A/N: Hey guys! I'm amazed and astonished at the amount of love and support even after such a long hiatus! Regarding the issue of the list of APTX victims, which many of you asked about: yes, I am aware that canonically, Shinichi's status was changed to deceased. However, for reasons of plot that I can't disclose just yet (can't ruin the fun~) that status has changed yet again~

Barring that though, I'm not and don't claim to be a DC expert! I try to keep things as canonically aligned as possible but there are over 1000 files of manga, 900+ episodes and a lot more technically non-canon bits of content that I may choose to incorporate (for those of you that caught the sunflowers reference in the heist chapter). DC is so big and so old that there's so much content, and it's hard not to miss things sometimes. And this fic was started two years ago. A lot in canon hadn't happened yet two years ago, and the way I plotted this fic out is now currently straying further and further from where Gosho Aoyama may have wanted to take the story. I ask that you please excuse me if I screw something up - I'm very likely to! And also keep in mind that this is AU content going forward - though I suppose the whole premise was very au anyway!

Also: I'm v v dumb! Like I'm Not At All very mystery geek I'm like Kogoro level so please excuse the slow and possibly anti-climatic way this case might play out! I'm trying my best, honestly. As always, leave a review in the box if you liked it~ Please, it feeds my soul and waters my crops!

The sudden ringing sound startled him and he instinctively patted his own pocket, only for the sound to stop a mere second later.

"Ah - not now, please," Chiyoko whispered harshly into her phone, "Or - I suppose, if you really want, you can send it to my work phone. Not this one, obviously. I'm in the middle of something." A pause. "I'll call you back later."

Conan raised an eyebrow at the woman.

Chiyoko waved the phone in her hand as if to emphasize her point "A friend had some news."

Conan eyed her phone charm, swaying almost hypnotically, and neglected to press further.

"What can you tell me about your great uncle? You hadn't mentioned him much, before." he began instead, putting the recording of the camera footage to the background and pulling forward the security program that controlled camera positions.

He now discovered that there was no time to replace the footage of the camera between the crime and its discovery, therefore, whoever had done it must have set up a different recording device - one that would record over the footage taken from the hall, so that the video evidence would be erased in real time. The problem was that no such camera could be found online - most likely the culprit took time before hand to set up the recording system so that the rogue camera went online precisely when it was meant to and then disappeared from the system again.

It was like a game, really. He could now eliminate his suspects one by one, until only the murderer was left in the running. Madoka and Henry both had enough conflict with Sumire to do it, but both had shaky alibis he'd yet to verify, and Keisuke didn't seem to have any less conflict with his half-cousin. Masayuki-san, who seemed to suffer abuse from most of his grand-nieces-and-nephews, had ample reason, too. Conan's personal instinct drew him to the master of the house - though he had, as of yet, no reason to suspect Akita-san to be the murderer. As unpleasant as the old man could be, he appeared to place significance on his family. Beside that - from the way he'd told off his grandchildren when they had first behaved rudely, Akita-san didn't want any smears on the family reputation either. A murder, in their own home, would produce the opposite effect. Still, something felt inevitably off about the old man.

Though, of course, there were other curiosities.

"My great uncle's rather mild-mannered. He's very absent and prefers to keep to his books - as you could probably tell. Quite the impressive catalog. Still sorting through the boxes from when he moved in with the rest of us, which is what he was presumably doing when the murder occurred. He's very fond of Keisuke-kun, and Henry-kun as well." A brief pause as she considered. "He seemed quite - well, recently, it appears as though he'd become rather uncomfortable around my grandfather."

"Uncomfortable?"

"Well, he did leave the room so quickly when he saw my grandfather was there. Even though we had guests. Since last week he's avoided Ojii-sama like the plague."

That piqued his interest. It was the first hint that his feeling about Akita-san wasn't completely unfounded. "Why would Masayuki-san be uncomfortable around his own brother?"

"Well, perhaps," Chiyoko put a finger on her chin, as if deep in thought, gaze flickering to Conan's face like she was testing him. "He knows a secret?"

A secret makes a woman, woman.

The words came into existence almost violently in his head, as did the tone that usually accompanied them.

"Conan-nii-chan?" A thin voice cut too quick into his thoughts.

His gaze snapped to her immediately, as if to assure himself that she was in fact, still there. "Ran?"

She'd taken to standing on the chair so that she could reach the computer, pointing with short fingers at the screen, a tinge of innocent curiosity bright in violet eyes. "It looks like home, doesn't it?"

