"- to wake up!"
Something jars him painfully, making him cry out involuntarily and try to curl in to protect his chest. A solid bar around his chest and shoulders stops him, jostling his protesting ribs.
"Hey! Come on, wake up!"
Kaito squints his eyes open, head spinning dizzily. He's moving, strapped into something that's moving. Something that clicks steadily as it moves upwards.
"What happened?" he asks, blinking awake and glancing around. He's on the roller coaster, and he can see Aoko and Akako seated in the car in front of him, heads tipped forward in sleep. "What's going on?"
"Listen. I need you to not panic. The ride is sabotaged. The attendants drugged everyone on the roller coaster. They're planning to create a disaster."
Kaito forces his eyes to clear, shaking his head slightly as he focused on the voice next to him.
Conan.
He stares at the child blankly, not hearing whatever he was explaining.
Conan is next to him.
"Where did you come from?" he asks, watching the impatient expression override the calm attitude he is trying to project.
"I was with my friends in line when you pulled me onto this car instead of my own," Conan says, frowning at him. "Don't you remember?"
"I remember a pretty girl," he starts, feeling more awake as it all started to come back. He went with Aoko and Akako on the roller coaster after Hakuba cried off for not having the stomach for the sudden drops. He pulled them to the front of the line, queued for the front car seats, when he'd spotted Conan and his elementary school friends in line behind him, arguing over who would sit where since they couldn't all sit together. One of them was going to be alone, and it had looked more and more likely that it wasn't going to be Conan.
He remembered grabbing the boy's hand and sitting him in the car beside him, turning to reassure his friends that he'd watch out for the boy.
He remembered the lights in the tunnel flickering off. Someone trying to smother him with chloroform. Dodging away from it. Being hit in the chest and forced to gasp for breath. Conan crying out, too, as he was attacked.
Then, hazy blackness.
"Hey! Are you okay?" Conan asks, hand reaching futilely over to prod at Kaito's knee. "Hey!"
"I'm fine. Just remembered." Kaito arches his chin up to stare at the track. "We can't have been out for long."
"I pretended," Conan admits. "I heard them say they sabotaged the ride at the second launch tunnel. I don't know how. Do you have your cell phone? We can call the police."
"Will be too late for that," Kaito says, wriggling a hand down to his jeans and working his cell phone out of his pocket. It takes some strategic maneuvering to get it up with his aching ribs, but he manages.
"Kuroba, you are on the roller coaster. This is completely unsafe!" Hakuba shouts, enough so Conan can hear too, and then Kaito considers and turns on the speaker phone.
"So, our ride has been sabotaged," Kaito says, raising his voice as the coaster clicks louder, gaining momentum to pull the cars even higher up the hill. "The ride operators weren't ride operators. They've set some kind of trap at the second launch tunnel."
"Shit," Hakuba says, and Kaito's eyebrows jump up.
"No accusations of lying?" he asks.
"The child seated next to you has been flashing S.O.S. signals with the face of his watch. I doubt you've talked him into that, and Koizumi-san wouldn't go along with your pranks," Hakuba says. Kaito glances over at his seatmate, Conan unapologetically covering his watch with his jacket sleeve. "And you'd never put Aoko in harm's way."
"We need someone to stop the roller coaster," Conan says, "And someone needs to go after the fake operators."
"I'm getting park security and calling in Division One," Hakuba says, distracted and curt over the phone. "Don't panic. We'll get you."
He hangs up.
Kaito huffs, storing his phone in one of his hidden pockets inside his jacket. He has to squeeze his fingers between the restraint and his chest, but he doesn't feel that ache in his chest when he moves so it's staying there.
"Who was that? He sounded familiar," Conan says, and Kaito has that bizarre feeling of deja vu.
He's never spoken to Conan and Hakuba together.
Kid has.
"Hakuba Saguru. Too scared to ride the roller coaster so he stayed on the ground. Guess that was a good thing."
"He's a high school detective!" Conan says, playing up the child angle. The voice doesn't match the calculating eyes he's giving everything from Kaito himself to the track up ahead.
"You know of him?" Kaito asks, giving some of his attention to the ride now. Conan doesn't recognize him, still hovering somewhere between innocent child and ruthless detective, so Kaito can play on that, too. "He's kind of an ass, but he'll come through."
