Blinking Dot

Conan's legs dangled and swung from the airplane seat, and Aoko stared.

She stared because that's all she could ever think of doing; she wasn't prepared for that. She wasn't entirely sure if she could live through the thought of taking the little boy with her to Thailand, and explain the situation back to his guardians in Japan. Eventually, however, she found her voice – a strained, strangled cry brought about by remarkably strong emotions. "Conan-kun?!"

"Good morning, Aoko-neechan!"

The seven year old flashed her a toothy, childlike grin, and for a moment, silence swirled around them – the noises of the passengers from the background diminishing into buzzing, incomprehensible hums.

"I followed you," he continued in a 'by the way' tone, and it at least managed to snap Aoko out of her reverie.

"Huh?" she replied, smartly, and he cocked his head to the side.

"I needed to talk to you about something."

Her left shoulder pressed against the back of the seat in front of her, and there was a slight pause during which she tried to process the fact that a child had snuck into a plane to speak with her. "Does Lawyer Kisaki know about this?"

"No."

Her left shoulder pressed further down the seat as she attempted to collect herself. She should tell the authorities about this. She really should. Before she could do just that, he thrust his hand towards her. "Aoko-neechan, can I have the chip in your pocket? Then I'll be on my way."

"W-what?" she spluttered. "Wait, no! No, Conan-kun! You're not even supposed to be here!"

"But –"

"God, this is crazy. I don't think that even Kaito would do this."

"I can't be sure about that."

She closed her eyes, sucking in a sharp breath. Yes. He would've. The things he did for his magic was sometimes over the top, but in a way, it's what made him who he was.

The little boy was eyeing her by then, gaze gleaming with a certain clarity that told her that her knew about the gravity of their situation. It made her pause for a while and wonder just how clever his mental capacity was.

Passengers continued to file in. They came in small bunches, slowly filling up the empty seats. It would only take awhile, she realized, for all places to be occupied. When that happened, the staff's going to realize that the little boy had nowhere to sit in. He had no ticket, and he was going to get caught. Conan was a child, but if he were as clever as she'd suspected him to be, he'd know that.

Indeed, he must've been thinking that same thing. "Can I have it now, please? It's very important."

"I'd like to know why," she replied, with an air of uncertainty. Despite her misgivings, however, she reached a hand into her pocket, finger fiddling with the plastic device. "What is it?"

Conan began to twiddle with his watch, eyebrows creased in a way that told her that he was thinking hard about something. "It's…a game. Just a game."

Kaito was very good at lying, so she was good at detecting them. And she didn't like what she was seeing. Before she could point this out, however, a hand gently landed on her shoulder.

"Miss?" a stewardess started. "Is that little boy with you?"

That's when she realized that an old man was standing on the aisle right beside Conan's seat, a ticket with his own seat number clamped on a wrinkly, pale hand. The seat number, she realized, was 33B– the seat right behind hers, where the little boy was currently residing. She also realized that the staff wouldn't let him leave the plane without a guardian, because he was a child. If he had been planning to slip away earlier, it was no longer going to work. He had drawn attention to himself.

And while she prolonged the silence, the question dangling over her face like a hooked fish, a suspicious look on the stewardess' face was beginning to form.

"Miss?"

Conan tugged at the end of her scarf, giving her a look that asked her to lie for him – to help him get out, and to give him the chip.

She'd give him the chip if he wanted it that badly, but she understood that the right thing to do was to inform them about his situation. It was best, not to mention safest. After all, Conan was a kid, not a day past nine. His request was clumsy. It was unthinkable.

The tugging stopped, the small hands on her scarf freezing as Conan looked down to suck in a breath. The stewardess was too busy looking at her, waiting for a reply to notice this. The old man merely raised his brows. "Aoko-neechan," he said sharply, and she was sure only she could hear it. "I need it to find Kaito-niichan."

Her heart froze.

She grabbed Conan's hands with her right, and straightened up.

