KID's Moving Castle

Summary: "If you're a naughty child, Kaitou KID will come in the night and eat your heart!" Shinichi just wanted to visit Ran at the bakery. Instead, he pisses off an all-powerful witch, gets turned into a midget of a seven year-old, and takes up lodging with the infamous Kaitou Kid. It's too bad the legends never mentioned how unfairly attractive KID was. (KaiShin- Howl's Moving Castle AU)

Rating: T

Please note that while I have tried my best to math the storyline/ plot of Howl's Moving Castle, I have taken some liberties in order to match certain aspects of the DCMK universe. Take, for instance, the fact that Shinichi will be turned into a child (to match the Conan aspect of DCMK) instead of an elderly person (what Sophie was turned into in HMC.)

Chapter 1: In which Yukiko tells a story

In the warm hearth of a warm home, a fire popped and crackled merrily, lapping at logs illuminating a family of three. A man and a woman were curled up on a couch with a young boy of seven nestled snugly between them. Basking in the toasty glow of the fire, the child gazed up at the woman with keen eyes and a dopey smile."Tell me a story, mama!"

The woman smiled indulgently and ruffled the boy's hair. "Another story, Shin-chan? I think it's about time you hurried off to bed."

The boy pouted, burying small hands in the woman's nightgown and curling his bottom lip. "Pleeease? Just one more story?"

The woman rubbed her chin in mock contemplation, eliciting a hearty laugh from the man and a worried frown from the child, before finally smiling. "Just one more? Promise?"

"Promise!" A small, cowlicked head nodded in fervent agreement, and the woman ran her hand through the boy's unruly black hair once again.

"Very well then," The boy burrowed deeper into the folds of his mother's soft dress. The man moved closer, resting one long arm behind the woman and tenderly wrapping another arm around the boy. Even the glowing fire seemed to lean forward in its nest of logs as the woman began her tale. "Let me tell you the story of a certain magician..."

Once upon a time, there was a man. This man was not like you and me, no, because this man was a magician.

"But Papa's a magician, too! He's always writing books about his spells and potions and everything!" The little boy piped up, a quizzical expression making its home in the shape of his crinkled eyebrows and pursed lips. The woman smiled faintly and bopped the boy on his nose. "Hush, now! You're ruining the effect!"

The boy's confusion only grew. "What effect?" The woman's smile faded as her patience grew thin. "The theatrical effect, Shin-chan."

"But what's a 'theatrical ef-'" The boy's query was muffled when a gentle hand was clapped over his mouth. The man chuckled, "Any more questions now, and your mother might send you to bed early!" The woman shot the man a grateful smile before continuing her story.

"As I was saying..."

This man was a magician, and a famous one at that. His name was known around the world and was uttered in awe by even the most powerful of kings and queens. This fame was not unwarranted, for this magician had powers unlike that of any other man. Entire forests sprang into existence when he blinked one eye, and they burned down to hot-white nothingness the second he blinked the other. He could revive an entire village of corpses with a single word, and he could slaughter an army with just as little effort. Ancient dragons and majestic griffons cowered at the mere whisper of his name, for they knew he could easily erase their existence in an instant.

This magician was undoubtedly the most powerful man in existence, and he could have easily razed the entire world had his intentions been less than pure. For much of his life, the magician used his powers for only good, and the entire realm flourished with prosperity. But, alas, even the most powerful of mortals was vulnerable to the ravages of time. When the magician's inky black beard faded to a brittle bone white, and his smooth ivory hands withered to wizened claws, his once-great mind became clouded with the fear of death. He gave up his peacekeeping in favor of searching for a way to transcend death, and failed to notice when the world collapsed into chaos around him. The magician scoured every end of the earth, from the highest mountain to the deepest sea, for something, some way to live forever...

"Did he find it? A way to live forever, I mean." The boy's voice sliced through the melodrama the woman had woven so carefully, and the tension in the air dissipated like fog in the face of the morning sun. Only too late did the boy realize his mistake, comically slapping two small hands over his overeager mouth.

The man struggled to hold back his laugh as the woman, eyebrows raised, stared appraisingly at the boy. "Well, I think it's time for someone to go to sleep."

"That's not fair, Mama! You can't just stop there!"

The woman's eyebrows inched even farther up her elegant forehead, and a muffled sputter of a laugh escaped the man's lips. "Oh, I think can, Shin-chan. Now it's off to bed with you." She stood up gracefully, forcing the boy to clamber to his feet as well, lest he roll off her lap and onto the hardwood floor. "But, Mama-!"

He grabbed as much of her dress as his seven-year old hands could possibly hold and gave her the biggest, sweetest, imploringly puppy-eyed stare he could possibly muster. "At least," he batted his long, ebony eyelashes and let the slightest tremor work its way into his voice, "tell me what happened in the end?"

