Recap: Chapter 9

"Are you sure this is going to work?" Haibara spoke up. Shinichi looked at her unsure of the answer, taken up the gamble on either they succeed and find the next clue or they fail and lose this clue.

The moment of truth has arrived. There was no going back now, the single spot of concentrated sunlight directly hit the corner of the card. The corner caught on fire almost immediately due to the concentrated heat, but tamed down as it slowly spread across the entire card at a relatively slow pace, burning a rather large portion of the card to dust. Shinichi leaned forward desperately trying to see what was happening, while Haibara sat back and watched the big picture, as the midday sun poured through the magnifying glass creating several strands of smoke.

"Its working," Shinichi mumbled "It's working Haibara!" he repeats himself, this time louder and more excited. Haibara didn't reply, she simply smiles at his excitement. It wasn't long till the sunlight finished crafting their next clue. Shinichi, like a kid in a candy shop, impatiently reached out and grabbed the new clue before the card completely burned off. Luckily he didn't manage to hurt himself. Clearing his throat so he could read out loud the new clue to Haibara, he began "…"

"T-this is…" Shinichi stuttered. Curious, Haibara leans into Shinichi to get a glimpse of what he was puzzled at.

SSs

EEEEEL

SA A MM MM E L

A SSS M M EEEEEL

A AS M E L

A MS U EEEEEL

SSSSS UUU LLLLLLl

SSSSS UUU LLLLLLl

SSSSS UUU LLLLLLl

L A A GNN N RRR N EEEe

L A AGN N NGH HR R NN N

GN H HRO N

L A ANGGN N HHHH O RN N N

LLLLLLLLLLA N N NN

OOO

CWSQERBCWQMIC

C EEEWRYIOPRIMIRIIMYC

CTYERUFUEOWPXIIMIMIMWRYC

CIIEEEEEEEEEPINKCIIMEKMWGRNQc

C

CPOMWUIQBCAOQPEWUSQGEBFCS

CYNWUCIQMOPLQOWCSWRCS

CQWQXVBCBNUWMPC

Friday

The message spelt.

"What, is this…?" Shinichi mumbled to himself while Haibara sat silently beside him, eye focused and thinking deeply to herself.

"Maybe we can start by writing out the letters, and the number of letters there are in each section" Haibara finally suggested. Shinichi took a deep breath in

"I guess that's a start" he shrugged with a smile and agreed to the idea.

Sitting opposite each other, Haibara noted down all the letters they found hidden in the first symbol. While Haibara counted how many each letter was, Shinichi tried out several combinations to form words, phrases or even sentences.

"It's no use, there are just too many combinations, and we don't know if the number of letters represents the number of letters a word or a sentence," Shinichi plainly states after trying about 50 or more combinations.

"It's not like you to give up," Haibara's green eyes flashed a challenge.

"There has got to be an easier way to figure this out, I just haven't figured it out yet" Shinichi sighed, he leaned back and onto the floor, he put his hands behind his head to act as a cushion. Then eventually bring his bent knees down straight to completely lie down on the hard ground so he can look upon the clouded blue sky.

"I guess the only thing we know now is Friday, but that doesn't give us enough information to the location and time," Shinichi carried on

"Hm… hey, there's two only small letters while all the rest are in capital," Haibara suddenly noticed.

"Yeah… I couldn't figure out what that's supposed to mean either, it's just getting more and more confusing," Shinichi sighed again and closed his eyes to take in the nature around them, hoping to find some clues he might've missed out on by retracing the events throughout the day in his head. Haibara felt hopeless, even the great detective doesn't have a clue to cracking the code. They were doomed. She decided to get some water while Shinichi fell asleep "thinking". She came back and he was up, pacing around still thinking about the clue. She sat back down and looked at the clue again, then started to lazily trace the letters and followed the pattern starting from the little letter. Shinichi paused to watch her follow the pattern with her finger, then it all came together. That was it.

"Haibara let me have another look at that," he tried to keep his voice calm, but he was almost certain that he had figure out how to crack it. Placing his finger on the little 's' of the first clue, he started drawing an imaginary 's' following all the path of the capital S's. He reached an A, as if he was drawing an A, he traced diagonally upwards following the A path and managed to reach an M. He noted down the letters as he followed the letters around the code. And finally he cracked the first symbol, Samuel.