"We have to go." If she hadn't been swayed by those words from her right mind, she would've thought things through. She would've taken into consideration the source of her information. Conan wasn't very reliable. Children generally weren't with serious matters of life and death. However, with her worry for Kaito toppling and shoving down what sanity was left in her mind, she could only take the bait. She reached her left arm up to adjust Ran's cap on her head. Then she ran her fingers through what locks weren't covered up, tucking them in the scarf. "Something urgent came up."

She offered them no explanations as she left, Conan tottering right behind, and they demanded none. There was a confused exchange of looks, however, which she did not mind.

The sound of a plane blared loudly in the background, but Aoko could hardly care less. She continued to follow the little boy down the airport hallways – her being all covered in scarves and hats. It should surely look suspicious to anyone paying attention, but the bright halls were busy – passengers scampering about to catch flights, staff attending to lost foreigners, and employees working on their given tasks.

She briskly marveled at how much it contrasted from how she saw it earlier that day, when she was walking through the place, her mind blank, ground unstable and constantly sinking. It had been so gloomy, dark and lonely without the pranks and the tricks, and she wasn't quite sure how she could regain her vigor.

But now she was scurrying down the stairs, up the escalators, leather boots clanking ferociously as she followed the little boy in a way that a child would follow a butterfly.

No one had the time to pay any attention to the suspicious-looking woman and allegedly naïve child. No one had the patience to observe them, and realize that their supposed aimless trails were actually geared to one specific direction – a waiting room that had right next to no other occupants.

The only other people when Aoko and Conan came in were an aged couple huddled beneath a blanket. They didn't notice the two minors cross the room to sit at a couple of benches located at the corner, just beside the window.

"So how can this help me find Kaito?" was the first thing Aoko asked. Her tone denied any leeway to lie, causing Conan to suck in a breath. There was a pause, in which she stared at his darting eyes, daring him to slip away.

And Conan – Shinichi – who couldn't exactly defy Ran when she eyed him like that, was sweating profusely as her look-alike did just that. He vaguely wondered if she ever used that look on the Kid, and if he weren't skating through thin ice, he would've laughed at the thought.

"It's just some kind of…game?" he replied, lamely.

"Really?"

"Um…"

She took the chip out and held it up against the light. Then she frowned.

She twirled it around her finger, perceiving the shape, the details, the color…

And it's strange. She faintly recalled seeing something like it before. Was it with Kaito? His nifty little magic toys always did look weird. She used to ask about the purpose of each one, and as a kid, he'd tell her everything – down to the very last details of his tricks. At some point, however, he just stopped. He became more secretive with his tricks, and the magnificence of his daily magic was somehow…subdued.

That chip, though…she's sure that it was one of the toys he's told her about. They were maybe around ten when he had slipped it somewhere…and they found…!

Her eyes popped open. "It's a tracking device, isn't it!"

"Umm…"

"It's a tracking device! Kaito used to have a bunch of these before. I can't believe I only just realized it now!" she cried, finally handing it to the little boy.

Conan drew back, looking visibly uneasy. But with the direction things have been leading to, Aoko knew that he could handle a little bit of that. She also knew that Kaito still wasn't with them.

"Don't lie to me, okay? Because I'm coming with you," she said. "Did Kaito put that in my pocket?"

She was asking someone who probably didn't know any more than she did, but she couldn't help it. Conan did, after all, convince her to bail her flight and march around the airport. He was also looking down, glasses gleaming, small hands clenching ever so slightly. It suddenly occurred to her that nothing was stopping him from coming up with the usual fibs. He could actually lie and say 'How could I know? I'm just a kid,' like he usually does.

But he didn't.

"Yes," he breathed. "I saw him slip it in earlier. Kaito-niichan probably did it to protect you from being taken away by the bad guys!"

"I see…" She suppressed a smile because goddammit, it was barely the time for that! She couldn't help it, though. After all, Kaito…boisterous, cheeky Kaito had actually been worried. She was vaguely aware of her own heart pumping vigorously, delivering a lot of her blood to her face. She tried to calm down, to focus, but she hardly had any sleep, and her emotions were all at its peak.

"Are you sure you want to come, neechan?" Conan – clearly unaware of her inner teenage turmoil – suddenly said, voice slicing through the silence as he fiddled with the joint of his glasses.

She looked down, knowing that her very hot face was most probably red. "Of course!"

