route_1065 | It seems the artists these days are not who you think

It seems the artists these days are not who you think

Who:

bakaitoukid (as Johto's resident phantom thief Kaitou Kid) and YOU [Open!]
Where: The rooftops of Violet City!
When: Sometime this evening
Summary: There is a strange figure in white not-so-discretely bouncing across the many rooftops of Violet City. Investigate, y/n?
Rating: G
Log: Pandora was a gem that, most likely, existed only on Kaito's world. And even if a version of it existed in Johto, Snake and his cronies from back home had no way of reaching it themselves, which means it wasn't the jewel Kaito's father was killed for, and it wasn't the jewel he was so determined to find and destroy.

Without Pandora as an incentive, Kaito had no reason to steal. No reason to don the white top hat and monocle he had found in a thrift store in Cherrygrove, no reason to traverse the rooftops and break into museums and steal priceless jewels right out from under Officer Jenny's nose. Kaitou Kid stole to find Pandora. Kaitou Kid stole to draw out his father's murderers. Kaitou Kid stole to get his father's murderers caught. Kaitou Kid stole to find the one gem his father's murderers wanted most and destroy it before they got their dirty hands on it first.

And yet, the magician turned thief still managed to find himself standing on top of the Pokemon Center roof, top hat perched on his head and monocle firmly in place. He hadn't quite managed to find a white suit close enough to his Kid uniform yet, so he had to settle for the change of clothing this world had given him instead. The red and black ranger outfit clashed spectacularly with his hat, but it would have to do. For now.

There might not be a concrete reason for Kid to heist in Johto, but Kaito was filled with far too much nervous energy not to do something while he was stuck here (every day spent here was one more day his enemies at home had to search for Pandora without him, after all. That is, if time really did pass there the same way it passed here). And he couldn't just let his skills get rusty, either. There was no way he was going to let his enemies back home one-up him while he was stuck training Pokemon, and if that meant keeping himself in shape by heisting every now in then in Johto, then so be it.

The thief lifted a hand to tip his hat backward a bit. The clouds from the day's shower were beginning to drift away, though a few remained to blanket the stars partially obscure the moon in the sky. Even so, there was enough light for him to see... and plenty of light that allowed him to properly judge the distance between the Pokemon Center rooftop and the one right next to it.

This was always his favorite part when he took the time to explore rooftops. The only thing he lamented was the fact that Violet City didn't have any taller buildings for him to leap off of. With a deep breath, he took a running start and leaped from the Center's roof to the one next to it, landing without so much as a hesitation and continuing on to the next rooftop. It wouldn't be easy to see his ranger outfit in the dark, but his hat definitely stuck out like a sore thumb. Just as planned.

The point of Kaitou Kid, after all, was to try to be seen.

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Johan had been out training that night when he'd entered the Center. He couldn't let himself get too weak just because he wasn't traveling anymore, and he certainly wasn't going to stop now with a battle with a Gym Leader on the horizon. Still... He hadn't expected to stay out so late, but he was at least glad that the Pokemon Center stayed open as late as it did.

He let out a yawn as he absentmindedly gave his Noctowl, perched on his shoulder, a fond pat. He'd give her something nice when they got back to the room, that was for--

"Toooowl!!" With a cry, the bird suddenly took off into the sky after something, something Johan had only seen out of the corner of his eye. Something white? He couldn't tell. Still, he wasn't about to let his partner get away from him like that, so giving a cry of his own, Johan quickly gave chase.

"Come back, Misola--!!"

Like Johan, Kay had also been out training-- the problem of having a team of mostly nocturnal Pokémon was that you yourself became somewhat nocturnal trying to keep up with them. Prim was the only one who was asleep at the moment, curled up on Kay's bed in the inn, while her trainer had been out practicing strategies, working on strengthening her team, and... thinking. Thinking hard for that matter, which was something she'd been doing with almost alarming regularity these days.

