Kobayashi Sumiko massaged her temples fretfully. No, this couldn't be a bad idea, right? Just a little summer fun day, absolutely free… it wasn't going to be fancy, but the kids she was aiming for weren't going to be coming from the nice houses and expecting a luxury summer. That new "Seven Crows" orphanage, for example. Some of the kids that had been transferred to the place after it opened a week ago would presumably be starting at her school after the summer. Better give them a little fun and get to know them, right?
She checked the list again. Ten girls and eleven boys. That could work, right? After all, her first-grade class was bigger, and she had no problem controlling them… and the group included Conan-kun and Ai-chan, who were good, responsible kids…
She frowned. Some of the kids from the orphanage had apparently put down their favourite juice instead of names. That was just a cute game, surely? Surely it shouldn't give her such a sense of foreboding?
Right?
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"I still don't know what you were thinking."
"Frankly, neither do I. I can't remember how I thought it would help."
"I mean, really. A vapour derivative?!"
"I had no intention of using it. And really no intention of that idiot mistaking it for sleeping gas, stealing a canister and filling smokebombs with it."
"This is still your fault."
"I'll add it to the list."
Conan sighed dejectedly, trudging along the little forest path. There were occasional signs made out of laminated paper about two feet off the ground, pointing them to the clearing where they were all going to meet. Conan and Ai had come in on the bus, having been unable to locate anybody at Agasa-Hakase's or the Mori Detective Agency. Conan was determinedly trying to forget the disaster that had happened over the weekend. This was to prove difficult.
Ai stepped into the clearing and dropped her bag, making a choking noise. Conan followed her gaze and became the world's youngest heart attack victim.
That seemed the best way to describe the feeling that he got upon seeing the Mexican standoff taking place before them. Ayumi was standing with her back to them, looking a little confused and upset, Genta and Mitsuhiko on either side of her with scowls on their faces. Facing them was- he prayed it was some evil funhouse mirror, some twisted doppelganger image. After all, there was another little girl in a pink dress, a large boy at one shoulder and a tall skinny one at the other, but…
"It can't be," Ai croaked.
"I wish," Conan groaned.
"Conan-kun! Ai-chan!" Kobayashi-sensei said, appearing from the woods and striding towards them with a big smile. "You're here! You're the last ones…" she glanced over at the six children with a frown. "Now, what's going on here? Aren't you getting along?" Genta, Mitsuhiko and Ayumi stared at her as if she was crazy, the other two boys had sullen looks, and the other girl had that infuriating smile…
"Kobayashi-sensei…" Ai squeaked, backing away as the skinny boy with the long hair glanced at her and smirked nastily.
"Some of the children here are from the new Seven Crows Orphanage," Kobayashi-sensei said. Conan groaned audibly. "They've insisted by going on cute nicknames… that well-built boy in the red shirt is Orange Juice, the tall boy with the long hair is Apple Juice- and can I stress that he is a boy, there was a nasty little fight about that earlier, wasn't there…" she smiled at "Apple Juice" and he gave her his special brand of Evil Eyes, the look that could kill- "And that sweet little girl in the pink dress with the bunny on it is Milkshake, right, sweetie?"
"Milkshake" winked at Shinichi and blew a little kiss. Shinichi knew that Kobayashi-sensei wasn't quite up on American culture, which was probably why she hadn't noticed that the bunny on the dress was a playboy bunny…
"Where the hell did she get that dress?" his mind wondered, the sheer shock and horror preventing anything but the most mundane thought processes. "I mean, who makes clothes for seven-year-olds with that logo on it?"
"You will all try to be friends, right?" Kobayashi-sensei said, beginning to sound a little worried. Conan glanced at her. She was beginning to bite her thumbnail.
"Um… sure, sensei!" he chirped up. "It's not her fault, she has no way of knowing, and Kami I don't know if I'm going to laugh or scream…"
"Good!" she said. "Now, I'm going to set up the bonfire to cook lunch on, and then we're going on the nature walk, so do you want to get settled in, introduce yourselves…?"
"Sure!" Conan said, grabbing Ai's wrist and pulling her over to the others. Milkshake just laughed and wandered over to them, Apple and Orange following her.
"What are you thinking?!" Ai hissed. "They're-"
"As small and helpless as us at the moment," Conan hissed back. "And I can get at my stun gun at any time while, trust me on this, even the smallest handguns are a chore to hide and fire on a small body."