"W-wasn't that one of the combination you put together?" Haibara confused by what Shinichi just did with the clue

"Yeah, but there were just too many others I couldn't completely tell which was the right word, but now I do" he smirked

"So you mean we could've been able to figure it out anyway if we had just written all the letters and put them together as words?" Haibara questioned

"I guess for the first two we could've, but have a look at the third, without knowing the way to decode it there is no way you can tell which letter is meant to be there, which means we won't actually be able to crack the code unless I know how to,"

"Hmm… what does the other two code spell?"

"L-A-N-G-H-O-R-N-E," Shinichi spelt out as he traced around the clue "Which means the last should be… Clenmens" he predicted before decoding the last symbol

"H-how would you know?"

"Because I do,"

His arrogance, it annoys her sometimes.

Haibara tried to solve the last code herself, but can't even find the start to the code. Then Shinichi pointed out the little 'c' and guided her through the maze, the third code did indeed spelt 'Clenmens'

"So, who is he anyway? This Samuel Langhorne Clenmens guy," Haibara asked, irritated

"Mark Twain," Shinichi replied

The two planned to go visit the Mark Twain's house in Hartford, Connecticut after lunch to investigate more and maybe even get some clues. But Shinichi's cold suddenly got worse, his temperature rapidly increased. His body became so weak that he wasn't even able to walk. Haibara couldn't force him to go with her, not with him in this state. She had to do this one on her own, again. She made Shinichi take 2 paracetamol pills before putting him back to sleep. Before heading out, again, she set the alarm clock to wake him after 4 hours so he can take his medicine and left another note along with another bottle of water by his side.

The sun was up above the clouds so high today that Haibara didn't need any silly night goggles. She set out from their campsite and found her way to the Mark Twain house. The house doesn't seem to provide many clues, she got many cautious glances at her direction whenever she tries to inspect an item that may provide her any clues. She was out of luck. The only information she managed to obtain was the dates of Mark Twain's birth and death. Still, this may be useful information. She made her way back to their camp site when night started to fall. She carefully unzipped the tent to find that Shinichi is still asleep. He has already taken his medicine, she breathed out, relieved to see that he's still doing okay. She slowly backed out of the tent, but stopped when Shinichi started mumbling uncomfortably.

"Hey are you okay?" Haibara softly whispered. She checked his temperature, he still had a really high fever.

"…Haibara?" Shinichi choked out with difficulty

"Yeah?"

"Can you… get me some chicken soup please?"

She seriously wanted to smack him then. Who does he think he is? She's not his mother or his maid! But she did feel sorry for him at this state, after thinking about it for a while she unwillingly agreed to his request and went to get appliances and a can of chicken soup. He better not be picky and appreciate can soup, she thought as she cooked the soup. The sun was setting, the sky was painted in dark ocean blue with a hint of orange remaining. He was asleep again when she was done with the soup. The sun had set and the half crescent moon had risen, although shadowed by all the dark thick clouds. The night was upon them and the wind was picking up though weak it had an eerie chilling feel to it.

"Wake up," Haibara gently shook Shinichi. He opened his drowsy eyes to meet her green ones.

"Hai-ha-haibara?"

"Yes it's me, drink up," she handed him the bowl of soup. He can just about manage to hold a spoon by himself, but the spoon did manage fail to travel to his mouth on several occasions. At the end, Haibara had to feed it to him as he was spilling way too much of her soup! ―and because he was getting his clothes wet.

After feeding him, he actually looked and seemed a lot better. The colour was returning to his lips and cheeks. And Shinichi actually managed to say a whole sentence without stuttering.

"Thank you, that was good soup," he said weakly

"Y-You're welcome, glad you liked it, I used our family secret recipe," Haibara lied, ashamed that she bought him canned soup even though he spent a bit of brain power on cracking the code for her to help save her mother. He coughed throughout Haibara's report on her findings at the Mark Twain house.

"I bet, you caught a cold because you wore your drenched clothes all this time from when you fell in the river and tried to catch kid," Haibara scolded at him

"I tried? I did catch kid!" Shinichi said between coughs

"That's not what I'm getting at here, I'm just saying that you caught a cold because of that! You should've just listened and got a change a clothes back then, look at yourself, you're completely useless here because of that cold,"

"I'm not completely useless," Shinichi argued, "I cracked the code didn't I?"

Haibara couldn't argue to that one, he did help quite a lot with cracking the code, in fact, that sentence made her feel really guilty for not giving him enough credit. "Fine, you're not completely useless,"

"And I don't think I caught a cold because of that, I mean, if I traveled back to now, surely then I haven't been to catch kid, which means I shouldn't have been soaked, so I don't think it was of that, I must've just caught something here," Shinichi reasoned with Haibara's hypothesis

"So did my information from the Mark Twain house help to cracking the rest of the code?" Haibara changed the topic

"I need to have a look at the calendar, I think we might almost be there but I can't be sure,"

"I'll get you the calendar," Haibara sighed and got up to find the calendar they keep in the Beetle. Damn him, Haibara thought, he's using the reason that he's ill to make her run around getting stuff.

