D E T E C T I V E
K A I T O U
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B O O K
O N E
- R e t r e a t -
p r e l u d e : s u m m a r y
After being caught eavesdropping on a private exchange, meitantei Kudou Shinichi was given the 'supposedly undetectable' APTX 4869 by one of the 'Black Organization's top members in an effort to kill him. The apotoxin, however, did not kill him but rather turned him into a small child and due to the fact that their members would surely murder him if they discovered he was still alive.
Renamed Edogawa Conan, he lives at the house of his childhood friend which also serves as the base for her father's detective agency, and it is there where he lies inconspicuously until a case to do with them appears. Sadly, Mouri Kogoro is extremely incompetent when it comes to detective work, and Conan uses the gadgets Agasa Hiroshi supplies him with to place Mouri into a trance – imitating his voice to solve the cases in the place of him in order to make him known as a tantei to rival Kudou's intelligence.
Conan also attends Teitan Elementary so as to not raise suspicions, and is included as the 'weakest' member of the Shounen Tantei, but solving all of the cases for them instead – some even being murder mysteries. Soon, a new girl joins his class by the name of Haibara Ai. It is found that she is actually member 'Sherry' of the 'Black Organization' and one of the creators of the APTX, having ingested the drug in an effort to die painlessly.
This strategy of hide-and-seek worked just fine, until he realized that every time that Mouri rarely received a case in relation to the very organization that shrunk him his goal seemed to be further away. Even though Haibara had told him countless times that as Kudou Shinichi he would not have the power to stop them, it was then when he finally realized her words were the truth and only the seventeen-year-old form could learn the skills needed. A seven-year-old could hardly learn martial arts or even keep firearms on himself, after all.
A plan was devised to make Conan disappear and him as Kudou to live as a new identity. It was all going smoothly.
Until he met Takaishi Kaori, of course.