When she'd finished for the night and Byrne had adjourned to his regular perch on her shoulder, Kay didn't go back-- not immediately. It was a good night, and she was wide awake enough to spare the city another dramatic speech but stand on a roof nonetheless. She loved heights, and right now, it was quiet and clear enough to be an ideal thinking spot. It didn't take much time for her to find a nice one and pull herself up with minimal effort.

Just in time for a figure in a white top hat to come bounding in her direction.

If it hadn't been for the Noctowl's cry, Kid might not have ever seen the Pokemon coming. An owl's wings were notoriously silently when they flew, and the Pokemon based on then in Johto were no different. As it was, the thief shot a quickly glance over his shoulder when the cry reached his ears, and for a moment, he paused, crouched on a rooftop and prepared to run again. His gaze flickered from the approaching bird, to the trainer chasing after it from the ground.

Would Pokemon and trainer continue to follow if he kept running? A grin curled up the corners of his lips. Not even five minutes and already he had attracted the attention of someone from below. Perfect.

He pushed himself to his feet and broke out into another run, leaping across an alleyway chasm and onto another roof. He had slowed down though, just to make sure his pursuers could keep up if they wanted to.

After taking a walk around Violet City, Rika was approaching the Center to call it a night. However, before she could even enter, she noticed something on a rooftop. There was someone standing on it. Wearing a white hat. And a monocle. That certainly didn't happen every day.

She looked at her pokémon. "Hope, do you see that?" The Vulpix's gaze was currently fix on the roof, where the figure was currently standing. So it wasn't just Rika's imagination.

Letting her curiosity get the best of her, Rika asked, "Mii, what are you doing up there?"

Kaito had expected several varying reactions to his journey across the rooftops of Violet. He had expected perhaps one person to try and follow him. He had expected a few to call out to him and ask him what he was doing. He had even expected a few late-night bystanders to stare silently as he passed by.

What he didn't expect was to run into someone else on the roofs besides him.

As soon as Kay's figure came into few, he quickly hit his own breaks and skidded to a stop on the shingles. His surprise was easily masked by a neutral expression, and it didn't take him long to identify his fellow rooftop dweller. The outfit, the hair, the Murkrow-- it was Kay.

Perhaps he shouldn't have been surprised to see her here after all. She was a thief, much like him, and he had already discovered she enjoyed her fair share of high places. He straightened and tipped his hat to her in greeting, one hand plunging into the pockets of his pants. "A pleasure seeing you here, Miss."

Rika's voice was loud enough to catch Kid's attention quickly, and he glanced down to see the small girl standing right out side the Pokemon Center, staring up at her with wide-eyed curiosity. With a smile, the thief crouched down so Rika might be able to hear him better, though he didn't leap off of the roof just yet. It was nice up here, after all.

"It's a rather quaint night, don't you think?" he responded with a friendly tip of his hat, "And the view of the city is much better from such an elevated position."

He replaced his hat on his head and tapped the side of his cheek thoughtfully. "And what are you doing awake so late at night, little miss?"

"Toooooooowl!!" came Misola's cry, giving chase once more as the mysterious figure began to flee from it. It didn't recognize it, but the bird knew that sneaking around in the night like this typically meant something, be it trouble or just something interesting. Even now, evolved from the Hoothoot stage, she was as curious as ever.

Johan, meanwhile, was doing the best he could to keep up, now not only with the bird, but the figure she was chasing. Had she seen something? Had something happened? Or was Misola just chasing someone who... happened to be innocently doing something on the roof? Had the white not been there, Johan would have had to wonder if it was Kay, for a moment. Misola going to greet her would have at least made sense, but this didn't seem to be the case.

... In any case, it seemed the person was aware that they were being chased, unless they coincidentally chose that time to slow down. Johan chose that time to look around to see if there was anywhere he could climp up on without losing momentum-- Seeing none just yet, he shook his head. If it came down to it, there was always... that option.

Instead, though, the usual Johan plan could always come first.

"Hello up there!"

The surprise in Kay's eyes (unmasked, unlike a certain thief's) quickly cleared to recognition. Not the recognition one would have expected from a friend, but someone they'd barely met, but apparently she was just as friendly to near strangers as she was to good companions, because she flashed him a grin and returned the greeting with an upraised hand. Byrne sidled on her shoulder, only calming when she turned her head enough to let him preen her ponytail.

