Mikau: Hello everyone! Thank you for your patience during the wait between chapters, and thank you so much to all of the reviewers from last time: Lady Paper (You know, I never really have any use for Keiko, so I'm not sure that she'll appear here, but I appreciate your suggestion. I'm not quite sure what you mean by "yellow-girl". You mean blonde? Or were you perhaps referring to the colors in their names? Keiko is actually pink from the Momo in her last name, Momoi. Momo is peach. "Ki" would be yellow. The "kei" in Keiko is actually the same kanji used for the name Megumi.), LLL, Kimmiko T, 00Midnight00, neonquincy1217, and Jeina M! Today we also have updates for The Healing Process, Falling in Love Literally, and Just Passing Through. I also have three new ones: an angsty Kid and Conan piece called On a Midsummer Night, another Kid and Conan one titled Let Go and Move On, and an Onmyouji!Shinichi and Hakuba and Spirit Familiar!Kaito fic called Haunted. Here's hoping you enjoy the chapter!

Disclaimer: If I owned it, the plots would be a lot simpler, for one. I am starting to work on that, though, planning my own murder mystery series. We'll have to wait and see how that turns out. ^.^;

…

Chapter Nine: A Visit to the Professor

"What's this one do?!" Aoko trilled for pretty much literally the thousandth time in the past hour as she picked up yet another invention from the pile (she still hadn't learned her lesson from the twenty times that something had blown up on her when she'd touched it).

"Ah, that one's such an old model," the Professor chuckled in his big, jolly, belly-shaking laugh.

Kaito leaned in and whispered to his coconspirators, "I think that's Santa."

Hakuba was about to put an end to the nonsense by being a royal humbug and denouncing Saint Nick's existence, but Akako cut him off.

"Yeah. I think so," she hummed. "And now we know why he always wears that hat; it's to cover up his receding hairline."

"What do you think he did with his beard?" Kaito wondered out loud.

"Perhaps he has a cloaking device," Akako suggested. "Or it could be a shimmer so that he's not so readily recognizable."

"Or maybe he just shaves the other eleven months of the year," Hakuba scoffed. "Akako-san, do not encourage him. Back to the task at hand, you two."

Kaito grumbled about what a stick in the mud Hakuba was. Or maybe he was commenting upon where Hakuba had a stick stuck. His voice was too low for the others to hear clearly. It was something about a stick, though.

Akako smirked, putting her arm through Hakuba's and squeezing it to her chest. "I like it when you're bossy," she snickered.

Saguru blushed and discretely tried to pull away. "Akako-san, now is not the time or place."

"Then should we go back to your house later?" the redhead pressed, pursuing him as he fled behind Kaito.

"Akako-san, please," Saguru tried to reason with her…all the while trying to keep Kaito between them.

All in all they looked rather silly going round and round the magician like children playing tag.

"But I thought we were engaged?" Akako pretended to pout, delighting in pushing the buttons of her new plaything now that he was no longer under her spell and thus capable of fighting back…futilely, but still. It made the game more fun when he ran from her. It'd been so long since anyone had resisted her…besides Kaito and he was more frustrating than entertaining.

"What?! Since when?!" Hakuba yelped as she almost caught him.

"You know. The onsen when I stole your innocence," she cackled in glee as he ran for the couches, trying to put a bigger buffer in between them.

"Can we please forget that that ever happened?" Hakuba pleaded pitifully as Akako easily (with the help of some levitation magic) hopped over the couch, clearing it with room to spare and forcing him to seek shelter elsewhere.

"But that was one of the best nights of my life! Two hot guys, all naked and alone in the onsen with me? How often does that happen?"

"One time too many!" Saguru wailed.

Meanwhile, all the racket had interrupted Aoko's conversation with the Professor about the inventions, so the Brigade Leader had come over to see what all the fuss was about. Seeing the spectacle of Akako chasing Hakuba, she raised an eyebrow and remarked, "This seems familiar."

"What? You chasing me around?" Kaito snorted half-fondly. "Though, if you ever catch me, you'll just right out beat me to death with a mop or a broom or whatever you have on hand. I think that if Akako-chan ever manages to get her hands on Hakuba, she's going to torture him to death…very, very slowly. Like, fifty plus years' worth of slowly."

Aoko shook her head. "Don't be silly. Akako-chan likes Hakuba-kun."

Kaito raised an eyebrow skeptically at that. "Akako likes attention. It doesn't have to be Hakuba. It just…is."

Aoko tilted her head back and forth in thought as she watched the spectacle. "It's strange, though. Aoko has always thought that Hakuba-kun liked Akako-chan too, but…lately…since everyone got back from the hot spring, things seem to have changed between them…between all of you. Just what happened while Aoko was asleep at the onsen?"

Kaito's gut reaction was to claim that it had been a wild orgy, but somehow he didn't think that that would go over well with Aoko. Instead he shrugged and dodged the question. "Nothing really. Hakuba and I reached an understanding, thank you very much to you and your lock us in the bath without a stitch plan. But other than that…"

Kaito shrugged, changing gears back to marginally safer topics. "Anyway, I think that Hakuba might still like Akako. It's just…he's just trying to reconcile some things about her that he found out recently…. But! I really hope they don't start going out, 'cause that would be weird."

