Sorry it always seems to take a while. For whatever reason it being Summer vacation has made me busier than ever rather than actually giving me free time... but I still manage to scrape some time up so I can work on my stories~

In this chapter: Hakuba and Shiho continue their conversation after an interruption, Ran chat's with Kazuha, Aoko is asked for help, and Kaito schemes

Well here goes nothing, I hope you enjoy, please review it doesn't matter if it's short or long or if you like the story or not (though I can't imagine anyone getting this far without liking it). ^v^

MR=TK=HH=NA=HS=EC=HA=MR, KK

It had hurt so much... but within a second the pain had subsided. I opened my eyes as if I had simply been blinking rather than holding my eyes tightly shut as if it would do anything to lessen the intense pain of Shiho's body regressing, what I saw in front of me was no longer Shiho's basement-lab, or any scenery that could be found within her and the professor's house but was instead a room I recognized to be the living room of the Mouri's house.

It took me a second to realize that I'd been body swapped again. Using the elevation of the table beside me as a basis I assumed that I was now Edogawa Conan. A bit of an improvement from just turning into Haibara Ai in my opinion, at least I would be a male primary schooler.

Ran-san is in front of me, I begin to say something so that there will be no confusion as to who I am but as I open my mouth my mind registers that Ran-san's father is also in the room. I make the wise decision to remain silent for the time being.

"Is dinner ready yet? Because I'm starved!"

"Just a few more minutes and it'll be done." Ran-san, or whoever it was in her body, said in a tone that was clearly a bit startled. As if it were an afterthought she added, "...Dad."

"Great!" He exclaimed, his expression twisting into an exaggerated smile, "Then we should be able to finish before Yoko-chan comes on!"

"Ugh! You and your 'Yoko-chan'! Can't we just sit down and have a normal family dinner just once?" She replied, at that point I began to suspect that maybe it was Kuroba in her body given how convincing her acting was, but something about the idea of it being Kuroba just didn't quite seem right.

True to her word it only to a few minutes longer before dinner had been fully prepared. There's not much point in recording our dinner conversation word for word so I'll just give you the gist of how it went: I personally didn't talk much because I was afraid he might realize that I had an odd accent though chances are he probably wouldn't have even noticed, "Ran-san" and her father kept up a somewhat civil conversation whenever he wasn't asking one of us to get him another can of beer, and Kogoro-san left the table approximately five minutes and thirty-two seconds before eight when the aforementioned idol's newest program began to air.

The two of us both let out a sigh of relief as the man had gone to his own room to watch TV, we were finally able to cut the act and be ourselves rather than Ran-san and Conan-kun.

"Saguru, I presume?" She said in a tone that made it clear it wasn't actually a question at all. The very fact that she'd called me 'Saguru' proved who she was, as for whatever reason no one else called me by that name, but I figured it best to ask anyway, to be sure.

"An' you're Shiho?"

"Correct," She confirmed with a slight smile.

"In any case I guess dis means yer hypothesis must be spot on," I sighed, not wanting to admit that I now believed what I had so adamantly denied before, "It can't be a coincidence dat a swap has happened again jus' as da antidote was wearin' off. There must be some sort a' co'relation."

"But it looks like everything is deteriorating at a rate worse than I initially thought," She said, her tone making a shiver run down my spine, "When Shinichi's antidote wore off the only one's who swapped were Shinichi and Ran-chan, but when the antidote in my body wore off it's clear that more than just you're body and my own were affected... we probably all were."

I understood the theory behind what she was saying but there was still something that bugged me about it, "You expected somethin' like this?"

She nodded grimly, "But I thought that it would take longer than it has... the eight of us are getting far too close to each other."

...

"Eh? Heiji is somethin' wrong?" The voice that asked was unmistakably Heiji-kun's own voice.

I looked around, not entirely understanding the situation myself. I was in Kazuha-chan's room, we seemed to be alone at least. I reached back to touch my hair... a ponytail. Okay, so I've swapped with Kazuha-chan, so who's in Heiji-kun's body?

"Heiji?" The other person tried, snapping my attention back to the fact that I had apparently been swapped into the middle of something.

"No?" I replied, not entirely sure what else to say, 'you've got the wrong person' maybe? Wait... to be calling me 'Heiji' doesn't that mean this person doesn't realize there's been another swap? This is Kazuha-chan then? I thought it'd be best to try asking, "Kazuha-chan, right?"

"A' course I am, Hei- ah ya've swapped again!" She proclaimed. I'm just glad I was right about who it was, it'd really suck to be wrong about someone being one of your best friends after all.