"Well, well," Milkshake said with a cold smile, which looked inexpressibly creepy on a little girl, flipping her wavy blonde hair- in which, Conan noted, there were a number of lacy pink bows- over her shoulder. "You're here too! Isn't this fun?"
"Welcome to my world," Conan replied. "Being in close proximity with your lot every day might be worth it to watch you all chanting times tables."
"If you even think the words "Taste of your own medicine, you'll be hanging from that oak by morning," Apple growled in a tone that was probably meant to be menacing but was tempered somewhat by the fact that it was delivered in a rather high, squeaky voice. It took an awful lot of self-control for Conan not to burst out laughing. Apple gave him that evil glare again. As an adult it was terrifying, but coming from a little boy in a low ponytail and dungarees with a teddy bear on the pocket (even if he did appear to have torn out enough of the stitching to decapitate the bear), it had less punch.
Orange, wearing a red t-shirt and shorts, seemed to have gotten the best end of the deal. Conan had never seen him without sunglasses, and instead he was wearing normal glasses, smaller than Conan's but with thicker milkbottle lenses.
All this time of being shrunken was almost worth it just to see this.
"So are you the only ones that got it?" Ai asked, having apparently followed Conan's train of thought and feeling considerably more confident for it, "or are Chianti and Korn waiting in the trees to snipe us during the nature walk?"
"Shouldn't think so, they'll be there too," Milkshake said sweetly. Then she waved vigorously at somebody behind them. "Won't you, Smoothie, darling?"
Conan glanced back to see a small ginger girl wearing a brown skirt and a green t-shirt with a butterfly on it stick her tongue out at Milkshake. She was wandering around with a tall, thin boy with brown hair.
"There's Smoothie and Lemonade," Milkshake said brightly. "We decided to switch to more age-appropriate names."
"Lovely," Ai said sarcastically. "Have fun. Do you know any of the Kamen Yaiba theme tunes? You certainly will by tonight…"
"That sounds like fun," Milkshake said, and actually seemed to mean it. Then she abruptly skipped off. "Smoothie-chan! Let's play!"
"She likes this too much," Orange observed in a voice that was higher than usual but nowhere near as squeaky as Apple's, who seemed to have decided not to open his mouth again for the duration of the week and communicate by glares instead. He glared at him and Ai again before wandering off towards one of the tyre swings, Orange following.
"Admit it," Conan murmured, "This is so worth it."
"I'll take the credit," Ai muttered back.
"Do you know them?" Ayumi said in surprise. Conan jumped. He'd forgotten that they'd been there the whole time. He'd never come across the Org and the kids at the same time before.
"I don't like them," Genta said huffily. "That girly-looking one laughed at Ayumi when she asked them what their favourite episode of Kamen Yaiba was."
"I was just trying to be friendly," Ayumi sniffed. "But they're kind of mean."
"We don't need them, Ayumi!" Mitsuhiko insisted brightly. "There's loads of other kids here too, after all!"
"Yeah, they're down at the lake, c'mon!" Genta said, leading them down what appeared to be a very short path if the fact that Shinichi could already hear wet mayhem was any indication
"Aside from us, there's 8 boys," Mitsuhiko said. "those three… the other five are nicer, though James-kun's kinda creepy…"
"One of them looks just like you, Conan!" Genta said with a snigger.
"Oh yeah, Morisu-kun…" Mitsuhiko said thoughtfully.
"Wait, what?"
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Chaos was a good word for it. In fact, situations like this were what the word was invented for.
The messy-haired boy was making up for a lack of size in pure energy. He was currently being chased around by another small boy who was yelling curse words that indicated that he, too, was not what he seemed, and whose hair was changing colour approximately every five seconds.
He had also apparently taken a leaf out of Conan's book and was wearing glasses, though the glass was gone from the left lens.
"Where'd the other girls go?" Ayumi wondered aloud.
"Um, they went that way, to the rope swings," a boy with dark hair volunteered. "Now can you make him give me my glasses back?"
"Hondo?!" Shinichi said incredulously.
"About a third of me," Eisuke replied with a shrug, squinting at him. "Oh, wait, um, it's actually Kuransi Hiro… Edogawa-kun?"
"Rupin, stop moving this instant!"
Conan stared at the boy who came to an abrupt halt half an inch away from him, staring him very closely in the eye. It was rather like looking in a 3-D mirror. Then a devilish grin split across the familiar little face.
"I'm Rupin Morisu," he proclaimed, clicking his fingers and replacing Conan's glasses with beer goggles. "And this is Homuzu Rampo-kun. Hajimemashite!"
