Chapter Text
Shinichi hadn’t meant to lash out the way he did.
He was just so frustrated. At constantly being undermined, at having to resort to tranquilizer darts and overacting and sneaking around to get anything done.
Normally he enjoyed KID’s heists – had come tonight to specifically get his mind off his frustrations, in fact. But after the Inspector had sworn at his presence and had him thrown from the room, and nobody had listened when he piped up and pointed out the obvious security flaw – all the stress and pent up anger bubbled up again, and then on the moonlit rooftop spilled out of his mouth unbidden.
“It’s such a waste,” Shinichi said. “With your skills, you could make a real difference.”
“A difference?” Kaitou KID asked, smile never wavering, not even in the wake of the sudden vitriol in the small detective’s tone. “What kind of difference do you mean, tantei-kun?”
A growl of impatience burned in Shinichi’s throat – he kicked at the rooftop pointlessly, needing to do something. “You could catch the bad guys, instead of being one of them. Stop real crimes instead of wasting police time with sideshows.”
“Sideshows? Tantei-kun, I’m hurt you think so little of my heists.”
“Just, stop! Be serious for once!” Shinichi shouted, sounding every bit the child he looked as his voice cracked on the words.
KID’s Poker Face did not falter. “I’m a thief, tantei-kun. I don’t operate like you detectives.”
“That’s your choice,” Shinichi accused. “You’re plenty smart enough. But instead of doing something meaningful, you do this.”
“As harsh a critic as always,” KID retorted easily. He swept into a bow. The sounds of the taskforce’s shouts were growing closer. “Perhaps next time, tantei-kun, I can change your mind.”
As the wind gusted along the rooftop, Shinichi belatedly hit his belt to inflate a soccerball, but it was already too late. The thief leapt off the roof’s edge, his cape caught the breeze, and then he was away into the night.
Later, Shinichi would remember the conversation with guilt and regret.
Those had been simpler times.
“Yeah, I just returned two weeks ago,” Shinichi said over the phone to Hattori. He was strolling through the industrial park on the outer edges of Haido – his recent efforts in fighting the Black Org had pinpointed a few suspicious warehouses in the area that he wanted to check out. “I got some new leads while I was over there, I’m following them up now.”
“Kudo, you idiot, don’t go alone! Aren’t you the one always telling me how dangerous these guys are?” Hattori grumbled, voice crackling with static.
“I’m just having a look around,” Shinichi said. “This is the first free afternoon I’ve had since I got back. If I leave it until the next time you get your butt up here from Osaka the lead could have gone cold!”
“If ya asked, I woulda caught the train up!”
Shinichi hadn’t asked, because as insistent as Hattori was about being involved, he would continue to do everything in his power to keep the other detective well out of the Black Org’s sights. A kid poking around the warehouse district after school was far less attention-grabbing than the Detective of the West strolling past. “I didn’t know if I’d have the time. Look, I gotta go. I’ll call you back later to let you know if I found anything.”
“Kudo, don’t you dare hang up the-”
Shinichi ended the call, and for good measure silenced his phone. The last thing he needed was Hattori ringing back to cuss him out while he was sneaking around.
From the outside, the warehouse in question didn’t look any different to the ones surrounding it. It was highly likely – like several of his other leads – that it would be empty, either a dummy front or long left behind. There was no way to tell without getting inside and having a look for himself.
Being in the body of a seven year old made it easy to wriggle through a gap in the fencing at the back, and sneak around the sides of the building, hidden by the scraggly shrubbery edging it. If it had a basement, there would be ventilation. His instincts panned out correct as he finally came across a window set at ground level, the frame just loose enough that he felt confident he could wiggle it the rest of the way open.
Ten minutes later, he dropped into the dim boiler room – the only light coming from the little that peeked through the highset window. He headed to the doorway, pressing his ear against it. The building was definitely in some form of use – it didn’t have that odd, eerie silence and stillness that came with the lack of running electricity or cut off water.
It didn’t sound like there was anyone in the immediate vicinity, so Shinichi reached for the door handle and gently eased it open, wincing at the slight squeak it made on its hinges. The concrete hallway outside was empty, however, so he crept onwards, periodically checking doors as he passed, making his way towards the stairs.
He didn’t find much until he reached the warehouse floor proper.
