Look, I'm still here! Also, it occurs to me that this storyline has been going on a while now... and I'm just starting to get towards half of what I'd initially planned. Yeesh.

Chapter 9

Kaitou KID. Here. Helping her, from the look of it—and Akemi meant that literally, because he'd dropped down in a blur of white and promptly swapped their clothes and put on her face. It had happened so fast she had no idea how.

She looked down at her hands and saw tanned, wrinkled skin that definitely didn't belong to her, "What…?"

"Stay with the kid," the thief ordered in her voice, sounding incongruously serene. "I know he won't be left out of this, and that's fine so long as he keeps out of sight—Kaku-kun*, be invisible," he added as she turned to see a strange child smiling at her brightly, looking like any scruffed-up six-year-old after a day in the park. His eyes were dark brown, nearly black but for eerie sparks of red reflected back from the paint of the warehouse door across the way. "Hai!" he chirped. "Miya-san, please keep quiet. It is easier to cover sight than sound. Kid-jii, I'm skipping you."

Kid frowned slightly, "… can you do something to keep me appraised about your visibility?" he asked.

Akemi blinked, baffled by the whole situation and half-convinced she was dreaming.

The child tilted his head with a frown of his own before abruptly turning translucent.

"Huh," Kid eyed the child for a moment, then shrugged. "That works. Can you cover Akemi-san as well?"

"For a while," the boy assured. "Maybe twenty minutes or so before it gets to be a problem."

She was dreaming. It was the only explanation. Her alarm had yet to go off and she'd started out her day with one of those too-realistic dreams. She'd wake up and have to face a horrible reality… but at least this dream seemed relatively benign.

(She didn't. Wake up, that was. It took nearly a full day and catching her hip on a table in an apartment she was told was hers to convince her she was awake. It took another three to decide she wasn't drugged and hallucinating.)

xxxx

Kaito didn't look it, wearing Akemi's face with a kind of grimly accepting calm, but he was about a half-step from terrified. He'd learned Shinichi's fear of Gin, learned it well, and the first time the man had gotten a good hit on his partner the last time around Shinichi had nearly died.

He knew, rationally, that this time Gin's perfect kill record hadn't been stained by Shinichi surviving. This time Gin had no hand in Conan's appearance and didn't know either of them by face or name.

That did not make the man any less dangerous, and he very definitely had something against Miyano Akemi, whom he both looked and sounded like at the moment. (Vest was good, and he was glad he was wearing it. Shinichi was better, and he knew his too-small backup was already twisting perception around them, catching every mind within eyeshot. It seemed odd that Shinichi had more trouble picking and choosing targets than just blanketing an area, but that was just the way Shinichi was.)

Anyway, there they were—Gin and his partner, Vodka. That one was creepily loyal, considering how often Gin had gotten fed up and killed his partners—Vodka ended the same way, though he lasted a good three times longer than any other. Probably because of the fanatic loyalty, come to think.

He could practically feel how Shinichi tensed off to the side, he and Akemi tucked away out of sight and further shrouded in illusion. (Shinichi would pay for it later, covering more than just himself. The rules were weird, but it seemed a lot like Shinichi barely had to expend any energy to change how people perceived him, but changing their perception on other things was for some reason harder. Kaito didn't get why, though—he wasn't very good with illusions, but he'd never had that sort of noticeable difference in kind. It was all shifting how people saw things, after all.)

And what would Akemi say? She had gone for her sister, right? Still held to a futile hope, not believing it but clinging anyway. She was also kind, so kind, and would not be happy that people she'd worked with had been killed. Was it worth it to ask? Would she have done so? Shinichi had missed the conversation, only having arrived after Gin and Vodka had left the first time.

She'd had a bluff lined up, though, a bit of petty revenge for what she had suspected was coming. The stolen yen had ended up returned after it had been found, a slight dent in the Black's income.

Would she have asked?

What the hell. He would, and maybe they would think it knowledge-of-death defiance if it was a bit out of Akemi's character. "Why did you kill them?" he asked in Akemi's voice.

"Oh? You're asking?" Gin's lips quirked up, that same cold smile that haunted Kaito's nightmares. "It's just the way we do things. Hand over the money."

Kaito dropped more into the mindset he thought was Akemi's, "It's not here. I hid it, and I won't tell you where until you let my sister go like you promised."

They had promised, if Shinichi was right, but it had been so long that the details may have fuzzed, especially since Shinichi had learned it through the filter of a dying woman and hearsay from others.

"I can't do that," Gin stated, pulling out his gun almost casually.

Kaito braced himself.

"She's still useful, you see. The money is of little consequence, compared to what your sister is doing. Still, I'm sure you have a coin-locker key on you, and we can find the money easily enough with it."

Gin raised his hand and pulled the trigger twice in quick succession, and the impact sent Kaito staggering back several steps before he stopped trying to catch himself and crumpled gracelessly. He was glad of the vest and the 'bleeding' setup, and hoped that Shinichi was up to making the liquid (actually blood, because when those two left, if either one had any on them, it had to be real, and butchers were a decent place to acquire that kind of thing) feel warm.

It was Vodka who checked his pulse, and Kaito kept perfectly still, knowing that Shinichi had him dead as far as they could tell.

Gin didn't say anything, having no doubt in his kill, but Vodka nodded to himself before poking through his pockets and coming up with the key for the empty locker.

They walked out of the warehouse without a glance back or even another word, satisfied in their acquisition and 'kill', and there was silence for several minutes before Shinichi popped out from behind the crates with a confused and stunned Miyano Akemi in tow.

Kaito sat up, "Ow," he informed. "I mean, vests are great, don't get me wrong, but—that's gonna bruise."

Something eased in the line of Conan's shoulders at his tone, "You're all right, Kid-jii?"

"Yeah, fine," he climbed to his feet, rolling his own shoulders and putting himself in recon-blacks so he wouldn't look like a dead woman before turning his attention to the woman at Conan's side. Well. Not quite Conan, the hair and eyes were a disguise there, too, as simple and subtle as the one he had on Akemi. "Come on, little Illusion. Let's get Miya-san somewhere safe."

xxxx

"Well," Conan decided as Kaito unlocked the front door of the white house, "I'll check up on her tomorrow, but for now…"

Kaito flashed him a grin, "It worked."

"It did," Conan agreed, following Kaito into the hall and closing and locking the door behind them and doing a cursory sweep of the entry. Satisfied, he dropped the mask. "All right, get upstairs. I need to check your ribs."

"I'm fine, dear," Kaito half-teased. "I promise."

Shinichi just looked at him and he held up his hands, "Hai, hai. I'll let you patch me up."

(It really was mostly just bruising, and not the deep, dangerous kind. A possible cracked rib, but not broken outright, and in a few weeks Kaito would be completely fine even if it was. Less if it was only a bone-bruise. For once, something that went right.)

xxxx

*Taken from Sakkaku, meaning optical illusion. Akemi doesn't know Conan's 'name' or that he's Shinichi at this point, after all.