Things finally began to pick up at last down at the station, and within a few days they had compiled a full press release. It was on the thirteenth of March when Nakamori decided to go and warn the owner of the target that was to be taken.

The target in question was the Morning Guardian. Well, it wasn't a jewel, per say – it was a large necklace. The force had found it quite odd to name a necklace the 'Morning Guardian' until Hakuba had pointed something out – the centrepiece of the necklace was a large brilliant cut of dark chrysoberyl, or alexandrite to be more accurate. The gem here was a ridiculously dark shade of turquoise in normal light, but at the light of a candle became a warm red, like the sunrise. Watching the candle through it made it resemble a sun rising in the sky; hence its name. Apparently the darker the colours were, the more money it cost… Nakamori couldn't imagine how many times his pay-check this gem on its own would be. The rest of the necklace itself (pure gold and diamonds as big as fingertips) was costly enough as it was.

The Morning Guardian was currently on show at the Tennou Museum, which was a very large museum in a relatively small town to the East, like Hakuba had mentioned. When Nakamori had reached it, he had needed to swallow several times – the building did not suit the rest of the town. Whereas the houses and the shops had all been plain and modern, the museum resembled an old castle. Indeed, a few signs at the door referred to the place as such. He couldn't believe such a place was likely to exist in such an unnoticeable area.

Unfortunately, he could believe the owner. Joukaku Houseki was not the kindest of women, especially when it came to the police – or anything regarding the necklace, to be honest.

"Get out! I don't need the police snooping around here!" she yelled, trying to push him out of the door. The men accompanying him looked around uneasily.

However, he held his ground as best he could, planting his feet firmly on the floor. "You don't understand, Joukaku-san!" he grunted. "The Kaitou KID is going to try and steal the Morning Guardian!"

The woman stopped, and smirked. "Oh, and your proof?" she said. "Did he leave a note telling you exactly what he was going to take?"

"No," Nakamori began, "but we had a very famous detective from overseas analyse it, and your museum gave the best results. Of any place he could have come to, yours would be the most likely."

"And which detective said that, hmm?" she snapped. "Try me. I'm a big detective fan."

There was a short pause. "Kudou Shin'ichi-kun," Nakamori suddenly blurted out.

Mrs Joukaku stared at him for a second with the kind of eyes that only a vicious fan-girl could make. Nakamori stepped back, having dealt with this kind of person hundreds of times before at previous KID heists and knowing exactly what they were capable of when excited. "…You're kidding me."

"No, no," Nakamori cried, waving his arms around. "I'm serious! Kudou-kun gave us the hint! Please, Joukaku-san. May we please place a guard around the Morning Guardian on the twentieth of this month?"

"Yes, of course you can!" Mrs Joukaku cheered. "Go ahead! Go ahead! If it's a deduction from Kudou Shin'ichi-kun's mouth, of course I'll accept it!" And she cheerfully ran off, leaving Nakamori to blink.

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"'Police Unveil Kaitou KID's Next Heist'," Aoko read off the newspaper that Kaito was studying in class the next day.

Kaito closed the newspaper with a flourish, complete with confetti and a sound vaguely like a cat yelping after a dog had snapped in its direction. Yes, he could even something as simple as that ridiculously over-the-top. It happened to be a Kuroba speciality, or something along those lines. She wasn't entirely sure what 'speciality' meant, and she didn't want to think about what his other specialities were. "Kaitou KID is going to steal a diamond and alexandrite necklace from the Tennou Museum in six days!" he announced. Then he blinked, and ran over the text again with his thumb. "Huh. He's been leaving Tokyo a lot lately, hasn't he?"

The girl glared. "He's an international phantom thief," she replied. "I would think leaving the country would be more normal for him."

"Hmm, good point." He turned around in his chair and chucked the paper at Hakuba. The other boy had been staring quite blankly at them from behind, and just managed to catch it before it struck him upon the forehead. "Oi, Hakuba-kun, what do you think about it all?"

"It's the correct location," the blond replied, stroking his chin as if he had a beard. "It's certainly the one we managed to pin down after decoding the note. But you don't find that funny?"

