a huge yawn, she fell against Kid's body as she let the sleepiness overtake her. Perhaps a nap was just the thing she needed right now. The last thing she saw before drifting off into the land of dreams was Kid's arms wrap around her, lowering her body slowly to the sidewalk pavement. And then -

Darkness.