Detective Conan and Magic Kaito characters, settings, and ideas do not belong to me but to Aoyama Gōshō.

All for the Love of…

By Taliya

Word Count: 912

Kaitou KID eased the door open and peered into the room. The interior was dimly lit, but he could see that within lay scattered objects across the floor, which were designed specifically to be particularly painful underfoot, as well as a security camera that was equipped with both night-vision capability and sound. With a pair of night-vision goggles of his own, he scouted the room for this target. There. On the far side of the room, resting innocently on the table opposite where he stood rested his objective. It blinked a captivating blue back at him.

The thief began to consider the various obstacles in his path. There were two sentries, both of whom were extremely sensitive to changes in their environment. He was going to have to use every ounce of skill he possessed to bypass the pair without disturbing them. This one time, he was not allowed to knock them out with gas—it would be a dead giveaway that he had been through, and he wanted absolutely no traces of his having been there at all.

Assessing his options, he decided that crossing the room via the walls and ceiling was his best option. He slipped on a different pair of gloves—these were designed with silicone built into the fingertips and palms for added grip and dexterity. He knew the layout of the room like the back of his hand, having studied the blueprints enough to know where each and every stud in the walls was. He should, considering he had watched with a critical eye as this room had been built.

There were hooks strategically spaced along the walls for pictures and other such decorations, and KID used these to his advantage as he monkeyed his way along the wall. He paused, suspended over one of the room's occupants to watch the person with an affectionate gaze before continuing his task. Reaching the center of the wall, he eyed the small chandelier-style light fixture before tensing his muscles and springing for it, rolling into a crouch on the other side of the room. He froze, listening intently for any signs he had been noticed.

Silence.

With a grin he swiped the object of his desire and stowed it in a pocket before swiveling to figure out how exactly he would make his escape. The option he had used to get in was out of the question, as it required him to spring up to the ceiling from the floor. He glanced around, and decided the table was a decent enough footstool for his purposes. He snagged a hook on the wall behind the table and began the laborious process of hopping from hook to hook, always aware of the room's two occupants. He stopped to gaze at the other occupant for a moment as well before finally making it to the door. With a breathless sigh he grasped the doorframe and swung himself outside, wedging himself into the "L" formed by the wall and the ceiling, all the while balancing his weight on the narrow doorframe. A twitch of hair-thin thread, and the door closed with all but the smallest snick.

A throat cleared from somewhere below and off to the side of him, and KID violently twitched, falling from the ceiling with a yelp and barely catching himself with a surprisingly soft landing. The phantom thief, hunkered in a puddle of white silk, craned his head upwards to peer at his potential captor. He grinned sheepishly. "Ah, good evening, ojou-san…?"

Kuroba Aoko, Kaito's wife, stared down at her crouching husband, unimpressed. "Kaito," she began, voice flat yet full of the forced patience that came with dealing with toddlers day in and day out, "is there a reason you're creeping around the kids' room in full KID regalia—who, I might add, has been retired for the past six years?"

"Uh…" Kaito chuckled embarrassedly, straightening from the floor. He dug into a pocket and with a flourish, produced his mobile phone. "I left it in the kids' room but didn't want to wake them."

One of Aoko's eyebrows ratcheted upwards skeptically. "Really?" The question came out more like a statement, and Kaito nodded enthusiastically in response. "You know you could have walked in and grabbed it like a normal person."

Kaito snorted. "What would be the fun in that?" he asked, monocle flashing in the hallway lights. The clover charm swiveled as it swung like a pendulum past his shoulder as they strolled back into the living room.

"You didn't wake either of them?" Aoko was referring to their two children sleeping in the room Kaito had just exited containing three-year-old Kagome and one-year-old Kenta. Her voice promised swift and immediate misery if he had.

The retired phantom thief scoffed. "Please. I was absolutely silent. Do you hear them screaming right now?"

Of course, the house was quiet—proof that Kaito, despite being out of the thievery profession for six years now, still retained all of the skills associated with that particular trade. His wife eyed him from his top-hatted head to… cobalt-socked feet. She sighed, smiling ruefully and shaking her head in exasperation. "At least you didn't wear the shoes inside."

Her husband made a noise of protest. "Of course I wouldn't wear the shoes inside the house! Who do you take me for?" he asked, clearly affronted. "A thief?"

Aoko did not deign to reply, too busy snorting giggles. A second later, Kaito joined her.

Author's Note: Try number two! This idea hit me like an eighteen-wheeler right as I was about to fall asleep last night, and here it is! Hopefully this makes up for my dismal failure from earlier, and my goal for this piece is to make you smile, if not outright laugh. I hope you enjoyed it.

Completed: 04.02.2016