Kaito and Aoko glanced at each other, and then got up out of their seats and walked other. Only a couple of students – Keiko, Akako, some kid with glasses named Yamada and his few friends – were present, and the teacher wasn't going to be present for another ten minutes or so.

Once they had reached his desk, Hakuba took out a highlighter and, much to Kaito's surprise, highlighted a paragraph. "I'm talking about this bit here," he said.

"You could have just pointed at it," Kaito mumbled. "You didn't have to go doodling all over my paper."

"You threw it at me," Hakuba pointed out. "Anyway… as I was just saying, I was the detective who helped the police locate the target. But here, the owner says that she would gladly 'follow Kudou Shin'ichi-kun's orders if they led her off the edge of the Earth'." He frowned. "Or something along those lines that I wouldn't want to know about. I wonder why she said that…"

Kaito snatched up the paper and glared at it. "You're kidding me," he said, glancing over the quote. He had to hand it to Hakuba; it was a wall of text, and he wouldn't have been able to find it if it weren't in neon pink. Huh... he'd have to ask about that one later. "That has to be the first time they've printed his name in... actually, I can't remember the last time I saw it."

Internally, Kaito was swearing. There was a reason Kudou Shin'ichi's name no longer appeared in the papers, and that was the Black Organisation. If his name were to start appearing, they'd realise that they hadn't killed him and would come back to find him. And the Organisation had only ever failed to execute three people in their time...

"Oh, no, no, no..." He folded up the paper and then tossed it down the secret tunnel in his desk.

"What's wrong?" Hakuba asked.

Kaito blinked. "Well, don't you think that Kudou Shin'ichi-kun's gonna be a bit mad when he finds out about that?" he asked.

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And, as you guessed, he certainly was.

Conan shot daggers at the newspaper that Ayumi had brought in. Well, it wasn't intentional, really – sometimes Shin'ichi seemed to take over for a brief second or too, just to do something strange. Conan hardly noticed it until afterwards, when the warm and cosy feeling of an older brother's hug would begin to fade, and he was suddenly reminded of how alone he really was. However, this time, Shin'ichi wasn't letting up, and the small boy was feeling a lot less comfortable then he would have done. It was understandable, but that didn't make it any more pleasant.

Ai glanced over his shoulder slowly. "Edogawa-kun?" she said. "Is something wrong?"

Conan stopped staring at the paper, and the metaphorical grip on his mind receded. "Why is Shi- my name on here?" he mumbled.

"…" She raised an eyebrow, turning her head away but keeping him in her sights at all times. Conan liked Ai, but sometimes all she did was scare him. "Did you just stutter?"

"No!" he exclaimed suddenly. "I didn't stutter!"

"You're calling yourself 'boku' again."

He shrunk into his shoulders. "…I am?" He jumped, and bit his lip. Yes, he was. "Sorry, Haibara-chi-…" He stiffened, and shook his head. "Never mind that. Why is my-" and this time, he carefully enunciated the 'ore' in place of 'boku', "-name in this woman's quote?"

Ai panicked. Ai was funny when she panicked: her face turned whiter than usual and she began twitching slightly. Her eyes always shrunk to the size of small dots. Her hair even puffed up a little, like a cat's fur rippled when threatened. If Conan wasn't as aware of the situation and was a little braver in general, he'd probably laugh his head off at her. "Your name is in that newspaper!?" she cried, a little louder than she should have done, because it called over the Shounen Tantei as soon as that had happened.

Mitsuhiko, surprisingly, was first to snatch up the paper and began scanning through it, much to Conan's horror. "Did you say your name's in the newspaper, Conan-kun!?" he repeated.

"I didn't even know!" Ayumi said excitedly. She and Genta both gathered around Mitsuhiko's back, eyes shining brightly like stars as they started looking through it. After a while, their faces fell; Conan guessed that it might have been because it wasn't his name specifically that was actually there, was it?

"I was so hoping our names would get in there!" …Wait, what?

Oh, yeah, Conan remembered, taking the paper back quietly. They want to be famous detectives like Occhan, and I'm the one the police will remember. So if my name was in there, they'd immediately think they'd be there as well.

