Hakuba finally settled down on the settee in his room, ears pricked. Well, not really, but one got the idea. Conan was right in the middle of telling him an interesting story when a few questions had driven him to a very dramatic silence. Now, as a detective, Hakuba made other people's business his own and had to nose through things. Well, things that interested him, of course. It was the course of the famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes to take only the weirdest of cases; and Hakuba Saguru aspired to be just like the man, no matter how silly it sounded. And it didn't really sound too silly when you actually thought it through like a detective. There was no point in investigating something or someone if you didn't want to know what was going on.

And Conan's case was grabbing his attention every second. Edogawa Conan was somebody he didn't know much about, even for somebody he had only met twice. The boy was eight years old, having arrived at the Mouri household (if you could call it that) around two years ago without any previous mention from anybody else. He had quickly made himself known with the Beika police when he began picking up various pieces of obscure evidence during Mouri Kogorou's sudden break-out of cases. According to some of the officers talking loudly while he had been asking around last night, as well, Conan had even talking up solving cases in his spare time with his little group of friends. Not to mention the fact that going against Kaitou KID had boosted his fame around Tokyo in its entirety, if not the whole country. And guess who was rumoured to be his cousin.

Kudou Shin'ichi, the disappeared 'saviour of the Japanese police force' who had vanished off the map just days before Conan was picked up on the radar. It was more than suspect when you thought about it, really. Almost like Conan had completely replaced Kudou. Then again, if you suggested that to anybody, they'd correct you and tell you that the one replacing Kudou was actually Mouri, and in a way they were perfectly right as well.

Conan had settled down next to him, fists tightening. It could have been the size of the house, but it seemed far more realistic to blame the stress that the conversation appeared to be generating. Thankfully, these last few minutes had calmed his nerves, and he seemed more like his tone earlier.

Hakuba opened up and switched on the laptop, placing it on the table in front of him. "I would like you to witness this," he said. "Kaitou KID sent me this. He asked himself if he should tell 'tantei-kun'. Personally... I'd say yes."

Conan frowned. "What is it he needs me to hear?" he asked, flexing his fingers.

He sorted through the files, and activated the video file. "This."

MKMKMKMKMK

"I'm planning another heist," Kaito announced to himself.

And indeed he was. The papers were strewn in front of him, just as they had been before. The computer was switched on and currently on screensaver while he scribbled down some notes. His spare hat sat a little way away (Kaito mentally begged somebody to say that it English three times fast) on the desk, perched tentatively on the edge.

"What did you just say?"

The young voice caught him by surprise. Kaito turned around to see Tails with his arms crossed.

"Does anybody else know about this room?" Kaito asked, switching to English carefully.

"Sonic does. First one to find this room," Tails replied, causing the human to blink, "but he's nosey, and always does things like this. Reminds me of when we went to our friend Blaze's world. He couldn't stop himself from examining the entire island and the contents of the houses there. He said he picked up the habit from a few strange friends of his... And if your mom knows, I wouldn't be that surprised, really..."

Kaito shrugged. How would his mother not know about this room, if she knew about his being Kaitou KID? Or if she knew anything about the nature of the house, for that matter?

The young fox Mobian sniffed the air around him. "So what are you doing?" he asked.

For a second, Kaitou juggled the idea of telling him straight out what he was doing. Tails spoke in a very adult manner for his age, and would probably understand him – at the same time, Tails was still a child, and children were impressionable no matter what the IQ was. Not to mention the fact that he had only known him for a few days. It didn't seem worth it to spill family secrets to practical strangers, even ones from another world.

Another world. Nobody knew him there, did they? There was nothing to stop him from telling the little alien.

He sat up in his seat. "I'm working out the trick for the next jewel heist in a few weeks," he said. "It's a long thought process, especially what I'm thinking of for this one. I had to take school off for this."

"I thought humans had to go to school," Tails replied.

"They do. Just that the school thinks I'm ill. The cold I had last week weakened my defences and while in school I caught another bug much too easily. I'm currently recuperating at home while my mom is trying to get a doctor for me." Kaito recited the story with no pauses or mistakes. "I'm using the time that I have to myself to plan out my next theft."

The fox frowned. "Your actions have been bugging Knuckles," he mumbled. "He doesn't take kindly to jewel thieves. The only one who does prompt a positive response is currently back on our home planet. And all the ones that do... well... they kinda get their butt handed to them."

Kaito shrugged. "What can I say? It's my job to bug everybody." Then he raised an eyebrow. "'Butt handed to them'? I have never heard that phrase before."

"They get beaten up."

"Ah." Kaito flicked through his papers, marking a few things down. "In any case, this is highly necessary."

Tails jumped up slightly to try and reach the table. Unfortunately he was only about the same size as Conan, and therefore didn't exactly do very well. So he jumped up off the floor, twisted his tails around like a rotor blade and hovered in the air. Kaito turned around at the chopper sound and his eyes nearly bugged out; meanwhile, the little anthropomorphic fox peered over his shoulder at the work in progress.

