Conan held the phone in his ear while running. He couldn't take the skateboard, since he'd left that back at the Agency. "Agasa-hakase, repeat every single word of what you just said to me!" he cried into the microphone.

"What else should I say? There was some noise coming from your house, and Okiya-kun isn't in at the moment, so I decided to look in secretly using some binoculars. There was a strange silhouette looking around your room!" the old man narrated down the phone.

The little boy bit his lip. "Could it be an Organisation member?" he asked, darting past some crowds...

And then he backtracked. There were a large number of people waiting around as a pair of police cars pulled up around them. Out stepped a weighty, stern man in a brown coat and hat, hurrying over to push through the group. He was followed by a young woman in her late twenties with short black hair, who suddenly broke into a sprint, shoving everybody of the way desperately. It was an amazing change from her regular demeanour, Conan noted.

"Shin'ichi-kun, is something wrong? I hear sirens."

"Megure-keibu just appeared. Along with Satou-keiji. She looked angry. I think something might have happened to a friend." The boy gripped the microphone tighter. He could go after the person who was sneaking around in his house, or he could go investigate a possible murder of a relative of the police officers he had spent so many of his waking hours with. It was a tough decision; the Organisation was dangerous and, if they had sent anybody directly into his house, then trouble was bound to be up. Meanwhile, he was a detective before he was a silver bullet. He had to help out any way he could. "What should I do?"

"I can keep an eye on the intruder for now – he doesn't seem to be leaving any time soon. Besides, they're your colleagues, even if you're not meant to be Kudou Shin'ichi anymore, right?"

The little boy gulped. Even if he technically wasn't Shin'ichi, he still hated that line. "Right. Okay." He pressed the 'end call' button and stowed the item away in his pocket, before running across the street. "Megure-keibu! Megure-keibu!"

The portly man turned around. "Oh, it's you, Conan-kun," he muttered.

"What happened?" He gestured to the small gathering of people.

"Takagi-kun called in while driving to another scene," Megure explained. "He had an encounter with... something. It's resulted in injury."

Conan visibly gulped. Megure eyed the boy. Conan was known around the police force for being one of the most stable people around a murder scene. Not even many of the officers could hold in their stomachs at the more gruesome deaths, and his carer Ran (for Kogorou was clearly not qualified enough, and his daughter had him practically whipped anyway) always performed an infamous scream. And yet the eight-year-old boy was the most professional of them all. It might have had something to do with over-exposure, he reckoned; of course that theory was driven out when you considered that the first time Megure had ever seen the child was at a crime scene – according to Ran, it was their first dead body in a long list – and yet he'd still been as steely as ever. To see him panicking now was not good.

And it raised some questions about why.

"Conan-kun, do you know anything about what might have attacked him?" he asked the child.

"N-nothing. I don't know anything, sorry," he muttered, and looked back over at the people. Satou Miwako emerged, along with a young man about three years her junior with sharp cheekbones and wide puppy-dog eyes... and a hand covered in blood and bandages. Clearly, somebody in the crowd had had the clear sense to perform some first aid on him rather than stand there paralyzed like any regular individual.

She whipped around at the sound of footsteps in a protective matter, but hesitated when she saw Conan's signature glasses and cowlick. "It's just Conan-kun," she muttered, tone harsher than she might have realised it to be. "Takagi-kun's been injured. The culprit got away easily."

"Did anybody see him?" Conan asked, trying to wear Shin'ichi's brave face.

"Everybody did," Takagi enlightened him. "It was kinda hard not to. The only reason it got away was because everybody was looking and trying to figure out what the heck was going on."

He blinked. "...It?"

"Some weird thing about three foot tall with a cowboy hat and a pistol," the officer replied. "It shot me in the hand. It kinda looked like a rat."

Satou suddenly grabbed his head. "Maybe it was a stress-induced hallucination or – or maybe you just thought the guy was a literal rat for shooting you and it's caught on," she suggested. "Sit down while I ask why somebody didn't think to call an ambulance."

