FFN Summary: "You can't trick me, tantei-kun, because I know what happens next." Except he doesn't, and he's a liar, and everything's changed. Because he's not a Kuroba, and she's not a Mouri, and everything really, truly has gone to hell. Oh well, at least he can look back and say "I told you so." /ShinKai, reincarnation-roleswap AU/
AO3 Summary: "You can't hide from me, tantei-kun. You can't trick me, because I know what happens next." Kaito's a liar, and he knows it all too well. Because he is nothing but a drunk detective's son, the woman he had been so jealous of has taken his place in front of the bullet, and everything is messed up. Because if things can't get better, they'll get worse, and he's no longer wearing a monocle but a mask of confusion and innocence that had once belonged to another Mouri. Because a British detective becomes a child and a young girl becomes a woman. Because it's all gone to hell, and all Kaito can do is say "I told you so." /ShinKai, reincarnation, roleswap AU/
GA: Still working on chapter 4 of Divine! There were some problems with my self-esteem concerning the fic, so I decided to take a break and work on Spoilers, Tantei-kun for now. This is a rather...ambitious AU, if I do say so myself, but all of my AUs are over the top and just a bit crazy. Kind of like Kaito, ne? This fic'll be focusing on a lot of different people at a lot of different times, but the main stars of this little show are going to be Kaito and Ran. It's also unlike anything I've ever written before, as well as in a tense I'm not used to writing, so please bear with me as I experiment just a little bit.
Enjoy!
PROLOGUE: WRONG, WRONG, SO SO WRONG
When he dies, it isn't as KID like he expects. No, it's as Kuroba Kaito, with a bullet lodged precariously in the depths of his aorta, blood running all too thickly down his shirt in a crimson river. It's as Kaito, with Kudo Shinichi to his right and Mouri Ran to his left and an average summer sun in the sky above him.
He barely hears the gunshot, the cries of horror even less so, and by the time he hits the ground, he swears he's deaf. It can't be the wound working so fast, he determines. It takes more than a bullet to put the phantom thief out of commission. But something blocks every word that comes out of Shinichi's mouth - incoherent babble, probably, since it looks like that lunatic detective has already ordered Ran to call an ambulance - and instead leaves Kaito with buzzing white noise.
Next goes his vision. It doesn't tunnel, like he expects, but shifts, fades into itself like folding a piece of paper into a neat square. He manages to catch the blurred edges of Ran in his vision, her wide eyes and tears drip-drip-dripping onto his uniform. Damnit, he thinks vaguely, I'll have to get it dry-cleaned again. And after he managed to keep from dirtying his other clothes on his heists, too.
With his sight and hearing gone, all that's left is consciousness. There's no pain, hadn't been any since he was shot, but maybe he's just so used to it that it doesn't matter anymore. Ah, but that's of no consequence. Or is it? His mind is jumbled, and he has nothing but his thoughts to sort out while he slowly dies. It's a slow process, dying. And when Kaito slips under, he's still wondering just how much he has to sort out when he wakes up.
His last conscious thoughts are maybe a bit too much.
When Kuroba Kaito wakes up, it isn't at Kuroba Kaito. Well, it is at first, but the clock blaring a poppy alarm tune on his bedside drawer is unfamiliar, and the room in its entirety even more so, and Kaito briefly wonders why he wasn't taken to a hospital, and instead has awoken in a room structured suspiciously like Ran's.
Then he realizes that it is Ran's. The window with the small crack in the lower lefthand corner, the door with its eaves two centimeters too low for Kaito to walk under without ducking, it's all the exact same as Ran's room above Poirot. But at the same time...it's not. The sheets covering him are dark blue, not the same grassy green, and the closet in the corner is open, revealing rows of gakuran, instead of the seifuku reserved for Teitan High students. Everything is the same, but it's all so different and Kaito's head is spinning between the thoughts of what's going on and why aren't I dead and so many in-betweens that he doesn't feel like questioning much anymore.
He finally shuts off the alarm and sits up fully, taking in everything that he had analyzed moments before, and details that he had missed pop out in vivid color. The calendar on the wall is two years too late, the blue rose on the windowsill is wilting ever so slightly, the name on the door is definitely not Ran's-
And when it finally registers in his mind that he's supposedly no longer Kuroba Kaito, but Mouri Kaito - of all things to be wrong with the world, Mouri Kaito - he's already passed out far beyond the unconsciousness of death that he had been welcomed by before.
GA: And thus ends the prologue! Yes, it's rather short! Yes yes, there are a lot of things unexplained! That just means I have a lot of explaining to do in the upcoming fic, right? Well anyways, I hope you enjoyed and, of course, I'll see you next chapter.
'Til then!
~G. Annihilator