"Have you opened the box?"

Kaito blinked twice under Kaitou Kid's mask, thrown off balance slightly by the question that had been brusquely asked in a no-nonsense tone almost immediately after they'd started driving away from the scene of the exchange. Box? What box is he talking about? Could he mean that Dona Par Society one I found in Dad's pit? Not quite sure how to answer, Kaito was mulling over whether to assume that was the box being referenced when he suddenly felt a pair of hands on his shoulders that pushed him rather firmly down onto a stool which seemed to be actually welded into the van's floor. Kaito also noted with more than some surprise that beyond being rather roughly sat down, there seemed to be no other effort forthcoming to try and physically restrain him. Then again, handcuffs are pretty easy to pick and get off when you know what you're doing...

"Answer the question. I won't ask it again." The deep, masculine voice that had initially addressed him suddenly took on a dangerous timbre. "Have you opened the box?"

Kaito reminded himself quickly to use his alter ego's voice-they were talking with Kaitou Kid, after all, not Kuroba Kaito. He replied with a devil-may-care shrug and signature Kid grin. "I've opened plenty of boxes over the course of my career, my good man. I have no idea what particular box it is that you're referring to, I'm afraid. Tell me, would it be larger or smaller than a breadbox?" Kaito finished in an almost mocking tone, the cool outer persona of Kid never revealing the more than slightly nervous teenager who was under the white suit much to Kaito's relief. Poker Face saves the day yet again...

"Hah. I've been saying it all along since he reappeared over a year ago, haven't I?" This was a different voice, sweetly feminine but with a venomous edge that was coming from over Kaito's left shoulder. "I knew that this Kid wasn't going to be our Kid, or rather the Kid we knew," the woman's voice continued in a suddenly airy tone with a half-laugh. Neither of the speakers were stepping out of the shadows of the darkened van, not that Kaito minded that- then keeping themselves in the shadows meant that they maybe didn't intend to try and kill him. "Though I certainly give him a lot of credit for managing to match the late Kuroba-san's panache." Kaito could feel a pair of eyes behind him studying the middle of his back intently.

Wasn't our Kid? What does she mean by that? Did Dad actually steal for this group or something like that? And these people obviously knew about Dad being Kid, too. Judging by Snake and now this group, at a minimum, knowing about his father's double life as Kaitou Kid, Kuroba Toichi seemed to have done a pretty lousy job keeping his secret in his son's opinion.

"Who are you, really? Since it's very clear now that you're not Kuroba Toichi." It was the man asking, and Kaito was furiously coming up with different ways to get out of answering when a voice he hadn't heard in a while spoke up- a scratchy male voice that sent quickly suppressed chills down Kaito's spine the instant that its owner was connected to it in his mind. It's been a while since I've seen him, but there's absolutely no mistaking that voice...

"I'd be willing to bet that it's someone who knew Kuroba Toichi quite well." The man that Kaito knew by the code name of Snake emerged from the shadows to Kaito's right, an oily smirk pasted in place across his features. "Now that we've finally got you where we want you, it's time for you to answer a few questions. Who you are under that hat is a good start, although I've already got my very well-informed guesses." The older man stepped forward and reached for Kaito's hat to remove it before a muffled gunshot rang out, followed by the van swerving wildly to the left as the driver tried desperately to regain control. Everyone in the back tumbled around, Kaito grabbing onto the stool to keep upright whole the van slowly skidded to a halt on the side of the road, severely tilted to its left front side. "What the hell just happened?" snapped Snake after the van had fully stopped and everyone was standing upright again.

"Th-the tire gave out...actually, I think that someone shot at our tire. Didn't you hear that gunshot a few seconds ago, Snake?" replied the young male driver in a shaky tone before slowly opening the driver's door and walking around the front to the other side of the car in order to try and inspect the damage more closely.

Just what's going on here? I know Jii wouldn't have done that because he knows I wanted to try and get information from these guys about dad and what he was doing. So who or what-

"This had damn well better not have been anything that was set up by you, Kid" snarled Snake before he pulled a small firearm out from his pocket, flipped the safety off and pressed it roughly against Kaito's stomach. "Raise your hands, turn around and get out of the van now. Any funny business, any sudden moves at all and you'll get a bullet right in the back." He let out a husky chuckle. "Wouldn't be nearly so acrobatic if you were paralyzed from the waist down, now would you?"

