Shinichi woke up on another icy beach. He wondered how he wasn't frozen solid, and then remembered that the Sea of Time was literally a sea of temporal energy, not actual water. Then how had he drowned in it? Wait, he didn't drown, he was alive. Except then he noticed he was wearing glasses. He realized that he was Conan again. He didn't say his name, and definitely didn't say it three times in a row, so why had he turned back?
Conan stood up and looked around. It was definitely the same spot at which he had embarked on the Time Whale, but it was different in a multitude of ways. There were tall dead pine trees everywhere and the door in the cliff was gone. The snow was shallower and he could feel hard ground underneath his shoes that was likely to be soil instead of ice. Was he in the past or the future?
Thinking of the time stream, he looked back towards the sea. There was no sign of the Time Whale, not even a spout in the distance or a wave out of place. The sea was silent and cold. Conan tried to whistle for the whale, but he had no idea how to do it. He sighed. He was stuck probably in some distant time period, hopelessly stranded.
There was only one thing to do now, and that was to turn back. Conan said 'Shinichi' three times. Nothing happened. The wind blew overhead. Why now of all times would the magic wear off? He was stuck as Conan again, and worse, he was stuck in the middle of nowhere to boot.
Bracing himself for the tough and probably hopeless journey he was about to embark on, he set off into the distant no-man's land. Huge icicles hung off the skeletons of the trees. Mountains faintly shimmered in the distance with all the quality of a mirage. It was the first time that Conan had ever felt truly alone on earth. Speaking of being alone, that also probably meant he wasn't going to survive for long.
His worry was suddenly interrupted by a noise some several meters away. He looked to its source and saw a great white mass of snow rise up from the ground. The snow cleared away to reveal blue limbs and a head covered in white fur, and Conan realized that it was a living creature. It was most definitely a yeti, and from how it was looking around hastily, he assumed that it had heard him walking through the snow.
Conan broke into a run and dived into a small cave formed by a snow bank. He ducked behind the icicles, hoping that he wouldn't be seen. This wasn't how it should end. He was stranded thousands of miles (and probably years) away from home and friends and Ran. He had just returned to being Shinichi. If he disappeared now, it would be without Conan, and no one would ever find his body.
Suddenly, the yeti was distracted by a different presence. Conan peered out from behind the icicle. The yeti was growling at a man in a red coat with a sunny disposition, who took out a toy and gave it to the yeti. The yeti smiled and began to play with the pull-along duck on wheels. Conan wondered if Santa had led some sort of fashion trend.
"It just goes to show that you don't have to be a child to enjoy toys," said the man. "You can come out now, little boy. I mean no harm. And I'm certainly no follower when it comes to my style."
Conan stepped out from behind the icicle. "Who are you?"
"Why, I'm Kris Kringle, toymaker. better known to some of my clients as Claus."
"Claus, as in Santa Claus?"
"No, just Claus. I've never heard of a Santa Claus before. Maybe he's related."
Conan looked over the man's features. He was a young man with a head of shiny orange hair in a snug bowl cut, bright eyes, and a smiling face. His muscles indicated that he had years of travel under his black shiny belt. Surely Santa had been young once. Was this him? What was he doing up here in this desolated ice world? What year was it, anyway? Where exactly in the time stream did the Time Whale beach him at?
"I think I can answer some of your questions," said Claus.
"Oh, right, you're telepathic."
"I'm delivering toys to some of the creatures who live up here in the Arctic Circle."
"Alone?"
"I was alone, until you showed up. So you're from the future, and you know me?"
"Yeah, you deliver toys to all the children on every Christmas."
"Only on Christmas?"
"Right."
Claus crossed his arms in a thinking pose. "From what your mental pictures are telling me, I end up as a jolly old soul who humbly gives out toys to children everywhere. I like it."
"By the way, what year is it?"
"1672."
Conan did a double facepalm. "How am I ever gonna get back to the present? Or back to myself?"
