NEW AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hello.

A very, very long time ago now I wrote this quite long crossover fanfic based on a prompt that I'm sad to say no longer exists in my inbox. For no particular reason, I used my own (alternate universe) interpretation of the Sonic the Hedgehog universe from back then, which shows up in another fanfic on my profile.

The interpretation has a Sonic that, looking back, is very out-of-character, even with the extra rules I set up. The canonical Sonic would never validate the actions of humans that exist in that alternate universe. The reason he has those views is that I was foolish back then. I no longer support those views - I am in fact turned completely against those view now, and can't understand why I so unnecessarily wrote these views into this story where they did not belong. And I am sorry to have done so, as I understand now where those views go wrong.

However, the fanfic has always been rather popular, and I know the experience of trying to find an old favoured fanfic that has disappeared off the internet for good, so I won't be taking down the story. In fact, I'm still kinda fond of the overall thing myself.

Would I rewrite it? I do want to re-envision it. Take out the icky stuff I put in back then. Fix the characterisations, adjust for the new canon, either play it straighter or play it stranger. I'm not sure, however, that I could do a full re-write. But, just to let you know that five years on, I have not forgotten this story's existence.

This note will also be posted as an update chapter at the end of the story.

It was needless to say that Kaitou KID was one of the most impressive people that you would ever meet. However, impressive didn't always mean positive.

The KID was just one of those people that you ended up liking or lumping after a certain amount of exposure to them. If you've gone through life even for a few years, you would understand that some people just were like that. The public opinion of them was two-toned. There was no 'in the middle', grey area. And Kaitou KID was the prime example.

In a way, he was just like Marmite, that 'love it or hate it' sandwich spread. Unlike Marmite, however, liking him and hating him both had their own serious consequences. If you liked Kaitou KID, it was only a matter of time before you joined a fan-club and regarded him as your lord and saviour. If you disliked Kaitou KID, you would be on the side of the police, and in a few years you'd probably want to take a few pot-shots at him from a carefully shaded position. Or not. It depended, really.

Also unlike Marmite, whether you liked him or disliked him was affected by your life and current status. Everybody who can afford Marmite can eat it, and anybody can form any opinion of it. People who liked Kaitou KID were those who had been brought up in small respectable houses. They were those who were liked magic tricks and public shows, who understood that a magician never revealed his secrets, those who respected that the thief would never kill somebody. People who disliked Kaitou KID were either those raised by a police officer, those who were police or those who owned a rare jewel of some kind with a strange back-story. They could also be the members of the criminal organisation who had taken the life of the first KID and been firing at the second one for some time now.

Oh, did I mention that the first KID was dead? Silly me, I didn't.

Kaitou KID had a reputation for being a great thief - the first one, at least, had been a brilliant mastermind. Many of the smartest men in the country had been investigated, but all of them had been clean. At the first, he stole anything that inspired him, returning it a few days afterwards with a note thanking the owner for surviving his troubles. At some point, though, his attentions had been brought to big, shiny rocks; and with a glint in the brown eye behind his monocle he had begun to change his reputation. Kaitou KID went from an uncatchable burglar who stole anything merely for the thrill of it to the world's most notorious jewel thief, determined. His tricks had evolved as well. He was still oddly cheeky, but now he had stopped being an entertainer. He had become more daring, magnificent - anybody who saw the hang-glider swooping in the night would even call him beautiful.

The police were baffled at the change of target, but then noticed that with regulated targets it was a lot easier to know what was under threat. They upped security around each and every one of the most expensive collections in Japan. That was when Kaitou KID introduced his next soon-to-be-staple - riddles in his heist notes. This time, instead of telling them what he was going to take without warning the previous day, they had at the most a week to week to guess what he might be taking. Cops, private detectives and amateur mystery freaks alike scrambled to decipher the codes, of which only two people were able to understand. One, Nakamori Ginzo, a young up-and-coming in the force, became head of the Kaitou KID Taskforce. The other, private detective Kudou Yuusaku, became a famous writer.

However, some years into his career, which had taken him across the world in search of precious treasures, Kaitou KID suddenly stopped thieving. There was no warning, just the disappearance of a man from the spotlight of the world. There had been an outstanding heist - this one, the police had prepared for since the last theft, when the message had been given. It was only at the promised time of the full moon, when the white cap and top-hat failed to appear, that the police came to suspect something wrong. A few hours later, and it was officially declared that Kaitou KID had given up. A few months later, and it was officially declared that Kaitou KID had vanished.

At the time, there had been one accident to relate to Kaitou KID's 'death', involving a stage magician who had died during a performance. Apparently, the trick involved some kind of explosive. Due to some bad rigging, the man had burnt to death, along with the stage and many members of the audience being obliterated. However, the police then denied the possibility that he could have been the mysterious thief, as it turned out that the man had been an informant and a consultant during heists. Then the theory appeared that maybe Kaitou KID had vanished because of this informant's death. The following investigation reaped no results.

