#wolfswriting

This was a more straightforward opportunity than he'd probably ever get out of Vermouth or anyone from the BO that had let him get away.

But is this alright? Letting down his walls for someone he couldn't see his face properly was irrational.

"What do you gain by saving me?"

"Gain?" KID laughed like it was the most amusing question in the world. “My, my, Great Detective. Is every act of goodwill, a transaction to you?”

"There isn't any logical reason not to save someone."

His own words from when he was still Shinichi came back to bite him with a vengeance.

Conan sighed. “I’d be a hypocrite if I said that, so no. But I don’t expect criminals to hold that sort of selfless sentiment.”

“Selfless, huh?” Kaitou KID stepped down from the ledge.

This simple action somehow activated Conan’s fight response. He squared his shoulders as much as it was possible while balancing on his crutches.

“Relax,” KID said, raising his hands placatingly until Conan backed down. “I don’t believe things are that simple. There are truly evil people in the world, yes. And the same can be said for the good ones. But most people you might meet are somewhere in between. Humans are walking, talking contradictions. You can reason some of their actions with logic, but not everything. After all, I’m an example of that contradiction: a gentleman thief.”

“Yeah, right.” Conan scoffed. “There is no honor among thieves. So what’s in it for you?”

KID set his hand over his heart. “You wound me, Detective. I’ll be the first to admit that keeping you alive has its use, but that’s only part of the answer. Before being a thief I am, foremost, an entertainer. My job is to capture people’s hearts, not stomp on them.”

“Get to the point.”

He just . . . didn't think he could bear facing them. Thom Rainier had intended to die for his crimes here in Orlais, as he should have done long ago. He meant what he'd said to Lavellan before he left. He admired them, respected them. He couldn't stand before them now to see the pain he'd caused them. Not that it mattered—what was done was done.

Heiji thought that after graduating from the police academy, his dad would hire him as a detective. But his father assigns him to the traffic department as a paper-pusher, saying something along the lines of “You need to learn how to do your paperwork properly before handling homicide cases”.

Heiji is of course pissed, but there isn’t much he can do about it. So, he drones through petty cases over parking tickets, when something exciting does drop in their department.

Someone confiscated a motorbike that is rumored to be KID's as it was found parked near the sight of his recent heist in Osaka. While the MPD Division 2 is trying to gain rights over this case, it is left to the traffic department to deal with it. Heiji believes that if anyone comes to ask for the confiscated bike and license plates, that person must be KID in disguise.

At first, an older gentleman appears (Jii). It’d be too rude to just pinch his cheek out of nowhere, but his lack of proper documentation proves enough of a stopgap to refuse his request. The bike is after all signed under Toichi’s magic troupe, which Jii is handling until Kaito comes of age. But of course, Jii doesn’t have a motorbike license. So Heiji tells him to bring a different document. This process repeats with every new document that doesn’t correlate the driver (Kuroba Kaito) as the owner of this bike.

In the end, Kaito himself makes an appearance. Heiji is confused because there are a lot of Kudou lookalikes but even Okita isn’t such a doppelganger. So he pinches his cheek, which of course isn’t a mask.

Kaito mouths him off, saying “Are all Osakan police so rude??”.

Eventually, Heiji concedes to give him the bike since there’s nothing more to stall him for. If anything, he is surprised that someone so lean as Kaito is able to handle such a high-octane bike (more so KID). Kaito tells him that he’s a gymnastics athlete. Heiji remembers one of Kudou’s spiels about Sherlock Holmes and offers his hand for a handshake. It’s true that Kaito’s hand has callouses that could hold the truth about what he said, but there’s too little evidence to make a clear call.

tw: gun violence

Title: Fragments (slipping away like sand)

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: 诡秘之主 - 爱潜水的乌贼 | Lord of the Mysteries - Cuttlefish that Loves Diving Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death Relationships: Leonard Mitchell | The Star/Klein Moretti, Leonard Mitchell | The Star & Pallez Zoroast Characters: Leonard Mitchell | The Star, Klein Moretti, Pallez Zoroast Additional Tags: Unrequited Love, Survivor Guilt, Dreams and Nightmares, Dreaming as a form of self harm (but you didn't hear that from me), Past Character Death, Yearning, Angst and Tragedy, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Self-Indulgent, One Shot, Lord of the Mysteries Spoilers, The Author Regrets Nothing, The Author has read up to the beginning of the Red Priest volume of the webnovel at the date of posting this so take that as you will Summary:

Living in a wretched world like theirs, to wish for anything was like building with your own two hands the stage for yet another tragedy.

Leonard returns to the Blackthorn Company. It's not a good thing.

Just dropping by (at the last minute) to let you guys know I'm participating in this year's @kaishinbigbang!!

I have the great honor of @chatlote being my partner, whose idea had me in a chokehold from the moment I saw it! It's gonna be a bumpy ride for our boys since the underlined theme was 'it gets worse before it gets better' and I took that as a challenge lol

Also, Lina's art for this is so beautiful!! I can't wait for everyone else to see it as well~ ♥

So, keep your eyes open for August 14 when The Countdown to Immortality drops!

[Text version of the preview below the cut]

So, after seeing the new teaser, that first silly impression is slowly becoming a fully fledged fic (is it HeiKai, HeiShin, HeiKaiShin, idk haven't reached that far yet 😅)

Like yeah, I want the dissonance of KID being aware that Heiji knows Conan is Shinichi, and Heiji not really knowing that Kaito looks like Shinichi (because Kudou never tells him any details that are not important for the task at hand). If anything, Heiji probably heard that's an option from Kazuha because Ran kept complaining to her about all the times KID had disguised as Shinichi before (or given recent manga spoilers, even from Hakuba and his suspicions).

That's why when Heiji unmasks him by cutting through his top hat, KID still slips into his Shinichi disguise (after doing it so many times, I'm convinced he can without a mirror at this point). Not because Heiji will believe it, since Conan is right there, but to buy time.

Heiji, of course, is pissed off about it, and given the whole Kidzuha fiasco, he wants to cut KID in half more than play along.

But KID says that he can't help it if disguising as the people that Heiji loves will keep him safe from his wrath. While Heiji has a crisis over what kind of love does he mean, KID makes his escape (recently stolen sword and all). Heiji throws his sword after KID, like a javelin, and unbeknownst to him, actually hits the handglider. KID drops out of the sky, fate unknown.

Next day, Iori shows up to bring Heiji to Momiji's temporary place (will the plot remain in Hokkaido, dunno) as there is a sensitive matter to discuss. Turns out, they found KID somewhere. While they recognize this person looks like Kudou Shinichi, it's still pretty obvious the clothes he had been wearing was KID's outfit. Heiji manages to convince them to bring Conan along, since the suspicion for KID's real identity will fall on his "cousin" and who's better to dispel these kind of rumors.

What neither of them expects when they are left alone with KID though is that one, he doesn't know who he is; two, he doesn't recognize Conan; but three, he remembers Heiji.

For now, I think the sword has something to do with this temporary amnesia (like holding a part of Kaito's soul or sth) since he feels more like himself whenever he's close to it. I also like actual magic shenanigans in the DetCo universe because it means I can make Akako appear (if the magic is real, she can exist. That's my rule lmao).