Title: Inconceivable

Author: joisbishmyoga

Word Count: Like I ever use a program with a counter.

Rating: G for content, R for multi-syllable words.

Disclaimer: Gosho owns, Jo whorships.

Warnings: MK canon has some bad science. Work with me here.

Characters/Pairings: Hakuba, Kaito, no pairing, because this is Not Deal.

Notes: Almost, but not entirely, unlike Deal. (Absolutely, positively, inspired-by-due-to-being, the exact opposite of a key point in said fic.)

Inconceivable

Hakuba Saguru sat on a low wall by the school's soccer field, picking at his lunch and pretending total exhausted obliviousness. Not that he wasn't truly tired, for he was, but oblivious... no. Saguru was merely exaggerating, and had been all morning, to snare a certain classmate's attention. And here came that classmate now, bouncing out of the school with his own lunch and just-so-happening to notice the empty spot next to Saguru.

Kuroba Kaito plopped down on the stone with just the scarcest polite 'mind if I sit here thanks'.

Ha. Experiment confirmed; Saguru had known the class clown and probable Kaitou Kid wouldn't be able to resist trying to cheer him up. Particularly knowing what had happened on Saturday...

"What's up?" Kaito asked. "Have a good weekend?"

"Not particularly," Saguru replied. "I take it you didn't hear about the shootout."

"Shootout?" Kaito echoed, well-faked disbelief in his voice. "No! Are you okay?"

Saguru flicked his chopsticks, waving that off. "Quite, quite. Perfectly healthy. I was going to process evidence all weekend, but one of my machines broke, so I've been running diagnostics and recalibrating it instead." Except that he was fairly sure the machine was working perfectly, after all the tests and the complete overhaul he'd done on it. "It's the strangest thing..." he mused. "Perhaps I should request your opinion. Your unorthodox genius may have more application than mine."

Kaito stared at him, a slow smirk creeping across his features. "You totally set this up," he accused.

"Me? Never," Saguru drawled, lying through his teeth. "It is truly a remarkable flaw."

"Setup," Kaito sang, eyes gleaming. "So, what's your machine's problem, oh great computer master?"

Saguru chose to ignore that, taking a bite of rice and giving every appearance of gathering his thoughts as he chewed. Finally, he swallowed, and lowered his chopsticks. "It's my -- or rather, my grandfather's -- primary DNA analyzer. It's giving provably incorrect results for a single individual injured in the shooting; one of the department consultants. I required samples from every officer, consultant, and bystander injured, as well as the victims, in order to rule them out."

"Standard procedure," Kaito agreed. "Go on."

"The machine consistently gives a readout that this individual is between sixteen and eighteen years old."

"And the actual person is... what, twenty-seven?"

"Six."

Kaito's chopsticks clattered against the side of his bowl. "Six?"

"It gets worse," Saguru added. Had it not been for this part, he would've actually believed that the machine was wrong, though he had yet to find an adequate explanation for why a teenager looked and claimed to be six. "The machine found an almost perfect genetic match between him and another sample -- the only difference is in the tip of the ninth chromosome. Blood type, mostly." Saguru shifted, carefully looking towards the sky, as he continued, "Were I certain my machine was working properly -- had I not met Edogawa Conan and seen for myself that he is not seventeen -- I would have diagnosed a genetic translocation in an AB-blood type zygote prior to splitting into identical twins. It would be a medical anomaly for the books."

"... huh. Freaky."

"Quite." And now for the real reason he'd lured Kaito into this conversation. It was a shame Hakuba couldn't soften the blow, since he had no proof of Kaito's nightlife. "The near-identical sample is Kaitou Kid."

Kaito fell off the wall.