For eight years there was no sign of him. The white wizard of the night never appeared under the moon for eight whole years. The Taskforce were kept by the police just in case that strange man ever decided to brighten their doorsteps. However, over the years it became obvious that he was gone. Either dead or simply retired. Whatever had stopped Kaitou KID's last heist remained a mystery, and he became nothing more than a legend.

Until that night when the Kaitou KID stole from a major museum and then delivered his very first heist note in just under a decade. Eager, the police gathered every able-bodied officer that they could find to appear at the heist. And what a surprise when he disappeared, leaving all but a rose in his place!

For the next few months, the Kaitou KID's targets had been varying just as in his early career. As if, after so long, he didn't know what to steal. However, soon he was once again directed to the allure of pretty stones, and then Kaitou KID reverted to only stealing the best and the brightest of the world's jewels. His heists once again changed from the uncomplicated parlour tricks of his early profession to the reckless stunts he was now so popular for. Along the way he gained his new enemies, in the forms of famous detectives Hakuba Saguru, Kudou Shin'ichi and Mouri Kogorou, the rich man Suzuki Jirokichi, and the young child Edogawa Conan. He gained a new generation of fans. His life had picked up from where it had left off. Never mind the snipers that tried to kill him; Kaitou KID was once again living the dream.

And this was the life of our wonderful Kaitou KID, until the fateful day he attempted that peculiar heist...

MKMKMKMKMKMK

The eighteen-year-old boy named Kuroba Kaito was in his house's hidden room, currently wrapped up in the last week's newspapers. It had certainly been an exciting week for the scientific community – an anomaly had been detected off the south coast of Shizuoka. The area screwed up satellite and communications signals coming through it. Photographs taken from space had revealed a large black zone somewhere in the ocean. The area had also become home to a few plane crashes as of late, and so the place had come to be known as Japan's Bermuda Triangle. Though the press reported very little as to what was going on, the answer was slowly been revealed to those who worked out the meaning of the newspaper headings: PROBE SENT INTO ANOMALY ZONE REMAINS UNRETRIEVED.

To Kaito, however, the answer became more obvious when Koizumi Akako stood in front of him that morning.

"Kaito-kun," she had greeted.

The boy had been surprised; Akako usually did not refer to him by given name. He had dropped the newspaper he had been reading that morning (he often read newspapers in the homeroom before class, if only just to see his own grin staring up at him from the black-and-white photograph) and scratched the back of his neck. "What is it, Koizumi-san?" he asked.

"I'd advise you against going near the Shizuoka area this month," she said. "I predict trouble is not far from the shoreline, and it's headed right here."

Kaito had laughed. "You talk like I'm going near that place. I don't interfere with scientific mishaps. I deal with magic alone." He had grinned broadly. "I'm a showman, not a physicist."

Akako had smirked in response, something which sent a chill up his spine every time he saw it. She was about to guess something. Koizumi Akako had this uncanny ability to guess anything correctly. Kaito didn't know how, although some days she just screamed 'witch'. And that was exactly what she seemed to be. Her house was one of the oddest, creepiest Western-style mansions he had ever seen. He had once been subject to a sophisticated mind-trick (it had to be that) involving a voodoo doll, some kind of hypnosis and what appeared to be a lighting system in her floor that illuminated complicated patterns in sequence. One time, as well, he thought he had seen her fly away on a broomstick.

"Then why are you reading about it if you're not going to be there?" she had retorted. The boy had gripped the edges of the paper silently, not letting a single true emotion shine through his confused expression. "I can already see it. Kaitou KID is going to check out that hole in space and time and he's going to be trying to get at the prizes through it."

In a normal situation, Kaito would have probably denied being Kaitou KID. This, however, had not been a normal situation. He had leant in over his desk, his face still confused but his eyes blazing with curiosity. "What prizes?" he asked.

Akako had tapped the desk. "Oh, no, no, no! If I talk about them then you'll go after them!" she huffed.

"Go after what?"

A few members of the class, a tall blond boy included, had looked over to the door to see another girl join the conversation. Her name was Nakamori Aoko. Boyish and lean with an underdeveloped figure – although, don't tell her I said that – Aoko was Kaito's childhood friend. And also the daughter of Nakamori Ginzo.

"Hi, Aoko," Kaito had said. "Me and Koizumi-chan were just talking."

Aoko had glared. "About what, anata?"

"Oh, that thing in Shizuoka." Kaito had leaned back in his chair, flowers suddenly bursting out of his school gakuran. "It's nothing important."

Now, Kaito was wishing he hadn't said that. He flickered through the newspapers, looking for anything that might give a clue as to what Akako had been talking about. Unfortunately, the paparazzi had been intelligent people this time, withholding all the important information. Before they had been throwing facts around willy-nilly, not realising that this was exactly where the best heist details came from when Nakamori didn't vent them all in one of his foolish moments of pride. It seemed they had finally learned the lesson Kaitou KID had tried to teach them ten years ago.

He punched the desk in frustration. Jesus, how hard could it be to find information on this thing!? This called for... ahem, special procedures.

