Warnings: discussions of child death and pokemon death, spiritual discussions, past character death, plot.


Four - To Clear the Air

Conan's first instinct upon hearing his name is to backpedal and let the girl die.

He squashes it because his first instinct comes without clues, without solid information. Not to mention the pain that had risen up at the sound of his old name (not dead name he doesn't have the right to those words), the sting of that accusation because he's not entirely sure who he is being blamed for leaving this time. For being too slow for. He can only think of two, but one was-

It's too late for me. But it isn't too late for you, little detective.

And it wasn't them. It definitely wasn't them.

So who was it?

He'll think about it later. Duty calls.

Mew floats beside him, gesturing to the two pokemon crawling towards them. Conan makes a face but he understands, catches it at once. The others need pokemon now more than ever. Hoothoot usually don't hunt that brazenly, or with that much hunger. Metapod aren't enough sinew and flesh and muscle for hoothoot. There should be enough pikachu or nidoran to fall from a few well placed confusions or even some butterfree.

It's only going to get worse from here, not better. And the girl will be more indebted to him if he gives her this.

He swallows the breath threatening to explode out of him in a scream.

A quiet peep reaches his ears and Watson leaps to his shoulder. He pets one ear without thinking. "Good work. Get ready. Are the kids far back?" Another squeak, this one a bit in the negative. "All right." Conan grins a little. "Charge."

Immediately, Watson obeys, staying on his shoulder as long as he can to do so. Charge was a move, sure, if you counted tail whipping as an actual attack. All electric pokemon knew how to charge electricity, it was just good manners to tell opponents that was going to be the case. Or to warn

This was just a trainer's way of saying, do as much as you can handle. If he was lucky the first spread were butterfree and they'd fall like bug rain and squash some beedrill that are too young. As long as it wasn't the larvesta eggs, he was fine with that.

"Conan-kun, wait!"

He pauses but he doesn't want to. He sees translucent wings slowing a little and cocoons shuddering. Feet thud behind him and Ayumi appears first, eyes glowing gold in the dark. Her skin crackles, hair standing on end.

"Stop," she says, voice calm. She's not looking at Conan, or even the pokemon. Her gaze is fixed on the tree, as if it will suddenly spout words "He is one of mine. He was being kind. He didn't want to wake you."

The beedrill buzz, coming out of the trees. Genta and Mitsuhiko arrive, Genta's fists up and charmander's tail burning bright.

Ayumi ignores all of them as one of the butterfree reaches her. She holds out her hand. "Forgive us please," she says. "We don't mean harm to you. We didn't want to interrupt you. Please allow us to take this girl and leave."

The butterfree considers, head tilted. Then it floats up and away. And the forest goes softer.

Ayumi doesn't move. Then she sags, the moonlight fading from her skin, eyes watering with tears. "Th-That was awful," she blubbers, curling in on herself for a moment. "All of them were so disappointed! Like we'd done something bad for nothing! I-"

A small hand rests on her shoulder. "Sorry." Conan's voice is quiet, soothing almost, in her ear. "I'll keep my hero complex for the daylight next time."

Mitsuhiko snorts, and Genta lets out a huff of discontent. "You woke us up for a metapod!" he grumbles, but he's smiling. "A metapod! That's lame, Conan."

"In my defense I was trying to do it discreetly so you stayed asleep." Conan scans the area now. "Ayumi-chan, is this the nest you were looking for?"

Ayumi hesitates, opens her eyes. They go wide, shining a moment. Then she pushes herself up, running forward into the dark. Genta moves to stop her, but Mitsuhiko grabs his arm with surprising strength. He shakes his head no.

"Let's examine the girl," he says, giving his friend a gentle tug. Genta leans back and doesn't want to.

Conan steps between them before they can. "Probably best not," he says. "She passed out when I got here. It's better not to move her around too much. Aggie's fine, she'll be able to take her out of here without much jostling. Besides, it looks like Ayumi-chan's almost done."

Said girl returns to them with shaking legs, a small egg of silk cupped in her hands. Her eyes are big and relieved as she runs over. "Got it," she says, eyes sparkling with triumph.

Conan nods at her. "Then let's get moving. We can rest at Pewter, camping at Route Two is a bad idea."

No one disagrees.

Route Two is haunted, after all.


The kids are all flagging by the time he sees Pewter, and the girl has only stirred at most. Aggie's fur is steadily turning pink, which is the only thing keeping the other kids going, lest Mitsuhiko start hyperventilating. Conan can't blame them, but he's the war boy and it wasn't like he'd seen this bad at six, let alone ten. But there's only so fast they can go.

"The ghost are awful quiet," Mitsuhiko chatters.

Genta manages to snort. "Cause there aren't any, dummy!"

"Oh no, they're real." Conan keeps his voice easy and breezy. "Ran-nee-chan and Shinichi-nii-chan were chased out of here by the ghost of Brock once along with some banette. They've never exorcised the area.

Ayumi and Genta make whines of discomfort and Conan can't help but laugh softly. "Relax, idiots," and he says the insult with so much more affection than he means. But they seem to like it anyway. "The ghost of Brock just likes a laugh sometimes. He won't hurt anyone. You just aren't supposed to stay because it's excessively rude. It's why no one camps in Lavender Town."