"I can assure you right now that this was nothing I arranged," replied Kaito smoothly as he slowly raised his arms and turned around before stepping forward and immediately feeling the gun's short barrel pressed very hard into the small of his back, the pressure centered right on his spine and clearly felt even through his rather thick cape that doubled as a glider, his white jacket and his purple undershirt. "Do you really think that I desired to prolong this visit with you unsavory lot any longer than necessary?" He took Snake's ensuing silence as they finished exiting the van as a form of assent.

It was then that Kaito heard a gunshot to his left before seeing the two black-jacketed men that had hurt his mom emerging from the dense woods to their left at a dead run, blindingly bright flashlights pointed at them and machine guns leveled at the group.

"So you think that Kaitou Kid is stealing for a secret society or something like that?" Shinichi's brows rose before his mouth settled into a serious-looking, contemplative frown. "But that wouldn't make any sense, would it? He always returned everything he stole, just like Kuroba does now right?" He checked his room's lock again before crawling into his bed and covering himself with the comforter to continue the conversation quietly; Ran would have his head- or rather, Conan's- if he was caught up this late on a school night chatting with someone on his phone even though she'd taken him to the Kaitou Kid heist with her and let him stay up in the first place. He was only sorry that he hadn't been able to stick the transmitter he'd brought with him on the thief after he'd discovered a partially open window that had led to the director's office and managing to sneak away from Ran and Sonoko long enough to squeeze into the room.

"Well, I believe that the first Kaitou Kid was at any rate. In fact, the original Kaitou Kid- Kuroba Toichi- his motivation for his thefts is something that we'll need to figure out before we can really get anywhere in this investigation, I have a feeling. It certainly can't have merely been to finance a business venture, or they probably would have simply kept what Kaitou Kid stole and sold it on the black market." He paused while Watson emitted a somewhat muffled screech. "Sorry, I just placed her cover on her cage and she doesn't always feel like going to bed when she should. Now as I was saying-" Shinichi heard a faint knocking on the other end of the line and then the receiver being muffled. "What is it, Shiori? I'm right in the middle of a consulation." This was followed by a few very faint, inaudible sentences. "Thank you, Shiori. Keep the back door unlocked a while longer but it doesn't really surprise me that Kuroba isn't back yet." Shinichi then heard the phone being moved around before hakuba spoke much more clearly. "Kuroba hasn't returned from his visit with his mother yet, it seems." Both meitantei knew that the magician had used the visit as a front.

"Yeah. Hey, I was going to ask you- why did you have Kuroba draw up those diagrams of the different finales that the magicians were performing at the time of their vanishing? I remember him running into me at the hospital and spilling them all over the..." Shinichi's sentence drifted off unfinished as a new thought sprang unbidden to his mind.

Well, whoever kidnapped them must have figured out how their tricks worked so that they would know the best time to kidnap them at, right? But aren't those top-secret magician secrets that they don't ever tell to anyone but their assistants if they have one?

"Something the matter, Kudo-kun? You stopped in midsentence. And yes, I had Kuroba make the diagrams to try and figure out at what points the kidnappers probably made their moves so that I could go back to the scenes and look for evidence later."

"Oh, nothing's the matter Hakuba-kun. I was just thinking of something that a classmate of mine, Mitsuhiko, said a while ago." He repeated the quote to the other boy. "I suddenly remembered it while I was asking that question, and thinking about it more now I know what's been bugging me this whole time about these vanishings."

"Oh? And what exactly is that?"

"How perfectly timed each and every one of them is, and how little evidence has been left behind at all of them. The kidnappers had to have really known what they were doing and have them planned out absolutely perfectly to be able to pull the kidnappings off so cleanly, right?" Shinichi caught his breath and let the sentences sink in. "That would imply an very intimate working knowledge of the tricks being used as well as the layout of the venues that they're being performed in, which would then seem to mean..." He trickled off deliberately this time, seeing if Saguru was following his train of thought to test out whether the theory was as sound as it seemed.

"I believe I understand. You're thinking that it's a group of other magicians kidnapping these magicians, aren't you Kudo-kun?" There was a large chunk of silence while the blonde was apparently mulling the idea over. "It would explain several ofthe stranger aspects of this case, I'll certainly give it that." Shinichi could almost see the blonde nodding on the other end. "Now we just have to hope that Kuroba can managed to extricate himself from whatever he's doing tonight in one piece. He's quite proficient at that, luckily." Shinichi heard a door shutting. "The group clearly shows an interest in Kaitou Kid, so we just have to give Kuroba rope and hope he doesn't hang himself with it before we can get to the bottom of what exactly's going on."