Kaito turned to the personal computer on the desk behind him. It was a greyish, blocky thing from the late nineties, lacking all the sleekness of more recent models, but Kaito had managed to increase its memory and processing power to that of three times the amount of its modern-day equivalent through some heavy-duty modifications. At the moment the computer did actually span seven towers and twelve CDs made up for extra memory if the need arose. The creation looked out of place within the rest of the room's unique gadgetry, but it had grown on the boy.

He booted it up, choosing to make a journey to the kitchen to pick up a snack and a drink in the time it took for the desktop to load. Coming back, he drew his office chair up to the desk and opened up his Internet browser.

He typed in 'Shizuoka anomaly' and waited. Several hundred page links appeared. He looked them over. Huh. There's absolutely nothing here. Angry at how his simple search had yielded absolutely zero relevant results, he tried a different tactic. He picked up his newspaper, scanned the front page, and typed in the name of the government organisation whose probe had disappeared that morning.

The website cropped up as the top result. He clicked on the name and was brought to the main page.

He flexed his fingers. This was where Jii's computer training would come in handy.

MKMKMKMKMK

A few hours later, and Kaito stood up, backing away from his computer. His findings blared out from the screen, all retrieved from the organisation's main computer.

The anomaly had been assessed as a tear in space. The probe that had not been retrieved was still transmitting signals, ones that they hadn't revealed to the general public yet. The thing, when travelling through the anomaly, had landed in an identical body of water, where it had floated along for some time. The probe had analysed the water; it was just normal water, with some extra silicon naturally dissolved in it. Although it was only a ten-thousandth of a centimetre in every nineteen kilometres of water at the most, this was a significant difference to the lack of silicon content in Japanese waters. Which meant one thing - the probe had ended up in a completely different place from where the anomaly had been detected. An item of distinct mass and complex design had been transported through space without significant deterioration.

But that wasn't the only thing wrong with the videos that he had pulled from the website just before the firewall had closed in on him. Apparently, the thing had been fished out of the ocean by something with human hands... but an animal's face. The probe had then been taken to some kind of building, where another of the creatures had been, and the two had started talking in distinct English. They had talked about some mystical subject, seven 'emeralds' with incredible power, while the probe was being tinkered with.

And they didn't seem to be treating it as just mystical, either. A lot of the things they had said greatly interested Kaito, as both the Kaitou KID and himself. Especially concerning the long history of the gems and their power. From their phrasing, they didn't seem to be telling any fibs about them. The two speakers had an intimate understanding of what they were talking about (the two seemed to be very close themselves, not using any honorifics when referring to each other but lacking hostility in their voices).

The gems rested, reportedly, on a floating island in the sky. They were packed full of natural energy from the planet. Such energy was unconstrained and could wreak havoc on the world if put to such uses. They were commonly stolen by a human foe with a strange name, one that Kaito regrettably did not memorise.

Talking animals, floating islands, magical gems capable of unlimited power... This being completely impossible on Earth, it led Kaito to the wildest of deductions.

The probe had not only just travelled to another area; it had travelled to another dimension.

Well, where else would you find anthropomorphic animals? Kaito was intelligent enough to know that 'furries' did not occur naturally on Earth. The idea of their evolution was, for a start-off, ridiculous. Animal DNA did not just mutate over time into a pattern similar to Homo sapiens and still retain the behaviours and features of the original animal, at least, not in the chain of evolution found on Earth. Therefore, the things had to come from a completely different evolution chain. The only way to find this would be to go to another planet.

Now, that explanation would have been enough if the animals hadn't talked in a mixture of English and Japanese. That had led him onto the 'alternate dimension' theory. The development of a language identical to English and the similar yet fundamentally different evolution route... this pointed to the idea of Earth in another dimension.

Still, by all laws of physics, this kind of thing should have been impossible. He should know that, he was a magician after all. He had a knack for creating moments that shouldn't happen. And this one took the cake.

But Kaito himself knew that the impossible happened every day. Heck, his most intelligent and entertaining rival was a walking, breathing example of that.

"Well, then... let's see these 'emeralds', then."

MKMKMKMKMKMK

A few days later, a message appeared at the police office. Nakamori Ginzo sat at his desk, and he was seething.

Somehow, KID had managed to hand-deliver the message to his desk. And his name was written on the envelope in a very odd way. He didn't know what was more insulting: that KID knew where his desk was; or that he had replaced the quick strokes on his given name with little hearts.

He clenched his teeth, drawing the paper out of the envelope. No tricks this time; the message dropped onto the desk. He picked it up and started to read. Or, at least, attempted – the first four lines of the message were in English.

Under the moon, the green stars that mark the teacher's steps hang in the sky,
The red man's hordes upon the angel's back, up where only the birds may fly.
One of them might be the magpie's great treasure if the rumour is true of the spread of their shine.
The black feather from under his wing wonders which of those lights will first catch his eye...

If you can't understand what I'm saying, you need to have a frank talk with the military. I've attached the address of the commander whose account I hacked to this note. Hope you manage to figure it out together.

Kaitou KID

A/N: Welcome to the wonderful world of crossovers, Umiyuri. Nothing you've previously written will really compare to this...