Smoke rose from the walls and furniture, mingling with the scent of disinfectant and rotting flesh. Debris came down in bursts all around him, crashing down and crackling with the flames that licked the surface. He could distantly hear the sound of shouting and feet pounding on the floors over the deafening ringing in his ears. Still, he pressed on. He had to.

He was not leaving. The heat burned his eyes and blurred his vision. He hacked his lungs out into the handkerchief held up to his mouth and nose. He had to get that antidote. Everything he had worked for these last four years…it couldn't be all for nothing! So he gritted his teeth and kept putting one foot in front of the other.

Both phones vibrated nonstop in his pockets as Conan flung the door of the second to last lab open. Shakily, he reached up and pressed the button to turn on the microphone and camera on his earpiece.

"Is this the place, Sherry?" he choked out, stumbling into the room. The pristine white walls and floor were scorched, the paint peeling, curling and turning black as the fire consumed it. He heard another round of debris fall the next room over.

"This is the place," came the staticky voice from the other end. "Be quick. My desk was the one on the far right. Password's Shellingford."

Conan gave a noise of acknowledgement and raced to the computer, jabbing the on button with his grimy finger. His eyes darted all around the crumbling room as he impatiently waited for the computer to boot up. He punched in the password the second the login screen popped up.

"Yes!" His eyes glowed as the messy desktop came into view. Dozens of highly classified files ripe for the taking sat there innocently.

"Good. I wasn't sure my computer would still be mine. The master file with the Apotoxin data is called—" Haibara cut off as a large red popup flashed across the screen. It read UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS. TERMINATE DATA.

"No, no, no!" Conan yelled. He slammed his hands down on the keyboard, hoping for something, anything. In the blink of an eye, the desktop was empty and the computer back to factory settings.

Panic rose up in his chest. This couldn't be happening. There was supposed to be a way out of his situation. He was supposed to get to go back to being Kudo Shinichi!

"They must have done this after I betrayed them so they could stop me from doing anything if I managed to get my hands on my computer," Conan distantly heard Haibara say.

"Copies?" he rasped into the microphone. He needed that data. All the remaining APTX capsules had already burned in the fire.

He didn't wait for a reply as he hurriedly checked if any of the other computers were intact. A massive groan sounded in the ceiling overhead, and Conan looked up just in time to be buried with debris.

Voices swam around in his mind, all overlapping with one another, but one rang out clear among the rest: "I'm sorry, but we couldn't recover the data…"

Conan's eyes shot open as he bolted upright in his seat. He wasted no time slowing his breathing. He briefly looked around to see if anyone had noticed, but they were all asleep. Of course they were; it was the middle of the night in Japan Standard Time. Jetlag was bound to get to everybody.

Flight attendants emerged from behind the light blue door at the front of the coach class compartment. Conan's eyes flicked upward as an announcement blared over the loudspeaker, jolting much of the plane awake.

"We will be landing at O'Hare International Airport shortly. Please gather up your things. We will land in approximately fifteen minutes."

The same message repeated in English and Conan relaxed back into his seat. He was fine; it was 2004. It had been four years since that night. That was all water on the bridge, and it was pointless to dwell on it now. He needed all of his focus to be on planning for the near future.

Once the plane landed, Conan grabbed his luggage and weaved through the hustle and bustle. Just outside the gate, he caught sight of a familiar face in the crowd and their eyes met. Conan briefly glanced over his shoulder before half-jogging over to her.

"Cool Kid," Jodie greeted, offering a small wave.

"Jodie-san," Conan nodded. He took a moment to study her face, taking an extra second to check around the jaw for latex. "I take it you're here to pick me up?"

"Yes, now come on. We shouldn't stick around longer than we need to."

Once passports and everything had been sorted out and Conan was waved through, the two walked stiffly to Jodie's Honda, neither sure what to say.

Conan clambered up onto the seat and had a quick look around. If the whole Black Organization ordeal had taught him anything, it was that it always paid to be cautious. "Is that a spider in your car?" he asked, gesturing towards the floor. He never knew when something or someone could be bugged.

