Kind of interlude-ish, and not very long. Having trouble with my health again, so expect updates to be sporadic and slow. Fair warning.
Chapter 12
Planning a heist was usually entertaining, but Conan had decided to do something completely unprecedented and recruit Hakuba. For the setup, that was, not the actual heist.
(When he told Kaito of this decision, he laughed for a good five minutes and begged to be allowed to witness it when Hakuba found out. Thus him shadowing Conan's latest Hakuba-escorted outing, although Hakuba didn't know it.)
Conan waited until he was certain the only person in earshot was Kaito, who wasn't in direct sight. He didn't need to be in direct sight to end up with the whole thing recorded—although he wouldn't, for this, since it was kind of incriminating.
Still. Public. Sort of. English, little-kid style, backed up by a jammer and white-noise generator that would only be noticeable if someone already had them bugged or had a directional mike aimed at them. "Hakuba, could you help me with something?"
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Kaito was hard-pressed not to snicker out loud, hidden as he was in the magnolia Conan had parked himself and Hakuba under. Such an obliging mini-husband, catering to Kaito's desire to see how Hakuba reacted.
Also, evil. Hakuba had this tendency to keep his word whenever he could, and the way Conan was looking for a promise prior to the actual description of the request was mean.
x
"Of course, Conan," Hakuba replied, immediately falling to Conan's more casual 'I'm a really smart kid, but I'm a kid' sort of tone.
"Great!" he cheered, and Hakuba had the awareness level to start looking a little worried. "You can help me set up for the heist, then!"
Hakuba choked, actually stumbling a step even though they weren't actually moving. "What!?"
Conan grinned at him, "Well, I don't mind setting up on my own, but let's face it: I'm tiny. It'll take forever!" (Being tiny was often frustrating, but at least it was his choice, this time around. Sure, the other option likely would have ended with him dead, but he'd chosen to take the poison this time and that… it made a difference. Took the bitterness out.)
"Dear lord," Hakuba looked genuinely alarmed, "You can't possibly mean to…"
"Do I seem crazy to you?" Conan asked, then paused. "Don't answer that. Allow me to amend: do I seem suicidal to you?"
Hakuba calmed slightly, "No, you do not. Wait—do you really want me to help you with…"
He looked so uncomfortable that Conan snickered. "It would be helpful, yes. Kaito's babysitting the antidote too often to put much time into it, and I'd rather my idiot not get shot."
"Fair point," Hakuba grimaced. "Oh Lord, why am I doing this?"
"Because you don't want him to get shot, either!" Conan chirped, smiling brightly. "Come on, let's see if we can beat him home."
"Wait, what?" Hakuba stayed confused a second too long and ended up covered in bright yellow smoke, his usually brown-blond hair a matching yellow when he emerged. "Damn it, Kuroba!"
Conan cackled outright. Moments like these made everything worth it.
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It was good to see them both still so lively, Hakuba had to admit. Also, he wasn't quite sure how he'd gotten where he was, but he was inside the Kaitou KID workshop. He remembered going up the stairs, smoke, and motion before he was falling only to land in a heavily padded chair that had some sort of shock-absorbing system. The room had seemed almost empty at first, but Kuroba had only shrugged and waved him at Kudo.
Mini-Kudo, who—Kuroba was definitely right. Kudo and Conan weren't the same. There was something different in how he carried himself, in his eyes and the line of his shoulders. Hakuba really couldn't mistake one for the other, not even knowing what he did.
He dragged his thoughts back on track and followed as Kudo led him across black and white wide tiles.
"Watch your step and don't touch anything unless I say you can," Kudo warned. "There are some interesting traps set up in here, and while none of them are fatal, not all of them are friendly. And when I say 'watch your step', I mean don't step on the tiles I avoid."
"Ah," Hakuba started paying much more attention to Kudo's too-small feet, not really wanting to find out what would happen if he ignored that instruction. Four meters in, and suddenly he could see a worktable along one wall, sets of drawers and storage chests. A few actual doors set into the walls—was this room not only underground (the drop had indicated a certain amount of distance, after all), but actually larger than a single floor of the house?
It was a little harder to tell, considering the western style to the home, with thicker walls and distinctive, closed-in rooms, but it seemed like this place was at least longer than the house as a whole.
Huh. How had they managed to hide this while building the house?
Then again, Kaitou KID. Also, there was a mini-Kudo smirking at him. It was scary. "… what?"
"Did you know that Kaito is the son of two phantom thieves?"
Two? Two? "Are you serious?"
Kudo grinned, "Oh, I found that out before I knew it was Kaito. Although I admit that once I realized the current driving force behind Kid, I was no longer surprised about his mother being Phantom Lady. She loves her terror-tactics and acrobatics, and the first Kid was a little more… understated."
"I thought you said that Kid's a… tulpa?"
"Kaito told you about that theory, huh? Kaito made him more famous than ever before with the resurrection, and as Kaito is what any would consider a 'rightful heir'…" Kudo shrugged, picking his way around a black tile, then a white three further on. "But the first Kid would use terror-tactics against hostiles, and he always liked teasing the 'force. He was just less acrobatic. Either way, though, with two of them? No one was going to notice anything odd about the building, and even the builders would have been convinced there was a perfectly normal, structural reason to dig up the whole yard."
Yes, considering how well one phantom thief could convolute and obscure the truth (or blatantly lie with completely convincing false sincerity), he could easily believe that two were impossible to disbelieve when working together no matter how bold-faced the lie.
Wait. Kudo had just obliquely answered a question he hadn't even asked.
"… Senpai?" Hakuba asked warily.
"You were measuring the room with your eyes, and glanced up twice. I assumed you were wondering about the dimensions and how no one asked questions about them. And also that if you weren't, you'd still be quite interested in that fact."
He was still growing ever more convinced that Kudo was psychic. The way he just knew things… although so far there had always been an explanation. (Not always a reasonable one, though. Time travel might be true, but it was not reasonable.) Which meant—Hakuba hadn't actually asked, and wasn't planning to—they might have been friends, in whatever time-that-wasn't. In which case Kudo might just know him well enough to guess like that, and he hadn't yet had enough time to learn to return the favor himself. (Just because he knew magic was real was no reason to get lazy. He needed to stop seeing it where it wasn't. Kudo had already said he wasn't psychic, and Hakuba knew he had either eidetic or near-eidetic memory, so most of the 'psychic' instances were just remembering previous experiences and the rest were probably simple deduction. Kudo was good at that.)
"Senpai, what are the odds of someone committing a crime with magic?"
Kudo tossed him a wry grin, "Very low. There's a reason most hold mahou to be a myth. And it is… not wise, to use magic to kill. It can be done, but… well. It's one of those things only those who've never been taught are willing to try. There's a reason that Akako-san only ever tried to subvert Kaito before we called a truce."
Hakuba nodded, considering asking why before deciding quite firmly that he didn't want to know and should just be grateful that it was unlikely to be an issue.
"Anyway, here," Kudo dragged a chair out from the workbench he'd stopped in front of, climbing up on it to snag a neat file-folder and pass it over. "This is what we're after and the security and layout for where it'll be. We're going for simpler than usual, to imply getting back into things after an injury. KID's been quiet for a while, after all."
Twenty minutes later, Hakuba had managed to put the 'magic' thing back out of his mind and abruptly realized he was actually enjoying the challenge of planning a Kid heist.
Dear lord, those two had corrupted him!
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