When Science is Not Enough
"Kamar-Taj," his mother whispered to him.
Conan sighed into the phone. "It doesn't matter what this Pangborn says, there's no such thing as magic." For all Yukiko understood the illusions behind so-called magic, curtesy of her tutelage under Toichi Kuroba, she was still a romantic at heart.
"But listen to this, Shin-chan," she urged, because despite her fancies, Yukiko also knew the men in her household thrived on facts and evidence. "All the doctors Pangborn-san saw told him he was paraplegic and inoperable. But now he's playing basketball with his friends."
"You know what science can do," Conan countered without a second thought. "Science turned me into Conan, and science will turn me back." And who was to say Pangborn hadn't been lying to his mother about his so-called untreatable injury?
"Let's go on a trip," Yukiko declared, paying no heed to his words.
"I refuse."
"Shin-chan," his mother whined.
Conan knew that for all Yukiko loved him as Conan – small and compact, and so fun to cuddle – she was also a good mother who knew his hate for this diminutive form. As obscure as her idea of a solution was, she only had his best interest in mind.
Still, "No," Conan refused yet again, because hiking to Tibet was a fruitless, whimsical endeavour if he ever saw one. "Haibara is working on an antidote."
It was only later on, months and months later, when he finally surrendered under Yukiko's endless nagging and 'anonymous' gift of plane tickets, that he would curse himself for not going sooner.
In the end, the Ancient One never cured the reason he sought them out, but at the sight of the Mystical Art she showed him, Conan soon forgot all about it. He could only breathe out in awe as everything he knew about the constraints of the world and everything that was possible and probable were proved wrong in a single moment.
"Please, teach me," he whispered, as the world before his eyes expanded.