Synopsis: Hell is other people. Or, in this particular instance: a phantom thief, a junior detective league, and five hours buried alive together.

Shinichi pinched the bridge of his nose. The light from his wristwatch reflected off his glaring glasses.

"One of you, I don't care which one - explain this to me in the next three seconds."

"Um…it wasn't my idea?" Ayumi said with a slight squeak, sending a guilty look towards the others as she did.

"It wasn't much of an idea at all, if you ask me," Kid said, raising his hands in the theatrical manner he was so fond of. "Just wondering - is anyone asking me here?"

"No," said Shinichi.

"-'Cos I must say, I've got a lot of opinions, and you can't just go back on your word like that - I mean, a three-headed monster? Are you people serious?"

"It worked, Kid-san, didn't it?" Mitsuhiko said defensively. "I admit that I didn't think it would, either, but the results speak for themselves - "

"The only monster down here," Kid said, flatly, "is the one who fell on me from above while I was climbing down the maintenance ladder. Now tell me - which one of you came up with this harebrained plot to catch me?"

Shinichi watched as Ayumi and Mitsuhiko made a gallant effort of looking anywhere but the guilty party. His mouth twitched.

"Oh no he's mad now," Ayumi whispered. It wasn't really much of a whisper, magnified by the confined walls around them, but at least no one could fault her for her lack of effort.

"Is it because we went off on our own -?" Mitsuhiko whispered back, with just as much subtlety.

"Don't take this the wrong way," Ai said, panting slightly as she caught up to Shinichi. For someone stuck in a body a decade younger, he certainly seemed determined to forget it. She looked from Kid, to the junior detectives trailing beside him, before fixing her cool gaze on Shinichi's unmoving face. "He's not actually mad," she said, unconvincingly. "Just…disappointed."

"'Cos we got to Kid before him?" Genta asked, most definitely not whispering now.

Shinichi screwed his eyes shut, looking acutely pained for a moment.

"Curiosity killed the kaitou, indeed," lamented Kid. He made a face, not bothering to hide the discomfort of being boxed in by a flock of miniature-sized humans he was less than fond of. "If you want to laugh, Tantei-kun, just go ahead and do it. You look like you are about to bust a vein."

"I really don't think that is the problem here," Shinichi said through clenched teeth.

And that was when the sound of explosion came.

Kid was almost convinced that he had busted an eardrum by the time the screaming died down.

"You lot," Shinichi bit out, face taut in a show of rare anger, "went wandering off on your little adventure when there's a lunatic lurking around - not you, I'll deal with you later -" he shot back at the offended look Kid leveled towards him. "There was a bomb threat. Why didn't you answer your badge when I called?"

The targets of his ire shuffled before him, ears practically parallel with their shoulders under the force of his glare. Guilt hung thick in the turgid air between them.

"Did everyone get out?" Kid asked, switch in persona so swift and unwarned that a less experienced man might believe him replaced on the spot.

"Everyone except the few of you here." Shinichi didn't bat an eye at it. "What do you have to say for yourselves?"

"I don't think they could have gotten your message," Kid put forth, cautiously, when Ayumi's eyes started watering. "The signal down here…"

"I called ten minutes ago," Shinichi interrupted him, unrelenting. "The radar was still working then. The call went through, but none of you answered. I thought that - that you might…"

The silence was deafening.

"We are very sorry," Ayumi said, openly crying now, the others stuttering out apologies along with her. "We won't ever do it again."

"Wander off on your own, or not answer me?"

"Both," Mitsuhiko mumbled. "I should have realized…"

"You should." Ai shook her head. "But what's done is done. How long do you expect it will take them to get us out of here?"

"Hakase knows that we came down. Clearing out the rubble above, on the other hand…" He frowned. "That'll probably take at least a few hours. We are lucky the structural integrity down here is intact. If we are very lucky, the ventilation might even still be working."

"We are not going to run out of air here, are we?" Mitsuhiko looked a bit peaky under the glow of his torch.

"It won't take that long," Shinichi reassured, softening a bit.

Ai glanced at Kid. "And if it does," she said levelly. "We could always get rid of the most irritating one first…"

Mitsuhiko looked like he wasn't sure if he should laugh at her joke. Or of whether it actually was a joke.

"You mind checking for our ease of mind?" Shinichi turned to Kid, the request almost casual.