Jodie caught the intended meaning, of course. "No, I haven't caught one in here in quite a while. But it is winter, after all."

"Okay," Conan started, dropping the slightly youthful tone he kept in his voice in public. But hey, at least he didn't have to crank it up full throttle anymore. "When and where was he sighted?"

Jodie sighed tiredly, her expression quickly shifting to a solemn one. "His Porsche was spotted first, sitting in the parking lot of the Baxter Hotel in Amity Park. Shu came to me later after he was sent to check it out and said he was spotted again there during one of the city's 'ghost attacks.'"

Conan raised an eyebrow. "Gin was going into hiding but went through the trouble of bringing his car to America?"

"We suspect he piled as many classified Organization files in there as he could before bailing out during the takedown, and he didn't have time to destroy it," Jodie explained as she flipped the turn signal. She leaned forward so she was hunched over the steering wheel. "And then you come in. Shu was the one who suggested calling you, actually. He said that you should get to be the one in charge of capturing Gin because of your…circumstance. And, since you became an honorary FBI member after the takedown, it is well within your right to do so."

Conan shifted in his seat. "I really appreciate the FBI's willingness to let me handle Gin."

"Well," she started, cocking her head to the side, "you've been nothing but dedicated to tracking down the remaining members in Japan. It's been a massive help, and at the same time gets the FBI out of hot water with the Japanese authorities. And even if that weren't the case, I would be inclined to let you handle it anyway. It's not like the FBI's never broken the law before, and you were the one who orchestrated the takedown."

"Mm-hm." Conan leaned his head against the window and watched the trees zoom past in a blur of green and brown, occasionally breaking to reveal a field of grazing cows, or perhaps a roadside diner.

Jodie took one hand off the steering wheel and lightly shook his shoulder. "Hey, I know you're jetlagged, but you need to know what's going to happen when we get to Amity Park. Here's the debrief: you're going to act like you just moved there with your parents and they have a job out of town so no one will question where they are all the time. You will go undercover at the local high school—"

Conan couldn't help the exasperated groan that escaped his lips.

Jodie paused, collecting her thoughts. "I know you don't want to have to pretend to be a kid again, but if you want this to be believable, you have to go to school. Last time I checked, fourteen year olds don't typically have jobs with the FBI."

"We've already been keeping my job under wraps. Can't I pretend to be homeschooled or something?" Conan suggested, fiddling with his hoodie strings. Granted, ninth grade was a lot better than first, but he'd done enough school below his level, thank you very much.

"With the story we've made up, your parents would have no time to homeschool you. I know it's a pain, but you really need to roll with this, all right? We can't risk Gin noticing something's off," Jodie said, her voice on edge. "This may be our only chance at arresting him. You should bring your gun with you everywhere just in case, even though you're undercover."

Conan straightened in his seat. "I understand. I'll do whatever I need to apprehend him."

Even so, it didn't make it suck any less. But it wasn't like Conan didn't understand the stakes. Gin was the worst of them all, save for Ano Kata, but he'd been caught during the takedown. It'd been what caused the scatter of members in the first place. Go for the heart, and the whole operation falls apart and turns to dust. Too bad it was too late to fix Conan's life.

It was just, well…Conan hated the constant reminder that he could never be himself again. He should be in grad school! He should be preparing to start up his own private detective agency, he should be happy with Ran, he should be laughing with Hattori at a bar, but here he was. He didn't even have his own name. That had been taken from him at Kudo Shinichi's funeral shortly after the takedown. It had been a long eight years since Tropical Land. Too long.

Jodie's voice cut into his dark spiral of thought. "We're here."

Honestly, Amity Park was a little underwhelming. All the houses and buildings looked more or less the same (save for an oddball marked "Fentonworks" that didn't look terribly legal and the Baxter Hotel, which evidently spared no expense) and everything else was remarkably generic. Plus, it was about the size of a tin can.

