"You guys wouldn't believe what happened last night!" Ayumi excitedly said as they waited in the courtyard for school to start. Conan braced himself for another long conversation about Kamen Yaiba or some manga she's reading or something. "Kaitou KID showed up on my balcony!"
Conan stopped in his tracks, then whipped his head over at the girl, his eyes widening to the size of plates.
He was not expecting that.
The three boys shouted, in near perfect unison, "What!?"
"Yeah!" She said. "He was so cool!"
He gave a jealous glance to the girl, now that the shock passed.
Lucky...
Conan couldn't help but think. He would like it if Kaitou KID showed up on his balcony (or, well, it'd have to be the roof considering the detective agency doesn't really have much of a balcony).
But, that begs the question, why did he show up on Ayumi's balcony? It's not like he was stopping by after a heist (he wouldn't be surprised if he did, KID probably knew who his friends were) because there wasn't a heist last night, and he would know if there was a heist. Maybe that meant there was going to be a heist soon! But still, why Ayumi's balcony?
Well.. KID is known for being unpredictable for a reason.
"Wow!" Mitsuhiko said, bringing Conan back to the conversation. "He really is a modern day Arsene Lupin!" (And, huh, he didn't know Mitsuhiko had read the Lupin novels, or at least heard of them.)
Clearly, Conan missed some part of the conversation, but he didn't particularly mind.
Haibara turned to him with a smirk. "So, what will the modern day Sherlock Holmes do?"
A bright smile formed on his face at the opportunity to talk about the thief. "If he's holding a heist then of course I'm going! It's been so long since there's been one! I'm so excited!" He gushed.
Haibara seemed taken aback by his enthusiasm.
Genta scoffed. "Great job Ayumi." He sarcastically grumbled. "Now he won't shut up."
"What? I think it's kinda cute." She said with fondness in her voice. "He's so excited."
Conan was too absorbed in his mind to hear them, but he did hear the snicker that Haibara let out.
He interrupted his gushing about the thief to say, "What?" and glared at her (because he just knew that was directed towards him).
"My, I never would've pegged you as such a KID fan." She let out a huff of laughter. "Aren't you supposed to be mortal enemies? You two are thief and detective."
Conan internationally sighed. "I mean, I still wanna catch him. I just happen to be a fan too!"
Haibara snickered again. "Wow, it's amusing to watch you act like such a child over a celebrity, a criminal no less."
Conan glared at her again (nervously, because he realized he was acting so out of character, he didn't think Shinichi would even consider complimenting KID like he was). "Shut up..."
Well, Conan had gotten his wish. KID had sent out a heist notice just a day later. Kogoro was invited to the meeting the police were having, which was great for Conan. It made things a whole lot easier for him.
Before Kogoro had left, he inconspicuously placed a bug (so graciously provided by Professor Agasa) on Kogoro's sleeve. He was pretty sure what he was doing was illegal, but it's not the worst he's done.
(Like, for instance, illegally entering a country.)
(He's still surprised at how easy that was. The airport security guards should really learn to pay more attention to what's below their eye level.)
But, honestly, he didn't know why Agasa trusted him with all these gadgets. Most of them, like his watch, were probably illegal and could be very dangerous in the wrong hands (and, you know, a seven year old probably was the wrong hands). Well, he probably trusted Shinichi that's who, which is another reason he is never telling Agasa that he isn't Shinichi. He did not want his gadget privilege to be revoked.
(Really, now that he thought about it, Agasa would probably make him a portable bomb if he asked.)
Anyways, he should probably be paying attention to the meeting that was about to start. (Well, technically he should be paying attention to the math lesson that was currently being taught, but he already knew his times tables well enough.) Fortunately there was no chunky ear-piece he needed to hide because his glasses were the ear-piece (again, thanks to the Professor).
He heard a loud, deep voice signal that the meeting was starting. They started off with an overview of Kaitou KID, with stuff like how many heists he's held and how much the damages cost, which he had pretty much tuned out because he already knew all that, thanks to his excessive stalking - ahem - research.