Kid walked up to the nearest grid in the wall, the others trailing beside him apprehensively. Dust layered the inside of the rusty opening, which was too narrow for even the children to pass through - but the tiny flame between his fingers jumped, very slightly.

He turned back with the biggest, showiest smile in his arsenal.

"Congratulations, my miniature ladies and gentlemen. Not only is the ventilation working, you get to enjoy my company for the next few hours."

"Sure," Shinichi said.

Five heads swiveled to him in surprise.

A long, tedious list of things Kid might be - most less than complimentary - but a poor entertainer wasn't one of them. And as resilient as the junior detective league was…they were still kids. Actual kids. Having something conveniently on hand to occupy their minds while waiting a rescue had to be better than its opposite.

Or so he had believed, at the time.

"Can you pull a rabbit out of your hat?" Ayumi asked hopefully.

Kid blinked. For a tiny fraction of a second there was something close to offense in his hesitation, albeit well-disguised.

"Wouldn't you prefer something less…cliché?" He asked.

"I like rabbits." The girl was implacable. "They're cute."

Ai raised her eyebrows, as if waiting to see what he would make of the predicament.

"Very well." Kid heaved out a dramatic sigh. "Far be it from me to disappoint such a sweet lady." He swept a low bow, took off the top hat, and reached inside with a gloved hand.

Shinichi stared at him. "Oh no, you don't," he said. "It's just doves, it's always the doves, what would you even need a rabbit for -"

There was a flurry of disappointed voices when the creature vanished again.

"There's an interdimensional pocket in there, right, Kid-san?" Mitsuhiko suggested, sending a concerned look towards Shinichi, who was glowering at the wall in determined silence. "That's still the only explanation I can come up with…"

"Let a magician keep his secrets, would you?" Kid asked with a slight wink.

Ai glanced up from the circle of impromptu petting party they had formed, unrepentantly amused. "I think you broke him."

"Looks like someone isn't having fun here. How about I do something to make up for it?" Kid tapped a gloved finger against his chin. "Fireworks?"

"Something less flashy, if you please. Ventilation or not, we don't need anything catching on fire in here."

"Poker?"

"A game he wouldn't lose at may be preferable," she vetoed again, a small smile playing on her lips.

"So hard to please, you lot." Kid rummaged through his coat pocket with one hand. His eyes glinted a bit when he pulled out a deck in a flourish. "Cards against humanity?"

"No," Shinichi and Ai objected resoundingly, at the same time.

"Do you two have to be the parents here all the time? Something traditional…like truth or dare? I bet Tantei-kun would like that. Pursuer of the truth and all."

"He might not," Shinichi said, dully. But it wasn't quite a no.

The kids let out a startlingly loud cheer, before they lapsed into awkward silence again.

"There's…not really much to dare about around here," Mitsuhiko said, sounding apologetic. "We could walk up to the wall, or maybe dance for a bit, but that's about…"

"Come on," Kid said, an almost wheedling note to it. "Use your imagination. I, for one, would pay good money to see Tantei-kun serenading My Heart Will -"

"No!" Four voices rang out in unison.

"Yes," said Shinichi slowly, standing up. "Far be it from me to disappoint you, when you've been working so hard to entertain us tonight, no?"

Kid gave him a curious, anticipatory look.

Shinichi smiled. He drew himself up to his full height, lifted the bowtie up to his face, and -

"Lady Luck, if you are still listening out there," Kid said through glazed eyes. "The soul of your dearest child is departing from this cruel world, and he would like a few words with you before -"

"For…obvious reasons," Ai said, finding a slightly more comfortable position to settle into. "I suggest we stick to the truths from now on."

"I second that," muttered Kid. A scattered chorus of agreements followed it.

"Okay, who goes first?"

Ai looked around the frazzled little circle like a lioness trying to pick out the weakest link in a herd of potential prey. "Mitsuhiko-kun," she said with admirable aplomb, "would you do the honors?"

Mitsuhiko flushed a little under the attention. "Um," he said, rallying himself for the task. "Okay…what are you afraid of, Kid-san?" He glanced at Kid's impassive face uncertainly, before adding, "I think it's just truths for this game now, so…feel free to pass the question if you don't like it?"

"Do you really need to know this now?" Kid gave an easy, one-shouldered shrug. "You've already caught me."

"Don't be a poor sport," Shinichi said darkly from the side.