"Yeah, I was just in the middle of fixing dinner too... I hope whoever just became me can cook, otherwise Dad might find out," I responded, it was mostly a joke though, Dad wouldn't suspect that I was involved in something like this if I messed up cooking just a little bit, but maybe if I kept doing a bad job he might get suspicious. I guess we'll have to be careful about that sort of thing, it never occurred to me just how much effort the guys would have had to take hiding this from their parents.

"Ah so it's Ran-chan!" Kazuha-chan replied happily, "Fer a minute der I was worried ya might 'ave been another one a' de guys cause ya were able ta deduce who I was so quickly! I mean not dat der's 'nethin' wrong wit da guys but it's jus' weird knowin' der's a guy walkin' around in yer body yaknow?"

"Yeah, I know what you mean, Shinichi was only in my body for a few hours but I couldn't shake the feeling that he could have done whatever he'd wanted with it," I sighed, wondering who was in my body now that I wasn't anymore. It made me worry a little bit but it's not like any of the guys were that likely to do anything bad.

Kazuha-chan didn't seem to pick up on my worry at all, "Weird, I wasn't swapped dis time... maybe it was just you an' Heiji, I wonder why?"

"Maybe I should call and see if it's Heiji-kun in my body?" I suggest, checking my skirt pockets for Kazuha-chan's cell phone.

"Nah, ya said ya were in de middle a cookin' dinner right? Wouldn't it jus' be a bother if ya were ta call right now?" Kazuha-chan reasoned.

"I guess you're right..."

"I'll help ya work on yer Osaka-ben fer a bit, din ya kin call, `kay? We 'ave school tamorrow and ya can't just go 'round speakin' in Tokyo-ben if yer gonna be me," She smiled.

...

"Eh? What but just a second ago I was... who?" I couldn't help but voice my thoughts, "What's going on?"

I knew I had just been body swapped but it was still really confusing to suddenly be in another body, last time I had just kind of woken up as Kaito but this time it happened while I was changing from school clothes to casual clothes... did I fall asleep or something? More importantly who am I now?

"Calm down," sighed a familiar feminine voice.

"Huh?" I look around to see where the voice came from but see no one nearby.

"Down here," She says, sounding somewhat irritated this time.

I look down to find what I could only assume was Shiho-chan's miniature form wearing an over-sized shirt. What looked to be the rest of an outfit lay at her feet but had clearly fallen off. She's cuter than I thought she'd be and yet still gives off the feeling of being mature and responsible.

"One of the girls I presume?"

I nodded, "How could you tell?"

"To be as shocked by swapping as you were you'd have had to been," the small girl explained, "us guys have pretty much gotten used to it, though I think that's the first time it's happened while more than one of us was awake. Oh, I'm Shinichi by the way."

"Ah, and I'm Aoko," I replied.

The fact that we actually had to tell each other who we were only served to deepen the sense that this was a terrible situation. We're supposed to be friends but without being told I couldn't even tell who I was talking too, and even he only had a vague idea as to who I was.

I hope the eight of us don't just keep swapping like this forever, that would be really troublesome...

My train of thought is interrupted when Shinichi-kun suddenly spoke up, "Hey Aoko-san, can you help me with something?"

"Hmmm? What is it?" I asked, not really sure what sort of thing Shinichi-kun could possibly need my help for.

"Could you help me pick out an outfit for tomorrow? Haibara will kill me if I don't wear something stylish while I'm in her body," he laughed though there was a hint of seriousness in his tone as though he half expected that she might actually kill him if he doesn't dress well.

I can't help but laugh at bit at his request, "Sure. I thought you were going to say 'let me see your underwear!' or something like that, it's easy to forget that even though you look kinda like Kaito the two of you aren't the same at all!"

...

After school Aoko's friend Momoi Keiko-san had asked me to come to the mall with her to have a 'girls' day out', which as much as it sounded like a terrible idea to me I couldn't think of any reason to legitimately refuse and thus wound up going.

After the sheer girlishness of it all was beginning to take it's toll on me I managed to escape to the bathroom if only for a moment. Looking in the bathroom mirror gave me a strange feeling comparable to deja vu, I rubbed my eyes trying to get rid of the odd feeling and when I opened them again I was looking at myself.

I mean to say that I had returned to my own body and was looking at myself in the mirror. I was also part-way through the process of taking of my school uniform pants...

Geez, what has Aoko been doing since being in my body?

A silly question. I knew that she was just changing into casual clothes, still did she really need to be in front of a mirror for that? Not that it matters, I needed a mirror to do some things when I was in her body and I have much more experience cross dressing than she does, I hope.

But I digress.

Being in my own body meant one thing and one thing only. I could return to being Kaitou Kid without any worries, if only for a while.

MR=TK=HH=NA=HS=EC=HA=MR, KK