"But can he do it quick enough?" Kaito doesn't think he's meant to hear this, said so quietly it's nearly lost in the rushed clacking of the coaster. "Do you remember how the ride goes?"
"First hill is a 93 degree drop, a small hill, and then a 105 meter drop, two camelback hills, a vertical loop upwards, a zero-gravity roll down into three more camelback hills, an over bank curve into a cobra roll then into a sharp hammerhead turn into the secondary launch tunnel, a brake run to slow us down before re-launching, then right into an Immelmann turn, a bowtie, two camelback hills each a 50 meter drop, and one more cobra roll before we hit the brake track at the end of the ride."
Kaito grins at the surprised look that gets him, laughing in delight as they start to crest the hill. It's nothing he hasn't done in a glider, but this can go so much faster. And he has to laugh or he'll start to panic.
"The second launch tunnels pushes you out at 135 kilometers per hour," he informs Conan. "If they've sabotaged the ride, it's likely they've disabled the trim brakes along the track and sabotaged the brake run. This is a hydraulic launch style coaster. My guess would be that they've disabled the systems that read the tracks and control the brakes, overhauled the secondary launch systems, and plan to have us crash into the riders in the train before us."
"They don't have anything on the track to slow us at any point, so we go into the launch too fast, get sent from the tunnel too fast, and run into the people unloading in the train before us," Conan repeats.
"Most coasters have a block system that prevents one train from being too close to the other. If they've sabotaged anything, the easiest would be to disable that. Then whether or not the brakes work won't matter because eventually we'll run into the train cars before or after us."
This would be the third roller coaster incident he's been involved in. The first at Tropical Land with Aoko during the heist that cleared him of suspicion with Nakamori, and the second obliquely with Conan and friends before, when he saved them from being blow up on the Serpent Coaster.
"I might never ride one of these again," Conan says, and it's still likely to himself. Kaito has excellent hearing, however.
"I will. We'll be fine," Kaito says, turning to look out at the expanse of the park. From this height, he can see the police cars' lights near the entrance. Already, Hakuba has someone coming to help. "Just enjoy the ride."
Conan stares at him, horrified and angry, but Kaito wriggles his fingers over to grab the hand he has tightly fisted on the restraints. It's a child-sized hand, and he doesn't know why he expected it to feel different. Conan's such a fierce predator in the field, making Kaito struggle for victory instead of leisurely strolling towards it, so he half expects his physical presence to match his fearsome mental skills. But his hand absolutely covers Conan's.
"I promise," Kaito says, softening his smile just enough to show his sincerity. "We'll be fine."
Conan still has hints of doubt, but that's fine. Kaito didn't expect to reassure him entirely. Conan's the type of person who has to do something to affect the outcome or he can't trust the results. That's fine. Kaito's that way.
But so is Hakuba.
And the woman they both love is seated in front of Kaito, and the woman she loves is right next to her.
He'd break ever rule in existence to protect both of them, laws of physics included.
"Why are you so calm? This isn't good," Conan says, pushing once at the chest restraint and dislodging Kaito's hand.
"I wouldn't try anything. We're about to go over the hill," Kaito taps his knee to Conan's, grabbing at the handlebars. Normally, he'd throw his hands up, but moving them above his head sounds like a terrible idea right now.
"Ah!"
The first drop is the worst one, and Kaito goes dizzy.
Conan's gritting his teeth, swallowing back a yell most likely, and Kaito's eyes fix to the glint off his tracking glasses, and the fact that he's wearing them despite the rules about glasses without a strap.
"That's dangerous," he says, letting his body go loose and roll with the abrupt shifts and drops of the track. His chest and shoulders hit the restraints hard, but without his muscles tensed, it's not so bad.
"What?" Conan shouts.
"You've got your glasses on. That's dangerous. You could lose them."
Conan' staring at him as much as he can over the restraints. It's a cute look on him, horrified and seriously questioning Kaito's intelligence. It's a look he sees on Hakuba and Aoko, and neither of them look this adorable with it.
"Are you serious right now?"
"Safety is important," and he can say it with a straight face because that's why Poker Face is a thing. "Hakuba will fix this."
Conan makes a frustrated noise.
