I am ready to stab this new layout with a spork! So annoying.

"Did you hear about it on the news this morning yet, Ran? They had another one of those weird magician things happen last night at a college." Sonoko offered this information with a half-serious flip of her hand accompanying the statement as the pair walked through the mall, their third, rather unwilling companion trying to keep up with the much longer-legged girls while wearing a frustrated look on his small, bespectacled face.

"Weird magician thi-? Oh, you mean those magicians that keep vanishing left and right lately," Ran commented with a knowing nod as they continued their trek through the rather packed mall. "That's why Dad is gone today. They called him in really early to have him look things over and help investigate the latest one, I guess. Megure-keibu decided to call him in after the families agreed to pay for Dad's time from their pooled reward fund- he actually took off this morning before Conan and I even woke up. Which is really weird for him as you know; him being up and gone before noon nearly made me panic for a minute till I found his note."

Yeah, he took off- and he didn't take Ran or me with him, which means that they'll most likely go off in some wrong direction because of a totally wrong deduction on his part somewhere along the way. Thanks so much for not bothering to wake us up to go with you when you got that call, ojisan, Shinichi thought darkly as he walked a few feet behind the pair of girls, deeply irritated both at being left behind and the fact that he was so helpless to do anything about being left. There were times that he completely, utterly and categorically hated being in this weak, shrunken body, and this was definitely one of those times. Of course, as far as he's concerned, he's the one solving the cases, so he probably didn't even think about taking us along. His head has gotten way too big thanks to me creating the reputation of 'Sleeping Kogoro'...

The worst part of the whole thing was that Shinichi had actually really wanted to dig into this particular case due to the exceedingly bizarre circumstances surrounding the magicians disappearing- especially the strange lack of evidence left behind at the scenes- and thanks to that idiot running off without him Shinichi had missed out on a perfect, golden opportunity to poke around at one of the scenes of the unusual crimes. If there was another one last night after I went to bed, that makes four of them now in total since these strange vanishings began about a month ago. Four different magicians in four different parts of four different districts of Tokyo just completely disappearing without a trace in the midst of their finales...

Ran turned and looked at her friend, deciding to break the silence that had settled over the trio as they walked. "So another magician went missing? Any clues this time around?" Ran took her cell phone out of her purse and shook it back and forth while she sighed. "I can't ask Dad because he won't pick up for some reason. I suppose that the police don't want him talking to anyone while he's there because they're afraid of information being leaked, even inadvertently."

"Probably. And yep, the Great Vizar suddenly vanished during his finale last night, just like the first three did" replied Sonoko with all the chipper air of an excited fan discussing their favorite band instead of someone talking about serious news. "And nope, the lack of clues at the scene is also the same the others- a few drops of blood here and there, an open back door but that's it. And of course, the police are being closemouthed except for the fact that minute traces of blood were found. Even that only got initially out because someone in the media snuck in and reported it on the third case, if I recall correctly..."

That was the other very strange aspect of the cases that chilled Shinichi- how oddly and completely silent the police were being with this particular set of investigations. Even Takagi-keiji and Satou-keiji, who normally shared (most) anything that they knew when they were asked by him after he'd carefully formulated a childlike inquiry beforehand, just looked at him with sad, puzzled expressions and shrugged their shoulders before walking off in frustrated huffs after not answering whatever he'd asked. Are they busy covering something up that they don't want the public to know? Like maybe finding the magicians dead later, something horrible along those lines and they don't want it to get out until they have some solid leads to the killer? Or could it be that they're really, truly almost as clueless about what's going on with these cases as the public is? Shinichi tried to think back to what little he had been able to learn about the cases through various television reports and newspaper articles.

The first performer, Kobiyashi Akashi, stage name of The Amazing Akashi, had vanished quite literally in the midst of getting ready to perform his crowd-pleasing 'Walking on Air' show finale nearly four weeks ago. His normal routine during the set was to vanish from the center of the stage in a puff of smoke, then reappear high above the crowd a few moments later and walk in midair from one end of whatever venue he was performing on to the other to wild, cheering applause.

That night, the magician had never reappeared above the crowd to finish the act after vanishing in that large blue puff of smoke, and it had taken nearly ten full minutes before someone besides his son-in-law/assistant realized that something was seriously wrong. The police had been called in, and an eventually fruitless search of the arena and general area had been conducted with no results. Even that assistant, so completely familiar with the routine, had thought for the first five or six minutes that Akashi was merely having a bit of difficulty with the intricate invisible rigging involved and was trying to straighten it out and hook it up correctly before dramatically reappearing.