"Have you got it?" Shinichi asked cheerier than before as Haibara returned to the tent.

"Yes, yes, young master, I have your calendar," Haibara said in her sarcastic voice, she knows he's enjoying making her run round for him. She passed the calendar over to Shinichi, so he can check on the dates

"Today is Thursday the 20th, tomorrow is Friday the 21st… can you repeat the dates of Mark Twain birth and death again?"

"He was born on the 30th November, and he died on the 21st of April,"

"The organization has given us the clue that we will be meeting them on a Friday, and this Friday is the 21st, the same as Mark Twain's death date…what year did Mark Twain died?"

"1910" Haibara answered

"19:10, 7:10pm, I think that must be it," Finally making his conclusion "Tomorrow, at 7:10, they will be waiting for us where Mark Twain is buried, Redding Connecticut, Woodlawn cemetery,"

"But…we're not in April," Haibara pointed out the flaw in deduction

"I can't think of an explanation for April, but it's just going to be a gamble we're going to have to make, if there was something hidden in the word April, then we fail, but if not, we've got them," Shinichi confessed "It's the only gamble we can make, I think we should take it,"

"I guess," Haibara agreed

"I'll try and think of other places or other meanings to this clue, but if there isn't any that make sense or fits the clue as well as this explanation, I think we are just going to have go and hope for the best,"

Haibara nods and agree with what he's saying, the best chance of ever seeing his mom again will be to go to Woodlawn cemetery tomorrow.

"Wait, what about the potion?" Haibara suddenly remembers "We were meant to give them the elixir of Chang'e in exchange for my mom!"

"You're just going to have to negotiate, we can't get the elixir by tomorrow, we have no clue where it can be, or…we can just make one," Shinichi suggests

"What are you crazy? How are we meant to make one? A freakin immortal potion by tomorrow! There's no way that― Oh…"

"Now we're on the same page,"

"This isn't going to work," Haibara plainly states

"Trust me, it will," Shinichi reassures her

"Trust me, I've worked with drugs before, we can't pull this off if we don't know anything about the drug, what's the colour going to be? Pink? Blue? Colorless? We can't pull it off, they'll know!" Haibara panicked

"We can just tell them that this is the complete version, so this is going to be different from all the different ones they've seen before," Shinichi suggests

"…Where do you come up with these ideas?"

"You, just don't think outside the box, which will make you a terrible detective if you ever want to become one," Shinichi taunted

"Hey, I'll have you know I can be a great detective if I want to be," Haibara defends

"How about blue? I quite like that colour," Shinichi on the other hand completely ignores her

I like the color of your eyes too, Haibara thought to herself. Suddenly feeling her face burn up, where did that come from? What am I thinking? She shook her head to clear the thought out of her head. It must be the time travelling, it's messing with my head, this isn't good, I need to hurry up and finish fixing this. Haibara sets her mind straight, Focus Shiho, She tells herself, I refuse to get distracted from achieving my goal, my family, I'm going to get them back. And that's all that matters… For now.

Wow, i haven't update this story in ageeesss. Which I'm really sorry for, I have been busy with my last year of school, but now its over and it's my summer wooo! so hopefully i'll be updating every 2 weeks or maybe even quicker

Okay, so I know the code doesn't make any sense on this page, I don't know what it is with fanfiction, I keep shifting it back to make the way it is on my word document, but when I save it, it just shifts back to... well that ^ So if you want to actually have a look at the real code, I'm more than happy to email the chapter on word, because it actually spaces out properly then. Really sorry you didn't get to see the real thing on here, I spent ages making it perfect as well :/ really sorry, I'll try my best to find some way to upload a picture or something. And if anyone knows how to make it alright, please do tell me, I'll then re upload the chapter properly and I'll owe whoever my savior is a massive favor in return

Anyways I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I hope you enjoy my chapters to come in this summer, thanks again for reading my story :D

Oh and just another thing, I'm changing my pen name to Chocolate Cloud, I got kinda bored of my own name so er don't panic if you receive an alert from Chocolate Cloud, it's just your same old beloved Alix ;)

Thank you all for reading, again, I wish all a lovely lovely summer :) xx