She hurried off into the crowd, flashing her badge as if she were a higher-ranking officer. Takagi rubbed his head, before sitting up and clutching his red-covered fist. "It was a rat, I'm telling you! But a three-foot-tall one with a long, crinkled tail and weird-coloured nose... not to mention that it shot me!"

"Is Takagi-nii-chan feeling alright?" he said quickly. Then his breath caught. Did he normally call him 'nii-chan' or was it usually 'keiji'!?

Luckily, he didn't seem to notice. It was a good thing that Conan always acted cute every now and then as part of his nature. "Of course I'm not feeling alright, I was shot in the hand!" he shouted. "It was completely embarrassing, not to mention that Satou-san heard it all over the radio… Damn it, just when everything was going fine."

"Do you know where the rat went?" Conan asked.

"It fled down the alleyway," he replied, gesturing with his one good hand. "Hey, isn't Niichoume down that way?"

"Niichoume!?" At once he shot down the alley, dodging Satou as he did so, whose expression was becoming more and more incredulous as she asked around. Niichoume was the area where Shin'ichi's residence was. Now he had an idea of his mysterious intruder…

MKMKMKMKMK

Sonic hopped onto the wing of the plane, adopting his take-off position. Knuckles, grimacing at the actions of the hedgehog, opted instead for the seat behind the pilot.

"Sonic, do you have any idea where we're going?" he asked, crossing his arms.

The fifteen-year-old looked down at him and grinned. "Nope!" he exclaimed cheekily. "But if I know anything, then it's that cross-dimensional trips always end up in some kind of adventure, right?"

"And that's what I'm worried we'll run into..." Knuckles growled.

MKMKMKMKMK

He went up to the landing after some brief exploring of the downstairs (the place was like a small village to him considering the available space, with a large study full of books and a pretty nicely-decorated living room), and gave his surroundings a good examination. Never knew when humans might pop up and try to catch him again. Especially those law enforcement officers. They seemed to be all over the place recently, all ready to spring a trap on him. And he daren't forget the detectives that were chasing him...

...What?

He clutched his head, and continued to look.

The landing was still quite dusty, and the carpet ruffled in stripes of dark and light (it had probably had a vacuum run over it or something in the last few days, possibly last night, and why did he keep thinking things like that!?) There were family photographs – real ones, not stilled televisions or anything like that but real photographs on real paper in real wooden frames - adorning the walls, of a three-person family. Though the fact that the images were in colour wasn't useful in telling him anything, the clothing was similar to that of the humans outside, which at least told him that a family did recently live here. There were also the faint scents of the people that confused his nose for a second there. Several scents, to be more precise. Then again, many people must have stayed or visited or something; although a few of them were particularly strong in comparison.

The most powerful of these led into a room with an open door, so he ducked low to the floor instinctively.

There was a tense silence.

The scent seemed familiar to him, somehow. It made every strand of fur on his body stand up on end and caused him to freeze up like something dipped into liquid nitrogen. He wasn't sure where he'd bumped into it before, though. Maybe it belonged to somebody he'd met back home.

Of course, that being impossible, judging that this was supposed to be a completely different dimension and that he'd only known Eggman who had come through, and to grab that weird rock... though logically, shouldn't he have tried just using that in the first place? Then maybe the Chaos Emerald wouldn't have gotten away... darn fridge logic.

And just then, the door burst open. A small boy who looked about four or five stumbled in and made it to the foot of the stairs, before stopping dead in his tracks, sharp blue eyes wide open behind his old glasses. He was a cute kid, only just as tall as he was, with thick black hair pressed to his head and a very wiry frame, but the look he was giving him was more than the confusion that the other humans had been showing. In fact, he didn't know what to call it.

And then the little boy swore violently, knelt down and pressed a button on the side of his shoe.

