:( Sorry for the wait, life interfering with writing for the loss.
"Are you positive that this is such a wise idea, Kudo-kun? Every time you use one of the temporary antidotes it lessens the time that the effect lasts, as you well know. You can't just do this meeting over the telephone using your voice modulator or something along those lines instead?" Shiho looked wary and mildly concerned as she watched Shinichi pack the lone 'adult' suit outfit that he had on him into a very hidden spot in his backpack in preparation for the meeting he had arranged with the other metantei tomorrow afternoon. Shinichi had followed Shiho to Agasa's after school and told her as well as the professor about his plans so they would know where he was in case something went wrong. Besides, they had needed to know what he was doing tomorrow since his cover story to Ran was going to be that he was at Agasa's working on a school project with Shiho for a few hours.
"I think...I kind of have to go, actually. Hakuba would probably make the assumption that I'm Kaitou Kid disguising my voice if I asked him for a telephone meeting after I already agreed to a face to face one. Although that was how this stupid thing got set up in the first place- Kid using my voice to call Hakuba." The shrunken meitantei wore an expression that mingled anger and puzzlement, still thoroughly frustrated and irritated that Kaitou Kid had so expertly backed him into a corner. If it had just been a matter of wanting to find out what information Hakuba Saguru possessed regarding the case, Kid could have simply disguised himself as Kudo Shinichi and shown up to the meeting so Shinichi was still puzzling over the thief's possible motivation. "I wish I knew why Kaitou Kid felt the need for Hakuba and I to meet. He kind of forced my hand and he hung up before I could ask him, not that he probably would have explained himself even if I had asked."
"Well you did say that he stated he wanted you and Hakuba Saguru in particular to work the case," replied Shiho mildly as she partially busied herself with the almost laughably easy (well, laughably easy for a teenaged scientist) homework their class had been assigned. "It's not surprising that he's requesting some form of assistance, actually. Remember that Kaitou Kid himself is in a great deal of danger if your theory about the kidnapper or kidnappers really being after Kaitou Kid is correct. So it's in his favor as well as the kidnapped magicians' if the mystery behind the kidnappings can be solved." She placed her pencil down and offered Shinichi a sly smirk. "Besides, I would have thought that you would take him choosing you to work the case as a sort of compliment, Kudo-kun."
"I take it as nothing of the sort!" Shinichi retorted darkly with a snort while his face contorted in ire, accompanying the emphatic statement with a stomp of his foot as Agasa entered the room. "That guy had the nerve to call me on a very hard to get unlisted number and-"
"Everyone thought that he'd died or retired, you know. Err, Kaitou Kid, I mean," began Agasa as Shinichi and Shiho both turned their attention to him. "I still remember the headlines after his thefts suddenly, inexplicably stopped. You two were probably around, oh, seven or eight when it seemed like he'd suddenly decided to quietly ride off into the sunset." He rubbed his chin with his hand and looked skyward as he added on "It sure seemed out of character for that guy to go out so quietly, though..." in a thoughtful tone.
"What do you mean?" OK, so Shinichi already had a fairly good idea of what Agasa was referring to- Kid would have had his picture next to the dictionary definition of a spotlight-craving exhibitionist, after all- but he hoped the scientist would elaborate more. After all, Shinichi had been pointed towards the path of truth in a murder case's twisted forest more than once thanks to offhand, random comments that meant nothing in and of themselves but were so much more when placed in the frame of the larger bloody picture. Plus as Agasa had pointed out he'd been a kid (an actual kid, that was) back then so his memory of events was fuzzy at best.
"Well, you know how Kaitou Kid is- big, flashy performances and public announcements complete with screaming fans showing up," chuckled Agasa. "So it seemed pretty strange when he just...stopped suddenly without any sort of finale or public goodbye. But perhaps he just wanted to quietly, quickly retire without making a spectacle out if it for some reason," shrugged Agasa lightly as he sat down. "To be honest, ever since his reappearance I've always wondered whether it's him- the original Kaitou Kid. I mean, his sudden reappearance after close to eight and a half years of complete silence was always more than a little strange to me." Agasa frowned slightly for a few moments, looking down at the carpet and concentrating. "Well, that and the fact that for Kid's first few heists after his reappearance, he really didn't seem to know what he was doing. As if, well, as if he was learning as he went along. Surely you noticed it, too? You nearly caught him a couple of times, after all."