The woman was only able to take one faltering step towards the staircase before capitulating. She cursed herself for giving birth to such an adorable child before reassuming her seat on the couch. The boy practically leaped into her lap, wide-eyed and excited. The fire, which had been steadily shrinking as it ran out of wood, still managed to let out a weak crackle at the boy's antics.

"What happened next, Mama?"

"Well, let's see, shall we?"

No one knew exactly how the magician attained immortality. Some said it was by catching a shooting star. Others said it was by consuming the mythical elixir known as the Apoptoxin. Yet others said it was by drinking the red tears of a maiden. The point was, the magician became immortal, and it was this newfound immortality that ruined him. Once he had gained eternal life, the magician began to thirst for eternal youth. He wanted the painless, limber body of a man in his prime, not the creaking, aching joints of an atrophying elder. He set off on yet another journey, this time scouring the earth for a way to rejuvenate his old bones.

Unbeknownst to the man, (if the wretched creature he had become could still be called a man), the magician's life as an immortal steadily whittled away at his humanity. The magician's soul, although still brimming with arcane knowledge and wondrous power, lost all sense of right and wrong, and slowly but surely plunged into the depths of madness. After countless years of committing unspeakable crimes in order to regain his vigor, the magician finally devised a spell, a dark, twisted spell, that would give him the youth he so desperately wanted. All he needed to do was consume the raw, still-beating heart of a child from time to time, and the moment he consumed that first heart, the moment he tore open the chest of an innocent child and terminated their youth to regain his own, his hair once again flowed richly black, his eyes regained their piercing stare, his bones stretched and grew until he was once again standing tall and proud.

And proud indeed was the magician, so proud, in fact, that in commemoration of his ghastly deed he renounced his former name and took on a new, more suitable moniker. Phantom Thief KID, he called himself, for he was the being that stole through the night and indiscriminately devoured the hearts of children, leaving nothing but a bloody husk as proof of his passing.

The room was silent.

Slowly, the woman leaned back, satisfied with her story. The boy, on the other hand, sat petrified, wide eyes staring in fear at the woman. Concerned, the man moved to speak. His wife had the tendency to take her stories too far sometimes, and he was afraid she had crossed the line with her gory descriptions. Before he could say anything though, the boy eked out a whisper. "Can you... tell me another story?"

The woman narrowed her eyes. "Another story? Even after our promise?" She shook her head. "What a naughty boy you are, Shin-chan! I must have forgotten to mention... If you're a naughty child, Kaitou Kid will come in the night and eat your heart!"

She leapt off of the couch without warning, and the boy barely hopped off her lap in time, wincing as the chill of the floor seeped through his thin socks. The woman shot the boy a devilish grin, and curling her hands into claws, she pretended to tear at his patterned fleece pajamas. "I am the Kaitou Kid, and I'll eat your heart unless you go to sleep right now!" The boy squealed and, cold feet forgotten, raced up the stairs, his mother in hot pursuit. The man, still sat on the couch, smiled as he watched his family's antics. Once they were out of sight, he stood up and stretched, wincing as his spine popped. He glanced over at the fire, now naught but a few sputtering embers in a pool of ash and coal. "Now... why don't I get you some more firewood?"

Eleven years later...

Business at the Kudo Hattery was booming as usual. The seasons were slowly shifting from winter to spring, and people were looking to trade their somber winter garb for something brighter. Customers were wandering between racks of richly hued hats, and the hattery employees were rushing around the shop answering questions and ringing up purchases. One cluster of salesgirls, however, had abandoned all semblance of work and stood gossiping in the corner of the store.

"Have you heard? Kaitou Kid's castle has been seen around Beika!"

"Seriously? Kid's moving castle?!"

"What, does he have another castle that I've never heard of? Of course I'm talking about Kid's moving castle! And get this- Ayumi from the florist's says she actually saw Kid!"

"No way! Do you think we'll be able to see him?"

"Huh? Why would you want to see him? He eats hearts, for god's sake!"

Shinichi sighed. From his seat in the workroom, he could see the girls twittering about Kaitou Kid instead of attending to the hat shop like they were supposed to. Shinichi, on the other hand, was dutifully attaching silk flowers to a bulbous lilac and chartreuse monstrosity that, in his mind, quite resembled a radioactive eggplant rather than the sunhat that it was supposed to be. He held the hat up to observe his handiwork, and promptly dropped it in surprise when a girl burst through the shop door.

"It's here!"

"What's here, Ayumi? Don't tell me-"

"Kid's Moving Castle! It's walking around the Beika border right now!"

"Oh my god. Can we go see it?"

Shaking his head, Shinichi picked up the eggplant hat and started attaching more flowers in a vain attempt to improve the hat's aesthetics. Hopefully, he thought, a color-blind customer would take a liking to the thing.