He crossed over to the screen, frowning lightly in concentration. The camera resolution wasn't of particularly good caliber, so he could barely make it out - it's a wonder Ran did, but she was younger. He remembered how sharp his own eyes had been, when he'd been freshly seven years old the second time round. The wallpaper that lined the hall was something similar to the print his mother had chosen for their home at the height of his father's fame. His mother always had - strange taste, to say the least. He still remembered trying to talk her out of the loud, distinctive design, the argument being that he was the one living there most and it made his head swim. He'd dropped the argument later, of course, when he went to live with Occhan and Ran, and he never had a chance to pick it back up because after everything had happened, he started sleeping at the station much more than he ever did at home.

(And his parents - his parents did what they've always done best. They left him alone. To this day, he was unsure if he was thankful for it.)

Still. He'd known the house - mansion, rather - hadn't all looked the same. Obvious to the point that it ought not count as an observation. But, it's often the most obvious things that were ignored.

The cameras surrounding the powder room door were placed so that one was almost directly level with the top of the door, overseeing the hall horizontally. The other two were placed so that it monitored the corners, so that one could see who was coming up the stairs and who was rounding down the hall. The footage that needed to be replaced needed to be shot somewhere - authentic.

And someone had manipulated the footage of a camera once already - Kid didn't do murders, but somehow, a heist note had still arrived in the hands of the Akita family, and the delivery-man couldn't be found on tape.

After all, if one relied on a method as an alibi - it was too risky to do not to test it.

"Akita-san said the card arrived yesterday, did he not?"

"Yes, but why?"

He sifted through the files, looking for the date. Once Conan had found the footage, he pulled it up, narrowing his eyes.

The same blink-and-you-miss it cut edit. Something dark and blurred at the edge of the camera - not a shirt or a foot after all? The same wallpaper at almost the same angle.

"Who chose the decorations for the house, Chiyoko-san?"

"My grandfather, of course. He has... a particular taste. And doesn't tend to suffer dissent. A bit of a tyrant, if you will. Ojii-sans often are."

"Hmmm. Have you had any workers in the house recently?"

"Aside from the people who came in to install security for the opal, no - though Henry-kun's been shifting things around a bit. Perhaps he's redecorated?"

Half a smile tugged at Conan's lips.

"Perhaps."

He'd eliminated one suspect, for now. As for the rest - some legwork was required first.

They'd never been particularly good at sneaking.

One of the reasons Edogawa-kun and Ai-chan didn't really like to take them anywhere, perhaps. Though there were likely other reasons. It got harder and harder to ignore whenever Ai-chan would put herself between them and danger, because "they were just children," even though, by all rights, she was also a child.

Ai-chan was cool and collected and protective - but there was something about her, something innocent. Edogawa-kun, on the other hand.

Well.

Ayumi had always thought he hadn't been much like a child to begin with. At first it had been easy to be fooled. He was - bright. In both senses of the word, the deceptive wealth of knowledge and the way he had lived. Cheerful, kind, perhaps a touch too curious - oddities easily explained. They were children then - didn't see the things they weren't meant to see, didn't hear the things they weren't meant to hear. In fact, they thought it was all normal, alright - until.

Then again, she thought, perhaps they had wanted to be fooled. She knew she certainly did. She wasn't so sure she liked Edogawa-kun.

The real Edogawa-kun.

After Ran-nee-chan died, the mask came down so, so easily. It's like he simply - stopped trying. She couldn't blame him for anything else, but she could blame him for that. If he had wanted to lie, he should've lied to the end - and what a beautiful lie it would have been.

(Ayumi looked around her - at Mitsuhiko, at Genta - and felt, with the weight of truth, that things could have been different. In another world, where Ai-chan and Edogawa-kun were exactly who they seemed to be - they could solve cases and get ice cream afterwards, could laugh and walk home together and make nonsensical jokes. Could complain about homework and go on school trips and playfully jab at each other and behave in the way childhood friends were supposed to do. Instead, there were closed doors and hushed whispers. The looks Ai-chan and Edogawa-kun always threw over their shoulders. )

It wasn't hard to tail Amuro, per se. His height and light hair made him stand out in the crowd, and his easy, disarming charm only worked as a disguise when he worked to implement it. Asking around proved somewhat fruitful. They'd stopped in the street where the last eyewitness had seen someone who resembled Amuro, a few blocks down from the Poirot at a pay per hour parking lot. The trail was dead, or dying. If he'd left in a vehicle, their adventure for the day would be over.