They read aloud the notice:
From the lion of dusk to the maiden of dawn, When a clock lacking a second-hand carves out the 12th symbol, From a multi-storied building with a shining sky, I shall call upon you and gratefully accept the Memories Egg.
Signed, The Last Wizard of the Century, Kaitou KID.
Which, again, he had already read (copious amounts of times) and had many thoughts and opinions on, but he still wanted to hear what the police thought of it.
Thankfully, they started talking about something he was more interested in, the object of the thief's heist, the Memories Egg. It's a Faberge egg, originated in the Romanov dynasty as one of the Imperial Easter eggs, and was gifted to the Russian empress by the emperor. It's currently in the possession of the Suzuki corporation and will be exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in Osaka Castle Park.
Hmm... Osaka.
Conan wasn't expecting to be visiting again so soon. It had only been a couple weeks since their last visit after all (and, speaking of, it seemed Hattori's recovery was going swimmingly, hopefully enough to attend a KID heist).
And, finally, they had gotten on to what he was here for, their thoughts on the heist note.
Conan heard what he assumed was Nakamori walking up to the microphone, "Firstly, 'From the lion of dusk to the maiden of dawn'. This refers to the evening of the last day of the zodiac symbol Leo, August 22nd, to sunrise on the first day of the zodiac symbol Virgo. This indicates the date of the crime."
Conan pretty much agreed and had come to the same conclusion.
"Secondly, 'When a clock lacking a second-hand carves out the 12th symbol'. This is presumed to signal the time of the crime, but at the present its meaning remains unclear."
Again, Conan agreed. He was more interested in the third line; he wasn't sure what the multi-storied shining building meant.
"Lastly, 'Multi-storied building with a shining sky'. This refers to Osaka Castle, and signifies the location at which KID will reveal himself." Nakamori finished.
Now, that was weird. From what he remembered of their last visit, there didn't seem to be anything shiny about the Osaka Castle.
Well, hopefully he can ask Hattori.
The meeting ended off with Nakamori saying something about how capturing KID was the top priority, and not making sure that the egg was safe, which is possibly one if the most Nakamori things he's heard come out of the Inspector's mouth.
Soon enough, they had booked a trip to Osaka (which Conan could barely stop talking about, much to the annoyance of Ran and especially Kogoro). Their trip was fully paid for by the police because Kogoro's assistance was specifically requested, and the KID Killer coming along was an added bonus. (And, god did Conan hate that name; like they really couldn't think of anything better? Besides, he didn't want to kill the thief. And, he didn't like all the attention he got after the Black Star heist either; did they have to put him on the front page of the newspaper? At least the reputation he gained was kinda nice. Maybe they'd start listening to him a bit more.)
Anyways, after a train ride that felt like forever, they arrived at Osaka and met up with Sonoko. She led them to a limousine (of course she just casually had a limousine), introduced their driver, and then started amiably talking about KID, with Conan joining in, because apparently Sonoko was the only person he knew who shared his opinions on the thief. (Well, except for the whole being deeply in love with and wishing he'd whisk him away like he does with a gem or jewel part, because he didn't feel any romance towards KID (that would be weird), mainly just admiration.)
Eventually, they arrived at the Osaka police station (freeing Ran and Kogoro). And there was a ton of security, there were guards stationed at every entrance and exit and several helicopters roaming the air.
"Wow, such impressive security." Ran said, looking around at the building.
"Seems a bit excessive..." Kogoro grumbled.
Conan would have to agree. He knew that the egg was being kept in the station, and yes they were dealing with KID, but it's not like the heist was being held there anyway (according to the police, Conan still wasn't sure if he trusted the whole Osaka Castle thing) and KID has never tried to steal something outside of a heist, in that fashion.
But, apparently Sonoko didn't glean all that, considering she said, "Of course! We're going up against KID-sama, after all! He's a–"
"-highly elusive phantom thief, disappearing at will, taking on one face after the other." A very familiar Osakan accented voice interrupted. "The strongest security is no match for his sham magic tricks. On top of that, he's able to perfectly imitate any face, voice, and even personality - a true master of disguise."
Conan looked over to see Hattori (as expected) taking off his helmet with a smile. (And, it was nice to see he recovered well, or at least enough to ride a motorcycle, with a passenger - noting Kazuha sitting on the bike behind him.)
