Detective. Magician.
Having the Detective figure out his civilian identity has crossed Kaito's mind several times, and in those instances, the deep pool of consequences has only made itself apparent.
Now don't get me wrong. Kaito knows that the Detective has a soft, mushy heart. He's seen him blabber and flush and prance around in Ran's presence. However, he's also seen him knock out a couple of criminals. The magician knows that the Detective's sense of justice is strong; heck, he had the nerves to face some criminals nasty enough to blow someone up in a certain Bell Tree Express. However, he also knows that the Detective could kick very hard, especially when mad.
Well Kaitou Kid has taunted him about Ran's underwear. He made him run around in circles, even used his face without permission a couple of times. And he almost kissed his rival's special friend that one moonlit evening.
So while Kuroba Kaito sat there, Edogawa Conan standing right in front of him with an allegedly innocent smile on his bespectacled face, all the former could think of was: Crap!
Crap! Crap! Crap! I am so busted! Crap!
"Well," Kaito drawled, leaning back on the couch, poker face being stretched to the extreme. "Don't you have any homework, little boy?"
"Oh, I've finished it long ago!" Conan smiled, shaking his head slightly.
The young magician snuck a glance at Aoko. She was busy speaking with the Mouri girl's parents. He can't really use her as an excuse to leave his alter ego's rival unless...unless he was willing to degrade their image of him by seeming a little rude. He quickly racked through the pros and cons of butting in, and finally concluded that he was going to interrupt.
Hm. It might be good. Kuroba Kaito's denseness, contrary to Kid' slick manners, might even drop the pint-sized private eye's suspicions.
"Ahoko!" he called out, standing up to bolt towards his childhood friend. But then something held him back.
The mini Detective grabbed his fingers before he could leave, looking at it with feigned childlike wonder. "Your fingers are so long, niichan."
Aoko, Kogoro and Eri, all looking mildly irritated at having been interrupted, darted their attention back to each other and pushed through with the conversation.
And by then, Kaito was internally shivering. Suddenly he was on full-guard – carefully aware of his breathing patterns and posture. He saw to it that he didn't reveal any hint of nervousness, but at the same time avoiding Kid's usual suave nonchalance. He kept an eye out on his fingers, which were being held near the faux child's face, and made sure that they looked relaxed.
"They're really long long and thin!" Conan looked up at Kaito, head tilting ever so slightly. "Why is that?"
"Because I was born with it," he replied.
Inside, he was cursing. The Detective is on to him, he's sure. And he was using an effective form of interrogation – sweet and slow, like honey, and then painfully sharp once the target lets his guard down.
Well the magician saw to it that he never let his guard down, and he could tell that it was getting on his rival's nerves.
He paid attention to his newly-released fingers – lazily interlocked behind his head.
"Wow! You're lucky! I heard from the telly that fingers like yours are good for playing the piano!"
"Oh really? Well I don't play any of that, sadly."
The Detective made a show of looking disappointed, although being a master of masks himself, Kaito easily saw through it. There was a glint in his eyes – a glint that says that his clever little mind was stringing things together. Detective, he thought, is on to something.
The blow came half a second later.
"What about magic?"
"What about it?"
"Do you do magic?"
Kaito's mind was suddenly working fast. I can't lie, he thought. Otherwise I'll only seem more suspicious. He can't be too impressive either. And he can't be dull. Kuroba Kaito is supposedly an amateur magician, but he is not dull.
Straightening up, he said in a loud, annoyingly conceited tone, "Yes I do magic! There is no one in this world who can defeat me! Heh heh heh!"
"Bakaito!" Aoko yelled from across the room.
The boy smiled, fully expecting this.
"You're always too full of yourself! You're really not that great!"
"Yeah I am!" He childishly stuck his tongue out. Eri was making small circular motions around her temples, while her husband roughly slammed a fist onto the tabletop.
"Do you wanna get out, brat?"
"Ah, no," he said meekly. The three resumed the talk, and that was the end of it.
But something told him that the shrunken private investigator wasn't quite done with him yet. There was a pause. A pause that took longer than he anticipated. Aoko's and the couple's voices have become buzzing hums in the background, and for a moment, it did seem like the sleuth was going to drop the subject.
If there's one thing he knew about Kudo Shinichi, though, it's that he never let's a suspect off so easy. If he was going to drop the bomb, he was going to drop it now. Yet even as he thought this, Kaito realized later that all the knowledge and mental preparation that the world could offer wasn't enough to prepare him for the boldness of the Detective's next move.
"Say, are you Kaitou Kid?"
There was silence, filled with paling and numbing. And in the split second that the poker face faltered, Conan's eyes flashed, and Kaito knew that any leeways had been burnt. This was a dead end. He was busted. The Detective had set up an elaborate blackmail, goddamn him to hell.
Still, despite the hopeless situation, he found himself clinging to that last thread of hope. Kaito did what Kaitou Kid did best. "What? Of course not! What would make you think that?"
He lied.
"Well I just think you are," the child shrugged. "And I think it's cool! I'm gonna tell everyone!"
He had no solid proof, and he was merely using the situation to his advantage. After all, these threats are empty shells when hurled at an ordinary magician; nothing more than the silly result of a seven-year-old's wild imagination.