"Kid's castle is here?!"

Shinichi was in the middle of a stitch when a falsetto shriek made him drive a needle into the pad of his thumb. Ow. A blur of brunette hurtled from back room and made a beeline for the pack of girls.

"Oh, Fujimine-san! You're a Kid fan, too?"

Fujimine Yukiko, proprietress of Kudou Hattery and mother of a certain long-suffering Shinichi, let out a dainty giggle that sent shivers down her son's spine.

"But of course! Now, let us hurry and close up shop! We don't want to miss Kid's castle, do we?"

A strange change seemed to overcome the girls. Once sheeplike and passive, they transformed into aggressive shepherd dogs, rounding up the customers they had once so blissfully ignored. "We're closing up! Please make your purchase and leave!" In five minutes flat, the girls had cleared out the sales floor. In another five minutes, they had shed their aprons in favor of heavy winter coats and were crowding around the door.

"Fujimine-san! Let's go!"

"I'm coming!" Yukiko reappeared from the back room and glided towards the girls. She paused, however, to peer into the workroom. "Shin-chan? Do you want to come along?"

Shinichi couldn't be bothered to look up. "No."

Yukiko pouted. "Did you hear that, girls? Shin-chan didn't even hesitate to turn down his beloved mother! And to think, he was such a big Kid fan as a child!"

"Ehh?" The girls' eyebrows shot to their hairlines as they exchanged exaggerated glances. "Who would've thought that Shinichi-san, of all people, was a Kid fan?"

Yukiko turned away from the workroom and smiled conspiratorially at the girls. "Oh, yes. Every night he would beg me to tell him the story of Kaitou Kid and his moving castle. He used to throw the most adorable fits if I didn't!"

She ushered the group of girls out of the store and into the darkening street. The town was experiencing the final throes of what had been a particularly vindictive winter, and the brisk air made haste to chap their lips and rouge their cheeks, a dying animal desperate to inflict as much injury as it could with its final breaths. The air, however, did nothing to stop the thirsty salesgirls from plowing forward through the weekend shoppers crowding the sidewalk. Ayumi was at the forefront of the pack, beckoning for the girls to follow her lead. Together, they shoved their way towards the outskirts of Beika, their sights set on the bulbous silhouette looming over the horizon.

In the quiet of the workroom, Shinichi's hunched figure finally straightened. Slender arms arched in the air as Shinichi stretched for the first time in hours. He hummed to himself as he pushed back his stool and stood up.

"Hmm...I think it's high time I took a break."

One stride took him to the other side of the workroom, where he picked up his own hat and coat, and another stride took him out of the cramped room entirely. Shinichi surveyed his workspace one last time, glaring at the purple hat still perched on his desk, before stepping out and closing the door. He shrugged on his coat as he walked out of the hattery, stopping by a mirror to put on his hat.

For a minute, Shinichi stared into the mirror at his own reflection. The man in the mirror shot him a grin before freezing and frowning in disapproval. Sooty black hair and washed-out blue eyes had no place among the vibrant colors decorating the hattery. What was Shinichi doing, lingering in such a vibrant place? The man in the mirror seemed to ask. A person as unremarkable as Shinichi only fit in with the drear of the somber workroom. A person as unremarkable as Shinichi should know his place in the shadows. A person as unremarkable as Shinichi would be better off fading into obscurity.

The man in the mirror shook his head and stalked away in disgust, pulling down the brim of his drab hat as he went. The chime on the hattery door sounded once, twice; the door opening and closing as Shinichi, clad in his nondescript hat and coat, exited the shop and stepped onto the bustling sidewalk. As the afternoon crowd quickly enveloped him in a flurry of hasty bodies and ruffled clothing, he began to push his way deeper into the city. "I think I'll pay Ran a visit at the bakery."

Behind Shinichi's retreating back, the silhouetted castle seemed to sigh, billowing smoke from its twisted chimneys into the pale winter sky.

A/N: Hello everyone! I apologize for lack of posting (again). This chapter is the accumulation of several months' work, and as a result, may have been choppy/inconsistent/redundant in regards to the writing style and wording. As to when I'll update this fic (or my other fic) again, I honestly can't say. I know this is unfair of me as a writer to put out content and expect readers to wait on edge for months as I dawdle and fail to commit, but I don't want to make empty promises as to when I'll update and ultimately fail to follow through, either.

Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed reading this as much I enjoyed imagining and writing it.

I also have a question for you! Would you rather this fic be based on the Howl's Moving Castle novel or movie? (Or maybe a blend of the two?) Maybe you have no preference at all or have never read/watched HMC. That's okay too! Anyways, please let me know so I can write the rest of the chapters accordingly, although so far, the fic seems to be going down the movie route. But as always, thanks for reading, please remember to rr/ff, and hopefully I'll see y'all soon!