Actual Pilot
"Just for the record, I think this is a bad idea."
But Conan's appeal falls, once again, on deaf ears—well no, not deaf, just very averse to listening to silly things such as reason or common sense or self-preservation.
"Why try to talk us out of it when you know we'll end up talking you into it anyway?" Ayumi asks him, very rhetorically so.
"Yeah!" Genta enthuses.
Conan opens his mouth to retort something, before promptly closing it shut, a bit chagrined.
"You know what the renowned Hell Kellen said about adventure?" Mistuhiko begins with the gravitas that sort of discourse requires.
Of course he knows. But just to humor him, Shinichi says. "No, tell me."
Mistuhiko visibly falters. "...alright, bluff called."
Conan rolls his eyes skyward.
"But the point is!" Mistuhiko soldiers on. "You will simply have to trust us on this, Conan-kun."
"...remember to chisel that into my tombstone." Shinichi whispers under his breath.
Ai conceals her amusement in a delicate cough that she stifles into her fist.
"What?" The rest of the children simultaneously ask, bemused.
"Nothing." Conan dismisses, shifting his gaze toward the blueness of a cool spring night shading the sky. "If you're so adamant to go already, what are we waiting for, then?"
"KID!" The children screech in an enthusiastic chorus.
"...oh, right." Shinichi mutters, clearly not sharing their joy on the matter.
"Where is he by the way?" Genta wonders.
"Yeah." Mitsuhiko agrees. "It's getting late, he should have been here by now…"
"Maybe he'll make an appearance once the 'quest' is over." Ai remarks.
Conan snorts. "Color me hopeful."
"Hey, don't you guys dare doubt Kaitou KID like that!" Ayumi is swift as lightning to jump to his defense. "Just 'cause he said he didn't really like making plans for the day because then the word 'premeditated' gets thrown around, or something like that, doesn't mean he won't keep his word to us!"
Shinichi and Haibara share a look at that.
"I really hate to break it to you," Conan begins in a tone that suggests that he really doesn't. "But a short announcement printed on the last page of the newspaper doesn't actually qualify as KID giving you his word."
It qualifies as delusion, mostly, but Shinichi is magnanimous enough to keep that part to himself.
"Oh, don't you worry, Conan-kun." Ayumi tells him with a gentle smile. "We actually bribed him."
"How the he–" Shinichi halts in his shock, fast to course-correct in front of the children. "How did you guys even manage to bribe The Kaitou KID? You don't have that kind of money."
It's the children's turn to share a look amongst themselves this time. They all open their mouths to answer him in unison, when—
"KID!"
Shinichi ignores his poor eardrums being pierced by their shrill volume and whips around to be greeted by billows of glittery smoke that waft in the air, only to painstakingly vanish and reveal a brilliant shade of white shining underneath, just like a beacon of light in the dead of the night—he didn't even hear him.
"Yep. That's me." KID states with gusto. "Flashy and effective."
"KID-chan-san." Genta reprimands as he marches up to him with an exaggerated scowl and his hands framing his waist, mirrorring the stance he has no doubt absorbed after being on the other side of his mother's scoldings countless of times. "You're late! What do you have to say for yourself, young man?"
"What're you talking about? I'm always on time." KID replies with a light scoff, pouting like a petulant child. "Everyone else is just early. Not my fault."
Shinichi, who just sorta malfunctioned as soon as Kaitou KID graced the periphery of his awareness with his presence, has just become extremely aware of the organ insistently battering against the walls of his thoracic cavity now tripping over itself at the sheer sight of him, at the mere sound of his voice (at how he has sorely missed him in the empty spaces haunting a radio-silent fortnight).
This is fine. He's probably just experiencing a mild heart attack or something.
"You haven't been causing any trouble, have you, pipsqueaks?"
KID's question cuts through his reverie, but doesn't do much for the ongoing heart attack.
"No way, we're little angels!" Ayumi declares with the most adorable and unimpeachable smile this side of the world has ever seen. "You can ask anyone!"
Conan and Ai hastily shake their heads while the kids aren't looking but KID is, but promptly feign innocence as soon the children send a suspicious glance their way.
KID meets their (practiced) Bambi Eyes with the curl of a smile growing across his face. "...but breaking the rules is much more fun, isn't it?"