"Really..." Hattori continued. "You've got a real pain-in-the-neck opponent this time, Kudou."
"He's not a pain-in-the-neck..." Conan grumbled under his breath, slightly glaring at the teenager. (And his magic tricks weren't sham either.)
"Geez, Hattori, why do you always call Conan 'Kudo'?" Ran asked exasperated.
Wait.
He did..? He did!
Conan sent a second, more intense, glare to Hattori. If Conan could learn to respond to all those names so quickly, then Hattori could learn to call him by the correct name!
(He started to wonder if he should be glad or not that Hattori had shown up.)
"Sorry, sorry." Hattori nervously laughed with a hand behind his head. "This kid always looks and acts like Kudo, so... I accidentally call 'im that."
The others seemed to accept that.. well enough, and Kazuha rightfully yelled at Hattori for being an idiot.
Soon, they headed off to the chairman's office, to finally see the egg. They were led to a room with a few other people in it, who seemed to also want the egg, each willing to pay hundreds of millions of yen for it. They soon left, agreeing to discuss matters related to the egg later.
They brought in the egg, and, well, it was kind of underwhelming. It did look cool, but it also just looked like some fancy decoration you'd put on a shelf. (Well, Conan assumed he wasn't seasoned enough to appreciate its true beauty or something.) However, it seemed many of the others agreed, so he wasn't alone. The chairman started talking about the history of the egg, which was vaguely interesting, but mostly boring.
After that, Hattori mentioned that KID's notice was a bit odd, that Osaka Castle wasn't shining in any way (which made Conan nearly sigh in relief because finally someone noticed that too).
But, that was when Nakamori and some other police officer (that Conan didn't remember the name of) walked in and started talking about the part of the notice the police didn't understand, the whole 12th symbol part. Kazuha mentioned something about alphabets which led Kogoro to suggesting that it was the 12th letter of the English alphabet, L, which, when put onto a clock, signified 3 o'clock. The police immediately agreed without much thought.
Conan was a little impressed, it made a bit more sense than Kogoro's usual whack theories, but, still, it wouldn't make sense for KID to use the English alphabet, which the police should've realized if they just thought about it for a bit longer.
Eventually, Kogoro went off with the police, leaving the others time to do whatever. The girls wanted to get their fortunes from some shrine, so Conan and Hattori followed.
At the shrine, the girls were all talking about their fortunes off to the side. Conan didn't look at his and just put it in his pocket, because he didn't really care, or believe, in that kind of stuff. He was too busy pondering KID's notice anyway.
In fact, too busy to even notice that Hattori was trying to talk to him. Well, until he heard him loudly call out to the girls.
"Kazuha!" Hattori yelled. "Why don't you show those two around?"
Kazuha looked over and asked, "What about you, Heiji?"
"I'll show this kid around." He said, pointing a finger behind him. Conan looked up at him.
Why was he trying to separate them?
"Why?" Ran asked. "Let's go together!"
Hattori crouched down next to Conan and put a hand around his shoulder. "We guys need to stick together, right Ku-Co-K-Conan-kun..?" He stuttered.
"Yeah!" He said loudly and cheerfully to hide the fact that he sharply elbowed Hattori where he remembered his gun wound being. Hattori let out a very pained and strangled noise, but, again, Conan hid that by saying, "I wanna be with Heiji-niichan!" The girls giggled at his cute antics, thankfully noticing nothing amiss.
"Hey!" Hattori whisper-yelled, with a hand clutching his wound. "What was that for!?"
Conan glared at him and erased any of the fake happiness still left in his expression. "Stop calling me Kudo. It's not that hard."
"Oh..?" Hattori said with a smirk. "Yer gettin' real confident for a guy who's secret I can just go and spill..."
Conan had to stop himself from letting out a very exaggerated and tired sigh.
Really?
How many detectives is he going to get blackmailed by?
"H-hey..!" He said with a nervous smile. "Work with me here."
"Yes, that's better." Hattori nodded his head. "If you're gonna ask someone a favor, don't forget to do it with a smile!"