"Do you know any kind of self defense? Are you good with guns? Are you…?" He suddenly froze, staring right ahead, and she didn't mind it at first. She paused and decided that the kid was probably just another weirdo-like-Kaito-in-the-making, then replied. "I…can throw things really hard?"

She realized half a second later, however, that he hadn't heard her. He was drawing a sharp breath.

"I can't track him down."

Aoko's blood ran cold. "What?"

"It's not connecting. Ki-Ki-Kaito-niichan's own tracker can't be traced."

His glasses, she realized, had sprouted an antennae from the right joint. The mirrors were no longer transparent lenses, but rather two spectacles with a constellation of grid lines, codes and legends plastered across the face. She realized that it all formed a map. Instead of a bleeping red dot to signify Kaito's whereabouts, however, what lay plastered across the lenses were two heartbreaking words: Cannot Reach.

"We…can't track him down?"

The small fingers hovered about the glasses – shaky and clammy and looking just about ready to throw them off. "No. Either the tracker is turned off, it's broken, or they're in a place that doesn't allow signals to pass through."

She didn't voice out the implications – that maybe it's off because he couldn't turn it on, that it's broken because he's been slammed around too much, that it can't reach signal because he's probably splayed across some unreachable place…like a rooftop…or a warehouse…

Or the bottom of some pool.

"Maybe we can narrow down the locations?" she said, voice trembling to her dismay. "He can't be that far! It's barely been two days since they took him."

It's been approximately thirty hours, half of that being the time that Aoko actually knew about what's happened to him. It's the longest fifteen hours of her life; it felt like a year of nightmares she couldn't seem to get out of. Losing Kaito was like a dream – so unrealistic, so uncalled for.

A very somber look passed over the boy's face, and the girl felt a terrifying chill run up her spine. "That should be enough time to transport two teenagers to another country."

"They wouldn't do that," she stated. "Too many checkpoints. Too expensive. And even if he is still just a kid, Kaito shouldn't make it easy for them to move around."

She wasn't very sure where the last statement came from. She was certain that she said it as some flimsy way to ease herself, but it ended up sounding so sure and trusting. It was as if her subconscious believed that maybe…just maybe Kaito was very capable of pulling through.

She didn't get to mull over the thoughts too much, because she noticed the smallest of smiles ghost over the child's features. "Yeah," he whispered. "He'll see to it that Ran-neechan will be fine, knowing him."

Suddenly, a thought that has never crossed Aoko's mind ever since she heard about her childhood friend's fiasco danced around her head.

"What happened to Ran-san?"

They've got another hostage now. What do they plan to do? She recalled her father saying something about that, but the news about Kaito then had still been so fresh.

Conan froze up, and then turned to stare at her, looking like he was about to sign her death warrant. It managed to make her shiver. "The Inspector didn't tell you everything, did he?"

"I don't know. I wasn't in the right state to pay attention back then."

He closed his eyes, inhaled – very deliberately – and then sighed. "Uncle and Inspector Nakamori received photos yesterday evening. It was proof that they had Kaito-niichan in their possession." She sucked in a breath, sharply, joints turning numb. "Along with it came the message saying that they 'd liket to have Uncle on the case. They also mentioned that if Kaitou Kid is not yet in their possession by the deadline, they start killing off hostages, starting with whom they assume is the least important among them."

"And that is Kaito," Aoko breathed, as sharp as a knife.

Conan looked down. "Yes."

It hadn't been difficult to decide who it was. Conan didn't have a top-notch poker face like Kaito did, and with the theory springing up like that, she was also able to identify the odd look on Detective Mouri during their drive to the café.

It was relief, because Ran's deadline was going to be extended, and guilt, because he shouldn't be feeling that way.

"He'll be okay, Aoko-neechan," Conan suddenly said, and Aoko needed to pause in order to understand that she –the daughter of a police Inspector – was being appeased by a seven year-old kid. I mean sure, this seven year-old kid went with the Great Detective a lot, but he was still so young! Put any other kid in his situation, and their state would be a disaster. But even then, she couldn't bring herself to tell him that she was fine. She couldn't say that he should worry about himself because hearing that they were basing Kaito's lifespan on his worth hit her like a spear.

