AN: This is a series of oneshots that will take one character and how they view someone else. Basically, I want to explore how close or how far off the truth can be, depending what people know of each other. I will alternate whose POV it's from and who is being studied, but someone will be repeated. Most will probably have a subject of Conan or Kid, but there will be some others. First name will be the POV and second name will be the subject.
Chapter One: Conan and Kaitou Kid
"Let you go to repay him for helping the kids, huh?" Conan murmured as he was heading back to the hotel, wiping away fingerprints from the diamond. He did promise to let Kid go and it would be a cheat to let them get his fingerprints from the diamond.
Or get his own. Better to have none and return it in a handkerchief, after all. Maybe that's why Kid trusted him with it even though he returned it without doing it himself.
...or he had some other trick, but better safe than sorry. He had been caught off guard a few times this heist, so it might have thrown off his meticulous planning.
"Though...that's possible too. You are the one who can read people, huh?" Conan murmured, holding up the diamond, only touching it through the handkerchief.
Conan had noticed the pattern himself. How many times has he actually relented in his attempt to catch Kid? First in the old house in the woods, the Iron Tanuki, the Ryoma case just a short while ago, now. Heck, if he wanted to be picky, his attempts for Seiran and the last case with Jiroki were more just shadows of attempts. After all, he had more than proven how far he was willing go to catch Kid by jumping off a sky scraper.
But that was different.
That was a heist. A false guess at the time, but when it was a real heist, he was willing to go all out. When it was interrupted by a murder or it was a hoax to begin with, he couldn't help, but feel that...
That it wouldn't be satisfying.
Though admittedly the soccer ball with the note was more to just let Kid sweat it out while getting chased all night. He was kind of hoping he DIDN'T get caught to suffer more, so of course he couldn't be following too.
Why though? He wouldn't have cared this much earlier on, so why did he now?
He saw the glint of the moon through the diamond. "Always returned after the full moon." Another clue in the puzzle that was Kaitou Kid.
Conan had more serious things to worry about. The Black Organization, Murderers, so many other crimes that were so much more threatening than Kid. However, wasn't that rather the point? Kid WASN'T a threat. Sure, sometimes bad things happened with him around, but that was through no effort of his own. People used his name or had poor timing. Really, they were likely to happen whether or not he was there. He was just another factor that could easily be thrown in or removed.
When it was all too much, it was nice to think of something challenging, but without the bitter taste of people getting hurt. He loved solving mysteries, but when he thought about it too much, there was a bittersweetness to them. They were a challenge and that was fun, but there was always that thought that someone died.
Sometimes he forgot that in his compartmentalized brain.
But that wasn't the case with Kid. The worst that was supposed to happen was hurt dignity, pride, and perhaps a bump or bruise, but ultimately, not dangerous. The property was even returned so really, the only thing that was a problem was wasting police time, public disturuption, and maybe some ruined clothes or decoration depending on the trick. More importantly, he was a challenge. Utterly mad, but totally brilliant.
And odd. So very, very odd.
Motive wasn't important to Conan usually. Yes, motive was important to the investigation and if necessary something he had to figure out or did by process of investigation. However, it didn't matter much to him. There were some cases that were true tragedies, death by a simple miscommunication or the like, but when it came down to it, not even the saddest sob stories could make him forgive a murderer.
That wasn't so with Kid. Mainly because there were such contradictions. Killers, thieves, bombers, all of them knew their motive and the only contradiction was in their insanity or misunderstanding. Yes, Kid was insane, but he was more than aware of what was normal and what was not. He knew human behavior or else he couldn't pull off his heists as brilliantly as he did. He predicted people. He understood people. So his contradiction could not be simple insanity.
Kaitou Kid didn't hurt people. Knock them out, fine, but ultimately, he was very careful to make sure no one was really hurt. In fact, Conan was pretty sure he was overprotective.
He knew about the Sunset Mansion. There were two sources to know, him or Hakuba. The other detectives never had any cases involving him before, so anyone he watched would be them. Hakuba obviously didn't tell the taskforce, so how could Kid know unless he kept a VERY careful eye on them?
And apparently went through their mail. Kind of creepy, but he had no reason to suspect the letter had to do with him. So he would read it because they got a suspicious letter in the mail. So in his strange, strange mind not only did he respect his pursuers, he worried about them.
Not to mention when people died and his name is tied in, even when there was a low chance people might learn of that fact, he seemed almost mad. He didn't want death tied in to the Kaitou Kid name in anyway possible, perhaps, but he probably hates the idea it might enter a person's mind.
Even going so far as to try and scare the murderer out.
Really, Conan had to wonder about a criminals intelligence to pin anything on Kid. Not only does using the name just attract detectives, it attracts Kid's attention and that's just begging to get yourself caught.
It was kind of funny.
Though that was another piece to this puzzle of Kaitou Kid. His heists. It was an easy task, looking up what he has tried to steal, for both the first and the second. Of course he knew Kid was around his age, being able to pretend to be him. He couldn't pull that off without a mask if he was supposed to be roughly twenty years older.
Even before that, he suspected because of the similar attitude he had as Hattori and Hakuba. It didn't take Kid long to acknowledge he was a threat and react as such. The adults around him, even the more brilliant ones, had a tendency to blow him off, but Kid hadn't. It was probably why he figured out who he was, but it gave him away.