"Besides, this can't be worse than being stuck on a roller coaster with a bomb strapped to your wrist," Kaito says, just to watch him choke on his tongue. And to mess with him.
Mostly to mess with him.
"I finally recognized you all. Those kids involved with the Suehiko Itoh case at the amusement park," Kaito says, grinning at the sudden narrowing of Conan's eyes. "That girl in front of me? She's Nakamori Aoko, and she's a big fan of the Kid Killer, so I hear about you."
Conan blushes at that, despite the way the track throws them around and curls. "W-what?"
"Oh yeah. When we get off here, she'll probably want your autograph." Kaito laughs at that, looking ahead at the track.
Not much time left.
"But I'm not that famous. I just try really hard. It's Mouri-san and Nakamori-keibu and Suzuki-san who do all the hard work," Conan protests, fingers scrambling at the restraints. He looks lost, likely wondering about Kaito's mental health and why he's chatting instead of panicking.
Kaito's phone chimes, a wild west whistle on repeat.
"Hey, Hakuba. Got it yet?" Kaito turns on the speaker phone.
"You're the best eyes on the coaster right now. You're about to enter the zero-gravity roll. Look at the launch tunnel and describe what you see as soon as you do," Hakuba instructs, "Anything out of the ordinary, Kuroba."
"Of course," he scoffs, already picking out the tunnel.
And the obnoxiously large black box wired into the brake track.
"Bingo. There's a detonator box wired to the brake track just before the tunnel entrance. Looks really poorly made." Kaito grunts as they roll and he gets dizzy. "Urg. I think I'm going to be sick."
"What?" Hakuba says.
"He's having a bad reaction to the chloroform. And one of the attendants hit him in the chest with a baton. He probably has cracked ribs," Conan shouts, the glasses nearly leaving his face. He grabs them at the last second, huddling into the restraints as they bounce over the camelback hills.
"We've got medical at the station," Hakuba says, "We've got you."
"Oh good," Kaito says, tucking the phone away again. "Told you we'll be fine."
"We're not safe yet," Conan protests.
Kaito reaches over and tangles his fingers through Conan's clenched fingers.
"Trust me," he says, squeezing once. "I've caught you before."
"What?" Conan asks, but Kaito ignores it.
His body hits the side of the seat as they make the sharp turn before the tunnel. The box is still there. The train cars aren't decelerating.
The tunnel swallows them going faster than they should be.
Conan's fingers tighten in his.
Kaito closes his eyes.
The train car slows.
They connect to the secondary launch system and they're abruptly accelerating, backs hitting the seats.
"Ah!"
"Aoko!"
"Kaito! What's going on?"
"You've been sleeping through the fun stuff!" he shouts up to her, leaning forward enough to tug at the loose hair over the edge of her seat. He doesn't let go of his grip on Conan's hand.
Conan hasn't let go either.
"If I find out you have something to do with this, you'll be in so much trouble!" Aoko yells, already turning to check on Akako.
Kaito smiles to himself and sits back.
"Didn't I tell you everything would be fine?" Kaito says, reaching up to take the glasses from Conan and tucking them into the pocket with his cell phone. "That's still dangerous."
Conan blinks at him, about to protest, and Kaito squeezes his hand.
He goes a bright red shade instead, gaping at Kaito in incomprehension.
Kaito wants to see more of that look.
Hakuba and an entire swarm of police and medical personnel are waiting for them at the station. Nakamori was there, too, helping Aoko out of the car and picking Akako out of her seat.
"I've got a doctor here for you," Hakuba says, releasing Kaito's restraints and frowning at Conan. "Edogawa-kun?"
"Ah, hello, Hakuba-san. Thank you for saving us!" he chirps, an officer releasing him from the other side.
"Here you go," Kaito says, offering the glasses back to Conan. "Safety first, remember."
"Uh. Yeah." Conan goes to take them, and Kaito laughs as he realizes Kaito is still holding one of his hands, hanging under the restraints loosely clasped.
"Told you everything would be fine," Kaito says, lowering his voice. "Much less dangerous than being thrown out of a blimp, after all."
He winks and lets go of Conan's hand. He leaves the boy with the officers, his glasses in one hand and a bright red flush on his face.
