Hi all, MagicConan14 here. This is the start of the Countdown series, and this one's majorly special – it's got 22 chapters instead of 10!

Originally, each chapter was going to be a one shot, but I decided against it and put a storyline in.

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters, but if there are any characters that defy this, I will point that out.

Card 22-The Fool

The fool is just a wild card, a blank-filler.

'Conan' had always been a disguise, a non-existent person created for the sake of Shinichi. Shinichi was in his Conan form right now, so why was there another Conan wandering around on the sidewalk?

"Conan-kun! Come inside!" Obviously Ran had fallen for the lookalike.

Shinichi watched as the kid plodded inside the café, and listened as his footsteps came right into the Mouri Detective Agency.

"Now what were you doing out there? I didn't see you go out…" Ran scolded.

Who is he? Conan thought as he ambled out of his room.

Ran couldn't believe it when she looked at both of them. How could there be two of him?

One Conan, the one on Ran's left, suddenly looked really pale.

Conan's doppelganger was, in fact, from the future – the very near future. Using a time machine Agasa-hakase had built, he had come to warn the present people what was going to happen – the world as they knew it was about to change drastically. Science and logic would not be any use. The reign of magic was at hand.

"How can I be sure I'll believe you?" both Conan (the present one) and Ran wanted to know.

"You'll believe me eventually…" Everything faded into blackness.

Conan woke up with a start, unaware that the future Conan was actually correct.

Haibara had been experimenting on him again, this time attaching suction-cupped wires to his head and forcing him to go to sleep.

As he got off the bed to tell Haibara about his queer dream, he felt something small, rounded rectangle-shaped and flat underneath his right thigh. It was a tarot card, more specifically the card called The Fool. Why was that there?

Haibara rushed in, a similar card in hand, hers being The Hermit. Both flopped on to the couch (the one on the left side upon entry) during their discussion. When Conan told Haibara that future Conan said,"The reign of magic is at hand", he held his card up to observe it for anything strange. Suddenly, he began to glow with a bright white intensity and levitate. When the transformation was complete, Conan was in a jester's costume and was holding a staff. The reign of magic really had begun.

This one's a different version of Doppelganger,which is why I decided to insert that word into the middle of the story.

Also, I remember Gosho Aoyama liked the name Conan because he wanted Detective Conan to surpass Future Boy Conan. There's a rather obvious pun in this chapter.

Please read and review!