Disclaimer: I do not own Detective Conan/Case Closed.

Pairing: KaitoxShinichi

Heroes and Villains: Blue Moon Island

[Superpower Verse]

Part 6

The island's one museum was situated halfway up the island's one mountain. There was a bus that would take you up to the museum and back, but Kaito and Shinichi decided to take one of the scenic trails instead. After all, they weren't in a hurry, and the fresh air and exercise were very welcome, especially with the splendid scenery to go with it.

Parts of the mountainside were lightly forested while others sported strange and beautiful rock formations and ridges. It was, they both agreed, no wonder that they passed many other hikers along the way who had stopped to take pictures or to enjoy a peaceful picnic in the great outdoors.

What did surprise them was the enormous crowd they found outside the museum. The building itself was really just a larger than usual house. The number of people vying to get inside it was well beyond what it could be logically expected to hold. Therefore, it seemed that visitors were currently being allowed in only as members of guided tours. Each tour group consisted of only a dozen people or so, give or take depending on the number of kids.

"Man, I wasn't expecting this place to be so popular," Kaito observed as he peered over the heads of the crowd to try and figure out which line would lead them to the ticket seller and which were for those who already had tickets. Finally deciding he'd found the right line, he attached himself to the end of it, tugging a dismayed Shinichi along with him by the elbow.

"This is going to take forever," the detective sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "If I'd known how many people would be coming, I would have said we should come right when the place opened."

"Well, we're here now, so we might as well deal with it. Unless you'd prefer to leave for today and come back tomorrow?"

Shinichi found that he was sorely tempted, but, on second thought, he decided against it. Like Kaito had said, they were here now, and some part of him felt that they needed to see what was in this museum building. He'd always had a good sense for such things, even more so now that he could sense the residual thoughts and emotions and memories of things.

So he and Kaito got their tickets and were told to wait in the courtyard until their guide, Tomoko, called for them.

They spent a rather uneventful half hour watching other visitors mill around, chattering about the amazing food they'd had and asking around to see who had seen the ghost ship and when and who wanted to go see it again. One young man was telling everyone who would listen about how he had brought a special camera to take pictures of the ghost ship with, but, when he'd looked at the photos, the ship hadn't been in them. But the sea had been flat and black just as it had been, and he swore you could see the reflection in the water of the ghost ship's light even if you couldn't see the ship itself.

Kaito paid the guy fifty cents for a copy of his photo.

"It's kind of fun," he said when Shinichi gave him a questioning look. Then he'd grinned. "We can scare Miss Mouri with it."

Shinichi rolled his eyes.

"Hey, Tour Group K!" a young woman called out from the front steps of the museum. "I'm Tomoko! And I'll be guiding tour group K! So if that's you, it's time to form up and put on your listening ears!"

"Does she think we're like nine or something?" Kaito murmured under his breath, but he did so with a good natured laugh and moved to join the dozen other men and women who were apparently also members of tour group K.

"Okay, so is everyone here?" She read quickly down a list of names, and everyone said that yes, he or she was there. There was a bit of a stir when the group realized that they had the Milky Way Agency's most famous detective and a real live stage magician in their midst, but both boys were well used to such attention. They signed a few autographs, and passed out several business cards, but soon enough, Tomoko had them all making their way into the Blue Moon Museum of Island History.

"This building used to belong to this lady from a really wealthy family. It was their vacation home, and she came to live here full time after she retired," Tomoko told them all. "She loved this island because it was where she met the man she fell in love with. Unfortunately, a ship he was on was lost at sea during a terrible storm just before they were to be wed, but they say she never lost hope that he might come back one day. So she came back to this island every summer before eventually moving in full time and continued to wait for news of his return until the day that she too passed away."

"That's depressing," one of the young women in their tour group said, frowning.

Tomoko laughed—somewhat inappropriately, Shinichi thought, but then she explained. "The stories actually say that, the night before she died, her housekeeper woke in the middle of the night because she thought she'd heard voices. So she got up and followed the sound to her mistress's room. When she peered inside, she saw the lady sitting up in bed. The window was open and the moon was full, so the housekeeper had a good view, and she could see that her lady was alone." Tomoko's voice dropped low, inviting them all to lean in closer and listen hard. "But the lady was smiling and talking—and someone was talking back. The housekeeper could hear a man's voice and a man's laughter responding to the lady's words even though she could neither see a man nor make out what he was saying. She thought right away that it had to be a spirit. This island's always been full of ghosts. So she was scared, but only for a moment because then she saw the relaxed and joyful smile on her lady's face, and she knew that, if there was a ghost in that room with the old woman then it was a good ghost. Satisfied and not wishing to disturb them, the housekeeper went back to bed. The next morning, however, she couldn't resist telling her mistress that she had heard her talking to someone in the middle of the night.

"Did you have a visitor?" she asked the lady, pretending that she hadn't gone to look into her bedroom.

"Oh yes," her lady replied. "My Nathaniel finally came to see me. He wanted to let me know that he would be coming to escort me when my time came tonight. He's been waiting all these years so we can move on to the next world together."

The housekeeper didn't know what to say to that," Tomoko went on as her now rapt audience listened, all crowded around her in the house-turned-museum's entrance hall. "Part of her was horrified because her lady had just said that she was about to die. And part of her wondered if the woman had gone mad in her old age. But yet another part of her still remembered the disembodied man's voice and his kind laugh, and she knew that everything was going to be all right. Her mistress passed away that night in her sleep with a peaceful smile on her face. But when the housekeeper looked outside the window after calling the coroner's, she thought she saw her mistress—much younger—walking down by the beach with a young man next to her, holding her hand. In fact, I've heard that some people still see the lady and her beau sometimes when they look towards the sea from her old bedroom window after dark."