"Nice night for a stroll, isn't it?" she said cheerfully, as if it was perfectly natural for two people to be out meandering on rooftops at night. "But I guess you had the same idea... Kid, right?"

The voice is what brought on the sudden wave of recognition. He had thought the trainer below had looked familiar, but with the distance and darkness of the night, he hadn't been able to put a name to him, particularly since he had yet to meet the owner of said figure in person. But Kaito had spoken to Johan enough over the gear network to recognize his voice.

There was something odd about the fact that Kaito's first meeting with the blue-haired boy would be under the guise of an international phantom thief instead of himself.

He didn't slow down as Johan called up to him, instead continuing to grin and opting to lift his hand in greeting. "Hello down there!" he said cheerfully, and he jerked his head back to indicate the pursing Noctowl. "Your bird, I presume?"

His hat settled back onto his head as he nodded at Kay, arms crossed over his chest and expression very amused. "A very nice night," he agreed, head bobbing back a bit so he could glance up at the cloud and star dotted sky, "Though I admit I didn't quite expect to meet anyone while I was out here." Leave to to Kay to prove him wrong and take him by surprise all in one fell swoop.

His gaze shifted back to her quickly, and he unfolded his arms to bow at her in a very gentlemanly-like gesture. "And Kid is correct!" he said, tone cheerful, "I see you haven't forgotten our last conversation, Kay-san."

Rika smiled a little in response to his answer, her smile crossing into the territory of a smirk. "I bet it is. Would you mind if I enjoyed the view with you?"

She couldn't help but giggle a little at the question. As old as Rika truly was, that was not how everyone else saw her, which made her habit of staying up late seem a little odd. So, she came up with the most reasonable explanation that she could think of as to why she was still up. "I couldn't sleep, so I decided to explore a little!"

Johan blinked. Did that voice sound... familiar? It did, he was sure of it, but from where--

"Tooowl!" ... Misola was still in hot pursuit, temporarily breaking Johan from his thoughts, but he kept up chase regardless of where his mind was.

After a moment, he mentally snapped his fingers, remembering a message and a person that had appeared once, quite a while back, on the network. He might not have been the best with directions, and he was still having trouble with a few other things, but as a duelist, and the fifth ranked one in the world at t hat, he at least had to have a good memory to most things, and faces and voices was one of them.

"Hehehe, that's right!" he called up cheerfully, deciding that the person, at the very least, wasn't a threat - yet. "She's been with me since I got here almost, as a matter of fact! Also, if I remember right... Your name is Kaitou Kid, isn't it? I remember seeing you once before! I'm Johan, in case you've forgotten!"

After all, it was always good to introduce yourself, and who knew what this mystery person had been up to since they'd last spoken?

"Ah, but is it best for someone as young as you to explore the city alone?" His conversations with Rika so far had been all over the gear network, so despite having worked with child detectives who were far smarter than children had any right to be at home, he was no more suspicious of Rika than he should have been.

But as for her first question, he certainly didn't have any problems with sharing his rooftop. "And I believe this view is far too stunning for me to enjoy alone. There are stairs in the Pokemon Center that lead up to the roof, if you wish to use those."

Not that he had used those stairs himself. Scaling buildings was far more fun.

"My memory's not that bad!" It came out indignantly, but a split second later, Kay lost the battle to look angry and laughed instead. "I would have gone with Top Hat, but who knows, maybe one of these days, you won't be wearing it, and then I'm short a nickname."

She hesitated, her lips twisting upwards in a smile of pure mischief, and then shook her head at the other thief. One might have said she was delighted to have a chance for an interaction like this. "If I surprised you, you might want to work on that. You should always stay at least twenty steps ahead of your audience, after all."

"I may be physically young, but I am quite mentally mature!" Rika said, giving him a broad smile as she wondered if he may be able to catch the true meaning behind her words.

