How many of you thought that I was going to wait another five months to update? Well, you were wrong, because here it is; the explanations chapter. I sincerely hope you don't kill me for this, but like I've stated before, this story is a general reflection of my love life, so it's gonna end up sad, although I might indulge you guys and turn it around again later. :D

Chapter Seven

The next few months were the best he'd ever experienced. The fact that he and Ai Haibara were an item spread like wildfire across the community. Conan and Haibara went everywhere together, sparking comments, congratulations, and criticisms from all corners of Beika, where the Detective Boys were best know. Even Kogoro Mouri was shocked, although he covered it up by saying that 'the nerds should stick together so we honest working people actually have a chance'. Inspectress Takagi (formerly Miwako Sato) even congratulated them at a crime scene, to the horror of the victim's family.

However, like all good things, it didn't last. Near the end of the summer term, Haibara found Conan one day after school and dropped some heart-wrenching news. "Conan-kun, when we all graduate, I've decided to go to America to go to school."

"WHAT?"Conan asked, shocked. "How come?"

"There's an excellent graduate program for microbiological studies in New York. I think it will help me achieve my dream of creating cures for poisons. You know I hate seeing all these people die young when they could be saved."

"Isn't there something like that in Japan?" asked Conan desperately.

Haibara rolled her eyes and said condescendingly, "How did Ran-san ever put up with you, Kudo-kun?" Then she realized her mistake and slapped her hands over her mouth.

"You called me 'Kudo-kun' again," Conan observed. "Why?" He ignored her remark because it didn't make sense to him.

Haibara looked down at her feet, as if pondering something. Then her face changed. "Come with me, Conan-kun," she said, taking him by the hand and dragging him off.

It wasn't long before they reached Agasa's house. "What are we doing here?" Conan asked, but Haibara said nothing. Instead she steered Conan onto a couch before sitting across from him.

"I think it's time I told you everything, Kudo-kun," she began. "Please don't interrupt until I finish." She took a deep breath, looked right at him, and began, "This may sound entirely alien to you, but all of it is true. You must trust me on that." She took another breath before launching into the meat of her speech, "You see, Conan-kun, you are not seventeen years old as you might believe. Instead you're twenty-seven. Your birth name was Shinichi Kudo. You grew up much the same as you have now, except that you had just one close friend, Ran Mouri. Over the years, you developed romantic feelings for your friend, so you invited her to Tropical Land for a day. I don't know what you were planning that day, but that day your life changed forever.

"During a murder on a roller coaster, you crossed paths with two men dressed in black. After solving the murder, you followed them to a money hand-off, where they soon discovered you and attempted to kill you with an experimental poison. However, the poison shrank you into a small child instead of killing you. Unsure of where to go, you moved in with your childhood friend under the alias 'Conan Edogawa' in an attempt to locate your attackers.

"After a year of gathering information, you found their headquarters, and you, stubbornly, decided to infiltrate and destroy them from the inside out. However, you were caught and hooked up to a machine to turn you into one of their operatives. Ran-san and her father, Mouri-san attempted to rescue you, but they were also ultimately caught. Kogoro-san was killed outright for being a possible liability. You and Ran-san, however, were turned into vegetables. Agasa-hakase and I contacted Jodie-sensei of the FBI and they led a raid on the headquarters, killing most of the operatives and imprisoning the rest. However, the machines had done irreparable damage to you and Ran-san. Both of you had had your memories completely wiped.

"When we realized that you would never regain your memory, we concocted an elaborate cover story for you. The former version of you, Shinichi Kudo, has been dead for nine years. By all legal means, he died in a fire attempting to save a little boy, but the entire story was fabricated with the help of both the FBI and the police. Inspector Megure was the most shocked. It was he who falsified the official police records of your existence. Since then, you've lived your life as a normal child, although much smarter than average.

"Wait," Conan interrupted, unwilling to stay silent a second longer, "if I'm so much smarter than everyone else, then how come you are just as smart?"

"What's the only logical reason for it?" she asked silkily, taking advantage of the question to tease him again, in order to lighten the mood. She actually was close to tears.

"Are you saying…are you saying that you got shrunk, too?" asked Conan incredulously, stuttering over his words.

"Yes," she replied, "which is what brings me back to why I want to go overseas."

"It's for nostalgic reasons, isn't it?" asked Conan, his eyes downcast.

"…pretty much," she replied, softly. "The university thinks I'm my own younger cousin, which is why they're offering me such a good deal. I don't have any family, and Hakase is too poor, so it's the best option I've got. Besides, I want to make right what I did wrong."

Conan thought about it a minute before looking up and saying, "Well, Ai-chan, I hope you find inner peace in your life. You've got ten years of extra time, so I hope you don't waste it."

"You're…OK with me going?" she asked, startled.

"Not especially, but after thinking about what you just told me, I realized that for you personally, it's the best way to achieve peace of mind. Maybe we could try again afterwards. After all, the world's not that big; I'm sure we'll meet again."

That was when the dam broke. His honest, thoughtful answers broke Haibara down completely; the last time she'd cried so hard was when she had found Conan hooked up to that mind probe. Unconsciously, she found herself getting up and falling into Conan's embrace, still crying away.

So it turns out that the whole thing wasn't nearly as AU as you guys thought. There hasn't been any canon information as of now as to how the Org. recruits members, so this might be a possible way of doing so. Any AU info I've seemingly contradicted is part of the fabricated story that never happened. After all, I had to fool you all too, right? :P

Positive reviews are nice, but I'll accept just about any kind you can throw at me. Just make them make sense, all right? I've gotten some lately that are so confusing that I can't pick out what they like and what I need to fix. So work on that, OK? And thanks again for reading. New chapter soon!

FYI if anybody has any questions, you can PM me for a quicker answer.