He daren't take any chances here, then. The last time he'd met anybody with special shoes, they'd managed to walk all over him. Well, almost. Change the word to 'run at Mach One' and you'd have a more realistic picture.

He removed the gun from its holster and fired off some warning shots around the kid, but he hardly flinched. What was he, suicidal or something? Anybody else who tried that often got a bullet through the skull... or at least got blown up several times. He could pretty much vouch for that, although often he was lucky and got his wings out on t- where the bloody hell was that memory coming from!?

He opened his mouth. "Detective?" he muttered, still wondering where all this was coming from.

The kid stopped, eyes wide.

And then he produced a football from the buckle of his belt. Wait, what?

And he kicked it.

The damage he caused in the wall behind him was going to cost quite a bit, he reckoned, as he crouched low and aimed for the skull. This time there was no holding back.

And that was when something flew at him and embedded itself in the wall. He looked at it. It was a Jack of Spades.

A playing card had just imbedded itself into the plasterwork, through layers of paint and wallpaper, until the top half of it was all that was visible. A playing card. Keep in mind that it was a standard-sized poker card, meaning that a hole of about four-and-a-half centimetres deep had been made with a piece of slightly-stiff paper. Understandable really, though, if one considered the speed it must have been going at for a second.

Then consider the speed it must have been going at for a second.

Yep.

Realising he was a wee bit cornered here – no, 'wee bit' was not appropriate; it was more like having the spiders on one side and the wolves on the other – he ignored the familiarity of the tactic and made a beeline for straight past the kid and managing to get through with naught but the loss of some fur to the boy's quick grabbing fingers from his tail that meant a great deal of pain right on the sensitive second tail kink. In retrospect, he reckoned, the hands should have looked as dangerous as the feet, especially when fingers began to bear a passing resemblance to daggers.

MKMKMKMKMK

Conan stared blankly at the lavender fur in his hand. Of all colours. "He called me 'detective'," he mumbled. His English was mangled by his heavy Tokyo-ben, but at least it was understandable.

"I know." The voice was almost identical to that of Kudou Shin'ichi's, with a hint of awkward mischievousness. Kaitou KID, or Kuroba Kaito of course (although Conan was not to know that), popped his head out of the amateur consultant's former room, tipping his hat before completely emerging with card gun being slipped into his coat's inner pocket. Now that had been a nice room for a kid. Maybe he should take up temporary residence here… "I suppose you also noticed something a little strange about him?"

"What, other than the fact that he was some kind of mutant rat my height that spoke English and wielded a Ruger KGP141?" the not-boy deadpanned, finger hovering over the button on his belt. "I hadn't a clue there was."

Kaito smirked at him. He clearly had no idea what to say, and for a very good reason too. It wasn't exactly every day you walked into your former home to discover a sentient anthropomorphic animal standing on your stairs with a gun in its hand, only to have it chased away by a famous phantom thief who never appeared unless he told you he was going to in a little note with a self-portrait in the corner. "After seeing that, I think you can guess why I'm here, hmm, tantei-kun?" he asked, proceeding to tug the card out of its notch in the wall and descend down the stairs.

"To talk about your heist last night," Conan replied, moving to cross his arms.

Before he could, however, a portly man with white hair burst through the front door, looking around wildly. "Shin'ichi-kun? I tried to stop her, but-" he cried, then suddenly realised they had the company of the thief. His eyes wide behind his glasses, he stepped back in complete shock.

Kaito, however, cheerfully waved his hand. "Oh, don't worry, ojii-san, I already worked that one out several months ago." He sat down on the steps, a few stray doves taking the opportunity to flee his cape. From his sleeve he produced a rose. "So, this 'she' would be who?"

"It would be me." A panting Ai reached the door, her unusual copper locks pressed to her forehead. "Is this what Agasa-hakase was talking about, Edogawa-kun? Kaitou KID in Shin'ichi-nii-san's old house?"