"Yourself?" He stopped and Conan assumed he was reading his mind. "I am reading your mind. You're not a real little boy, are you?"
"No," said Conan, "I'm actually a teenager who got turned into a little kid, and in the future you fixed it with your Christmas magics, but after I got misplaced in time, I don't think it works any more."
"What a story," said Claus. "How did you travel through time?"
"I rode a Time Whale, but we got separated by a storm."
"And where were you intending to go in time?"
"I was planning to go to 1984 to solve the mystery of who murdered the Heat Miser."
"Wow," said Claus. "You must really be out of your element, then."
"I wish I could just go home," said Conan. "I can't even solve this case. I don't know how to get home or if the Time Whale knows where I am. I'm hopelessly lost."
"There's only one thing to do about that," said Claus. "You need to put one foot in front of the other."
"You want to come along now?" said the Time Whale. "It's dangerous out there. You could get lost in time like how Shinichi did."
"I'm up for the danger," said Ran. "We need to rescue him."
"Good," said the Snow Miser. "As soon as we get him back, we can finally solve this old mystery once and for all."
Ran nodded. "I'll see you later, Snow Miser." She waved goodbye as the Time Whale slipped into the vortex of time's threads.
"So this is the time stream?"
"Indeed it is."
"How will we look for Shinichi here? I mean, there are so many years."
"I'm going to find another friend of mine to ask for help. We're stopping in a different age."
The whale suddenly began to turn to the left against the huge force of the time stream. They began to slow down and the time stream began to vanish as the waves calmed into steady seawater.
"Here's our first stop," said the Time Whale. They sailed smoothly into a port near a castle. "This is the home of the New Years."
"The New Years?" asked Ran.
"Indeed, even a concept as confusing to immortals as a new calendar year can become personified, thanks to the stream of magic that flows around the Earth and dumps its runoff into the Arctic Circle."
The castle had a large waterway running through its middle that the whale sailed through. They came to a great hall and stopped.
"Ah, welcome to my humble abode, my friends. What do you need, Mr. Time Whale? And who's this lady on your back?" asked an old man.
"Hello, 1994," said the whale. "I've lost one of my passengers in the time stream. This is his friend. Can you tell me where, perhaps, the newest time anomaly has sprung up?"
"His name is 1994?" asked Ran.
"He is that year, our year, yes," said the Time Whale. "He's the newest year in the world, but his time is almost up. He's close now to the day when he'll be reborn into 1995 at the stroke of midnight."
"I'll use my memories inherited from the past New Years in order to find him, don't you worry," said 1994. He put two fingers to his forehead like he was psychic, which he probably was. "Hm."
"What's 'hm' supposed to mean?" asked the Time Whale.
"We may have a bigger problem than I previously anticipated."
"Why?"
"Wherever this boy is, he's managed to change the past and affect the future."
"May Father Time have mercy on our souls," said the Time Whale in an even graver voice than Ran thought possible.
The black helicopter neared the North Pole.
"We'll be sure to find Santa's workshop any time now," said Gin, who was flying the copter.
"I hope he has all the answers we need," said Ai. "Few things can flip a man's entire personality in the blink of an eye."
"That wasn't quite how it all went down," said Gin.
"What happened?"
"I was asleep in my home when I was visited by the ghost of Pisco."
"Pisco!?"
"Yes. He was there and he had chains all over him as if he was connected to some infernal machine. I asked him what business he had to haunt me. He told me that if I were to not change for the better, I would be visited by three spirits that Christmas night. Of course, I expected Pisco to just be a nightmare, and I didn't listen a bit, but after the first visited me, I knew that it could only be real."
"Are you saying that you were just like Ebenezer Scrooge?"
"I can see where you'd get that from," said Gin. "It was definitely similar. I was whisked away to the past, the present, and the future, and I was taught the true meaning of Christmas, charity, and goodness. I've been like this ever since. I think it suits me better."
Ai crossed her arms.
"I can tell you don't agree with me on that last one."