"I expected a little more from the famed ghost hoax town," Conan remarked, studying the layout of the streets from the car window.

"Makes it a perfect hiding place for an internationally wanted criminal," Jodie fired back, clearly studying the same way he was.

"True."

Jodie soon pulled up front of a worn-down apartment building made of beige bricks stained and dirtied with age. Conan grabbed his suitcase and hopped out of the car with a quick wave to Jodie as she drove off. The lobby inside was modestly furnished with a huge coarse rug covering the whole floor that was the color of the yellow ginkgo leaves back in Japan. The lady at the desk seemed unsurprised to see him.

"So you're the new resident, huh? Where are your parents?" she asked, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

"They had to go to work, ma'am," Conan lied smoothly. In his opinion, he'd gotten far too good at it. "They dropped me off here."

"Well, you've got room 3B. Your parents already signed all the paperwork online and the movers came with your stuff earlier today, so you're good to go. Here's your key, kid." She reached over the counter with an ancient brass key and pressed it into his palm. "Don't get in any trouble."

Conan didn't bother responding and headed straight up to crash; jetlag was catching up to him and he was supposed to start at Casper High as soon as he could to avoid raising any suspicion. At least it let him observe Amity Park in a natural way.

Two days later, Conan discovered that The FBI had fortunately been thorough in all areas, so all he had to do was show up to school and tell the secretary in the main office that he was a new transfer student. She handed him a schedule and sent him on his way in two minutes flat. Conan stared at the piece of paper in his hand. He had come just after the beginning of second period, which was apparently English I with a Mr. Lancer.

He walked gingerly through the empty hallway and knocked on the appropriate door. A bald man with a close shaven beard who looked to be in his mid-forties or so opened it and made an O shape with his mouth.

"Ah, I've been expecting you, Mr. Edogawa. Please come in."

Conan had just stepped into the doorway when something rammed into his back, sending him to the floor with a yelp. He whipped his head around to see a sheepish kid with black hair stuck out at odd angles rubbing the back of his neck.

"Ack! Sorry!" He offered a hand to help Conan up, which he didn't take. The debris from the takedown had left a pattern of burn scars all up and down his arms and hands, which he would rather not get questions about. He needed to keep a low profile more than ever, and he needed to do a much better job than he'd done in 1996.

"Mr. Fenton! Late again. You may not think that the color symbolism of The Great Gatsby is interesting, but the exam disagrees," Mr. Lancer said dryly. But Conan had to disagree with the exam right back on that one.

Now that Conan had a better look, 'Mr. Fenton' looked like he'd just been to Hell and back. His weight was shifted to favor his right leg, and Conan could see a dark purple bruise poking out between his fingers where he seemed to be trying to hide it. Faint scars webbed across his features, but Conan couldn't tell what from. And his eyes were…weird. Conan wasn't sure what it was, but they looked just a little brighter than they should. Maybe he was too used to looking at corpses.

"Interesting," muttered the detective, putting his index finger and thumb up under his chin.

"Right…" Fenton looked to the side and scooted around him to go to his seat.

"There's an empty seat behind Mr. Fenton," Lancer said, gesturing towards the back of the room.

Perfect. Conan's eyes shone with the new challenge. He understood, of course, that he was there with a mission, and a very personal one at that. But at the same time, he never could resist a mystery. After all, how many murders had he solved while worrying about the Black Organization back in Japan?


Hey! I hope you enjoyed the first chapter :)

This idea has been in my head for a while but I never got around to writing it so here we go. It hit me one day that the Detective Conan and Danny Phantom timelines line up really well since Danny Phantom first aired in 2004 while Detective Conan did in 1996. If Conan was six in 1996 (and yes I know that's his manga age and not anime age but shhh), that puts him at fourteen in 2004 so...I couldn't resist.

I know this chapter is very Conan-centric, but the POV is going to switch around between him and Danny, so worry not. I just needed to get everyone up to speed on what Conan has been up to.

Disclaimer: I do not own Detective Conan or Danny Phantom.