Conan shook his head. "Actually, he was talking about the..." He trailed off, entire frame stiff. Then he shook his head. "Anyway, I need you and Agasa-hakase to analyse these hairs back in the laboratory, Haibara-chi- Haibara. Sorry."

"Why would that be?" she asked sharply. Kaito jumped.

"It's because he wants to know if you can recognise what on earth that creature that just escaped from this house was," he exclaimed, mostly in panic. This girl didn't seem the type to lie to.

Everybody whipped around and stared at him. Then Ai directed a particularly powerful glare at Conan. The boy stiffened completely under her gaze, a shiver racking his body like the shockwaves of a powerful earthquake. The girl held out her hand, and he gave her the fur guiltily.

She glanced at the clump, feeling it gently in her hand. "Well, I can tell you one thing straight away. This fur obviously doesn't belong to any animal I've ever seen before."

Conan frowned. "So, you didn't see it run just a minute ago?"

"…" Ai crossed her arms and looked up at Kaito. "And this man would be?"

The magician disappeared with one spin of his cloak and a smoke bomb and reappeared in front of her immediately. He spotted the little detective looking around in confusion uncharacteristically. Well, he hadn't meant to pull out the Chaos Emerald so early, but it made for an interesting show, didn't it?

He took her hand and kissed it softly. "Kaitou KID at your service, Haibara-hime."

"I'm no princess… and you're definitely not my idea of a price," the girl replied, smirking.

Agasa looked around at the damage, especially wincing at the virtual crater that the football had left in the plaster. Conan's powerful kick was not one to contest naturally but, with the special powered kick shoes that he had created to help in chasing and capturing criminals, the results were quite often deadly. "Why are you here, then?"

"I decided to talk with tantei-kun here about the mess I ran into on my heist last night." Kaito patted the slightly-beaten hat upon his head. "I sent him a heist note before I actually executed my private performance down at the Suruga Bay. I was going to wait at the Agency for you to come home from school, but then I remembered about Mouri-san – that fine detective who does an excellent job, I assure you – would still be present in the house."

"So you came to Shin'ichi-nii-chan's house," Ai said disbelievingly.

"Yes, I did." He couldn't exactly tell them that when wanting to be taken to Conan's house while performing Chaos Control he had ended up appearing in the once-teen detective's home instead, after all. Now that would ruin the mystique.

MKMKMKMKMK

Sonic surveyed the green pipe ahead of them. "Hey, haven't we seen one of those things before?" he asked.

Knuckles and Tails looked up at him for a second, puzzled.

"I think that small human once invited us to participate in some kind of sports day or something…" the pilot wondered, keeping his grip on the steering wheel.

The hedgehog nodded in agreement, before looking it over again. The pipe didn't seem incredibly wide, only about seven feet in diameter. Seven feet was already quite big when you remembered their size, but there was no way that the Tornado would be able to fit into it normally unless his right hand fox had already thought up some way to shrink them into fitting. Not only that, but there was also the problem of the anomaly's very nature. What if the electronics worked if they went through one way, but didn't if they went the other? It wasn't entirely crazy; the Tornado had already malfunctioned once during a temporal storm, but the vehicle they had taken back had worked perfectly fine.

He looked down at Tails, who smiled back and then directed the plane directly to the pipe… and sped up, barrel-rolling in the process. The hedgehog deftly grabbed onto the edge of the wing, letting his feet slip off. The echidna may have been strapped in, but was faring no better, holding his head in an attempt to keep in his stomach contents.

The fox pressed a button on the steering wheel five sections before the plane reached the edge of the pipe. All of a sudden, the wings split along the middle and folded backwards, Sonic along with them.

They hurtled into the tunnel, leaving their bright and sunny planet behind.

A/N: Our intrepid heroes are bumping into the truth, it seems. And Conan's disguise is always slipping still. But the ones to feel sorry for are Takagi and Satou.

The author will be on holiday next week.