The Explosion
By the time the three of them reached their destination, the spot was deserted — nothing left but a table and a stool that Mona had set up for her fortune-telling stand.
Faced with such a bare-bones divination site, Bourbon couldn't help wondering whether Kaeya's astrologer friend could really make a living from fortune-telling at all.
They walked up to the table and found a note Mona had left behind. It said that she had gone on ahead: once her divination pinpointed Klee's location, she would call to tell Kaeya, and he should prepare to handle the aftermath in advance.
Reading it, Bourbon felt a flicker of confusion. She claimed she would find someone by divination — well, Kaeya had already explained that, so he wasn't about to argue. But *aftermath*? What kind of aftermath? Surely Kaeya's friend wasn't planning to track down the people who took Klee and deal with them on the spot? Aside from that, Amuro Toru honestly couldn't imagine anything else that would need cleaning up.
But now was no time to worry about something that hadn't happened. Finding Klee came first.
Amuro Toru exchanged a word with Kaeya and set off to search the area for clues.
Cinnamon didn't move.
It wasn't that he wasn't worried about Klee — he simply believed that Mona's divination would locate the girl faster than they ever could on foot, and that all they needed to do was wait for her call.
Still, he didn't stop Bourbon from searching either; he had no way of convincing the man that Mona's divination really was that accurate.
Before long, Bourbon returned.
He gave a brief summary of what he'd found: judging from the disturbed soil, Klee had been drugged and carried off from that spot, and the footprints suggested a man and a woman working together.
He had also examined the nearby tire tracks — the closest ones to where Klee vanished led off in that direction. As he spoke, Bourbon stretched out a hand and pointed, signaling for Kaeya to bring the car around so they could give chase.
And just ahead, in the very direction Amuro Toru was pointing, Mona was making her way toward Klee, guided by the instructions of the hydromancy plate in her hands.
Not far in front of her, five children were roughhousing with one another, slowly drifting her way.
"Mona, what are you doing out here?" Conan's puzzled voice suddenly sounded beside her.
Mona lifted her eyes from the hydromancy plate and looked up to find five children standing in front of her — one of them Conan, whom she had met before.
These were the five members of the Detective Boys. Conan had spotted a strangely moving figure up ahead, and only after looking more closely did he realize it was the astrologer Sonoko had once dragged him to for a fortune reading.
Her absurdly overpriced books and her uncannily accurate results had both left a deep impression on him. He'd been meaning to have his fortune told by Mona again sometime, but the business with the Black Organization had never left him the time.
He hadn't expected to run into her here, though — and judging by how anxious she looked, today didn't seem like a good day for fortune-telling either.
"Oh — Conan, right?" Mona pretended to rack her memory for a moment before recalling his name. "I have something to take care of today, so I can't do a reading for you. If you want one, come find me tomorrow."
Ayumi leaned close and whispered to Conan, "So this lady is a fortune-teller? Did you ever get a reading from her, Conan? Was it accurate?"
Haibara gave Conan an odd look. "My. I had no idea the great detective believed in that sort of thing."
Conan ignored her teasing, quietly answered Ayumi's question, then looked back up at Mona and — in his best childlike voice — asked with wide-eyed innocence whether she'd run into some kind of trouble. The Detective Boys could help, you know!
When Genta and Mitsuhiko heard that the lady in front of them might need a hand, they eagerly launched into a rundown of the cases the Detective Boys had cracked, solemnly guaranteeing they'd be useful, and begged her to put her trust in them.
Conan watched the two of them crowd up to Mona, shoving him bodily out of the way, and his mouth twitched.
How can you two say that with such a straight face? Every case we've solved, I've done the actual solving.
Unable to hold out against the children's enthusiasm, Mona finally told them the truth: her friend's daughter, Klee, had gone missing.
"Klee?!" Genta, Mitsuhiko, and Ayumi cried out in unison.
Learning that the one in danger was the new friend they'd made only days ago fired them up all the more — they were determined to help catch whoever took her.
Conan: "..."
By now, finding out that Mona knew Klee too didn't surprise him in the slightest. Everyone with a Vision wore the same band around theirs, so of course they'd all know each other.
At that moment, Haibara drifted over to his side and murmured, "I'm starting to believe that 'connection' you mentioned."
The odds of people wearing identical bands, all encountered in such a short span of time, just happening to know one another were far too low. The only explanation was that people with the same bands were linked somehow.
???
It took Conan a second to work out what Haibara meant by "believe." Then he caught her mouthing the words *Vision*, and realized she had come around to his earlier theory — that people with Visions were connected, and might even belong to the same organization.
So she'd never actually believed him until now. Wonderful. And here he'd been so worried about frightening her that he hadn't even told her Kaeya was quite possibly tied to the Black Organization.
Watching the children, once briefed, practically charge forward in their eagerness to find Klee, Mona hastily stopped them. "Um... you really don't need to do all that much. I've already used astrology to narrow down Klee's location — she should be in that building up ahead." She pointed at a residential building not far away. "The only problem is I can't yet pin down exactly where inside, so I'll need to go floor by floor with my hydromancy plate to find her."
Mona suspected it was something about this world that made her astrology harder than before. In the old days, a single reading had been enough to fix a person's location to the spot; now she had to physically get close before the plate would cooperate.
Conan's eyes went wide and beady. He had to wonder if he'd misheard. Finding someone by *divination*? A method with no logic or reasoning behind it couldn't possibly work!
The three actual children reacted in exactly the opposite way. The moment they heard that Mona was about to find Klee through divination, they believed it without question — a little disappointed that they wouldn't be much help, maybe, but not doubting a word of it, and they were ready to follow her straight to that building.
Conan and Haibara had their doubts, but with no other leads to go on, they had no choice but to tag along and see for themselves — and if nothing turned up there, they could try something else. At the very least, the building wasn't far from where Mona said Klee had been taken, and by any reasonable analysis, the kidnappers could well be hiding there.
Conan sighed at the thought.
But still — the odds that a divined building just *happened* to be exactly where the kidnappers were? Far too small.
Could Mona's readings really be that accurate?
Amid Conan's doubt and self-doubt alike, the little group finally reached the building. Just as they were about to start knocking on doors, floor by floor — *BOOM!* An explosion tore through a room on the third floor!