The kids answer back with a Cheshire Cat Grin everyone in a 100 mile radius and their mothers should be worried about.
"Should we maybe be worried about that?" Shinichi asks the only other mature adult capable of things like rationality and fear in this ragtag little gang.
"Perhaps in an hour or two." Ai casually replies.
"That's not very reassuring!"
"Wasn't meant to be."
The children's cheerful voices rise over their whispers.
"Come ooon, aren't you burning with curiosity!?"
KID shrugs into his shoulders. "I'd say I'm lukewarm with curiosity, thanks." And something in his voice could be mistaken for hesitation as he voices. "You sure you guys are up for this? Who knows what awaits us...there."
"No, we're not!" Genta exclaims excitedly.
"Which is why we've enlisted your expertise." Mitsuhiko continues with a polite smile.
"I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I'm–"
"No one voted." Ai interjects. "And we're not that confident."
"But.. " Shinichi tries—he genuinely, actually tries. "You're still welcome to join."
KID, whose focus has been robbed by the kids since his surprise-arrival, turns for the first time to fully face him, to actually look at him, straight into his eyes. Shinichi's breath unexpectedly catches in his throat as KID pins him into place with nothing but a simple gaze, his half-concealed expression giving beneath something that cracks right through the surface.
"I almost believe you mean that." Kaito murmurs under his breath, his tone so low it's indescribable.
(Thin tendrils of guilt slither up his chest.)
Shinichi frowns because this is what he was dreading. "Of course I mean it, I–"
KID cuts in. "Aw, you wanna do some bonding, Tantei-kun?" He suddenly pipes up with loud, mock-elation and a plastic smile plastered to his face. "I'm touched!"
Kaito is deflecting. Because of course he is.
...dammit, two minutes in and they're already off to a rocky start. Not like they hadn't been off to a rocky ending. Actually, it's just been rocky all along, as far as the eye can see. And that has nothing to do with the fact that they're currently in the middle of nowhere surrounded by a bunch of land and rocks.
Shinichi exhales through his nose in defeat, being the first to sever eye contact, digging his hands deep in the pockets of his jacket to avoid fidgeting in front of the object of his afflictions (and affections).
"Are you sure you're up to the task, Oh Great Phantom Thief?" Ai turns the question back to him, seamlessly slicing through this weird tension crackling between the two of them, which the rest of the kids don't seem to be aware of, thank god.
KID, who gets overly defensive when his mettle is brought into question, does what he usually does in such situations. He overcompensates with aplomb.
"If you think I have somewhere better to be on a Saturday night, you better think again!"
"That's sad..." Mitsuhiko utters with a slow, judgey shake of the head.
"You zip it, mister." KID snaps, sulky.
"It's okay, Kaitou KID-sama-sshi." Ayumi reassures while she grabs fistfuls of his mantle and smothers the satin fabric in her tiny fists to better drive her point across, and Conan thinks they maybe should really have a talk about honorifics while they're at it. "We ride together...we die together." She avows, a creeping intensity glinting fiercely in her wide doe eyes.
"Oh-kay." Kaito pats her head once then twice with an ameliorating smile as he not-so-subtly tries to get her to let go of her death grip on him, before he leans toward Ai with a freaked out expression. "Someone's clearly had one too many near-death-experiences lately!"
Ai regards him with nonchalance. "You seem surprised, somehow. Why?"
"Are you serious–!?"
"Yeah!" Genta, unaware and uninterested in their exchange, adds his own wheels to Ayumi's train of conversation. "And I also forgot how to get home from here!"
At the array of silent and unimpressed stares he receives from the group, Genta back-pedals on his statement with a tentative, toothy smile.
"I mean...I love you all?"
KID turns to the side to heave a (theatrically) deep sigh. "...Great."
Just a short distance from this ragtag little gang, nestled in the woodland and embraced in the flora as if it had sprung right up from the ground, stands an imposing mansion. Or a haunted castle. It varies with different perspectives.
"Well, fair enough." KID decides in the end with a half-resigned, half-resolute sigh. "I did come here fully expecting to end up in jail. So."
And then, with a snap of his fingertips, KID reappears out of another puff of smoke clad in plain clothes, grinning broadly at the children's—well, most of them, anyway—awed expressions.
"Let's get this party started."