A quiet voice in his head replied. There's still the question of why my name is there, Shin'ichi asked him. I'm pretty sure Hakuba Saguru-kun was working on the case; so why did Nakamori mention my name?

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Sonic flopped on top of the futon, shaking his legs. "Hmm."

Tails blinked. "What is it?"

"I just feel… adventurous." The hedgehog began kicking his feet out behind him, closing his eyes. "You know. We've been stuck in this house for a while now. Sure, I've been interested in a lot of the stuff here, but after a while, I just want to get moving."

"I understand." Tails nodded. "It's only going to be a little while, then Kaito will give us the Chaos Emerald and we can go back home."

Sonic opened an eye. "What makes you think so?" he asked.

"I was with him when he planned his jewel heist," the younger Mobian explained. "He told me before we delivered that note to the blond boy that if he's decoded the entire note correctly, then the whole thing is going to blow over in about a week."

The other sniggered at the idea. Things were never that easy, were they? He could vouch for that – heck, they'd wandered over here with a plan in mind, one that had gone very drastically wrong as soon as they'd landed. That was just why he never bothered to trust a plan. "Right, a week. Let's cross our fingers." He pushed himself up onto his feet and walked over to the bookcase, looking at the spines. He and Tails had been looking at these books when they'd discovered that they'd gone back in time, hadn't they?

And that had really been when things had gone topsy-turvy.

"So, we're in the past…" He smiled. "It's awkward, when you think about it."

"Nobody really knows how time travel works," Tails explained. "You could change everything by standing somewhere, or maybe you'd have to do something similar to what he's doing and get the entire world to notice you. Or maybe this is actually a stable paradox. And what effect is it going to have on us?"

Sonic flexed his fingers. "When I was six years old, I spotted my name in a history book and thought nothing of it until right now..." He cocked his head. What a weird concept to try and grasp... "Yeah, I can imagine that kind of situation."

"Will we be able to return home, I wonder?" He span around to look at the fox, whose namesakes had dropped to the floor. He was hunched over in thought, his piercing eyes trained on an ant that had crept into the room. "If I step on it, will it cause an apocalypse on Earth in the future and stop humans from ever travelling to Mobius? Will our species have remained as undeveloped as it was three hundred years ago? Or would it not make a difference at all? Will everything still happen the way it already did despite this ant's life... Or have we already made all the changes that'd cause that by just being here?"

"Who knows…? Let's not muse about that anymore." Sonic rubbed his ears. "Where's Knuckles, anyways?"

At this point, Tails broke into a little giggle. "Oh, he's outside in the garden," the fox explained. "Apparently, Kaito's mom noticed the flowers weren't looking too good. And Knuckles was kinda curious as to what she was doing and went outside to see. He noticed her bent over the flowerbed with a depressed look on her face. So he's out there helping her do the gardening."

"What kind of thing is he doing?" Sonic asked, furrowing his brow.

Tails covered his mouth, shaking for a little while as he tried to stop himself. "He's helping spread the fertiliser."

The giggle became suddenly infectious as the hedgehog realised just what exactly that meant. "He's handling shit... isn't he?" he muttered.

When Tails finally managed to spit out a much-hampered confirmation, the pair of them broke into uncontrollable laughter, made even more so by Sonic's own ridiculous cackle. Outside, the echidna and the human glanced up at the window in confusion. Knuckles blinked, nodded in recognition, and then pulled at her arm, gesturing to some of the begonias in an attempt to distract her from what he knew could only be his spiky blue 'acquaintance'.

Back in the room, Sonic sighed, and stretched his arms upwards to try and rid himself of the ache in his sides. "Well, he seems to be doing it pretty well, don't you think?" he said, leaning against the bookcase with his hands in his spines.

There was a little silence again, during which the hedgehog and fox each took furtive glances at each other. To tell the truth, although he was so happy to be here and to be seeing everything from the history books, Sonic was a little uneasy, and he knew exactly why. It was the set of problems Tails had just brought up. The only time he had ever travelled in time, he had done so to erase the most spectacular debacle of his entire life: in other words, to deliberately manipulate time to the path he knew it would lead to. It had worked, quite obviously, seeing as the next moment everything had appeared to have been just a dream. It had taken him a few weeks of obliviousness to realise what exactly had transpired in the alternate timeline.