"Wh-" Conan yelped, pulling his glasses off. They were sitting on top of Hiro's nose, on top of his glasses.
"Alright, that's enough a' that!"
Conan had just ditched the goggles as a small dark figure thwapped Morisu over the head with a stick. Conan slapped his hand to his forehead.
"Lemme guess," he sighed. "Eruri something?"
"Kazutada Eruri," the boy introduced himself with a wink. He then winced because he had a black eye. Conan had a premonition that he had found the source of the teasing about Apple's hair. He was wearing a blue baseball cap and a t-shirt with a samurai on it. "Scuse me." Rampo (now pink-haired) had Morisu in a particularly painful-looking armlock. Eruri went to sit down a foot away from Morisu's pained face, at which point he pointed very deliberately at the pair and started laughing his ass off.
"This is too much," Conan groaned.
"What's wrong, Conan-kun?" Mitsuhiko asked.
"Hey, where's that creepy kinda foreign kid?" Genta said, looking around. "Him an' those fruity kids were having a staring contest for ages…"
"James-kun is up there," Rampo said, indicating a small boy in dark clothes who was sitting on top of a rock not far away, watching them all with a blank and faintly irritated face. Conan slapped himself on the forehead repeatedly before wandering over to join him. "Now tell me how to get the colour out, Morisu-kun!"
"Sucuri James," the boy said with a nod. On closer inspection, he appeared to have attempted to roll the bottom on his beanie up enough to cover up the little blue bears. "Isn't this fun."
"I'm starting to think it really does have some mental effects as well as physical," Conan said, dryly watching Morisu slip out of Rampo's grip and dunk the other boy's head in the lake. He came up spluttering, swearing and blond again. Eruri was laughing so hard that he was rolling on the ground, at which point Rampo started chasing Morisu again and both took care to tread on the laughing boy as they ran by.
"Guys, we need to go back soon," Mitsuhiko pointed out.
"Yeah, Kobayashi-sensei's making food!" Genta cheered. Morisu took off at high speed towards the clearing, now followed by both Rampo and Eruri, who was chasing them both with a stick. Hiro jumped up to follow them and promptly tripped over his own feet. Conan and James exchanged looks.
"I have to say, though," James muttered, "it's almost worth it to see those dungarees that "Apple" is wearing…"
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"Look look look!"
Ai and Ayumi reached the rope swings just as a small girl in a red pinafore dress was swinging a tyre so high it was almost horizontal. At the peak of the swing, she leapt off, spinning through the air before landing on all fours.
"Wow, Sena-chan!" a girl in a blue frilly dress that appeared to be Sena's twin cheered. "That was really high! It was like you were flying!" Sena bowed, then spotted Ai and Ayumi.
"Ayumi-chan! Ai-chan!" she called, running over to them. Ai gaped.
"R-" she began, but Sena cut her off with a hug.
"I'm Desavia Sena!" she said. "You're Haibara Ai-chan, right?"
"You know her?" the girl in blue said curiously.
"Ayumi-chan told us 'bout her, remember?" a girl in yellow shorts and a tank top said, running over to them, her high ponytail swinging. "I'm Dana Nanusi! Hajimemashite!"
"Wait, when did you-?!" Ai began, then shook her head with a resigned sigh. "Never mind. Hajimemashite."
"I'm Ganimaru Amasu," the blue girl said, dragging over a girl with odd purple hair who had located a small snake somewhere and was twining it around her fingers. "And this is Siruse Morugana-chan!"
"Hey, Ai-chan!" a blond girl squealed, hugging Ai around the neck and dragging her away from the other girls a little. Ai stared at her. She was wearing a green dress covered in flowers.
"So you're…" she sighed.
"Muruder Kurisuti," she said with a wink behind her big glasses. "I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Explains a lot about you and Cool Kid, anyway."
"Did you see…?" Ai asked quietly.
"Why do you think Shuu- erm, James-kun and I are here?" she said. "We're gonna get 'em before we go!"
"And just how do you plan to…?" Ai began slowly.
"You'll see," Kurisuti said with a wink.
"Ai-chan! Kurisuti-chan!" Ayumi called. "Hurry before Genta-kun eats all of the food!"
"Is the big fat one?" Morugana said coolly.
"Ah! Yeah!" Amasu squeaked, running for the clearing. "And if Morisu dares put anything in the food…"
"I ain't seen all the boys yet," Nanusi said. "Bet there'll be a cutie or two, eh?" she nudged Sena, who blushed the same colour as her pinafore.
"Nanusi-chaaan!" she groaned, following her.
