Detective Conan - Magic Kaito oneshots

Phantom

Kaito smiled, baring his teeth to a world that didn't know his name, didn't know his face and didn't know he existed.

He was the rustling of leaves in the wind, the shadow down the dark alley, the water slipping through the cracks in the stones of the sidewalk into obscurity. He was the feeling of not being alone when your senses said you were, the invisibility of a black feather held up against the night sky, the pebble resting unseen in the stony bed of a river, the untraceable whirl in the ever moving current.

He was the face of a coworker or classmate who stayed home sick, the voice of a relative on the phone who you didn't hear from in some time, the polite email contact with a business partner. He was the kind elderly lady feeding the pigeons in the park, the boisterous, stocky, middle aged man selling ice cream at the parlor down the street, the teen girl kicking the creep in front of the women's bathroom at a cafe in the balls for molesting another high schooler.

He was the chameleon that stepped outside with a new face everyday, that never showed its true colors, or spoke with its real voice, that never returned to a safe house twice in a month, or to the same place two days in a row.

He was a blank slate to draw upon whatever he pleased, in a state of drifting beyond the confines of the world that the people crossing the street around him were locked in.

It was the anonymity that damned him to loneliness, tears that shone in the moonlight on nights when his heart ached and bled and wouldn't allow itself to be consoled in its yearning for the human need of connection to be fulfilled. To be tethered to someone, someplace, or something, instead of drifting endlessly through this ever changing world he'd been born into and was yet never truly a part of.

It was the freedom, to be so completely unbound, just as free as the breeze that tore at his hair and pearlescent cape during some nights high up on top of an empty roof, when the phantom deigned to show itself, allowing his being to be briefly caught on the edges of reality, before tearing free and drifting away into the night again. When a shadow stepped into the light to allow itself to be given a name. KID, the Phantom Thief.

Kaito did not exist. But KID.
KID was free, the one kind of free that Kaito would never be, free to step into the spotlight, draw attention to himself, allow the grasp of spiky haired fury incarnate, the physical form of arrogance with a British accent, and the daring little science experiment gone wrong, to seemingly close around him, before slipping through their fingers, unblemished and with ease.

Bringing a joy to the people watching his magical heists that they could connect to a name and a figure clad in white cloth and moonlight.

KID's name sprawled across the front pages of several newspapers, circled thousandfold across the internet, and came up in fond or irate tones in private conversations, his pictures, blurry and low quality as they may be, were equally popular, memories of moonlit nights full of adrenalin solidified, proof he existed, stamped into the common memory of the people of Japan and some beyond its borders.

Kaito's name had never touched a paper, not a birth certificate, not his birthday cards and presents, not the crinkly pages of his first attempts of writing, forever forbidden to be brought into physical presence. And with the disappearance of his parents from his side it had also lost its audible presence.

With the Phantom Lady back to her own travels after having reared her child up to the age of independence, and the original KID a memory shared only between mother and son, with the exception of those few that still remembered and whispered the name of Kuroba Toichi decades after he disappeared off the records, after his soul had long faded from this world, Kaito's name was unknown to everyone around him but himself.

He was but a spark in the nebula of life, a blink of an eye in the long stretch of time. A star on fast forward, its human equivalent, here to burn brightly and light up the darkness for one second and a burned out dead husk the next.

He was the result of a love between a shadow and a man willing to fade away to be allowed to love it.

A little girl without a name, or home, or family, found and raised by a guild of thieves into their craft, a little girl that named herself Chikage to have a presence in the world, at least a word to call herself by, long before she truly started her career and gained the name the world would know her by as it was allowed a glimpse at her existence, the Phantom Lady.

And a young man by the name of Kuroba Toichi, who's mischief and magic lead him onto a path that allowed him to grasp a shadow, a Phantom Lady, the woman he lost his heart to so severely he was willing to give up his life and dreams for her.

Instead of a famous magician the world got a man fading from any record or radar, until his name was erased from the minds of most that had ever met him, and he himself had become one with the shadows, only allowing humanity a glimpse at his existence when they watched KID the Phantom Thief soar across the dark expanse of the night sky.

Just the way his son, born into obscurity, would do after him. The son that watched him fall out of the sky at an age too young to fully comprehend the meaning of his father's blood seeping into the cracks in the pavement. Or the burning of his broken body on a funeral pyre. Or the sight of ashes disappearing in the waves of the ocean.

The son that had travelled the whole world before he'd ever set foot inside a school, for however brief a stay, that knew more magic tricks than thusly inclined children thrice his age before he could walk. His only son, his secret legacy, adamant to finish what he'd started.

Kaito smiled, standing on an empty roof so high above the ground he couldn't hear the noise of traffic, baring his teeth to a world that didn't know he existed. And then he snapped his fingers and a cloud of smoke drifted across the rooftop into the night as a couple of doves took off into the air, circling beneath the stars to land back on the outstretched arms of their home and master.

KID the Phantom Thief smiled and dove off the roof, followed by his birds, as he snapped open his hang glider and soared towards his next heist, gliding down out of obscurity for the blink of an eye, to steal his prize of the night bathed in moonlight and the cheering crowd of his fans, spotlighted by the challenging gazes of his favorite critics, determinedly set on their goal of catching a phantom.