Aoko nodded. "And then Aoko and Kaito would have to start going out, and that would be…wrong." She started to squirm.

Kaito cast her a gauging look and then sighed. "Yeah. Wrong. In more ways than you'll ever know."

Just then, Hakuba rushed back over, using Kaito as a meat shield again. "Will you two stop gawking and help me?!"

With a sigh, Kaito grabbed Akako as she rushed by, securing her in a straightjacket hold. "Now, Akako-chan. People are going to start saying that you're boy crazy if you don't stop chasing poor Hakuba around."

"Oh, but he's so fun to tease," she argued her case playfully.

"Are you going to stop so we can hear all about the Professor's nifty gadgets?" Kaito continued in a parental tone.

"Depends," she snickered. "Are you going to keep holding me if I say no?"

"If you don't stop, I'm going to start ignoring you," he threatened as Aoko looked on with jealousy at someone else holding Akako all intimate like that.

"Fine," Akako pouted and was released from captivity.

Kaito cleared his throat and addressed the scientist. "Now that we're all done acting like kindergarteners, could you please tell us what that…bentou…thing…invention does, Professor?"

"Yes. Please excuse our rudeness." Hakuba bowed deeply in apology.

Akako added her own little bow to that.

The show of remorse seemed to appease the inventor, and he went back to smiling and belly-laughing and showing off his various gadgets.

"This," he pronounced the word with much enthusiasm, pride, and undue fanfare. "Is a bentou box phone. About twenty-years ago, before the cell phones like we have today were invented, I made this phone disguised as a bentou so that it could be carried around and used anywhere."

"So…it's a little passé," Kaito mercilessly observed and received a savage elbow in the gut for his trouble.

"Kaito means that it's retro," Aoko corrected. "It's very cool, Agasa-hakase!"

Aoko turned to Akako and Saguru, subtly encouraging them to agree with her glare of death.

"Oh yes!" Saguru chimed in. "Very cool."

"Mmhm!" Akako nodded obediently.

And then Aoko was back to her rummaging through the pile. "What does this one do?!"

"Ah. That—" Again there was much ado and unneeded solemnity. "—is a toaster. It can toast eight slices at once!"

"Who would need eight slices of toast at once?" Kaito mumbled so that only his two accomplices could hear him.

"Maybe the Professor came from a big family," Saguru suggested in an equally hushed tone.

"Well, we should at least try to get some useful gadgets out of him while we're here," Akako sighed, calling out, "Professor! Do you have any gadgets that could pick a lock for me?"

"What do you need something like that for?" Kaito hissed. "I can pick any lock you need me to."

"Well, what if you're unconscious or bleeding out or distracted by female assassins or something?" Akako returned in a quiet snort. "I need to be able to fend for myself.

"How about a gadget that can crack a safe?" Akako added to her wish list.

"I can do that too," Kaito grumbled.

"Same argument," Akako whispered.

"And how about something like an aerosol can of knock out gas?"

This time Hakuba was the one to question her. "Knock out gas? What would you need that for?"

"In case there are some guards I need to knock out," the witch replied matter-of-factly.

"Can't you just…I don't know…use a spell like the one you put on Aoko-kun at the onsen?" Saguru raised an eyebrow at his partner in crime. "Or Kuroba has knockout gas bombs."

"If it's guards you're worried about," Kaito snorted, "Why don't you just use your charms on them?"

Akako rolled her dark burgundy eyes. "What if the guards are female? My love spell would only work if they were lesbian."

Kaito blinked and then stared hard at Akako. "Wait. I thought that your attraction spell had some effect on girls too. It doesn't?"

Akako shook her head, long crimson strands of hair whipping back and forth against both boys' arms as she did so.

"But…" Kaito's brain was about to explode. "Your charm always seemed to at least partially work on Aoko, so…"

His intense stare transformed into a heated glare as Akako turned her head, refusing to meet his gaze.

"Akako, is there something you wanna say to me?" he growled softly so as to avoid attracting the attention of the Professor and the girl whose sexuality was now in question.

"Oooo no," Akako insisted. "I am having nothing to do with this. That is for you and Nakamori-san to figure out."

"B-But…" Kaito whimpered.

Hakuba awkwardly put a comforting hand on his Brigade brother's shoulder as Akako once more raised her voice, calling out, "Professor! Do you, by any chance, have some kind of rig like you see in the movies that art thieves use to descend from the ceiling?"

That day they went home with upgraded Brigade badges; three pairs of virtually invisible, earpiece-style coms; a portable, light-weight, and yet sturdy mop that shut up like a telescope; and the feeling that more than just the secrets about Kid stood in the way of a relationship between Aoko and Kaito.

…

Mikau: So I don't really know when you can expect the next chapter. ^.^; Sorry. I've been in a writing slump the past few months with things getting so busy at work, and now that I'm getting back into the swing of things, I'm mostly just working on The Healing Process, so you can look forward to more chapters of HP, but as for the Brigade… Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the chapter, and I appreciate your patience in the wait for the next one. Take care guys!