Bloody Rose

5 O'clock Shadow

Note* I hope you tried to figure it out for yourself before you moved on to this chapter! Enjoy!

Chapter Twenty-Four:

Battle of the Minds Pt 2.

KID POV

Heiji Hattori and Friends,

Welcome to the Battle of Minds, a game of my own making for my own entertainment. At the end of the game the prize will be given, a prize I have specifically chosen. Should you make it to the end, I will personally introduce myself and give you the prize. However, should you fail, I hope to meet you again perhaps when you are older and wiser.

You first hint is as follows:

The Clocks face tips up into the shining sun. Tick tock, tick tock, the Adults hand moves back two spaces as the Childs moves five forward. Pendulums swing shall cross the half way mark and the sun shall hide again. I am but a shadow of myself, WHERE AM I?

Good Luck, Detective & Co.

The Host

"Alright so what do we know about this hint?" asked Hattori.

"Let's break it down" stated Shinichi.

Kaito grinned as he read the riddle over. It made sense to him.

"I can see the look on your face Kid, you already know don't you?" asked Heiji.

Hakuba glanced at Kaito, not at all surprised he had already figured it out considering the riddles he leaves for the police all the time.

"It was quite simple, I was surprised."

"Care to explain?" asked Heiji with a flat look, it didn't look simple to him at all.

"Very well, listen closely" Kaito began.

CONTINUED...

"The clocks face tips up into the shining sun, so a clock has a face. Another word or meaning of Face is Surface, so where is the sun up in the sky when on the surface? The answer is the horizon. So in other words, where is the setting sun when on the horizon?"

"According to the saying", started Hakuba, "the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Therefore the setting sun is west."

"Right", stated Kaito, "and the next part, tick tock, tick tock, means that as time goes on, the adult hand and the child hand move."

"Annual time of a setting sun here in Japan is 5:40pm. If we take it from noon which is the half way mark of day and night, which is what I assume the part about the pendulum swinging means cutting the clock in half. And we move the child's hand or what can be described as the clocks smallest hand in size, we have the hour hand. If we move the hour hand five hours up from noon we have 5:00."

"Yeah, so if we move the minute hand two minutes from the time it is right now, we have exactly 4:58."

"Right, because we are using 5:40 as the starting mark in order to ascertain the width of direction the plate might be set in. So 5:40-4:58."

"I don't understand that last part though", Hattori said reading it again, "The sun shall hide again? I am but a shadow of myself? Where am I? And what does 5:40-4:58 have to do with anything?"

"Well as I said, we must divide the table into four sections. If the table was the clock and we placed the hands facing west at the indicated times, we would find that it points to Hakuba and his corner of the table which is the range of 5:40-4:58. However it says the sun shall hide again and I am but a shadow of myself. If the sun is setting that means night is dawning, so the moon is coming out, right?"

"If the sun is shining against something, shadows from the light grow bigger right?"

"Yeah? I guess?" asked Hattori, clearly confused.

"I get it!" said Conan, "You are saying that if we point the hands west, the shadow of the setting sun would point a different way, more to the east, where the moon will rise."

"Exactly Tantei-Kun, the shadow when shining against the arms would point towards me, however the next part says "I am a shadow of myself", meaning a shadow of the shadow. Often times, shadow can mean follower, so as a follower, you would be someone behind the original."

"Which means that Hakuba is the original time, you are its shadow, I am in the direction of the horizon where the sun originally sits, so Hattori is..."

"Right" Kaito grinned, "Hattori-kun is the moon that comes out behind the sun aka the follower. He is sitting where the direction of the moon will rise in the sky, hours after the shadowed time comes and goes."

"He is the follower meaning he is also the one with the poisoned meal, right?" asked Hakuba.

"Right Haku-chan."

"Wait, if I am the follower, why would I have the poison?"

"Well, first off, the riddle clearly points to you, Tantei-han. Secondly, if we take the word follower, we can break down its meaning."

"Whoever wrote this clue, obviously has a knack for vocab," Commented Hakuba, it was all a big twist of the original meaning.

"I agree", Kaito nodded, "Follower can mean Adherent or Member. Member can mean Participant or Accessory and Accessory or Participant, when broken down, can mean Addition or Contributor. In other words, they contributed or added something to your meal. It's all basically a really big play on words."

"Great! Now that it's finally settled", Hattori pushed his meal away from him as the other smirked. He didn't even drink his coke as he waited for the challenge to end, "I want food! Clean food!"

A waitress walking up to their table stopped and stared at the plate that had been set aside. She smiled as she pulled off her name tag and handed it to Kaito.

"Your explanation was rather amazing", she said before quickly walking away.

"They were listening huh?" asked Conan, not really surprised.

"Makes sense. They would probably want to know about the members brought into the game", stated Hattori.

"Well I am for one, very happy that my food was not messed with", Kaito said grinning as he dug in. Conan smirked and also began eating, as did Hakuba. Hattori just glowered as he watched them.

"Jerks", he mumbled.

It took another half hour before he was brought a clean dish to eat as well. By that time, three of the groups had failed their first challenge and the other three continued on.

AUTHOR NOTE*

Hope that I explained it well! Sorry if it was confusing! Next chapter, Battle of the Minds continues with challenge number 2! ~ I thought the story could use a fun mystery before moving on to the main story plot. Let me know what you thought of my riddle! - Enjoy!