Conan didn't stop himself from sighing this time.
It was a mistake, befriending this guy.
Conan grabbed Hattori's arm and forcefully dragged him out of the shrine, the girls heading out in the opposite direction. Hattori yanked his hand out of Conan's grip and followed after him.
After they had walked a bit away from the shrine, Hattori looked down to Conan with a cheeky grin and said, "Y'know.. I wasn't expecting you to be such a KID fan."
Conan was hoping that Hattori either didn't hear or would've just ignored when Sonoko had excitedly talked about KID with him at one point during the walk to the shrine, but it seemed he was too hopeful.
"What? He's cool." Conan childishly whined.
It couldn't be that weird. Could it? That was the second person this week.
"But, isn't he just some thief?"
Conan had to stop himself from rolling his eyes. "He's not 'just some thief'. Have you ever even seen him in action?" Conan argued. "And are you really going to tell me that a guy who can flawlessly disguise as anyone and get past even the tightest of security, isn't cool?"
"Yeah, yeah..." Hattori said sarcastically.
"Besides," Conan continued, "his heists are really fun to go to. They're as fun as solving a murder but without the whole murder part."
Which reminded him of the fact that a murder has never occurred during a KID heist, the closest there ever being was attempted (which, again, he knew because of his obsessive research), perhaps because of KID's presumed 'no one gets hurt rule' or maybe his presence is simply too grand to allow any other crimes to take place. Although, there have been accidental deaths that happened at the same time as a heist, but they weren't at the heist, and they've never been involved with the heist or KID either.
(He and KID were opposites in that right, huh?)
Hattori paused for a second before saying, "But, I mean, aren't ya supposed to be enemies? Yer a detective and he's a criminal, ya know."
Conan sighed. How many times is he going to have to give this same explanation? "I know he's a criminal and I still wanna catch him. I can just just admire his skill."
Hattori scoffed. "Yeah, 'admire'... Anyways, talking about KID, his notice is kinda weird, isn't it? I noticed a few things, but I think I should let you talk instead. You seem to be more knowledgeable on the subject." He said with a smirk.
Conan glared up at him. "Yeah.. I'm still stuck on the whole 12th symbol thing. It doesn't make sense for it to be referring to the English alphabet. It should be the Russian or Japanese alphabet but neither of those work." Hattori nodded in agreement. "And 'The Last Wizard of the Century' at the end is weird too. He's never titled himself that way before... On top of all that, he's only ever targeted jewels before, so it's odd that he's after the egg."
"Wow." Hattori said. "Ya really know a lot, huh. Sounds like ya did lots of 'research'." He finished with a wink.
Conan glared at him again. "Shut up..."
"Anyways, what did your fortune say?" Hattori suddenly said, changing the subject.
"Haven't looked at it yet." Conan curtly replied.
"Eh? Why not? It could predict your outcome with KID."
Did Hattori believe in these things? Whatever...
"Fine." Conan said as he fished the fortune out of his pocket.
Hattori looked over his shoulder and read, "Slightly good luck, huh?"
Conan just skimmed over the rest, because these things didn't work after all, but something caught his attention. Under the travel section, it read: Your secret will be exposed. Give it up.
Ominous much?
But still, Conan had to wonder which secret it was referring to. He had so many at this point.
After reading through the fortune, Hattori said, "Y'know, fortunes from here tend to come true."
"Hey..."
Conan and Hattori were right. The 12th symbol wasn't referring to the twelfth letter of the English alphabet, but instead the twelfth character of KID's notice, the hiragana symbol ヘ , meaning that the heist was at 7:20 P.M. And, even if they hadn't figured that out, they surely would've when fireworks (very impressive and pretty fireworks) suddenly started going off around the Osaka Castle. According to Hattori, there weren't any sort of events going on today, so that left KID being the only explanation.
Suddenly, the city was plunged into darkness, a power outage.
Wow, KID really went all out this time, Conan thought. He could only imagine all the machinery and work needed to pull off such a display, with the extravagant fireworks and city-wide power outage. Just more to prove how cool and amazing KID is.
Wait.
Conan shook his head to rid himself of the thoughts.