"Why is it necessary to steal?" Tails asked. "And in such a flamboyant manner as well..."

Flamboyant. Ostentatious. Showy. Loud. Grandiose. They were the words that defined the Kaitou KID. No hiding in the dark for him, not even at night – if he had a chance to look invisible, he had to wreck it. It was the best plan of action.

"Because," Kaito replied, "if I didn't, they would never be stopped."

"They?"

"Heh... my secret, Tails."

MKMKMKMKMK

The recording came to an end, and Conan sat back. Hakuba watched him carefully. The little boy glared at the screen for a second.

"It was all in English," he finally said.

"And you understood every word of it," Hakuba answered.

The child hesitated, biting his lip, and nodded. "That's right," he replied, except this time he spoke in accented English. "I understood all of the English in that recording." Hakuba blinked slightly; his previous use of English, although more or less fluent allowing for the accent, had only been quoting a heist note.

Swallowing (this was a bit of a tense moment, after all), the ainoko crossed his arms. "The voices you just heard belonged to Kaitou KID, a madman named Doctor Eggman, and three creatures of the same species as the one you described earlier. I gave KID the recording equipment – a small web-camera that he placed in his pocket – before he disappeared into the anomaly. The recording is of people who exist on the other side of it." He adjusted his position on the sofa and locked eyes with the small child who was still staring at the screen of the computer. His pose seemed stiff and unnatural, not to mention how stilted his voice currently sounded. He sounded completely artificial.

"The other side of the anomaly... this is what Kaitou KID wanted us to know?" Conan asked, clasping his hands.

"Yes," Hakuba replied. "I can't understand why he would want 'tantei-kun' to know, however, when 'tantei-kun' happens to be you. A small child."

The boy jerked up in surprise, whipping around to look the older, taller detective in the eyes. Hakuba jumped in his seat – suddenly he seemed a lot more... human that before. Like his personality had taken another one-hundred-and-eighty-degree spin just from that one comment.

"I'm not any small child," he growled, slipping off his seat and walking around to face Hakuba properly. "I don't know what KID thinks this will achieve, but I can guess that he wants me to explain."

The seriousness that the blond had heard described to him so many times had finally emerged, and Hakuba found himself in awe. For as long as Conan had been there, people at the various stations had been talking about him. Hakuba had once heard the name all the way over in Gunma, for example. He'd never picked up on it, of course, until the first time he'd actually met Conan. And what an adventure that had been. He was sure he'd seen the idea before (reminded him of an Agatha Christie novel), but Conan, who most likely hadn't, took the concept of the trap and ran with it. The boy had saved their lives by making them act out their own deaths, which drew the murderer and game master into a sense of security.

The same sense of security which was then blown through the wall when the creepy little child with the shiny glasses wandered in and gracefully uncovered the entire plot like a ghost of their will. Hakuba had only been there because Kaitou KID had reputedly sent the invitation to him. It was actually Kaitou KID who had been invited, however.

There had always been something off about Conan. This strange little character who gave off so many hints at crime scenes that coincidentally all pointed to the murder method? This kid who had simply appeared without any paperwork? (Apparently the police had investigated that several times and come up with zero answers.) This omniscient child who claimed that his encyclopaedic knowledge had all been taught him by a clearly incompetent Detective Mouri Kogorou? Hakuba hadn't bought it for a second. He had known Conan was strange the moment he met him.

He just had never figured out why.

"My name is not Edogawa Conan. I'm not eight years old." His fingers twitched. "My name is Kudou Shin'ichi."

Hakuba stared. "...What?"

"A criminal organisation tried to kill me. They only managed as far as shrinking me down to size. They don't know who I am... at least, they didn't used to. They keep coming closer and closer... If I don't stop them soon, Ran will-" He shuddered. He hadn't used honorifics. "The FBI is helping out, but I've not told them who I am and they started the investigation before I met them anyway. But it's not enough unless somebody knows why I'm working with them. This little face... isn't the face of a hunter, huh?" Conan looked up. "I think what KID wants me to say is that I need to tell somebody. The one thing I would never say to anyone. He's got a cruel sense of humour for that."

Hakuba paused, and then closed his eyes. "And so do you. Kudou Shin'ichi disappeared some time ago."

"And I appeared the same day he went missing. Ran will vouch for that. Besides, if you want better proof then compare a photo of me to a photo of Shin'ichi aged four. Or just take some blood and DNA samples. They'll match perfectly, despite the fact that Conan and Shin'ichi are meant to be cousins at closest relation. You can't call that just a coincidence, right? And our birthdays are both the fourth of May, and our eyes are both blue, and our skin is the same colour, and we both have the same haircut – there's a lot of stuff there that's pretty hard to duplicate."

Hakuba shook his head. "That's not possible. You are three-foot-tall and eight years old. Kudou Shin'ichi was five-foot-four and eighteen. You cannot be Kudou Shin'ichi, no matter how much you try." He leant down, his nose getting ever closer to the little boy. "You can't shrink a human being. It's against all laws of everything."

