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Caught on Camera

Photograph: Dreams

"I assume this is the page about the strange things we did while we were asleep?" Shinichi guessed, eyeing the next spread of photos.

"Some of them anyway," his mother agreed.

The first of the pictures featured a teenage Kaito. In it the blankets had lost the battle to gravity and lay in a fluffy mound on the floor. The magician himself was practically falling over the edge of his bed while he waved an arm as though fighting some imaginary monster…

. . . . . . . . .

He'd been having a nice dream about being at the beach. Which was a little odd because he didn't much like the beach. But Shin-chan had been there, smiling up at him from where he was sprawled rather invitingly on their towels. Then he noticed that there was an open cooler sitting in the sand beside the towels. A look inside revealed boxes of chocolate milk, chocolate ice cream bars, miniature chocolate cream pies, and even bottles of chocolate syrup in case there wasn't enough chocolate in everything else. In short, all the chocolate you could possibly want on a warm beach.

So there he was with all the ingredients for what promised to be a very enjoyable afternoon and all sorts of interesting ideas flittering through his head.

And then the giant sea monster rose out of the waves and grabbed Shin-chan and took him away.

Horrified, he ran back into town where he learned that the sea monster lived in a palace under the waves just off the shore. Every now and then the monster came and kidnapped people.

"Why?" Kaito asked, naturally confused and more than a little concerned.

It turned out the monster captured humans to act as its servants. Those who were taken were never seen again.

This was not what Kaito had wanted to hear.

He was not giving his Shin-chan to a sea monster!

Asking around, he found an old man who said he could tell him how to find the monster's palace. The old man also gave him a giant seashell which glowed when he took it and turned into a scimitar. It looked very sharp.

A blur of colors later he braced himself and walked into the sea from the rabbit shaped rock that the old man had shown him. The water was murky but he could see the glow of the castle on the sea floor as he drew closer and closer to it.

It didn't cross his mind to wonder why he could breathe under water.

Eventually the castle came into sight, composed almost entirely of coral and pearly stones. It was too beautiful for the home of a monster, but maybe it had stolen that too. With his shell scimitar in hand, he marched into the castle.

He fought scaly, monster guards and was given directions by a pair of helpful servant girls who told him that they too had been stolen from their homes. He wondered idly if Shin-chan would be wearing one of those peculiar but elegant servants' robes too. But now wasn't the time to be distracted.

So he defeated the monster and rescued his Shin-chan and didn't go on to rule over the former sea monster's underwater realm. What they did do was stay the night. The people freed by the monster's defeat put on a celebration feast and then danced and partied through the glowing coral gardens.

. . . . . . . . .

…Over all, it had still been a good dream, Kaito mused. An adventure, a party (all in his honor), and a nicely cuddly Shinichi all in one.

He couldn't place the next two pictures though. One of the pictures showed Shinichi brandishing a pillow at him (which he couldn't put a time to because it happened rather often). As for the other one… Shinichi was lying on the ground in it, wrapped up in a cocoon of blankets with his eyebrows drawn together in a frown. "Were you having a bad dream?"

"Uh…it was just a weird dream…" Shinichi hedged.

He was inclined to blame that one all on the new illusion Kaito had pulled earlier that day where, for a full ten minutes, he'd actually managed to convince everyone at his show that day that there were two of him…

. . . . . . . . .

"Shin-chan~! It's time to get up! If you sleep any longer you're going to sleep the whole weekend away!"

Groaning, Shinichi rolled over and burrowed deeper into the fluffy sanctuary of his blankets even though he knew it was a futile effort. He wasn't at all surprised when hands began to pry him from his comfortable little nest of blankets. He clung onto them for a moment longer before relenting and sitting up to give the intruder a disgruntled look.

That was when he did a double take. Because instead of the grinning magician he was expecting there was…well, the magician was still there, but either he was seeing double or the teen had learned to duplicate himself.

He stared. They grinned.

With another groan, he flopped back onto the bed. "Kai, what did you do?"

"What do you mean?" the magicians asked, sounding like some strange echo. There was a pause then a single voice exclaimed, "What're you answering for? He was talking to me."

"No he wasn't," another voice that sounded exactly the same retorted.

Shinichi pinched the bridge of his nose. Maybe he was going insane.

In the end he'd dragged the two to see Toichi-san in hopes of an explanation. The older magician had looked at his twinned sons with only mild surprise.