Ai followed with Kurisuti, wondering just what she had done.
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Conan and Ai weren't eating a lot. They were just staring in mute shock and horror.
There were classic summer foods- corn-on-the-cob cooking on the bonfire, watermelons, a couple of bags of marshmallows and toasting forks. Genta, for some reason, wasn't eating much either. He wasn't speaking at all, though he kept staring at the food and whimpering through closed lips. Morugana was smirking nastily. Ai kept moving away as Milkshake "accidentally" swung her toasting fork too near her head, in between swinging it at Smoothie as the girl spat watermelon seeds at her with pinpoint accuracy. Lemonade was also occasionally spitting seeds at further targets, such as James, who was trying to extend his armspan to reach the corn because whenever he or Apple stood up each would try to trip the other into the small bonfire that was cooking the corn and marshmallows.
Another little girl, who had popped out of nowhere and was trying to sit as far away from Hiro as possible, appeared to be writing down what the mini-org members were eating.
"Milk-chan!" Milkshake sang, causing the girl with the notebook to look up. "Pass another marshmallow, please?" Smoothie got there first, throwing the marshmallow at her head, but Milkshake expertly speared it on a toasting fork and began carefully heating it up.
"Can someone pass me some corn?" Conan asked desperately as his stomach rumbled. He hadn't been able to get up to get food because Ayumi, Ai, Sena and Milkshake had all possessively surrounded him, two of which were actively trying to kill each other during the meal, Ayumi clinging to his neck as much as possible and Sena, he suspected, very capable of breaking it.
"Comin' right up!" Eruri called, picking up a cob, but it was snatched from his hand by Morisu, who proceeded to run through the fire to hand it to Conan.
"Rupin-kun!" Kobayashi-sensei gasped, putting a hand over her heart. Conan pitied her. He could tell that it would only get worse.
"That's it!"
It was worse. Apple launched himself at James, James just rolling out of the way and poking the other boy in the eye. Orange was also swiping and Kurisuti, who was keeping him at bay by jagging him with a toasting fork. Rampo and Amasu were chasing Morisu again, Eruri chasing the both of them with another stick, and Hari had lost his glasses again. Milk hauled him away from the fire before he stumbled into it, before dropping him and fleeing when Smoothie narrowed her eyes on her. Lemonade drew a slingshot and started taking potshots at her. Nanusi was running screaming from Morugana, who was making faces appear in the fire. And was Ai actually engaged in a marshmallow-throwing war with Milkshake?!
"Calm down, everybody, please calm down!" Kobayashi-sensei pleaded tearfully. Eruri suddenly dodged behind her, and a second later the teacher collapsed into a happy sleep when one of Morisu's sleep pellets hit her.
"All right, that's it!" Conan yelled into his voice modulator at full volume. "Is anyone here actually a kid?!" He glanced at Genta, Mitsuhiko and Ayumi. "Except you three?"
"Ummm, Conan-kun?" Ayumi said nervously. He glanced over at her. Then he pulled a double-take as he saw her pull her short dark hair off, revealing long bleached curls. Mitsuhiko pulled his face off to reveal an almost perfect double of Conan. Genta transpired to have a rather large nose.
"We got you, Shin-chan!" Yukiko sang happily. "We got you good!"
"Awesome, there's three of us now!" Kaito said excitedly, popping up between Conan and Yuusaku.
"Are you to blame for this?" James- Shuuichi- demanded of Agasa, poking him in the large belly (not false).
Conan smacked himself on the forehead repeatedly. Then regretted it as he felt suddenly sleepy. Who the hell opened his tranq watch?!
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Conan blinked a couple of times, then opened his eyes. Right. That was a nightmare. A really, really bizarre nightmare…
"Conan-kun! You're going to be late for school!"
"Coming!" he called, getting dressed and jogging happily downstairs with the full-size Ran. He felt compelled to "accidentally" trip and grab Mitsuhiko and Genta's faces on the way down, but other than that, the walk to school was normal. Still, he couldn't shake that bizarre dream. Why had he had it? It felt like one part was real…
"Hey, did you know there's a bunch of new kids in school?" Ayumi said chirpily. "They're spread out over a bunch of different classes, but I think we've got a couple in ours…"
"Really?" Conan said, his heart freezing for a moment before he calmed himself. "Just a dream…"
Until he walked into the back of Haibara in the doorway of their classroom. The girl had stopped dead in a manner all too familiar from his dream.