Conan stood straighter this time, although his head was bowed. "I'm not lying. I'm Kudou Shin'ichi and-" He broke off, looking around. "And I'm slipping away. The anomaly is causing I-don't-know-what and Kudou Shin'ichi's voice is fading. That's why my personality has been changing. I as Conan Edogawa tried to keep up the mask that everything was alright, but then Kaitou KID called me out on it."

"..." Hakuba was at a loss for words, and for a good reason. It just didn't sound right... and, somehow, it did. Certainly it could fit along the timeline from what he'd found out over the past few days while in Beika. Not to mention, what Hakuba had seen before of Conan's personality, he had seemed a lot older and wiser than he really should have been. This was a small child who somehow managed to be on the same foot as the rest of the police, if not a step ahead of them. This was the impossible child.

"Let's suggest for a second that you're telling the truth," he began. "Why would you tell me?"

"Because Kaitou KID needs me to," Conan replied, "and he seems to understand what I'm going through better than everybody. Even myself." He glared at the corners of the room, searching for eyes in the shadows, and when content he let out a sigh. "Let me tell you what I know."

MKMKMKMKMK

It was a few hours later when Hakuba dropped Conan off at the Mouri home again. The master of the house, Mouri Kogorou, was back and had bombarded the young half-Brit with questions for a while. Eventually, Ran had needed to call her father off manually, and a very confused young man had begun the track back home.

Meeting with Conan again had revealed some things that as a detective, Hakuba was just not ready to think about. The main problem, of course, was not Conan being a child, but it was something he simply couldn't ignore. He only wished that some of it had made more sense. The boy had failed to give a decent explanation as to how exactly it had happened; only stating that it had and that he was the long-missing Kudou Shin'ichi. Of course he had been completely forgetting just how poisons worked when he suggested that one had caused him to shrink, since apoptosis just didn't work that way. And the idea of a criminal organisation was nothing new to Hakuba, who had seen many of these types of things in England, America and Japan, but the description that Conan was willing to give didn't match up with anything Hakuba had heard off.

And from what he had suggested, this group was big. Too big for the police to notice, maybe? It was likely.

And that was one reason why it was completely unlikely. Why hadn't it been shut down already? Most yakuza-like organisations were usually uncovered within the first eighteen months or so of starting (with the obvious exception of the actual yakuza; there wasn't much you could do when they became part of popular culture). This group would have had to have spread like cancer if the police hadn't yet discovered it. And it had to have kept expanding for at least over two years...

Yikes. 'Big' indeed.

A feather weaved through the sky to fall in front of him, and he looked up. Above him, some kind of balloon exploded, throwing over him the unusual combination of confetti and what seemed to be... strawberry shortcake. Hakuba dodged the falling foodstuffs and blinked as a piece of card dropped right onto his head.

He took it off. It was double-sided, navy blue on one side and white on the other. He flipped to the navy blue side, curious.

'I thought you'd do that.'

Frowning (it was becoming a common occurrence today), he flipped the card over onto the white side and read. This was...

...the same message Kaitou KID had given to Conan before the previous heist?

Indeed, the same poem was emblazoned on the card, and in English as before, but this time a small post-script in Japanese followed it. The small doodle the thief had done of himself in the corner wasn't smiling as it normally would, either. Instead its face looked rather grim. This took Hakuba by surprise; KID was in general a very playful person and the drawing always grinned maniacally at whoever was reading.

"Please let tantei-kun join you," he read out to himself. "If he hides away again then I will not fulfil my mission... Your mission?"

He looked up. There was a small shadow in the sky, but it had to be a helicopter, since he could hear the quiet sound of rotor blades. It certainly wasn't KID; that was for sure. But there couldn't have been enough time already for KID to disappear completely from view. Suddenly there was a strong wind next to him, and the cared seemed to leave his hand for a quick second before the feeling came back. Confused, he turned away from the sky and looked down at the card and the little doodle. Instead of its previous grim face, a grin had blossomed onto it somehow.

He tipped the card, feeling it for a second. It was the same one.

Smirking, he continued down the road. There was no point in him trying to figure out how the message had reached him exactly, or how its expression had changed; after all, he'd listened to Conan, and that story was no less than insane. Really, now...

Meanwhile, a rather great distance above the detective, a small humanoid fox hovered, frowning. "I don't understand it," he said to himself, messing around with the bag that he had flung over his shoulder before flying. It had contained the metallic balloon; Sonic had brought it back for him after the tournament in the moustached man's world. He'd kept it in the plane ever since, and was very surprised to have seen such a sensitive item survive the crash the way it did. Kaito had specifically said for him to use it after seeing it. "Why does Kaito want me to deliver the message this way? Wouldn't it be better to deliver it himself?"

The hairs on the back of his neck (if he had much of one) stood up, and he turned around. The sight of a crooked tail met his eyes, before it disappeared behind a building. There were some dark shadows cast on the ground. Large ones.

Tails blinked, hovering closer slightly. Was it him, or did he really just see the Mobian that had vanished some days before?

A/N: The plan is in motion, and a friend returns. What is Kaito planning?