"They said he got on his car," Kogoro grumbled as he returned from the lot. "Looks like he went that way." he pointed down the street and then paused, sticking his hands into his pockets. "There's no chance you kids could find out where he went today, unless you want to get the station in on this too. Amuro-san's probably far gone as is."

Amuro-san was another piece of the puzzle that fit too strangely to ignore. Edogawa-kun had worked closely with the cafe detective, Ayumi knew, but Ai-chan - Ai-chan always seemed to be uncomfortable around him. Jittery. Jumpy.

(The look in her eyes made her seem completely different, like someone who wasn't the Haibara they knew at all. Like someone who had - seen horrible things.)

Her own working knowledge of Amuro-san was too little. She had, after all, not thought much about him until very recently, when it became very apparent that everything was off somehow. Perhaps they ought to start with what they knew. "What could Ai-chan possibly want from Amuro-san?" Ayumi mused, aloud. Her friends, at least, she knew something about. They hid many things, put on many masks - but some things simply couldn't be faked and some masks had cracks. She had to believe - that the people she knew were real. That the people she loved were real. "And why was she so afraid of him before?"

"Maybe he killed her family and has to atone for his sins by being her slave?" Mitsuhiko offered, half-joking.

Genta gave him an unimpressed look. Kogoro scowled.

"In any case," Mitsuhiko swallowed, and continued more seriously. "Edogawa-kun must not know anything about it."

"He's right," Genta tapped his chin. "I doubt Haibara-san would speak to Amuro-san herself if she could get Edogawa-kun to do it."

"So whatever she's having Amuro-san do must be something to do with Edogawa-kun," Ayumi frowned in concentration.

"But except for the Kid heist - just you wait, I'll kill both him and Kid for that one - that four-eyed brat hasn't been taking any cases since they busted that criminal syndicate," Kogoro growled, half to himself, "He'd better not - after all, he's supposed to be taking care of my daughter."

Silence.

Three pairs of eyes, wide and curious, snapped their gazes to Kogoro's face.

"What?" He furrowed his eyebrows, crossing his arms almost defensively.

"Your daughter?" Mitsuhiko all but squeaked.

"Ran-nee-chan - " Genta began.

"Is alive?" Ayumi finished breathlessly.

It hardly seemed to make any sense - and yet it did. The pieces fell into place perfectly. The change in Edogawa-kun over the past couple of weeks. The little girl that seemed to have become his shadow. The one they'd seen that day, outside of their old school, clinging to Edogawa-kun like he was the only one tethering her to this word, who had blinked at them with violet eyes that were violently familiar -

Edogawa-kun's fierce protectiveness. Ai-chan's sleepless nights. Somehow it was real - somehow, Mouri Ran was alive and shrunken into the body of a seven-year-old child, and somehow this was all to do with the mystery that surrounded Edogawa-kun and Ai-chan, and somehow now that she was onto something she found she wished she'd never discovered it at all.

The shounen tantei-dan knew. Nothing's ever truly a coincidence - as detectives, they should hold that conviction.

(But Ayumi hadn't believed it was even possible.)

Kogoro swore. "You can't tell anyone, is that understood? No one knows about this - aside from the four-eyed brat and Takagi-keiji. You can't say anything about it till the trials are over." He glared at them. "Not even Megure-keibu knows. Not yet."

The trials. The ongoing trials of that so-called Black Organization? The same organization that had supposedly been behind Ran-nee-chan's murder, so many years ago?

"It's - " Genta started and then paused suddenly, darkly. His gaze found Ayumi's, and his lips pressed into a thin line, as if contemplating. " - A secret."

Some secrets should be kept.

"We -" She breathed deep, shoulders lifting. "Understand."

But when secrets were no longer secrets, but truths, it was like trying to smother a flame with sheets of paper. It all must come out, eventually. One way or the other.

"If we're confused, then Edogawa-kun must also be - well, maybe not confused. But he must want answers," Mitsuhiko, quiet Mitsuhiko, was the only one who voiced what they were all thinking. "Haibara-san as well. Perhaps they're both - looking for an answer. In different places."

And for those answers, Haibara-san had gone to - Amuro-san, a man she avoided at all costs. Presumably, for those same answers, Edogawa-kun had gone to a Kid Heist, something he hadn't done in the last decade. Connecting the dots with her pulse jumping almost painfully in her wrist, she wondered. Just what kind of a mystery involved a crime syndicate, Kaitou Kid, and the mild-mannered sandwich artist detective from Cafe Poirot, who was deceptively intelligent and perhaps just a touch too observant?