There had been an empty double desk next to Conan. They were now filled with a large boy in glasses and a skinny, sullen boy with long hair who was giving Conan and Haibara the definition of Evil Eyes, and in front of them, yes, in a pink dress, was…
"That's right," he groaned as Vermouth waved with an evil grin. "The vapour derivative and smokebomb part were real."
At least the dress didn't have a playboy bunny on it.
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My beloved HaibaraDaiFan drew Ai and Vermouth's marshmallow war! She thinks it's rubbish, I think it's adorable. See for yourself: http:// s295(dot)photobucket(dot)com/ albums/ mm136/ Connie_Babe/ ?action=view¤t=Photo8(dot)jpg&evt=user _ media _ share
Coming up with the names was half the fun of writing this piece of crack XD I probably shrank waaaay too many characters, but the names were as follows:
Vermouth=Milkshake
Gin=Apple Juice
Vodka=Orange Juice
Chianti=Smoothie
Korn=Lemonade
Kir=Milk
Akai Shuuichi=Sucuri James (Scully + James Bond)
Jodie Starling= Muruder Kurisuti (Mulder + Agatha Christie)
Mori Ran=Desavia Sena (Angelique de Zavia + Xena)
Hondo Eisuke=Kuransi Hiro (Tom Clancy + Hiro Nakamura)
Hattori Heiji=Kazutada Eruri (Hattori Kazutada, sengoku-era samurai and page to Oda Nobunaga + Ellery Queen)
Toyama Kazuha= Dana Nanusi (Dana Scully + Nancy Drew)
Kuroba Kaito=Rupin Morisu (Arsene Lupin + Maurice Leblanc)
Nakamori Aoko=Ganimaru Amasu (Ganimard + Amazon)
Hakuba Saguru= Homuzu Rampo (Sherlock Holmes + Edogawa Rampo)
Koizumi Akako= Siruse Morugana (Circe + Morgan le Fay)
I blame this on a chat I had with White Mage Koorii. It went as follows:
Koorii-chan: Do let me know what you think'
Chuchan: ... like Shinichi's thought of shrinking Gin, although that would have to be the scariest grade-schooler in the universe to deal with... XDXDXDXD
Koorii-chan: yuup
Koorii-chan: XD
Koorii-chan: can you imagine Ai's reaction if members of the BO shrunk themselves to infiltrate the elementary
Koorii-chan: XDD
Chuchan: XDXDXDXDXD they'd be like the evil doppelgangers of the Shonen Tantei-Dan... tall, skinny Gin and big lunk Vodka following pretty little Vermouth around... XDXDXDXDXD
Koorii-chan: XDDD yup
Koorii-chan: I want to write something like that eventually
Koorii-chan: just like a little one shot
Koorii-chan: XDD
Chuchan: XDXDXDXD awesome. I can imagine Chianti and Korn winning food fights in the caf by throwing rolls with pinpoint accuracy... XDXD
Koorii-chan: XDDDD
Koorii-chan: sadly
Koorii-chan: the Japanese don't have cafeterias as far as I know
Koorii-chan: they eat right in the classroom
Chuchan: Oh yeah, so they do... still plenty of scope for foodfights, though... XDXDXD
Koorii-chan: mhm
Koorii-chan: XDDD
Koorii-chan: Gin poking the girl in the seat next to him with a chopstick..
Koorii-chan: XDD
Chuchan: XDXDXD
Chuchan: Kir sneaking peeks at their notes and muttering into a pink plastic walkie-talkie... XD
Koorii-chan: XDDDD
Koorii-chan: rofl oh god
Koorii-chan: Conan: Jodie-sensei, we don't need the FBI's help anymore.
Koorii-chan: "Ehh? Why?!"
Koorii-chan: "I think we need a baby sitter instead."
Chuchan: XDXDXDXDXD
Chuchan: OMG, the plunnies are attacking me over this... "DC Nursery".... XDXD
Koorii-chan: XDDDD
Chuchan: "Kobayashi Sumiko had heard that first-grade classes were difficult, but she was now discovering that this was a severe understatement..."
Chuchan: I'm going to have to write this now. The plunnies are all over it like Bugs Bunny over carrots...
Koorii-chan: -snickers.-
Koorii-chan: Have at it
Koorii-chan: Lord knows I have enough on my plate.
Koorii-chan: XD
Chuchan: ... I'll have to write it tomorrow, I have to go just now, but somehow I doubt i'm going to forget the idea XDXD
I do not own Meitantei Conan or Magic Kaito. I merely kidnap the characters for my own cracked amusement. Nor do I own anybody whose name I mangled for this crackfic.