False Inventions
None of Professor Agase's inventions are suppose to work correctly, right?
The Kicking Shoes
"Murder, theft, assault… crime is everywhere and Mouri hardly sees any of it. Two cases in the last nine days and I had to lead him around by the nose to get anything solved. Tell me why I'm staying there again?"
"It's better than nothing Shinichi-kun. The more cases he solves with your help, the more his reputation will grow. Just be patient."
The small boy snorted. He set down the newspaper on Professor Agase's kitchen table to turn the page. Being small sucked. "At the rate we're going I'll go crazy long before I find anything about the two men in black. Why can't you just fix me?"
"Like I said before, I'm an inventor, not a bio-chemist. And without a sample of the poison I couldn't do much for you even if I was."
"Your inventions haven't done much for me either," Shinichi reminded him. That bow tie voice changer would have been perfect, if it worked right. Even with a complete phonetic range of language from Professor Agase, the synthetic version sounded stilted and unrealistic. That didn't include how his child-like voice could still be heard despite 'Professor Agase's' voice overriding it.
"Well don't dwell on the things you can't do." The inventor easily ignored his neighbor's disparaging remarks. "I've enrolled you into school. You can keep busy while the Mouri Detective Agency is slow."
"What!" The undignified screech aptly displayed the boy's horror.
Agase's proud smile never faltered. "It took a few favors to get the right papers for Edogawa, Conan, but you're officially registered at Tantei Elementary."
"B-But…" This was a dream; a very bad dream. Shinichi didn't realize he had such an active imagination.
"Now, now. Ran was worried about Conan's parents. They haven't come back at all. I told her they were out of the hospital, but had to return to America rather suddenly. Without knowing how long you'd be staying I had to sign you up." The boy's disappointed frown faded as Shinichi tried to find a way out of the situation.
"School is a waste of time. I can't go. I need to stick with Mouri and find the men in black." High school was boring enough, but at least he had Ran to keep him entertained. The thought of elementary school terrified him. It meant accepting he'd be small for an extended amount of time. Past cases had never taken more than a day or so to solve.
"It won't be that bad." The glare leveled at the professor declared that yes, tit would be that bad. Agase visibly swallowed before brightening. "I have something that will help."
A few minutes rummaging through the scattered piles of junk produced a pair of child sized sneakers. "These shoes are designed to enhance the leg and foot muscles to increase your kick strength. Now you can have the power you need to catch the culprits you find."
The idea was too tempting to discard. Tying the crisp laces, Shinichi tried to forget that none of the inventions his neighbor showed him ever worked correctly.
"Now, you don't' want to be late. Everything you need is in this backpack. Make sure to arrive no later than 8 o'clock. Someone in the school office will be expecting you." The professor gave him no time to test the shoes. The inventor literally shoved him out the door before waving cheerfully and retreating back inside. The audible click of the dead bolt locking left the shrunken teen standing alone with a medium sized bag clutched in his hands.
Trudging down the street towards his old elementary school, Shinichi deftly thought of several alternatives than attending classes. The professor likely knew he would and sprung this at the last minutes leaving him no choice but to go. His conclusion: Agase didn't want him hanging around so often.
Sighing, the would-be detective resigned himself to being Conan as long as it took to catch the crooks that poisoned him.
~Scene Break~
Kids scattered as he stormed out of school. All his deductions for the day proved true. Arriving alone at the office resulted in poorly concealed pitying looks. The child speak used towards him irritated him even more. Not even Ran was that bad.
Introducing himself to a room full of second graders was awkward. The only gratitude he felt towards Professor Agase came from the fact he was sent to school wearing street clothes that Ran picked out for him a few days ago. It turns out the elementary no longer required uniforms. Showing up in a mini-suit the first day would have been bad.
By the time physical education class arrived, Shinichi had been reprimanded by every teacher for not paying attention. Being able to answer every question they asked correctly only kept them from punishing him more. Soccer was a godsend. The praise from his female classmates made him feel almost normal.
Then he decided to try the professor's new shoes. That brilliant idea banished any goodwill he had left towards Agase and earned him a trip to the school infirmary. The nurse bought his story of muscle cramps from lack of recent use, but the electrical shock he had received was not pleasant. He could still feel the pins and needles.
Glowering at another kid that dared stand in his way, Shinichi turned the corner and froze. A suspicious man in a trench coat and sunglasses hid in the shadows of a nearby alley. Was this Mouri's idea of being discreet?
Five minutes later, the teenage detective had a new level of respect for the man's idiocy. After the day he had, the boy had no wish to go near his best friend's father while he was shadowing someone so poorly. Hopefully a few hours yelling at the crazy inventor that sent him too school with electrocuting shoes would give him enough strength the play 'little boy' for Ran.
Without his new classmates around, the walk helped clear his mind a bit. Shinichi admitted he should have known better regarding the shoes. How many times had the teen helped his neighbor after one of his creations blew up? The phrase 'enhancing the muscles' was a clear indication of a stimulus being used. Drugs had been the only workable method to date the teen knew that could 'enhance' human muscles. Electrical stimulation was a good theory, but the long term effects of steroids and similar drugs out weighed the immediate results. If the professor's idea had worked, what could the long term effects of continued electricity use be?
A safer idea would have been to add an extra boost of power to the kicked object. The recoil would need to be addressed, but bullets traveled at a high speed with minimal effort by the user. Gunpowder wasn't the right method of execution, but the basic idea had merit. They could try a miniaturized oxygen tank stored in the sole of the shoe. The pressurized air could be released at the moment of impact to increase the objects velocity.
Shinichi was so lost in thinking of workable enhanced shoes he forgot to lecture the professor.