[sandbox. Hey, Shinichi!]

[beforenine]

He was really starting to hate Japan. He hated having to worry about finding a place to sleep at night, hated having to worry about keeping cash on him, hated worrying about running into people who might know him of know of him. Worse, he hated the possibility that it might be his Japan, the one he had left what felt like a lifetime ago. He hated

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[nolongerlittle]

Shinichi hummed quietly (and discordantly) to himself as he walked along the pavement, dribbling a ball in front of him. It had been a busy day at the office; he'd had a handful of smaller cases to solve, and a stack of paperwork to sign. Nothing too hard, but it had served to make him wish for the quiet solitude of his house.

As he neared his house, however, his house keys started beeping quietly. HIs first instinct was to fling them as far away from himself as possible, but then reaosned that it wa simpossible to make something as small as his front door key into a bomb, even if it was beeping and glowing slightly red. He peered at it for afew moment, before remembering Agasa telling him of some security updates he'd done to the house a few months back.

Huh. Must mean the battery's running down. I'll have to get the professor to recharge it tonight. He yawned a little and opened the door, kicking his shoes off almost immediately, dropping his bag off his shoulder before he looked around properly

[beforenine]

Eight raised an eyebrow at Kudou's reaction, folding his arms over his chest. "You're more paranoid than I am, Kudou. Jesus Christ," Eight offered, defaulting back to the most general, 'accentless' American English he'd picked up while there. He scowled down at Shinichi, his head throbbing a little. He was hanging, upside-down, from his ankles. This was just fucking lovely. "Would you mind letting me down? Christ." ...Okay, so Kudou was big and obviously living in his own home again. Damnit, he'd been hoping for an easy place to rest for the night. He had enough money to go the normal route, now that he thought about it, but...

Well, he hadn't thought about it until now. "My head's fucking killing me." And his hair was loose. Goddamnit.

[nolongerlittle]

"...Tell me why you're in my house first," replied Shinichi in English with a slight Japanese accent - going overseas had helped him refine it a lot. The shock of finding a stranger in his house was dying away, replacing with wariness and scepticism (what had Agasa been thinking? What if Ran had gotten caught up in that thing?).

He went over to the controls anyway, hoping he could figure out how to lower the mechanical hands before opening them. He had his belt on - one of the few mostly unchanged relics from Conan's life - so there shouldn't be much of a problem.

Shinichi looked a the controls, then sighed, and hit the button for the inflatable landing pad Agasa must have installed at some point. Updating the security is not an excuse to turn my house into an inventor's playground... He turned to look at the stranger, then hit the button to release the clawed hands.

[beforenine]

Eight snorted. "Because I thought it would be empty and I needed a place to crash for the night," Eight offered back in Japanese, twisting so he'd land on his feet- even if he did stagger and fall on the landing pad as the world became right-side-up once again. Eight scowled, pulling his hair back from his face and flopping backwards for a moment. Ow. The world needed to stop spinning. "I didn't expect you to be more of a paranoid bastard than me, Kudou." There was no use in hiding who he had been, not from Kudou, and especially not if this was the Japan Eight thought it was.