"Me, Tantei-kun?" Kid looked insulted by the very idea. "Never."

"So, what is it?"

"If you had asked me five minutes ago, I might even pretend to hesitate a little. But now?" Kid looked around the circle, as if daring anyone to contradict him - "Your singing."

"Why, thank you." Shinichi bore the burn with the grace of someone who had long come to terms with his deficiencies, and resolved to devote the rest of his life to weaponizing it instead, spiteful creature that he was.

"That makes sense - no offense, Conan-kun." Mitsuhiko said, a nervous laugh building, before something else occurred to him. "Uh, but what about before you heard it, Kid-san?"

"Answer your own question first," Kid replied, "and I might be in the mood to tell you. Consider that my question."

Mitsuhiko narrowed his eyes, recognizing a trick condition when he heard one, but unable to counter it. "You mean what I'm afraid of? Uh - zombies, I suppose."

"Zombies are bad, but…I still think youkai is scarier," Ayumi said. "They don't just eat your brains…"

"Ghosts are worse than zombies," Genta pitched in. "They actually want to hunt you down for revenge!"

"That would depend on the kind of ghost, wouldn't it?"

"That would depend on whether ghosts even exist at all -"

"Is this how we play truth-or-truth now? Like - like a debate?" Kid glanced between them. "Okay. Sure, just…ignore me and go on competing your worst fears with each other, why not?"

"Zombies are not like youkais, or ghosts." Mitsuhiko crossed his arms staunchly. "A zombie apocalypse could actually - possibly happen. Theoretically."

"Theoretically, an asteroid could hit this miserable chunk of rock we call a planet, and we'd all be dead before any of them come for us," Ai said with a wry smile.

"Must you?" Shinichi protested tiredly.

"I'm kind of surprised, to be honest," Kid said. "After all the time they spend with you, corpsus magnetus suprema -"

"That's not how you say it in Latin."

"- And this is the best they could come up with?"

"Well, what else are you looking for?" Shinichi summoned a flat stare to accompany his response. "Gruesome, age-inappropriate murder details?"

"Ah…" Genta said thoughtfully. "The case last month was pretty scary."

"Which one?" Mitsuhiko asked. "I kind of lost count."

"I'm talking about the one with the - uh - that got blood and goo everywhere, even the ceiling -"

"I don't know. I think the one where the victim got buried alive was scarier," Ayumi countered.

"Can - can you please - refrain from talking about it in that cute, breezy tone of yours while we are stuck down in this place?" Kid backtracked rapidly, visibly disturbed. He shot Shinichi a hard, accusatory look that might as well be a shriek of you monster at the top of his lungs.

Shinichi withered a bit under the glare. "I didn't exactly put them up to -"

"Ohh, wait a second. I remember now," Mitsuhiko said. "Conan-kun mentioned a case where the murderer got rid of the body by making it into…something? What are those called again?" He looked to Shinichi in askance. "Burritos, right?"

Kid started inching away from the circle, now looking distinctly green about the gills. "Tantei-kun," he said, weakly, "what - what the he -"

"Language," Ai reminded sardonically.

"You're concerned about language now? How about what the actual flambéed flying fish -" The Look escalated into something along the lines of you are a shame upon your ancestors, a blight on the face of this planet, and an affront to existence itself.

Shinichi was fairly sure he had seen actual corpses and murderers and roadkill on the receiving ends of less disgusted looks before.

"The defense shall now plead his case for crimes of corrupting the young and innocent," Ai deadpanned.

Shinichi shot her a betrayed look. "You know it was an accident -"

Kid followed up without a hitch. "He shall now plead his case for accidentally corrupting -"

"They overheard me talking with Hattori on the phone about a novel, that's it, that's literally it -"

"He shall now plead his case for abusing the term literally -"

Shinichi opened his mouth. "That's not -" He clamped it shut. He would not play into their hand. He would not. Some things were just not worth it, and this was -

"The defense pleads guilty to all charges, Your Honor," Kid said, morosely, in Conan's own voice. "I am deeply remorseful for my vast and numerous wrongdoings, and I hereby swear, in the name of the moon, that I -"

Shinichi closed his eyes, inhaled, and counted to five. When he could finally trust himself not to scream, he opened them, stared up at the ceiling in despair, and made a prayer for whatever sadistic deity that had condemned him to this to please, please let him out.