Furthermore - now that she knew it was possible, the connection was something that was hard to ignore. If Ran-nee-chan had been "killed" but then turned up years and years later in a child's body, then - Ai-chan and Edogawa-kun, brilliant to the point of borderline creepiness, who seemed older than their years, who threw themselves into destroying that organization like it was their life force - what did the organization do to them?

(And just what did Ran-nee-chan mean to their friends - the friends who, more and more, she was realizing they didn't know at all - that they would bend their whole world for her?)

"Let's go to Hakase's," Ayumi said instead, steadying her voice. " And ask for one of the models of Edogawa-kun's old glasses. If we can get a bug into Amuro-san's car next time we see it, we should be able to track him with the GPS function. And then we'll know. It's not a very elegant solution but - we'll do what has to be done."

The rooms on the first floor didn't hold anything that particularly caught his attention. The room in which Henry-kun had walked into to take his call was a sterile, almost lab-like computer room. None of the computers had been turned on - he'd personally checked the log. The room Madoka-kun had been in was hardly touched at all - he'd been on his phone bidding for skins the entire time, so it wasn't particularly odd.

Then, of course, there was the matter of the jewel.

The Jade Rabbit had vanished under everyone's nose - much like Kazuha had. If his fiancee had been here to appreciate being compared to a jewel, she probably wouldn't be too appreciative that it was because she had been stolen. The analogy would have been amusing, if it hadn't been for the particular circumstance.

The two had disappeared almost simultaneously - and it was evident that the culprit was going through the motions of framing Kid, if only half-heartedly. Made sense that the culprit would steal the jewel as an attempt to sidetrack the investigators, or vice versa. What Heiji had to determine was where the trick was - and therefore, where the culprit was at the time of the crime. Perhaps he'd get a motive out of it too - whether the jewel was the goal, or whether Akita Sumire was.

The carpet around the case appeared to be darkened - with condensation? He nudged it with his foot. A wet ring had materialized on the floor, when no one had been looking.

A closer examination of the case revealed that it was in fact, empty, and in fact, still sealed perfectly. If it was actually Kid - well, Heiji had seen enough heists over the years. He'd be able to believe that the damn phantom thief was capable of doing something like that. For the average suspect, though - especially one of the house - he was more willing to believe in a key or pass code.

He'd asked for the pass code. Akita-san wrote it down for him, and Takagi had scribbled a copy hastily in his own notebook too.

A glance at the digital display monitor told him that no one had unlocked the case in the past few days. The only record of the case having been opened was Sunday, a week ago, when the gem was, presumably, put into the case.

Like any detective, Heiji had read Holmes. He was not as fond of the series as his friend was, perhaps, but the saying he recognized. When you eliminated the impossible and all that, he thought, drumming the tips of his fingers gently against the glass. Then he pulled up the keypad on the digital display monitor and put in the code.

The glass retracted, slowly, leaving behind only the velvet casing. Hesitantly, Heiji reached for it. The fabric and the plushness of the cushion gave way in the center, and Heiji plunged his hand into the slippery mass, until his fingers found cool, smooth edges.

He pulled out the object enclosed in the stuffing and fabric, in spite of the almost resistant pull he felt.

The opal rested in his hand, tossing light everywhere. A strip of metal stuck inconspicuously onto one edge with a wad of neutrally colored gum adhesive, hidden carefully at the back.

Heiji narrowed his eyes and put his hand back in the cushion, searching until he found what he was looking for. Then he pulled back the cushion and peered down into the contraption.

A magnet, resting on what appeared to be some kind of piston inside the hollow of the display stand.

Must've been how the jewel had disappeared - in all the commotion of discovering Akita Sumire, it was likely that eyes had been taken off of the jewel - and just one moment was enough to pull the jewel down with the magnet secured onto its other side.

It seemed like a trick Kid would use - had used before, most likely, with how flimsy and bold and showy it all was - but Kid relied on misdirection and quick hands and agility usually immediately afterward to switch out the real jewel. If what he was holding wasn't a fake - and it didn't seem like there was any reason to hide the fake - then whoever it was that had been preparing to steal the jewel hadn't had time to steal it after all.

He bent down, dropping to his knees, to inspect the base of the display stand and the circle of condensation around it. It was still somewhat warm to the touch - recently condensed vapor, perhaps? Gas released, to drop the piston? Seemed like a Kid thing to do, too - the jewel disappears in a puff of smoke.

The thief - perhaps also the murderer - was a good copycat. Had the murderer set it up, because they knew they would be preoccupied with the killing?