This was not the time to be thinking about that. He had to think about why KID was doing this, not how cool it is.
Conan looked out at the darkened city. A few buildings started to light up again, hospitals and hotels as to be expected–
Oh!
That's it! That's why he's doing this!
After giving a quick explanation to Hattori, Conan grabbed his skateboard and sped off down the street, Hattori going off elsewhere on his motorcycle.
Usually, Conan wouldn't dare ride his skateboard in the middle of the road like that, at risk of causing a car accident and harm to himself or others. But, thanks to the power outage, all of the cars were unmoving, stuck on the road, so, if he made sure not to run into any car or person, he should be fine.
He glanced up to the sky, and a smirk drew on his face as he saw a strikingly familiar white triangle contrasted against the night sky. He chased after KID for a while, but soon came to a dead end.
He was about to frantically turn around and find another route, when he heard Hattori yell, "Kudo!" from behind him. Conan turned around, hopped on his motorcycle, and put on the (much too large) helmet that Hattori had given him.
They sped off down the road (thankfully much more safe and legal than before, because a motorcycle was a registered road vehicle). They soon arrived at a generic looking building, the only thing odd was that it had power, in the middle of an outage. Conan rushed in without a second thought.
After running up a grueling five flights of stairs, he burst into the one room whose door was open. All of the police and guards were asleep on the floor, but more notably, KID stood on the windowsill with the egg (thankfully in its case) in hand.
"KID!" He yelled.
But before he could do anything, the thief shot a card at the floor, which exploded into a thick smoke. After it had cleared, Conan rushed to the window and saw KID flying away very quickly.
It had already taken so long to get up all those stairs.. but Conan noticed a conveniently placed rope next to him. He clipped it to a pole, threw it outside, and began climbing down (thankful that his adrenaline overroad his fear because he was climbing down the side of a five-story building with only his grip on the rope keeping him from falling to his potential death).
Again, Conan hopped back on the bike, and they began chasing after the thief. Eventually, the road started to clear up.. a little (well there were still a ton of cars but at least they were moving).
Conan looked up towards KID and noticed he was closer to the ground. "He's descending!" He yelled over the wind.
Hattori looked up as well. "Looks like he's heading towards the Osaka bay!"
As Hattori crossed an intersection, they suddenly heard a loud blaring horn and a bright light filled their vision. A truck was headed right towards them. Hattori sharply swerved the bike out of the truck's way, causing both of its passengers to fall off. Thankfully, Conan was able to land down on his skateboard, but it didn't seem Hattori was so lucky. He heard a strained scream and looked over to see Hattori scratched up on the ground, with a pained expression on his face.
That could not be good for someone who was still recovering from a gun wound.
Conan skated over. "Hattori!" He looked down at him with worry.
The teen painfully pushed himself off the ground. "What're ya doing!? Go after him!" He yelled.
"But you..."
"I'm fine! If ya let 'im escape I'll beat you up!" He shouted with vigor.
Well then, if he was so energetic...
But still, Conan yelled to someone nearby, "Call the police and the ambulance!" and (hesitantly) started riding off after the thief. (Well, the police were unnecessary, but he was so used to asking for them it just slipped out.)
Eventually, he made it to a very clear stretch of road; there were barely any cars, which let Conan pay more attention to KID. At one point, he couldn't help but notice a suspicious silhouette on the roof of a building. It looked like they were holding a sniper rifle, pointed up at the sky. Well, Conan was too busy chasing after KID, so he paid them no mind for now.
Soon, he ran out of roads to follow and found himself at the edge of the sea. There were some items on the ground up ahead, and he felt dread pool in his stomach as he got close enough to see what they were. The Memories Egg laid seemingly untouched on the ground but it's case was nearly destroyed. KID's monocle, with its glass broken, and an injured dove laid next to it.
Conan carefully picked up the bird, and gingerly held it under his shirt. He looked out across the sea.
Did KID get shot and fall into the sea?
Is he okay? Did he die!?
No, no. He's KID. He has to be okay. He wouldn't just die like that.
Well, whatever happened, it seemed that sniper he saw earlier was, in fact, relevant.
And, it seemed there's much more to this egg than he thought.