"Who hasn't gotten a turn yet?" Someone - someone entirely heedless to his silent pleas - asked, when the commotion finally died down.

Shinichi had never wanted to understand the motives behind crimes of passion in his life, but in that instant, he thought he might.

"Favorite hobby," he forced out in a tone that wasn't much more alive than the walking dead in Mitsuhiko's supposedly worst nightmares.

The answers started out normally enough. At first.

Until they decided that even normal wasn't good enough for them anymore.

"Magic," Kid said. "Obviously," he added, sounding slightly quizzical about the dubious silence that followed it.

"But your favorite hobby is stealing," Genta said, wholly unselfconscious. His companions, significantly more polite but no less uncertain about the opinion, nodded along in agreement.

Kid actually looked taken aback by it. "I...wouldn't say that it's my hobby," he said after a beat.

"Um, I'm sorry if that was rude, but…he kind of has a point?" Mitsuhiko said, hesitantly. "You do…steal a lot, in your free time? If you just like magic, why not just be a stage magician?"

"But it's not just -" Kid protested, frustration palpable. "I don't actually like stealing -"

"Then why do you enjoy it so much?"

"Enjoying the thrill of the heists is not the same as - look, I don't just do it for…" Kid considered for another second, only to lose track of his argument. "Fine, whatever. Think what you like." He said blithely.

Shinichi looked to Ai, whose face had taken on a bored expression again, and wondered why he was struck by the sudden urge to speak up in his rival's defense, now of all times. Then his previous plight came to mind in vivid detail, and he decided - no, he definitely wasn't that magnanimous, after all.

"Does that mean you are a - a kleptomaniac?" Mitsuhiko asked, after a moment. "Do you actually, you know -"

"No," Kid said heatedly. "No, I'm not, and no, you can't just throw around big words you don't understand from wherever you read that -"

"I know what it means," Mitsuhiko said tartly, taking offense.

"If you didn't want to answer, you could just say so instead of lying," Ayumi said, frowning. "That's not really fair to us."

"Shouldn't there be a penalty of some sort? That's twice you've done it now - "

"Tantei-kun," Kid said, with a politeness that obviously pained him. "Can you please control your…ah, minions?"

"We are not minions!"

"Hellspawns," Kid amended.

There was a brief pause in motion, before said hellspawns caught on that the amendment couldn't possibly mean anything better than what preceded it. Retaliation came, swift, violent, and some rather less verbal than others.

"You started this, Kid," Shinichi said, ruthlessly. "You will see it through to the bitter end with me."

Kid hissed like a cat that had just been dumped into cold water. "Get them off me this instant or I swear to god, I'm gonna gas all of you -"

"Without gassing yourself in here?" Shinichi arched an eyebrow, entirely unconcerned. "I think not."

"Is there a word for the talent of pissing off everyone in the room at once?" Ai said, wonderingly.

The stars, Shinichi knew, were aligned. Balance was once again restored to nature; the angels were singing above in sweet, rising chorus; the universe was expanding in perfect, chaotic harmony, and the look on Kaitou Kid's face, in this instant, was a thing to be savored for all of the glorious future to come -

Plus tard.

"Thank god," Kid said in a low whisper at the snoring, wrung out pile sprawling ungainly on the ground. "At last."

"I'm still not entirely convinced you didn't drug them," Shinichi muttered. "Did you feed them something before I got here?"

"We've been here for at least four hours, Tantei-kun," Kid said, still keeping his voice subdued. "And I want you to take a long, hard look at what unholy hour it is now, before you tell me that bucketloads of normal, sensible kids still run about at this time." He shot a dubious look at Ai, who raised her eyebrows and returned it with a challenging look of her own.

"Are you sure you can call them normal or sensible?" She asked.

Kid gave the subjects in question a wary sidelong glance, lowering his voice another notch. "…Fair enough."

"Ingestible sedatives isn't up in his M.O, as far as I know." Shinichi turned back to Kid. "Not that it would surprise me if you do have free candies on you too -"

A chocolate bar materialized before him. He stared at the proffered object for a second, before shaking his head. "Ah. No thanks."

Kid tilted his head. "You don't seem as outraged now. Fancy that."

"Unhealthy suppers in your line of profession isn't anywhere near as outrageous as animals that come out of nowhere," Shinichi said dryly. "So. The tip-off for the bomb threat. Was that you?"