An ordinary magician wouldn't know the extent of Edogawa Conan's intelligence. He wouldn't know about what he can do to someone he deems a suspect.
But Kaitou Kid will know. And Kaitou Kid is freaking out.
"Alele? Hey, Aoko-neechan! I just found out something that you might want to listen to – " Kaito briskly covered the child's mouth.
"No, Conan-kun," he said sharply. "That is a bad word. You don't say that, okay?"
"Will the two of you shut up?" Kogoro suddenly bellowed, his patience lost completely as he stood up to glare at the two boys. Aoko was behind him, looking just as mad.
"Good heavens, Kaito! What are you teaching a child?"
Eri's temple-massage clearly wasn't working. She reverted to pinching the bridge of her nose, obviously trying to keep calm. The young magician released his grip on the faux child's mouth and stood back up, sensing that the Detective wasn't going to spill.
Yet.
Then, he scurried towards the door.
"Whoa, Conan-kun. Let's go! Let's go! Before they eat us alive!"
"Ah! Scary! Wait for me, Kaito-niichan!"
Once the Great Detective had tottered over to his side like some kind of innocent being, Kaito allowed a silly smile to dash across his face. He directed a waving motion towards Aoko and, before any of the three could react, closed the door and dropped the smile.
The staircase was still dull, but brighter that it had been earlier. A fluorescent lamp hovered overhead, it's hum loud against the silence. Kuroba stared blankly at the wall in front of him, satchel sprawled across the ground, and fingers hanging loosely at his sides like dead things.
It was Conan who broke the silence. "You have good acting skills, I could tell you that."
The magician smirked, sharp teeth glinting underneath up-twisted lips. "Can't say that I can commend you in return. Blackmail is a pretty nasty trick, Detective."
"I was a bit pressed," he replied, repressing shock at the other's sudden shift in tone. He watched the magician shift his weight, not in discomfort, but rather to pull the school bag up his shoulder. Then Conan cast hist gaze at the plain walls ahead, lazily crossing his arms across his chest. "I'll be honest. I didn't actually think you'll just waltz into the agency with the risk of getting caught. Mistakes like that aren't like you, Kaitou Kid."
"What if I said that I'm just borrowing Kuroba Kaito's face for today?"
"That's impossible. You blushed when I asked you about your relationship with that Nakamori girl."
"Oh?" Kid said, looking like nothing in this world could ever faze him – "Aoko. It's because of her that I am standing in your delightful company now" – however, judging by the way that the thief said her name above everything else that rolled of his tongue, he deduced that she was someone who could push the thief's buttons; probably has already done it several times, if the banters he had witnessed earlier was anything to go by.
For just that moment, Conan wondered if he was seeing, really seeing, the Magician Under the Moonlight for who he really is – a teenage boy, just like himself, with a certain fondness for his childhood friend.
After all, it was strange to see Kid use a girl's first name so casually without a disguise. Around all women, he was slick mannerisms and flattery. Around this one Nakamori Aoko, you wouldn't think that he was anything more than the prankster he appeared to be.
"To think that you'd be weak against the Inspector's daughter," the Detective murmured, grinning at the irony.
"No, I am not weak against her," Kid replied in his usual nonchalance. "A little wary, maybe, but that's because she is the Inspector's daughter."
A thought suddenly occurred to Conan, and he turned to the thief. "Why are you here anyway?"
"To get Mouri Kogoro's help, of course." Kid said, leaning down before Conan could protest, "I agree with Aoko on one thing. Those two deserve to know where their daughter is."
On a normal day, the shrunken sleuth would've objected. But he's seen how serious the ojisan had been. He's seen how absolutely terrified and broken he and the lawyer were when they needed to file the case on a missing person.
It was more of a gut feeling, and his gut feelings were usually right – the man who was the father of his childhood friend will find a way to help bring her back.
"So, Detective," Kid drawled, the slightest touch of urgency coloring his tone. Urgency that he saw in himself – one that he'd been hiding behind his own childish poker face for three days. "How's the research going?"
"Not so great," he spit out the words – like venom – hanging onto cold air. He called the police headquarters, searched the net, asked Haibara, the professor, even Hattori, and still found nothing that could be called a practical clue.
The thief suddenly lifted his satchel and gave Conan his usual, all-knowing smile. "Well, you asked for leads, didn't you?"
A wave of relief suddenly washed over the Detective, successfully churning his insides. "Is it complete?" he asked.
"Complete," Kid whispered, "and…strange."
Author's note:
Wow. Okay. This took awhile to make! I edited this about...three times! Because basically, nothing much was happening, so I decided to kind of just use the opportunity to clarify how Kaito and Shinichi viewed one other.
Anyway, I kinda got the plot set up now. I think. Ooh, and I'm reading lots of DC crossovers. And there's a freakin' Danny Phantom and Nancy Drew in there! My childhoods combined! Woohoo!
I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and the ones that will surely come in the near-future!
Yes, even if my ultimate goal is to ruin brains with (in my opinion) insanely long chapters, which are coupled with long-ish ramblings which is this author's note. Haha, see you!