Hattori and Hakuba acknowledged him as brilliant so fast for the same reason he believed Kid had at first. Because he knew age meant nothing, in the end, to what a brilliant mind was capable of. Being younger made it easier for him to believe that 'Conan' COULD be a threat.
Of course, he confirmed it, by posing as Shinichi.
However, back to the pieces that were his heists. The first one was rather varied with his heists. Usually going for jewels, but not restricted to just those.
Not so with the recent Kid. At first he was just as varied, but then it shifted. He went for only large jewels almost exclusively barring ulterior motives, such as when someone was challenging him, using his name, or it was a good deed he felt he had to do for whatever reason he has. Maybe it was like that with the first, but the reasons weren't as obvious as this one. Aside from the Clock Tower, which he suspected was because no police officer would take what the message said seriously, it was always obvious.
And all after Blue Birthday. Where the gem was reportedly found in an empty house with tracking device still in tact. Hardly his usual flair for the return and the house was in a neighborhood that houses were hardly abandoned. It might have been nothing, but the scenario didn't ring true. There was something there.
Perhaps...
"Even that guy might have danger," Conan murmured, pocketing the diamond wrapped in the handkerchief after he was sure he got off any possible fingerprints.
Then again, that had almost been confirmed, hadn't it? He had been at enough heists, around the taskforce enough to hear it. Upon looking at the files his father had on Phantom 1412, Conan started to suspect the possibility for the biggest contradiction in Kaitou Kid.
The snipers. Snipers would come to heists. Not always, but often enough. Snipers no one could find the source of. It was too often to attribute it to possibly the owners being too prideful or crazy to risk an accomplice of murder charge than let Kid steal their jewels. The fact they hadn't been caught in doing so just made him conclude it probably wasn't them.
So it was a third party. A third party was willing to shoot at Kid. It couldn't be solely for the jewel. Between the two, Kid or security, it would be roughly the same. Or if not, then Kid was tougher. At least there were limits to what can be done with security. If it was just because they happened to be eying the jewel at the time, it'd be better to wait until it was returned than get themselves arrested for murder.
Unless, of course, there was a reason they didn't want Kid to have it. Which meant it was likely to be at least as much to kill Kid as to get the jewel.
Why? Why, why, why? And Kid had to know.
And that was the contradiction. He didn't like people getting hurt, but if he was being targeted snipers, why make it easy to target him? The chance was low, but people still could be hurt because of such a thing. Why did Kid risk it? Why did he risk that when he hated it any other time.
But the original Kid had the same problem. Not always, but enough times it was suspicious.
Even the one person without that bittersweetness to his brilliance had troubles. It was always that thought that turned things around and things started to fall into place.
Kid disappeared eight years ago. Why? He was incapable. But was it just he was physically incapable or just incapable of anything period. The snipers were part of a third party. They weren't caught, so they had some skill. And they were around for years.
It wouldn't be impossible they figured out who that Kid was.
If the first Kid was dead and was logically someone very precious to the current Kid, then his contradictions all made sense.
It wasn't about the thrill.
It certainly wasn't about greed.
It was about justice.
A young child lost someone precious to them. Staged as an accident more likely, but an unsolved murder at the least. Eight years later, the child figures out who that person was. Probably the one who taught them magic. If the magic was too different, someone would notice, more than likely.
They had an inkling, but not the truth. Perhaps they learned of it from the elderly assistant? Someone who knew about Kid, but not the whole truth behind his death.
When he thought about it like that...
How do you find out about the truth eight years later? Get the proof? Avoid slandering that's person's name?
...it was simple then.
Draw them out. Draw them out by becoming the ghost of who they thought was dead. And at some point, he succeeded enough to actually find them. Find out the motive.
The motive being the jewel. They killed Kid because they didn't want him to have a jewel and now Kid is stealing both to get the jewel first and act as bait. Draw them out enough for the cops to grab them. They were shooting at someone, so they would be arrested no matter what and it could potentially avoid slandering their precious person's name.
Everything was explained then. It explained why such a noble person who hated violence any other time would take such a large risk. Why he WOULD be deliberately so flashy. Everything was explained.
...well, almost everything.
Tonight, he had another clue to that. The fact Kid returned the jewel said it was a specific jewel they were looking for. Something unique that they didn't know enough about. A jewel that had a relationship to the moon.
That was perhaps the one question Conan couldn't even begin to speculate. What exactly could this jewel be that made it dangerous enough for the first Kid to make it his mission to find and...for people to kill him for it? It can't be greed since Kid put it at risk by returning it...so what made a shiny rock so valuable that they needed something specific?
It was perhaps that, in the end, that made Conan pull back so easily as time went on. When a heist was ruined, the pure enjoyment was gone and it easier to become detached like in a murder. It was easy to get lost in the thrill otherwise, to forget that there was something Kid was trying to do. There was very possibly a threat he was trying to take down.
To cheat to win then, to ruin that chance...
Well, it made him wonder what would happen if he ever caught Kid in a real heist? Would he turn him in?
Or would he let him go?
All because there might be a serious threat out there that Kid was trying to stop.
"What exactly...are you racing to prevent, Kaitou Kid?" Conan murmured.
AN2: This came when I was watching the latest OVA. I've talked about what Conan could, conceivably, figure out from his canon POV about Kid before, but after the moon thing, I finally decided to make a fic of it. Especially with the first real clue he has to what makes the stone Kid is looking for unique. Which may or may not appear in other future fics.