Kid gave a light snort. "Not everything is on me, you know," he said, turning solemn when Shinichi's expression did not waver. "I'd have done something more useful than traipsing around with these hellions, don't you think?"

"Unless you weren't," Shinichi said, gaze sharpening. "You just came down here to find them at the same time I did."

"Nice deduction," Kid said, poignantly not confirming or denying it.

"Do I even need one? …You were still arguing with them when I found you."

"Phantom thieves these days," Ai said wryly. "No respect for their job."

"How anyone ever thought for a second that you could be middle-aged is beyond me."

If Kid had found the statement threatening, his smile was no less quick for it. "People tend to see what they want to believe." He gave Shinichi a look that seemed to say, you would know that, wouldn't you?

"Still - I appreciate it," Shinichi said, pointedly not acknowledging the exchange. He eyed the low ceiling pressing down above them with some wariness, as if trying to estimate how far out of the comfort zone it would be for someone used to taking to the skies. "Getting into a space with only one exit while surrounded by people intent on catching you. Just because you noticed they were missing."

Kid looked to Ai. She shrugged and leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes as she did. "If you're going to be negotiating with the criminal, meitantei," she said, in a perfect mimicry of Kid's tone of address, "I want plausible deniability."

"So…you'll let me off this time?" Kid asked, cautiously hopeful.

"Basically?" Shinichi paused. "Yes."

"And the next?"

"Don't push it." But that was almost a smile in his voice.

"Tantei-kun," Kid said slowly. "I risked my freedom and sanity to save three hellions tonight. That's…like, three more than you."

Shinichi gave Kid a scrutinizing look, like he was a tiny, wriggly specimen spread on a microscopic slide, a creature so alien that they had to come up with a unpronounceable genus just for it.

Kid faltered a little. "Okay, so maybe the sanity part is more of a 'mutually assured destruction' sort of thing -"

"Are you bartering with your altruism?" Shinichi asked with loaded incredulity.

Kid responded to the intense scrutiny of his moral fiber by flinging what remained of his conscience - and dignity - to the wind. "Well, yes if I don't have to face that monstrosity you call a soccer ball! I've still got the bruises from last week!"

Now that he was looking for it, there was, indeed, a barely visible mark where the projectile had glanced off. Despite himself, Shinichi felt a very small twinge of sympathy. Unless Kid was a martial artist (doubtful), or made a regular habit of slamming his face into walls (unlikely, though not impossible…), that one couldn't have been easy to explain away in his civilian identity.

"I could have gotten myself killed," Kid complained. "Or worse, arrested."

Briefly, Shinichi suspected that the stress had gotten to him, or at least his hearing, after all. His suspicion lasted about as long as his sympathy did.

"Care to elaborate on your skewed priorities?"

"Uh," Kid paused in contemplation. "I'll…live to see the consequences of my sins?"

He was sounding serious. He was actually still sounding serious. Shinichi found himself reevaluating the probability of unfortunately lasting effects from blunt trauma to the head.

The odds were…somewhat depressing.

"Fine," he relented. "I'll aim somewhere other than your face next time. If only because a bigger head is the last thing you need on top of that ridiculous get-up."

Someone gave a snort to the side, not even bothering to hide the fact that she was listening in anymore.

Kid looked very much like a put out salesman, roped into accepting a poor deal by an unexpectedly tricky customer.

"I'll take what I can get." He brought up a gloved hand for shaking. Shinichi leveled a flat stare at it, and he dropped it again smoothly. "All right. We've got a deal."

"- Aaand thus let it never be said that Edogawa Conan, dubbed the worthiest opponent of the great Kaitou Kid himself, is a deceptive, devious, despicable little ingrate. For when he next ran into Kaitou Kid a week after their agreement, true to every word of his sacred promise, he aimed for the groin."

Shinichi rolled his eyes. "You dodged it."

"By the skin of my teeth!" Kid fumed.

"I gave you an extra second of warning, didn't I?" Shinichi said. "I'm not a complete monster, you know."

Kid muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like "could have fooled me".

"What was that?"

"Nothing!"

A/N: I've been stuck in a terrible mood lately, so I tried doing something silly and light-hearted for them to cheer myself up. Didn't really work for me, but who knows, maybe it'd make someone else a bit happier.

Thanks for reading. Have a lovely day :)

(Outtake in next chapter.)