Or, perhaps - was it a different culprit altogether? Whoever it was, they must have been - trusted with the pass code, or the handling of the jewel, at some point.

He peeled the magnet off of the opal and placed it back on the cushion, replacing the glass case. He'd ask about it later.

For now, though.

Heiji stepped briskly out of the open doors and into the courtyard. He'd glimpsed it on his way in - in the long, well-lit hallway where Kazuha had about chewed his ear off for being impolite. Kazuha was good like that - she reminded him when he became too abrasive, kept him from blowing his top at inopportune moments.

The bushes under the window from the powder room were wild - but undisturbed. Above, the rain duct extended across the top of the window to the edge of the roof and down, but when he approached, the foliage beside it had not been damaged either. All in all, there was no evidence that anyone had been in or out of the window.

Heiji frowned.

If Kazuha wasn't being kept on the first floor, and the culprit hadn't gone out the window to move her either outside or to a neighboring window, then where could she be?

Furthermore, the way that Sumire-san had spoken moments before she had turned her nose up and gone upstairs - Heiji was sure the woman was inflammatory, but she had behaved in such a way that made Kazuha follow her upstairs.

Had something been off about Sumire-san that Heiji hadn't noticed, but Kazuha did?

The city below was bustling, deceptively peaceful through the glass windows. The ambiance of the room was one he was used to - ringing phones and the sound of whirring coffee machines, brisk steps and soft voices. Almost by contrast, the overwhelming sense of wrongness now came at him from all sides, washing over him like a tidal wave.

He belonged here and yet was repulsed by it all the same, constantly felt its pull and yet wished he could get a clean break, never to return.

Almost unsurprisingly, a bespectacled man came to a stop beside him. A moment of quiet in the corner - the way it had always been before.

Furuya Rei didn't turn to meet the familiar gaze, smirking half to their reflections, distorted and blurry on the window, and half to the city below, glowing white gold in the midday sun. "What gave me away?"

"Please." His former associate began, mild-mannered but serious as always with a stony face and an unaffected tone. "You would not have been seen if you hadn't wanted to be seen."

Rei laughed. "As always, you overestimate my abilities, Kazami-san."

"Not at all, Furuya-san. You're very good at what you do. The agency was very sad to have lost you."

"Well, it's a younger man's game." Nostalgia wasn't enough to erase the memories. The people he'd learned with, the people he'd worked with. They were almost all gone now and he'd been - tired. Much too tired. "And how is the Bureau?"

"You have seen for yourself."

"As busy as always, then?"

"Quite." Kazami inclined his head. A pause as dark eyes turned their gaze toward Rei, scanning his expression. "But you didn't come for nostalgia's sake."

"Straight to the point, as always, Kazami-san. You haven't changed much, in the last ten years." If it'd been up to him, Rei didn't think he would've ever set foot past those grand glass doors and into the cuttingly efficient building again in his lifetime. But, his path had been made of mistakes, and now he was paying for it.

"I assume you're here about your old assignment?"

That - was expected. He knew how his existence worked, the push and pull exacted from him to keep his peace. There was really very little difference between an intelligence agency and the black organization, at least, regarding their former subordinates. He found the bugs behind mugs and foodstuffs, and let them be. A little friendly fire never really hurt anyone.

Something more grimace than smirk touched his lips, did not reach hard, cold eyes. "Is there anything that the Bureau doesn't know?"

Kazami didn't answer. Instead, he reached into his briefcase and produced an inconspicuous-looking manila folder. "I've had it prepared since they uncovered the organization. They're - frightening children, don't you think?"

Rei said nothing, took the file from him, fingers hesitant on the edges of the thick paper. His gaze flickered from the photos at the top of the stack up to his former associate.

Kazami merely smiled. "Welcome back."

"I'm - not. Back."

"Somehow, Furuya-san." The smile on the other man's face seemed somehow more knowing, and his words were so similar to that of Haibara Ai - an almost creepy girl child with eyes older than her age, with eyes that reminded him of her mother - that it sent shivers down Rei's spine. "I don't believe you ever left."

"I'll relay this to Kaito-botchama as soon as possible."

"Thank you, Ojii-san."

"Nonsense. It is I that must thank you. The young master has been hoping - hoping for a very long while."

"I - I understand." Haibara paused, breathing through her nose. It was painful how she understood. Painful that Kid had lost all those years - in that way, she was almost thankful for the apotoxin. "Then, take care."

"You as well, Haibara-san."

The line went dead on the other side. She put the phone down, and crossed the room.

Back to her microscope.