But this time, he hadn't even known he was going back in time. And this time it was back much further than before, going back hundreds of years before he was even born. The first time, it didn't matter to him what changes he made – he was only changing the future. But here was different, and it was only now that he had realised just how damaging time travel could be.

And the scariest part of this was that he didn't even know if they were going to get back home. Since the best laid plans of Mobians and men often went awry...

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The silver-haired man had almost given up on it all.

It had been a hellish few weeks for him and his partner, simply trying to adjust to the way things were right now. They had been on their way to a meeting when the creature (whatever thing it was that the boss had decided to adopt) had stumbled into them. What a pleasant little meeting that had been. All it had gained him was a bit of recognition from the higher-ups and a deep scar on the back of his hand. Well, that, and some nostalgia.

They hadn't done anything that unrehearsed for about two years now. It brought back memories... very bad ones. About the last person who had fallen victim to a pipe in the back of the head.

And dear lord, for a short while that had been the worst scandal they had ever been faced with. The constant insults and laughter when they had finally turned in their reports had been unbearable. They'd been found out blackmailing an executive by a teenager with a disposable camera and one hell of a natural instinct for trouble and suspicious characters. The only way to stop the berating had been to reveal the name of the person they had 'assassinated' – for they weren't even sure it had actually worked – and watch the ensuing reaction with a sense of minor satisfaction. After that, there had been very few people trying to step in their way, bar two, and that was only because that was how things worked in the Black Organisation anyway.

Well, that, and there were very few women the boss had favoured anyway. Only his prima donna, the actress Sharon Vineyard, held any particular authority; other women, while powerful in their own rights and their own personal fields, would not dare to act the same way that she did. Sharon was just lucky that she didn't get punished.

Luckily, the creature hadn't been assigned to them, but to a separate branch taking care of one Tokyo district and one very special target. That had only ground on his nerves; the new recruit, a thing in the most frank description, managed to end up as a professional assassin in the most exclusive party of the whole syndicate, while he was stuck quietly doing away with the lower class scumbags. There had been a reason for it, though: the discovery they had made watching the late night news that it had shot at a police officer in the hand earlier that day. That had supposedly meant a lot and almost immediately after it had recovered from its concussion it had been taken to the firing range and given a semi-automatic pistol and the regular old plastic silhouette stand-ups.

It had hit a vital area every single time. Didn't matter which, really – head, neck or heart, they were all good targets when you had a particularly big gun to waste on a human. The pity was, as the rumour went, that the creature only really favoured the gun it had been found carrying around with it and wouldn't think of finding a new cartridge for it. He'd wasted enough shots from it as it was. One bullet left. And the higher-ups intended to make him use it on the so-called 'big game'. No guesses as to who that was.

Well, he thought as he sipped his plastic cup of coffee, at least I don't have to work too hard today.

He unfolded the newspaper and opened it, scanning through as fast as he could. He didn't have too much time to waste this morning. There were a few things to do, a few places to visit, a few people to say farewell to...

Wait a second.

The coffee nearly dropped from his steadily-loosening grip.

Emblazoned clearly in black ink on the newspaper, right in the middle of an article about the before-mentioned big game... was the name of the boy who had caused the mess two years ago. And there was no way in hell that he'd ever forget it. Kudou Shin'ichi.

His mobile phone rang. He checked the caller ID; it was his partner. "Moshi moshi?"

"Aniki! Have you seen-"

"Yes, I have," he cut the other man off. "Vodka. Contact ano kata and inform him immediately, then report back. Have you got that?"

"Y-yes, aniki. I'll do that."

"Thanks." He hung up roughly, thoroughly infuriated. It looked like that boy's detective games were still ongoing after all this time, posing the best question of all:

Where had he been hiding to be able to dodge a global crime organisation for this long?

A/N: The best plans end up as the worst disasters... as demonstrated here.