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The phone rang, a jaunty tune that echoed cheerily in the secret room where he was working.
He answered it in a singsong tone, activating the speakerphone. "Hello! Phantom Thief Agency, this is Kid at your service, please state your emergency!"
"How fast can you create a fake identity?" The voice that came over the line was rushed, high-pitched, and - he realised belatedly, mind stuttering in shock - all too familiar. "And I mean a proper one, Kid, one that will stand up to inspection and all that."
"Shinichi? Is that you?" His eyes boggled as he snatched up the phone, turning off the speaker. "Wait, what exactly happened? Start at the the beginning."
Sighing exasperatedly, Shinchi told his tale to the increasingly incredulous thief.
"That should be impossible," Kid said slowly, his mind still processing everything he'd heard in the last few minutes, although it really did explain everything that was different about the detective's voice. "You got shrunk by ten years because of a drug?"
"Oh, please," the detective retorted, a hint of distinctly unchildlike acerbicness creeping into the young voice. The disparity was rather mind-boggling, honestly. "You chase a gem that cries tears of immortality! You hardly have the right to lecture me about being impossible, that's just plain hypocrisy. And you probably fit into the same category anyway, what with the ridiculous stunts that you pull - "
Kid listened without comment, patiently waiting for his newly-shrunken friend to finish his tirade. Finally, the flow of his words slowed and stopped.
"Done ranting?"
The detective's reply sounded mildly sheepish. "Um. Yeah."
"You'll be needing a new identity for the foreseeable future, then, I suppose," Kid mused aloud. "Although I must say, I am rather touched that you contacted me in this time of need, meitantei-kun."
"Well, who else was I supposed to contact? Division One? 'Hello, this is Kudo Shinichi speaking, could I report a homicide attempt? Oh, and did I mention that I was the victim of said attempt, which shrunk me into a little kid instead!' That would go over so well."
The usually calm voice was edged with just the slightest note of hysteria, although Kid supposed that it was perfectly understandable given the circumstances. "My parents were somewhere in Los Angeles when I checked last month, and I have exactly zero idea where there are now, not that they'd necessarily be helpful anyway. And my apologies for not knowing many people capable of creating a fake identity with any degree of credibility."
"Always glad to know that my unique skill set can be of service, meitantei-kun," the thief replied with his customary cheer. "Goodness knows, with your naturally honest and truth-obssessed mind, you're liable to come up with some completely transparent name like Edogawa Conan or something equally unlikely."
Shinichi began to splutter a protest on the other end of the line, but Kid just went on, his brow knitting as something occurred to him.
"Which is just as well, seeing as you'll need me to provide you with a plausible leave of absence." His voice shifted and changed as he spoke, shading back into the less polished tones of Kuroba Kaito, clouded with earnest worry. "Mouri-san must be beside herself with worry by now."
"What - oh god, right, Ran must be wondering where I am. Damn," he cursed in a obviously heartfelt manner before falling silent. They'd both been so focused on what to do about Shinichi's new situation that the existing problem had slipped their minds.
Kaito was the one to break the silence. "Shinichi? You still there?"
"Ah, yeah. Look, I don't know how to say this, but…" Shinichi's voice trailed off and hitched, exhaustion clear in every breath. "How soon can Kudo Shinichi appear in his house? As his seventeen year old self," he added bitterly after a moment of thought.
"Twenty minutes will do," Kaito answered almost immediately, transport schedules running quickly through his head. Traffic would be pretty clear by this hour, so he shouldn't have too much trouble in that regard. "I'll need your keys," he added almost as an afterthought.
Shinichi didn't even bother mustering anything beyond weak sarcasm in his reply. "What, the great Kaitou Kid can't get past a simple house lock?"
"Hardly. But who knows if anyone will pass by at this hour, and I'd rather not get caught breaking into what by all appearances is my own house."
"Good point," he conceded. "Can't do much about the gate, but the spare key for the front door is in the top left corner of the doorframe."
There was a brief silence on both ends of the line, filled only by a distant background murmur.
"Oh, and Kaito?"
Kaito paused in his movements - Shinichi never called him by his real name unless it was something serious, as least not over the phone - and transferred his attention back to the phone that now lay innocently beside the glider mechanism he'd been tinkering with. "Hmm?"
"Thanks." There was a brief moment of hesitation. "For believing, I mean. I was pretty sure no one would buy this whole thing."
"I'm hardly just anyone, Shinichi." On his end of the line, Kaito grinned, just a hint of Kid's daredevil cockiness in the expression. "The impossible is rather my speciality, after all. You are one of the few people who actually have this number, and none of the others would pass it on to a kid, let alone get into situations that would shrink them into one."
The detective snorted. "Right. You'd better get going, then, otherwise you're never going to make it to Beika anytime soon."
"No problem, tantei-kun!" Kaito snapped the phone closed, tossing it aside as he reached for the nearest can of hair gel and began tugging his perpetually unruly hair into place.
And Kudo Shinichi left the Kuroba residence for his house in Beika, even as a much younger figure stepped away from the flashing lights of Tropical Land and started on the long journey home.