"I told you this would happen if you used the blue feather for the spell," he'd told the younger magician (magicians?). "It'll probably take about a day to wear off."

This hadn't made much sense to Shinichi, but the Kaitos seemed to get it. They shrugged in unison.

"I suppose it can't be helped," the one on Shinichi's left said.

The one on his right nodded amiably before grabbing Shinichi's hand and heading for the door. "Come on Shin-chan, let's get something to eat."

"Hey, I was going to do that!" the first Kaito complained, bounding after them.

It was the most annoying meal Shinichi had ever eaten. The café only had booths—standard ones built for four to sit two by two across from each other. The food here was good, but it was difficult to enjoy it when every ten minutes or so he had to get up and switch seats. Why did he have to do this? Because the Kaito on the other side of the table generally took about that long to start complaining that the seating arrangement was unfair. He could see the confusion on their waitress's face as each time she returned he seemed to be sitting somewhere different. Except since both Kaitos ordered the same thing and ate at the same speed, she wasn't sure if it was her imagination. Shinichi could sympathize all too well. He was getting confused himself.

"So which one of you is real?" he asked finally.

"I am," they both said at the same time. Then they glared across the table at each other. Shinichi dropped his head into his hands. He really should have expected that.

It only went downhill from there.

"Whoever has the bigger audience by the end of the show is the better magician," one Kaito declared half an hour later as they stood in the plaza outside of the restaurant they had just left.

The other smirked, radiating smug confidence. "Agreed."

The contest to find out who was the better magician ended only when Shinichi got fed up with the whole thing and threatened never to speak to them—him?—ever again. They relented, both claiming to have won.

They had gone to the amusement park after that. It was, after all, what they had originally planned to do that day. It didn't take long for Shinichi to start wishing he'd just gone home. First was the ridiculous cotton candy eating contest which Shinichi only put a stop to by pointing out that there were a lot of children at the park they would be depriving of the fluffy sweets should they really get into it. They argued every time they reached a ride that didn't have more than two seats in a row which eventually led to them having to settle for the rides that had three or more (so Shinichi could sit in the middle). And of course they had competed at every single booth in the carnival game sector of the park.

And now… Well, now they wanted to know who he thought was the better kisser. That was when he'd decided it was time to run away.

He loved Kaito very much and he had nothing against being kissed by the magician (quite the opposite, as long as they didn't have other things they were supposed to be doing), but he drew the line at being dragged into this inane competition against himself that Kaito seemed to have begun.

Now…how to get home without getting caught? Or, no, if he went home, he'd surely be found. Where could he go that Kaito wouldn't think to look? Toichi-san had said whatever spell this was would wear off in a day. So he just had to stay hidden for the rest of the day. Where to go, where to go… Bookstore? Pleasant, but too obvious. Library? Same problem. Grocery store? He really didn't want to spend that much time in the grocery store. Fish market? Effective, maybe, but too smelly for an extended stay. Aquarium? Too far away. He'd never make it there without being spotted. Peering around the corner of the building he was currently hiding behind, he scanned the skyline. That was when he spotted the glitter of a glass roof he recognized. That was the new botanical garden that had just opened! It was full of plants and thin, winding trails it was all too easy to get lost in. Perfect! Now he just had to get there without being seen. If he backtracked a little, there was a side street he knew would lead him straight to the place.

Drawing away from the corner, he turned—and came face to face with Kaito.

"There you are!" the magician said cheerfully. "I've been looking all over for you."

"K—Kaito." Shinichi backpedaled hurriedly only to crash into something warm and solid. Strong arms wrapped around him from behind, aborting his attempt at flight.

"Now, now," an all too familiar voice murmured in his ear. "It's not polite to run away from your date~."

That was when he'd woken up—to find that he wasn't alone in his room.

He stared at the magician currently half in and half out of his bedroom window for a moment before picking up the pillow that had fallen on the ground beside him (why was he on the ground?), and smacking the intruder upside the head with it before he could dodge. Kaito let out a confused and rather muffled yelp as he suddenly found himself the subject of a vigorously flailing pillow barrage.

. . . . . . . . .

…Kaito was still watching him expectantly. Shinichi coughed and hurriedly turned the page. "Let's just move on."

TBC

A.N: Er, I was in a weird mood when I wrote this one… ^^U