Due to the fact that she was wearing a summer dress and sandals, Rika decided that scaling the building would not be a good idea. Also, she wasn't too sure if Hope would be able to keep up. So, she ran into the Center, and up the stairs to the roof.

Once up there, Rika looked out across the city. The view really was quite nice.

Johan and Kid were probably attracting a few stares from the other residents of Violet City who were out on the streets this late; after all, it wasn't every day two people held a conversation while running, one from rooftop to rooftop, and the other clearly still on the ground. But it didn't look like Kid had the intention of coming down from his high perch anytime soon. Nor did he seem phased by the awkward circumstances surrounding the conversation, either.

"Andersen-san, that's right," the thief replied, and there was a pause as he leaped and landed on another rooftop again. He was bound to run out of rooftops sometime soon, but for now, he would keep going, "I don't tend to forget names and faces. It's a pleasure to speak to you again, this time in person."

"I'm still quite fond of Top Hat," the thief admitted as he balanced on the balls of his feet playfully, "Though failing that, you could always default to Monocle. Or some variation."

Kid let out a small chuckle at Kay's advice. His memory was fairly sharp as well, and he clearly recalled a very similar conversation they had shared on his first day in Johto. Not that Kid was supposed to remember that conversation, and under normal circumstances, he would have refrained from referencing it at all to keep both of his identities completely separate.

But this was Kay. She was a sharp girl, and he was curious to see exactly how much she would pick up on.

"I'd say one hundred, if you could manage it," he said thoughtfully, and almost immediately he launched into another statement, "It's not very often that I find my audience members on my stage before I am, though."

The statement certainly made Kid arch and eyebrow at the young girl curiously, but for now he merely filed it away in his mind for later.

By the time Rika made it up onto the roof, Kid was sitting cross-legged near the edge. At the sound of the door opening and closing, he glanced over his shoulder, and then nodded at Rika in greeting. "Be careful not to slip," he said, "The roof is still wet from today's shower, and if you're not familiar with how to walk on them properly it's rather easy to lose your footing."

Goodness knew Kaito had lost his footing several times when he was just learning how to scale rooftops. He didn't really want Rika to have to go through the same injuries he had.

Somewhat used to stares, having spent the better part of his life doing what most considered talking to himself, Johan paid the people watching them no mind, much more intent on talking to the mysterious person who had finally resurfaced again after all the time that had passed since he'd last seen him.

"Hahaha, you're pretty agile! Like a friend of mine--!!" Johan commented, he himself having had to get past things on the ground, sure, but it was still nothing like keeping up this chase in-between rooftops. How long could he keep this up, Johan wondered? "Likewise! You wouldn't believe how many people I've only been able to speak to without actually meeting them. So what are you doing out this late?"

Kay was a lot of things, reckless more often than not and not always prone to thinking before she leaped (sometimes literally), and that often gave the impression that she wasn't the smartest tool in the shed. But the daughter of a prosecutor had picked up knowledge starting from a tender young age. She'd preserved the piece of evidence needed to catch her father's killer. She'd happened upon the Yatagarasu's secret on her own, and she'd made Little Thief her own, handling it with almost as much proficiency as her father had. She was a lot of things indeed, but stupid she was not.

It helped that she had been dwelling on Kaito and his mysterious empathy for quite some time, and this thief echoing the words he'd said so long ago - something about pulling off one hundred, if she remembered correctly - couldn't have been mere coincidence. Kay didn't believe in coincidences, not after what she'd been through. But she didn't say anything about it-- not yet. In fact, the only indication was that her gaze sharpened, but her smile remained easy.

"Don't think of me as an audience member then," she suggested blithely. "Unless you've got a problem sharing a stage with another performer."

"A friend, you say?" Kid asked with curiosity, though he had a feeling he already knew who this friend was. Johan hadn't had the chance to see him in action before tonight, but Kay was also very light on her feet. It had to be her Johan was referring too. Unsurprisingly, of course.

As for the question... "It's a rather pleasant night out, don't you think?" he asked with another tip of his hat, "It isn't too warm or too cold, there are enough stars out and the clouds have already begun to clear from the skies. I don't see why anyone would pass up the chance to enjoy a night like this-- ah, you'll have to excuse me for a moment!"