"Now that you mention it, yeah. He did seem like he was making things up on the fly to an extent, especially on his first couple of heists." Shinichi sighed as Conan's cellphone chose just then to ring, no doubt Ran wondering where he was at. Sure enough, Ran's worried and somewhat angry tone greeted him after he answered. He knew that there was only one place he was going with her in that particular pair of moods-straight home. As he made his excuses and apologies for worrying her while heading out the door, Shinichi just regretted that he hadn't been able to glean more out of Agasa, who'd opened up some very interesting new possibilities regarding Kaitou Kid- ones he might just have to bring up to Hakuba during the meeting tomorrow.
The next afternoon, Shinichi realized with a disgusted sigh that the school day was dragging along at an extra-slow clip, although thankfully there were only about five minutes left until the final bell rang at long last. He'd grown tired of hearing about the magician rescue a million times over from nearly every kid in almost all of the classes at the school since they'd found him under the pile of leaves, and he watched the clock's hand slowly march forward even though he knew better and that it was probably only making the time pass more slowly in his head. I hope that one dose will last me through the meeting, it should though... Agasa was supposed to pick him up in front of the school and drop him off at Hakuba's, so Shinichi was impatiently waiting for the day to end so he could head to the restrooms, take the antidote, recover from taking said antidote and get dressed.
An hour and a half later, Shinichi rang the front doorbell of the almost-mansionlike house that Hakuba had given as his address before he adjusted the old baseball hat Agasa had brought with him over his head. Shinichi was grateful that Shiho and Agasa had thought of the hat- he'd been so caught up in how he was going to try and both impart and glean the information he needed to that he hadn't even given a single thought to the fact that he would need a disguise just in case someone spotted him before he entered the house. He heard footsteps approaching the other side of the door before it swung open to reveal a slight white-haired woman wearing a rather large pair of glasses and a simple grey pantsuit.
"Welcome. I'm Miyano Shiori. You must be Saguru-botchama's afternoon appointment. He's expecting you in the library. Please follow me." This no-nonsense statement was followed by the woman turning on her heel and striding purposefully into the house before shutting the door after Shinichi entered, then quickly indicating with a wave of her hand to follow her into the right hallway. Shinichi followed her until they reached a pair of double doors that Shiori opened to reveal a rather large, well-stocked library surrounding an expensive-looking sofa and love seat. Hakuba Saguru was in the center of the sofa sipping tea, and Shinichi couldn't help but notice the new-looking blue baseball cap that the other meitantei was wearing on his own head. What the hell...?
"Would you like anything to drink?"
Shinichi waved Shiori's offer off politely before sitting down on the love seat across from Saguru. He decided to open by perpetuating Kid's lie, not that he had much of a choice now that he was here. "Thanks for agreeing to meet me on such short notice." Although it was sure short notice for me, too...
"Thank you, Shori. I'll call if you're needed." Shiori nodded to Saguru before exiting the library and shutting the door behind her. He then turned his attention to his guest. "So, Kudo-kun, where have you been these past few months? I thought you'd vanished off the face of the Earth for a while there. Which was part of why your phone call surprised me so much." Saguru took another sip of tea. "Although I did hear from some police contacts I have through my father that you'd shown up a time or two, solved the crime then vanished as quickly as you'd appeared."
"I've...been away. There's a case I've been working on that's kind of become a main focus of mine that I've had to chase all over Japan after." Shinichi removed the baseball cap after scanning the room to make sure there were no windows that people could see in from the street through. He followed the vast understatement by standing up and beginning to pace back and forth a little behind the love seat. "There's a very dangerous group that I've been working on trying to bring down that's known as the Black Organization, and you could say they're what prompted my call to you...after what Conan told me his friend Genta relayed to you." He gave Hakuba a pointed stare after the quickly conceived lie rolled off his tongue. "One of the group's signatures is dressing from head to toe in black."
Saguru cocked an eyebrow before setting down his tea and leaning forward slightly. "Well, it is true that the magician they found relayed a warning to me to give to Kid about men in black...but what makes you think it's the same men in black that you're going after?"
"Mostly the fact that this string of kidnappings has their methods all over them- well, except for the fact that they actually let any ofthe magicians live. The planning that's obviously going into the kidnappings, the fact that there's virtually no evidence left behind aside from some blood, the-"
"I see. But do you have any hard evidence?"