Contraband. Crates and crates and crates of it. Illegal weapons, restricted chemicals, restricted pharmaceuticals, computer parts – enough to outfit a whole operation. It looked like a halfway house, likely a distribution point for one of the smaller branches.
This was definitely the Black Organisation.
Shinichi snapped some pictures with his phone, but there was too much to go through, and now that he knew this was Black Org territory he had to be fast, and he had to be careful. There was no way there weren’t any guards about, not with this much illicit inventory.
An operation like this had to have logistics, files, something to organise it all. Shinichi just needed to find it, then he needed to call Jodie in and get the place either on 24hour watch or judiciously raided.
The offices would be upstairs – he could even see a few on the mezzanine ringing the warehouse floor, and stairs leading to the floor above that. Offices meant files, meant computers.
It also meant people.
It was strange though, that he had yet to see any guards as he snuck up the nearest stairwell. He would have thought that perhaps this warehouse had its security automated, if what few cameras he’d seen weren’t clearly decommissioned. It made a certain amount of sense for the Org to do so – any sort of recording was a double-edged sword that could be turned against them – but they normally compensated with manpower. Or at least security tighter than what a determined seven year old could get through.
Yet he didn’t see any sign of life until he was in the upper level hallway. Around the corner, the whisper of a footfall, the flicker of a shadow on the opposite wall. Shinichi froze, eyes darting for a place to hide.
No time. He raised his watch as the figure rounded the bend.
And found himself staring down the barrel of a very distinctive card gun.
“KID?” His finger froze over the trigger.
“Tantei-kun.” KID’s voice was studiously neutral – Shinichi thought, if he wanted to, that he might read surprise in it, but whether it was positive or negative he couldn’t tell. “Haven’t seen you for a while.”
“I was out of the country.” Two months overseas, working with the FBI to crack a foreign branch of the Black Organisation. It had helped his cover as ‘Conan’, coinciding with the summer break, and let some of the heat on his alternate identity cool off. He was feverishly glad to be back though – as useful as it had been to lop off one of the Org’s fingers, he’d missed Japan, and Ran, terribly. And playing ‘nephew’ to his overbearingly affectionate parents, even if they were in the know, had been its own kind of tiring. “What are you doing here?”
“I think that should be my question,” KID replied. “But it's far more important that both of us not be here as quickly as possible.” Then without even asking, the thief scooped Shinichi up under his arm and ran silently towards the exit.
Shinichi struggled in place. “Wait! Why?” He still couldn’t hear any sound of pursuing guards, or alarms, or anything that would demand their immediate departure.
“The building is rigged to blow.” Shinichi stopped his struggles, mind whirring. Was the warehouse a trap?
KID shot a card at the nearest window, not breaking his stride as he leapt through the broken glass. He deployed his glider mid jump, catching the updraft of warm air from road. It carried them another two blocks, where KID finally let him go on the roof of a closed hardware complex.
No sooner than they landed did an earth-shuddering boom knock Shinichi off his feet.
The warehouse they’d just left was crumbling in on itself, a plume of black smoke beginning to rise from the wreckage. “No…” He scrambled back to his feet, staring. The warehouse hadn’t exactly been small. The damage was breath-taking. It was a total write off.
“You seem upset, tantei-kun.”
“It was evidence,” Shinichi said feebly. He finally had a solid lead on the Black Org, and now he’d just seen it go up in smoke.
“It was resources,” KID corrected. “Far better they don’t have it.”
Shinichi turned his gaze on KID, a horrible thought beginning to occur to him.
There hadn’t been any guards in the complex. That had been strange. And what had KID been doing there in the first place? Since when was he involved with the Black Organisation?
Back-dropped against the setting sun, with a rising plume of smoke behind him, the thief seemed suddenly a stranger.
KID, for his part, shook out his cape, and hopped nonchalantly onto the building’s edge. “The fire department has already been called, and the police will arrive eventually. If you want to avoid drawing attention, you should make yourself scarce, tantei-kun.” With no further ado, he stepped off the side of the building and disappeared from sight.
Shinichi was left gaping at the roaring flames, now visible even three blocks away. The distant wail of sirens began to rise.
KID wasn’t exactly a stranger to property damage, but this was…
This wasn’t KID.
This couldn’t be KID.