He had reached the final rooftop at last, and with a cheerful wave, he quickly dropped down from the edge of the building and onto the ground, out of sight. If Johan were to round the corner to the side of the building he had leaped off of, he'd find the thief leaning against the bricked wall, arms crossed over his chest as he waited.

Kaito had learned to read people's expressions as part of his job as a magician, so the narrowing of her gaze was enough of a clue for him to realize she had picked up on the hint. He had fully expected her to do so; it had been dropped fairly obviously, after all. Still, as she said nothing about it, neither did he.

He had admitted to himself that Kay finding out about Kid wouldn't be the worst thing in the world back when she had first told him about the Yatagarasu; in fact, part of him had wanted to tell her right then and there, if only because he knew she'd understand. Even so... it wasn't his style to give out his secrets so easily, after all. It might have been the magician in him (or maybe it was the thief), but he had always been the type to leave hints and clues that people could draw their own conclusions from instead. It seemed like Kay was already beginning to do that herself.

Part of him was relieved, though he had to admit is was incredibly weird to feel like he could finally trust someone with a secret like this. It was something he couldn't tell anyone back home, no matter how close to them he was.

"I can't say I'm used to sharing the spotlight," he admitted freely, gaze shifting from her to the landscape of Violet City that stretched out in front of them, "The only people I've worked with have been stage assistants, and they specialize in remaining behind the scenes. Kaitou Kid has, for the most part, always worked alone." He paused, only for a moment. "Then again... he doesn't quite have the luxury of working with others available."

"Yeah! She's my..." Johan paused. Best friend? Well, that was Juudai, and family was obviously out. Of course, he already knew the word he needed, and with a smile, he looked up at Kid, as Misola swooped after him, and answered him. "She's my treasured partner!"

"Hmm?" Johan blinked. He supposed he had a point. He had been worried about rain again, and yet the clouds were clearing up even as they spoke. It had been a great night for training. "You're absolutely righ-- Eh?"

As it happened, while Johan stopped to blink and realize what had happened, Misola continued her chase, eventually coming to land on a trash can next to the thief.

"... Towl," the bird spoke after a moment, tilting her head in the way owls were so well known for.

The thief watched him quietly, and it was a wonder that she hadn't developed a migraine from all the heavy thinking she'd been doing lately. She'd lost sleep over it, at least, and she could only be glad that she'd resolved... part of what had been plaguing her. But now it had come to this, and if she was wrong...

She hadn't known her father was the Yatagarasu. Or Uncle Badd. She hadn't known about Calisto Yew and Shih-na and the third leg, or the true leader of the smuggler ring, but each and every time she'd found out that someone she'd thought she'd known wasn't who they were (not entirely), it had hurt. And yet she still trusted, because even as the Yatagarasu's successor, Kay was still Kay, and she still believed in the morals her father had taught her. Right now... she wanted to believe she was right about this, and it had taken no small amount of pondering. The hint dropped and seeing Kid standing before her now was the final straw.

"I know what you mean," she said at last, and it wasn't echoed by her usual smile. If anything, her expression was a wistful one. "Maybe not as much, because you've probably been doing this a lot longer than I have, but I don't... really have anyone to work with back home, it's going to be just me until I fix that, and that's..." It was lonely. She wasn't going to be able to trust that many people back there with her biggest secret... she couldn't afford to, and certainly those who knew weren't even anywhere close to her age. Here was... somehow here was different. She knew who to trust with this.

After a long, indecisive pause, Kay gripped her muffler tightly and heaved a sigh. "Luxury or not, maybe you like working alone, but..." She stared at him directly now. "Are you really okay with that, Kaito?"

Kid tipped the brim of his hat back enough so he could meet the Noctowl's gaze, and he tilted his head in a similar direction the owl Pokemon did.

"Hello there!" he said as he lifted a hand in greeting. He might as well greet the Pokemon in a friendly manner as he waited for Johan to catch up. "And what's your name?"

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It seems the artists these days are not who you think

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