Before I begin, I'd like to apologize. Then again, I'm not really sure why I need to keep repeating myself like this… but it's not very nice what I keep doing to you all by holding onto finished chapters. Unfortunately, I've barely made any progress on chapter 4 at the time of posting this one, so I don't really know how long it will be until my next update…
At any rate, please let me know if this story is good, and if I should keep going with it, because my best work is on things that I feel a deep connection to the topic, and this one didn't quite hit my typical comfort mark.
PS. If there's any confusion, I still don't own DC, and after all this, I'm not really sure why anyone would think I did. :P
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Chapter 3: Allow Me to Fill You In
After dinner, Conan left the apartment for a while, making the excuse that he was going over to visit Professor Agasa. Thinking more carefully about what he told Ran, though, he realized that it would probably be a good idea to go over there anyway. A few minutes later, he arrived at his destination, and his friend came to the door to let him inside.
"How are you doing, Shinichi-kun? Didn't you mention something about your friends leaving for camp yesterday?"
"Yeah. In all honesty, though, I think it'll be nice to spend some time apart from them."
"Does Ran know you're here?"
"She certainly does. I originally told her I was coming here just as an excuse, but then I figured it would probably be a good idea to come over anyway…"
"Ah, okay. Well, you know where I'll be if you need me."
"Thank you." Conan sat down the couch, adjusted his voice-changer bowtie to his 17-year-old voice, and dialed a number on his cell phone.
A female voice answered after three rings. 'She must have been busy with something, to have waited that long…' Shinichi thought.
"Hello," the voice asked.
"Hi, what's up?" He answered the question with another.
"Shinichi!"
"Yup, that's me." He smiled because even though she knew he would be calling, she was still surprised.
"But… How did you know?"
"Huh?"
"How did you know to call me?"
"I dunno… I…" He would have continued, except that he found himself interrupted.
"Shinichi… something important has come up, and since you're still away, I was hoping you'd let Conan-kun and me handle it," she said hesitantly, knowing how he gets about his cases.
"Well, why don't you tell me what's going on, and we'll see," he suggested.
"Okay…" She proceeded to recount the events of the last two days to him, including a recitation of the riddle.
Upon hearing it repeated out loud, Shinichi came to a stark realization. "Hold on a sec! The first honor isn't the longer sword, it's the shorter one!"
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"It used to be that when samurai began training, the first sword they were given was a shorter one, a wakizashi. Only as they became more experienced would they be able to use a full-length katana…"
"I'll be sure to pass that along when Conan-kun comes back from Professor Agasa's house."
Shinichi winced, but let it slide as if it were normal to talk about himself in the third person (even though he had been doing it for so long that it almost was). "Why don't you let me be the one to talk to Nakamori-keibu? I know he doesn't like me much, but he'll be more likely to listen to me than Conan, I think. I'll make sure he knows who he needs to be cooperating with, okay?"
"Okay… Take care of yourself, Shinichi."
"You too, Ran. Don't let Kid trip you up too easily," he replied. She could hear the smile in his voice. They each pulled their phones away from their ears and disconnected the line. Ran found that warm, fuzzy feeling inside her like she always gets when she talks to Shinichi. The young detective, however, started formulating exactly the best way to breach the subject with the inspector.
Conan sat for a few minutes in silence. He didn't want to talk to Nakamori any more than he thought the inspector would want to talk to him. He knew it had to be done, though, especially because he already told Ran he would do it. He looked down at his bowtie to make sure it was still set to the right vocal range, and then pulled out the piece of paper with Nakamori Ginzo's office phone number written on it.
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"Nakamori."
'It figures he'd still be at the office this late…' Shinichi thought. "Nakamori-keibu? This is Kudo Shinichi."
"What the hell do you want? I'm busy."
"What does 'great world tour' mean?"
The man on the other end of the line was momentarily taken aback. "How do you know about that?"
Shinichi decided it would be better not to answer that right away, that it would serve his purposes more to string him along a little bit. "I've decided to give this case to Ran and Conan, because I'm so busy." The younger detective could practically feel the older one's vein popping out of his forehead in anger, so he laid down his trump card. "By accepting their help, I'm sure you'll have a much better chance of catching him…"
"Do I have to deal with 'Sleeping Kogoro'?"
Shinichi was relieved that the inspector was at least willing to hear him out. "Maybe… I don't know. If you do, it will only be for this heist. I'll make sure Ran knows to somehow make sure of that."
"If she doesn't, I will."
"Thank you, sir. I'll let them know, and they'll be in touch with you in a day or two." His business finished, Conan closed his cell phone, and went to find the professor.
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The next morning, Kuroba Kaito sat in a booth in one of the small restaurants around the corner from his house. The morning newspaper which sat on the table in front of him didn't have any stories on any of Kid's heists, but he knew that given a few more days, that was bound to change. He sat back with a cup of tea, a goofy grin plastered across his face at the thought of the plans that were already in the works. It was probably going to be very expensive, but he had a list of places where the Pandora gem might be located, and this was as good a time as any to go looking for it. He was so absorbed in his plans, that he didn't notice his childhood friend walk up to the table… in an apron.
"Kaito-kun!"
The magician returned to the real world. "Huh? Oh, Aoko-chan, I thought you'd be at your summer job," he said with a smirk. He knew exactly which buttons to push to get the desired reactions out of the girl, and like so many times before, she took the bait. In a matter of seconds, she had a mop waving in his face.
"This is my summer job, for your information! Not like you would know, with your high-paying magic gigs."
"You can be my assistant…"
"As if!" Aoko's anger had grown so much that she was now poised to have the mop actually make contact with her friend's head, which caused him to do the first thing that came to mind – get up and run.
"Aoko-chan!"
"What?"
"I didn't just come here to pick on you."
That caught the girl off guard. She stopped chasing him, and folded her arms across her chest. "Okay, then why did you?"
He turned around to face her. "I just wanted to let you know that I made plans for the summer. I won't be around much after the solstice, until school starts again."
"Okay." With that, she went to put the mop away and get back to work.
'Heh, that was easy,' Kaito thought as he left the restaurant.
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Not more than an hour later, Ran and Conan found themselves in Nakamori Ginzo's office. "Thank you for agreeing to meet with us," they said, bowing.
"Kudo seemed to think you had information for me."
Ran pulled the envelope out of her purse and proceeded to fill the inspector in on their progress over the last couple days, while Conan interjected with the details she forgot. When they finished, Nakamori looked at them with a confused expression. "Where's the rest of it," he asked.
"The rest of what?"
"The rest of the riddle… The copy he sent to me had another part to it…"
"That was all we got," Conan replied. "But I also have a copy of the map of the museum, which I marked up with possible entry and exit points he could use. It's not quite complete because I realized part way through that I was probably going about it all wrong. Even if I suggested that you ask your men to guard all of them, it would only slow him down a little bit, not stop him. That's why I asked Shinichi-niichan to get us this audience with you."
Unlike Ran, the older man was not quite used to Conan's seriousness. Once he regained himself, though, he pulled his copy of Kid's note from the top drawer of his desk. The pair recognized the first section of the text as a copy of their own, but were surprised when they looked further down the page.
When the two towers of the sand stand together under the sun, east shall meet west and the first rumble of thunder will be heard.
"Any ideas," he asked after the younger detective looked back up from the sheet.
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End Chapter 3
A/N: There you go! Next time, if I get to writing, will be the beginning of the action. And, there's a twist in the works that neither Shinichi nor Nakamori-keibu factored into the equation!