Another young woman sighed. "That's romantic."

"Don't you mean creepy?" her boyfriend asked, looking uneasy.

She laughed. "Oh come on. Imagine. A love that really lasts beyond a lifetime."

"I never liked ghost stories," an older gentleman in their group muttered. "They always gave me the willies. But I have to say, now that I'm getting up there in years myself, a nice positive ghost story every now and then might not be that bad."

"Would you wait for me for years and years if I disappeared?" Kaito asked, leaning in so that he was murmuring directly into Shinichi's ears. "Like if I disappeared on a mission and everyone told you I'd probably kicked the bucket."

Shinichi scowled. "No of course not. I'm a detective. I'd go find you."

Kaito chuckled, nuzzling Shinichi's ear. The detective blushed but didn't try to pull away because they were at the back of the tour group and no one was paying any attention to them with Tomoko starting on a new story up front. He could hear the smirk in Kaito's voice.

"For the record," the thief murmured. "I wouldn't sit around waiting either. I'd find you and steal you back from whatever dastardly villain was trying to keep you from me. And then I'd spirit you off to one of my hideouts where we wouldn't be missed and make love to you until my name is the only word you remember how to say."

"…Do you not realize that your fantasy has you starring yourself as a perverted kidnapper?"

"I thought I was describing a romantic rescue and retreat."

"…This is what I get for dating a former phantom thief," Shinichi grumbled. "Come on. We better hurry if we don't want to be left behind."

According to Tomoko, the former owner of the house had passed away with no relatives. She had, however, always been quite involved with the island's various arts and cultural organizations, and her will had had her home transformed into a museum to those arts and to the island that she had loved. The place was now a tribute to both those loves and hosted regular events that celebrated them.

In lieu of that, most of the museum's exhibits were dedicated to different crafts ranging from painting to ceramics. They displayed works by local artists through the ages and linked those pieces and artists to the island's history (which, to be entirely honest, had not been very eventful. There were stories that a pirate had used the place as his hideout back when barely anyone had lived there, but there seemed to be very little evidence to back that particular story). The largest exhibit was focused on blue moon coral, which had perhaps been the island's only true claim to fame before the opening of the Blue Moon Rose.

The unique and lovely coral had served as the inspiration for many artists and other craftsmen. It wasn't just its monetary value, however, that had made it important to the island. It was also an essential component of the island's equally unique underwater habitat, which was home to at least a dozen species of fish and crustaceans that were not found anywhere else in the world.

"Now, if you'll step through here, this is our main event room and the current resting place of the cursed treasure found just off of Half Moon Cove!" Tomoko announced with relish.

She was answered by an awed silence that was broken when Kaito let out a low whistle.

"Now that's what I call treasure," the magician said into the silence.

Shinichi could only agree.

There, housed within a long, glass display that ran the length of the room's back wall, was a glittering assortment of gold necklaces and bracelets, rings and brooches. Some sported jewels while others were so elaborately shaped that they needed no additional adornments. Alongside the jewelry was a heap of gold coins and a collection of ornate goblets and other random pieces of dinnerware. At the far end of the astonishing collection was an actual treasure chest.

"That can't all be real," the old man who didn't used to like ghost stories said. "Can it?"

Tomoko shrugged. "We had a few jewelers examine some of the items, and they authenticated them. That's real gold and real gems. We had to have our entire security system overhauled just to be allowed to display it here."

"Has there been any trouble?" asked Shinichi.

"Well, there was one attempt to steal the treasure the day after we installed it. But the thief had a heart attack just as he was leaving. He never even made it out the door. We haven't had any attempts since."

The silence that greeted this pronouncement was even more deafening than the one that had followed their initial introduction to the treasure.

"Wow," one of the girls said eventually, shaking her head. "That's crazy."

"You said it," the goy with her agreed, shivering. "What happened to the people who found all this? Did they, um, you know, d—die too?"

"What? Oh, no, no," Tomoko said, laughing. "They were fine last I heard. Better than fine actually, since they each got to keep a few pieces. So did a few other people involved with getting all this stuff dredged up, cleaned and installed."

Kaito and Shinichi traded looks as both made mental notes of this new development.

"I wouldn't want cursed treasure," someone muttered. "It'd be like taking home a bomb."

"You could always sell it."

"And become a murderer? No thanks."

"Get it exorcised first then."

"Oh come on. You guys can't all be taking this seriously. So one guy had a heart attack. It happens all the time. It doesn't mean anything."

"Hey, so is it pirate loot?" someone else asked eagerly, bringing a halt to the discussion as everyone waited for the answer.

"No one knows, but I say it's very likely," Tomoko replied, dropping into low, ominous tones. "It would certainly explain the ghost ship sightings. They say that that ship is the very ship whose ruins these treasures were taken from. But with the treasure gone, the spirits of the ship's crew have awakened, and now they sail around the island every night, seeking to reclaim it."

There was an uneasy stirring before another tourist asked, "Wouldn't it be better then to, you know, put it back?"

"Funny you should say that. The museum's management and the island's council have been discussing that idea too," Tomoko replied. "So it may happen. But, for now, we have the honor of getting to admire and look after it."

"Honor," Shinichi muttered under his breath, "is not the word I'd choose for it."

-To Be Continued-