Almost exactly a week after Kobiyashi Akashi vanished without explanation Uchihara Kojiro, also known onstage simply as Arenai, performed his own permanent disappearing act while in the middle of his 'Teleportation' showstopper. Kojiro began the final performance by levitating himself high above the audience, then vanishing in a flash of light and reappearing in several different places within the arena over the next minute or so after disappearing in similar flashes, random places that sometimes even included empty seats in the crowd, much to the delight and amazement of the spectators.

What had differed that night from the norm was that directly in the middle of the act while the crowd was going nuts, a strange, secondary flash of light that his fiancée/assistant didn't recognize as part of the act suddenly showed up and began blazing brightly as Kojiro went to move himself again. She had just tried to quietly inquire via a well-hidden microphone to the lighting booth about what was going on when that same errant light flashed brilliantly a few seconds ahead of schedule, burning so brightly that it temporarily blinded everyone in the arena- who had, of course, been focusing intently on the spot due to Kojiro's being suspended there. When the light finally faded, Kojiro's black silk cape fell from the balcony where he had last been seen along with his signature black handkerchief. The man himself, however, was gone, and it took his fiancée fully eight frantic, tear-filled minutes to convince everyone that this was NOT part of his finale.

The third magician to inexplicably vanish during his finale was Musashi Shigeru, or Musashi the Magnificent as he liked to be called when working. He had been in the middle of what he liked to call his 'Reversal of Fortune' finale wherein he called a volunteer from the audience onto the stage and, in a twist on the usual 'stick volunteer in box, poke said box with swords, have volunteer emerge unscathed,' Shigeru himself entered the box and had the volunteer stick the swords in. His chosen volunteer was a small boy of no more than nine who jumped up joyfully and listened carefully to the man's instructions before Musashi entered the box with a wink and grin to his audience, saying he would 'be right back when I'm done having some swords run through me.'

"Alright, Shota, go ahead and start" were the last muffled words that were spoken from within the now-sealed box before the young boy, Shota, picked up the swords and began sticking them into the box one after the other as the crowd gasped and writhed in their seats. After he had stuck the last of the swords in like Shigeru had instructed him to do, Shota begun to be absolutely terrified as the box never moved and the magician never reemerged. After nine minutes of increasing concern and bewilderment, someone from the audience finally went to open the box to discover that it was completely, totally empty except for a few drops of blood in its bottom.

That blood...and the light smatterings here and there at the other three scenes...they're the only indicator that anything untoward has even possibly happened. But no scene had a particularly large amount of blood, at least not the three that they've fully reported on so far. I wonder if this morning's is any different...Shinichi's well-honed tantei instincts told him that someone (or more likely, people) somewhere were kidnapping the magicians. And not only that, whoever was doing it was spending plenty of time to plan out and execute a highly visible kidnapping and to time it at a moment when the magicians were vulnerable as well. But for what purpose were they being kidnapped, and why was the perpetrator or perpetrators going to such lengths to kidnap them in the middle of their shows? How long would they be held? And where were they being held? And-

"Earth to Conan! We're at the clothing store! Do you want to help pick out some outfits or just stand there all day looking so serious?" inquired Ran as she waved her hand in front of Shinichi's face, causing him to blink twice and snap out of his extended musing. Crap, that's what I get for thinking too hard about this case... "Sorry, Ran-neechan," he finally managed to stammer out as he followed the pair in. "I was just thinking about whether or not I got all my homework done from school this week."

"Ugh, you're way too young to be that serious about your grades, Conan," teased Sonoko as she knelt down to pinch his cheek. "Clothes are way more-"

"That's enough, Sonoko," announced Ran as she shook her head with a laugh. "Don't set such an impressionable kid down the wrong path. Now, we need to go find that clothing section."

Trust me, Ran, you don't need to worry about me listening to her, thought Shinichi dryly as he let Ran steer him towards the child's clothing section of the store that they were in. As they were nearly to the section Ran's phone rang.

"Hello? Oh, hi Dad...What's going on?" Ran listened to the other end of the phone for a few moments while Kogoro talked. "Well, I suppose Conan and I can hail a cab and come there, but we were just going to do some-" Confusion crossed her features. "You managed to LOSE your rental car and you have no cash on you to take a cab of your own? Ugh. Why am I not surprised that you have no cash on you?" With a dejected sigh, she hung up the phone and turned to Shinichi and Sonoko. "Have to go bail Dad out I'm afraid, we need to go pick him up with a cab. Sonoko, do you want to come?"

"Of course I do! Sonoko the Deduction Queen will get to the bottom of these mysterious magician kidnappings!" she cried as they exited the mall and went to grab a cab to the crime scene.