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Chapter 1
"You ready for this?" Kaito asked quietly, eying the front door like he wasn't entirely sure himself.
"No," Shinichi sighed, then flipped the 'Conan' switch. "We should go, anyway, though. We have to do it sometime."
Kaito offered a half-grin, "You always were the scariest kid I've ever met."
Conan smirked a little, stepping into his shoes and grateful that the Hakase already knew how to make them, this time around. He had indoor versions, now, too, and that was a comfort. "Really? I always thought it was Haibara."
Kaito snorted, "No, always been you. I mean, she's—okay, yeah, she's scary. But you—you're terrifying. Haibara always had a sense of self-preservation."
"She was a little skittish around you at first," Conan conceded, opening the door and promptly switching to English. He was supposedly raised in America, this time, and only supposed to be semi-proficient with Japanese. Also, his new 'Conan' birth certificate said he was just barely six, having been born too late in the year to start school yet. At least according to the American methods, and that was going to save him a lot of trouble—but of course Kaito couldn't leave a 'little kid' home alone, and setting him up in daycare when he didn't speak the language would be cruel.
Or, that's what they could claim, anyway.
"Come on, Conan," Kaito held out a hand, and Conan was edgy enough that even as Shinichi he might not have spurned the comfort. Of course, if he were Shinichi, he wouldn't have the cause of the edginess, but the sentiment was there.
And then Aoko showed up, trotting to meet them and apparently having been camping their front walk for that purpose.
"Kaito! Is this your guest?"
"Hey, Aoko," Kaito kept to English, though he let his accent slip a little. He'd been 'getting better with Shinichi's tutelage' as he hadn't been great as a true teen, so he'd been losing the accent slowly by deliberate effort. "Conan, this is Nakamori Aoko—you'd say 'Aoko Nakamori', but the polite way to address her would be 'Nakamori-san' unless she says otherwise, okay?"
Conan nodded, and Kaito turned to his childhood friend, "This is Edogawa Conan. He's Shinichi's… some kind of cousin, I'm pretty sure Yukiko-chan was deliberately confusing in the explanation."
Aoko crouched a bit, and Conan sighed, a little put out at the fact that he was going to have to deal with being patronized, even if it was unintentional. From Kaito, it was actually kind of amusing, as he wasn't patronizing Conan but those watching. From everyone else…
And explaining to Hakuba was going to be a pain. Hopefully he wouldn't start wondering upon first meetings; he was still a little rash on abrupt confrontations, even if he had been getting better. But Shinichi was a better actor, now, and Conan was a second skin; figuratively as well as literally.
"Hey, Conan-chan," she smiled at him like a younger child than he was claiming to be, and he really, really wanted to snap for that.
He settled for a discomfited grimace.
"Aoko," Kaito warned, "Conan may not speak all that much Japanese, but he does know basic suffixes, and he doesn't like that one. He's just used to Americans calling everyone by their given names."
She blushed a bit, muttering something that involved the word 'cute' under her breath in Japanese, and Conan suppressed a sigh.
Girls. Small children. He hated that combination when he was the child.
She shook her head, and asked "Would you rather just be called 'Conan', then?"
He blinked, then nodded slightly, "Yes, please, Nakamori-san. Or… Conan-kun?" he half-asked, glancing up at Kaito as if for affirmation.
Kaito gave an encouraging smile, but his fingers flicked through a coded, 'This is going to be a long day.'
Well. He couldn't dispute that one.
"Conan-kun it is," she decided, picking the one she was more comfortable with.
Conan sighed again and stuck close to Kaito, Aoko eventually letting him be.
Now all he had to worry about was fielding the class—and Hattori. And Hakuba. And his parents, who were probably on their way back again.
Somewhere, some god either hated him or thought he was funny.
xxxx
Hakuba had possessed somewhat mixed feelings on hearing that Kuroba was having a small boy from America coming over to live with him for close to half a year. Kudo being missing was obviously taking a toll on him, and maybe Kudo was only officially missing, since Kuroba wasn't frantic even in private, but he was definitely in some kind of danger or Kuroba wouldn't be so… drawn.
A child—even if the arrangement had been offered before Kudo had gone missing, right now Kuroba didn't seem to be in a fit state to look after a pre-school-aged boy, especially not one with a different primary language. But Kuroba would look after his family, Hakuba was certain of that.
The child would not be neglected.