She knew that they were going to stick with the deadline; it came with the knowledge of his abduction. But Kaito was not worthless, goddammit!

"Listen," she murmured, "I considered asking for help. From another detective."

"No!" Conan's reply was immediate, with fear ebbed into its edges. "We can't risk that!"

"And we can't let Kaito die!" She wasn't about to watch time of Kaito's life slip through her fingers. She won't. Conan, on the other hand, seemed to have other thoughts.

"It's going to take more than ropes and explosions and duct tapes to kill him – ah."

Aoko stared, not sure about how she should feel about that. She was tired, after all. Gods, she was so tired, and the little boy was pushing all the wrong buttons with that statement. "The heck do you think he is?" she hissed, venomously. "That's my best friend you're talking about!"

"I didn't mean it that way! I'm sorry!" he cried. Then with a softer voice, "w-who did you have in mind, Aoko-neechan?"

"Hakuba Saguru. My classmate."

Conan actually flinched. "Classmate, you say?"

She raised her brows. "Yes."

"With you and Kaito-niichan?"

"Yeah."

He shook his head vehemently, the tip of his lips churning upwards ever so slightly. "I see…"

Aoko stared down at her boots, a small smile adorning her own face. "I'm not sure if you know him, Conan-kun, but he's someone who's really into Kid's cases."

He was nodding, urging her to continue, and at the back of her mind, she realized that he was doing that to help get her mind off the case – even if it was just for a little while.

The build-up of hope and the fall that followed had been awfully devastating. She felt bad for sitting around, reminiscing about everyday classroom scenes with Hakuba, Akako, Keiko, and Kaito, but she egged on. She told him about how clueless he was during Valentine's Day, about the skiing competition, about his birthday magic trick, about the everyday school clamor and mop chases and pranks. She felt bad, realizing that there's a chance that school could take a complete turn for her by next week because Kaito may not be there – because Kaito may be dead.

She finished her story with a choke, and she realized that fear was rendering her unable to smile despite the humor of her next statement "…there was one time, I remember it well. Kaito colored his test papers green, and he in turn called Kaitou Kid a scampering goose. Kaito's a big fan of the thief, actually, which is why they never get along."

And Kid's an ass for letting him down.

"Kid really is such a bastard…"

Conan's expression suddenly became somber, and she wasn't sure if it was because her own face held its own dull countenance as the thought crossed her mind. She didn't ask him. Seconds passed, Aoko fiddling with her scarf, and Conan sucking in a shallow breath. Then – "Do you hate him, Aoko-neechan?"

He fingers froze around the stitches. "Of course," she whispered, response fuelled by fifteen hours of terror. "Kid took my father away. Now he's on the verge of taking Kaito away too. I hate him so much –" in a way that she's never hated anyone before.

"I see," he said, softly.

She glanced at him, and saw that he was staring at the old couple, a strange look in his eyes. She knew that he was far too smart for a boy his age. But still, he really was just a kid. Somehow, though, at that very moment, he sure didn't feel like one. There was a look on his face – dull and reflective, far too mature and discerning to belong to a child's. She watched him clench his jaws. And then she watched the sudden jolt of his hands as they flew up to his glasses. She saw him hitch a breath, fingers frozen on the joint of his glasses.

And suddenly, she was aware of the red, blinking dot in the lenses. Her heart froze.

"Conan-kun, you've got a lead, haven't you?" she stated, quickly.

Author's note:

Hi, guys! I've been getting asked a lot if Hakuba, Akako, and Heiji were going to make their appearances here. I've also been asked if Ai and Jii would have roles. They won't, and I'm sorry for telling you guys about it just now! The thing is, for the longest time, even I wasn't sure if they should be. I had a role for them in the latter chapters, along with Sonoko, but it would've seemed forced. It also would've triggered some kind of comedy, which I did not mind, but the roles would've been cut short. And when things start happening, what do I do with them?

Anyway, this has got to be another one of my longer chapters, which is a surprise. How was it? I struggle a lot with Aoko's POV, to be honest. Oh, and THANK YOU for your support, guys!