Shinichi resented the interruption at first, but he had to concede that Hakuba had made a very good point- one he needed to address and quickly. His gut was practically screaming at him that the black-jacketed criminals who had shrunk him were behind the vanishings, but that was really all he had to go on- a hunch. Hell, the magician in the hospital hadn't even given a description of his assailants beyond 'dressed in black'- that was way too generic to jump to the conclusion that it was the same group. But he refused to ignore his first instinct- the question was how to best present the case that it was the Black Organization.
"Well, these guys are most likely stalking Kaitou Kid, correct? Have you seen any weird people at his heists lately?"
Saguru's eyes narrowed slightly. "Now that you mention it, the police mentioned chasing off a pair of men in black trench coats and matching black fedoras from a back alley near one of Kaitou Kid's heists a month or so ago- haven't seen either of them since though."
Shinichi visibly stiffened- It IS them, I KNEW it!- before replying "That's them- the Black Organization. Or two of them I should say; the black trench coat and fedora is their preferred uniform." After studying Saguru's somewhat skeptical face he added "Not that's that's absolute proof of course, but that's definitely their normal mode of dress when they're not in disguise."
"Well if you're such an expert on them, why do you think they want to kidnap Kaitou Kid?"
"Maybe they need something stolen and he wouldn't cooperate with them when they asked," replied Shinichi unsurely as he finally sat back down. "Of course part of the problem with these guys if it is them is that they're everywhere. And I really mean that- they've infiltrated all kinds of industries and political offices. I've spent almost seven months trying to figure out everything that they're involved in and have barely scratched the surface."
"Hmph. Maybe it wasn't too smart of Kid to unretire," remarked Saguru dryly as he polished off his current cup of tea and poured another. "I really do wonder about that sometimes- why come back so suddenly after eight years?"
"You're supposed to be one of the foremost researchers on Kaitou Kid- why do you think he suddenly reappeared?" Shinichi was genuinely curious, and he decided to grasp at the offered opening to obtain the information he'd agreed to this meeting to obtain- a list of people who might possibly be Kaitou Kid.
"I don't think that the current Kaitou Kid is the same Kaitou Kid from back then, to be quite frank about it." Saguru rose up and walked over to a shelf, where he pulled down a large thick scrapbook with the word 'KID' emblazoned across the cover in very precise handwriting. He then placed it on the large coffee table and flipped it open to reveal several faded newspaper clippings. "There's large enough and consistent enough differences in height and body frame when you compare these older pictures of him with newer ones that I suspect it's an entirely different person." A sleeppranking idiot that I let stay at my house, thought Saguru darkly as he adjusted the baseball cap he was still wearing slightly with a scowl.
"So what are you thinking? A relative, maybe? But then what happened to the original Kaitou Kid, or do you have a theory on that as well?" C'mon, give me information...I need to find the guy and warn him!
"I don't know what precisely happened to the original Kaitou Kid but yes, I have a theory. I think he died in a tragic stage accident eight years ago." Saguru flipped the scrapbook to some pages that detailed the horrific stage accident and ensuing death of the master magician Kuroba Toichi. "After Kuroba Toichi died, Kaito Kid's thefts completely ceased. Well, until his apparent resurrection a year and a half ago," Saguru finished as he shoved the scrapbook towards Shinichi so he could examine it.
After he turned the scrapbook towards himself, Shinichi's heart dropped into his stomach as he felt the all-too-familiar pangs and burning that heralded the antidote's effectiveness- and the time in his true age- was going to come to an end very quickly. He quickly got up and made his way towards the door. "Thanks for the information, I gotta go," he yelled back to Saguru as he began a sprint for the front door while his whole body began to feel like it was on fire and his head began to pound. What the HELL? I just took the antidote not even two and a half hours ago! If I don't hurry up and get out of here-
"Are you alright? You look like you need to lay down very badly, if you don't mind me saying so," commented Shiori as she approached Shinichi with a puzzled and worried look on her face. "My goodness, you're sweating a lot! Are you running a fever? I'll go get you some water, OK? Just stay there, I'll be right back."
"I just need to go, alright? I appreciate the concern but-" Shinichi paused briefly as he gripped his stomach and almost doubled over in pain, thankful that the maid(?) already had her back turned and was exiting the room. "But I just, uhh, need some medicine that's back at my house." He wobbled towards the front door and almost made it to the point of turning the handle before he felt himself very nearly pass out. "I have to leave and get back there, tha- that's all."
"Kudo, what's going on? You suddenly began looking very ill back there-"
The last thing Shinichi heard before he slumped to the floor and passed out was Hakuba's puzzled question.