Mitsuhiko squeaks in alarm. "Oh-Oh…"

Conan contains all the laughter he can. It's hard, but at least they look relaxed. They need to stay awake for a while so they'll sleep tonight.

It's going to be a long day.

They reach Pewter and immediately the two kids are wrinkling their noses. "Gross!" Genta complains.

"Can't help it," Conan replies, leading them on. "It's an industry city. And apparently a few years ago, it was worse. Smoggy and less trees."

Now the trees are threatening to swallow the museum whole from behind, the bricks of the buildings baking brown in the sun of years and years old. People part when they see the children, whether because of their physical state, the unconscious girl, or that Agatha was walking beside her master without pause. Either way, the children all drew closer together with Conan at the head. His eyes sweep across the streets, cold, daring, strong steps.

The girl, starting to droop off Agatha's back, groans.

"Good," he says cheerfully and breaks the tension like a piece of glass. "She's alive enough to feel that!" He turns to the nearest bystander and the chill in his eyes melts innocently. "Miss!" he calls to the woman with her baby. "Which way to the pokemon center?" Like they hadn't been walking that way already. She points with a trembling finger and he smiles, all teeth and disarming cuteness. "Thanks!"

And he leads them on. The other three scuttle after him, shooting the

The pokemon center is immune to the absol and more concerned with all of them.

Which is good because the second they all reach air conditioning, Mitsuhiko's legs give way and the boy nearly topples face forward into the tiling.

Then the lot of them collapse in their room, and no matter how loud Conan turns up his phone they're all unconscious within ten minutes.

Even him.

He still wakes up and curses his ten year old body and its awful endurance and stamina and gets out of bed immediately to check on their wayward patient and call Ran. But well, girl first. Ran second. Ran worries after all, because of their journey before, because of the regulations now, because no one wants to deal with the terror that had been sponsoring the other grandchildren of Professor Oak ever in life in someone else. That pink one is still considered a threat on a region level, even though she's long since settled back in between dimensions or something. No one knows.

No, well, Conan does, but a promise is a promise and he'd rather not be skewed by feathers that were on fire without good reason.

He leans up against the counter and beams at the nurse. She smiles back at once .

"You were the boy with that girl who was brought in, yes?"

"Yeah!" The balancing act is leaned better now, more towards what adults mostly prefer out of children, the happy, endearing, but polite child who used the wrong language on accident but still had a personality that wasn't annoying and wanted things. People forgot that they were like that when they got older, it just doesn't sound like whining and sounds demanding, which really is worse if he's honest. "How is she doing?"

"Sleeping peacefully now, her injuries were rather extensive but most of them should be healed with ditto and grass root treatment by tomorrow. Do you think you and your friends would be able to give a statement to the police when she wakes up?"

Conan pauses, thinks. "Uhm, I was separated from my friends and found her, they just followed me later… I dunno how much help they could offer…" He trails off and watches her brow furrow. "But I can ask, miss nurse!"

She relaxes a little. "That'd be wonderful. Just be careful with your little heroics next time okay? That cocoon you gave us will thank you, but the forest might not."

"It's ok! I'll be fine!" And that is customary child bravado because they expect that too. Even so, Conan isn't scared of the forest. He's in awe of it. He respects it, but he doesn't fear it. That is for those who want to cut it down further to worry about. "I'll be more careful next time. But… that metapod will be all right, won't it?"

The nurse nods fondly like she's looking at a young bug catcher rather than a real trainer. "She should be. She'll just need more time to rest. If you're hoping to use her at the gym, you've got a little longer to go."

Conan pouts visibly, but in his head, he hadn't been planning on it. Kogoro tended to use two pokemon on newbies, a slakoth and vigoroth if he was in a bad mood, an eevee and a porygon if he's feeling on top of the world, lillipup and munchlax for general rule of thumb or swapped with starly and deerling or occasionally if the trainer who signs up is a known troublemaker/asshole, a stufful and a chansey. Among other things, Conan's sure he's rounded up his training work by now because again, that slaking is still illegal to use. Just that slaking.

"Hey, uhm… do we have any idea who that girl is?" he finally asks because he's dying to go into that room with some kind of advantage beyond "life debt shit" because he already knows what he's going to do with that. He's a Kudo for Mew's sake. He knows exactly what to do with it.

But first he needs to know who she is.

His spirits fall as the nurse shakes her head. "Nothing's come up so far on the registered trainer database. The League would have to get involved if we wanted to explore past trainer records. For all intents and purposes, she's probably like you, Edogawa-kun."

For some reason, that statement makes him nauseous. He settles back on his feet instead of his tiptoes. Not because of the lie, but because of the truth. This strange girl is likely an orphan with no papers who was left to die.

Much like Edogawa Conan, the boy whose life had been struck out at the tender age of infancy by the man and his ice ship.

Screw Ghetsis by the way. He still thinks that Tanis girl deserves way more reward for that than she got.

"Can I see her?" he finally asks, almost not affecting his voice just in time.

The woman smiles and nods. "Of course. She might still be sleeping, but she'll likely be grateful you saved her."

Somehow, Conan doubts this.