But… what of Kuroba? Kudo wasn't dead and Kuroba wasn't broken, which was a plus. Kudo was missing and Kuroba was worried, which was a definite minus. If he started channeling his energy into a likely traumatized child instead of self-care, Kuroba could end up getting sick, and then where would any of them be?
(Because he wouldn't stop channeling energy into helping Kudo, and there was only so much one person could do before burning out.)
The first few days, the boy would be staying with Kuroba even during class hours. That would give Hakuba a chance to properly evaluate the situation, and possibly start getting to know the boy. He might be American, but Great Britain's English wasn't that different. At the very least, the boy would likely take being able to understand at all as a blessing.
Hakuba sighed, trying to quell his restless thoughts. He was pretty sure Kuroba's guest was supposed to show up today, and Kudo had been trying very hard to teach him to keep from jumping to conclusions or theorizing without evidence. Let the evidence lead to the conclusion, not the conclusion to the evidence.
He knew that. He would follow it.
xxxx
Kaito was pretty sure he was more nervous than Shinichi, though not more than Conan. Shinichi was getting to hide, the jerk, except that Kaito didn't really believe he was a jerk. Or that he'd wanted this. Or deserved it. No, Shinichi wasn't hiding, he was trapped, but the trap hid him more thoroughly than any shadow.
And he had, eventually, fashioned Conan into a separate being in his own right, just as Kaito (and likely his father before him) had done with Kid. Kaito spared a moment to wonder what a psychologist would think of his and/or Shinichi's mental state, then huffed and quelled his nervous reaction.
Hakuba counted seconds. Shinichi bounced things off his feet, if he had the luxury of not needing to hide his restlessness. Kaito had his Poker Face so ingrained even as a true teenager that his biggest actual nervous tic was tangential thinking.
The pranks were calculated stress-relief or boredom-breaking.
(He wasn't sure what jumping off tall buildings and/or the occasional cliff or aircraft counted as.)
Conan poked his hip, looking up at him with wide, concerned eyes.
Kaito glanced down, "That obvious, huh?"
Conan nodded seriously, still pandering to the audience that was Aoko.
Kaito offered a small smile, "I'm okay, Conan. Just a little stressed."
Conan tilted his head, fingers tapping the outside of his thigh in a purposeful rhythm, and Kaito's smile widened a little. (Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Aoko look startlingly relieved.) "Really, Conan. Don't you believe me?"
"Is it about my cousin?" he asked, giving Kaito an easy out.
"We'll get him back," Kaito said, completely assured of that. Of course, Shinichi was right in front of him, and he wanted—but it would take time. One antidote, though, wouldn't be so bad. And… well, time alone had caused problems. Conan had stayed too small, not growing with his kiddie classmates. Even Haibara had grown fairly normally, but Conan stayed the smallest in his second elementary class, and while he was quite athletic by most standards even after three years as Conan and two under experimental antidote-testing, his physical abilities had dropped as time went by, not increased.
When Haibara had realized the experiments were detrimental, she'd stopped them. Conan's condition had stopped declining as quickly, but he had continued to grow measurably, if not particularly noticeably, worse.
She had realized that his life would be measured in years at that rate, not decades, and resumed cautious research on the antidote.
Five months shouldn't be too bad. The damage might not even be permanent, if they handled it carefully. But Kaito couldn't help but worry, and putting tiny Conan in a class full of people so much bigger and physically stronger… well. Accidents could happen.
"Stay close to me today, all right?" he asked.
Conan gave him a smile, small and reassuring. "Okay, Kaito."
"Well, here we go—what did that captain say? 'Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!'*"
Conan laughed, fingers tapping out a reply on Kaito's palm that was slightly more appropriate for the given situation, not that any but the two of them would recognize that. 'Once more unto the breach.'*
Kaito grinned, bright and reckless, and entered the classroom with a cloud of smoke and glitter.
When it cleared, no one was the color they'd started out as, and the entire group, teacher and students alike, showed visible relief at Kaito's first prank in weeks.
(He wasn't going to do them often, of course. No one would have cause to even wonder if he was forgetting Shinichi. And he was still worried. But—well, no harm in making it obvious that Conan's presence was a balm on his worry, if not an actual cure.)
xxxx
*Common paraphrase of American Navy Admiral David Farragut's orders during the Battle of Mobile Bay, and one of Dad's favorite quotes. No one's entirely certain what was actually said during the battle, but the sentiment boiled down to basically that.
*From Shakespeare's Henry V, act III, if I'm remembering the acts in the right numbers.