It occurs to me that I get fewer reviews during the school year. I'd be tempted to only post when there isn't school, except I'd never be able to hold off on a completed chapter's posting for so long. Finished chapters just feel like they should be posted, okay?

Side note: Dad's doing a bit better, mood-wise. Since he can stand and walk short distances now—with a spotter, for safety's sake—his physical improvement is now obvious to him, too.

Chapter 3

Conan was banging his head against Kaito's leg, a low, frustrated keen in his throat.

Kaito couldn't blame him. The murder-magnet effect never had been dulled by shrinkage, but this time he was having to start over with the Conan-and-police bit. At least Kaito was with him, and probably usually would be, and could help with getting the police to the right answers quickly.

They knew him, after all, and while he wasn't Shinichi, he was trusted and observant. Solving as quickly as Shinichi usually did would seem a little strange, but that was easily avoided in anything that didn't have a time limit, and once the police realized how unutterably bright Conan was, they would be easy to lead into thinking the speed was Kaito and Conan joining forces.

"Kuroba-kun," Megure-keibu greeted gently, glancing down at the frustrated child at his knee—literally.

"Conan, stop that," Kaito huffed in English, "I know you were hoping that coming here would dull the effect, but I told you Shinichi never managed to outrun it. We're good at handling it, here. You won't have to deal with the way they were back in America."

Conan stopped trying to imprint his forehead onto Kaito's kneecap, "I know," he replied, sighing. "I guess maybe it's a good thing Shinichi's not here. What would happen if we were in the same place?"

Kaito got a sudden image of Shinichi and Conan as actual separate people and crossing paths with each other. He cringed, "Oh, uh, I don't even want to know. That's horrifying."

Apparently Shinichi got the same thought, because he cringed a bit, too. "Are the police going to make us stay a long time?" he asked, looking up with wide eyes.

Kaito eyed the scene, "I don't know. Sometimes things get settled really fast when we help, and sometimes things take a while."

Conan perked up, "We can help? They listen?"

Kaito nodded, ignoring how Megure was not able to keep up with the conversation. "They do. Shinichi usually helps them a lot. Right now, we'll just have to do it ourselves."

Conan nodded, then pointed over towards the corner, "There was something weird about the scuff marks over there, but they wouldn't let me get a good look. Do you think you can...?"

And so they started training the police, with Conan sometimes haltingly explaining what he saw in stilted Japanese and sometimes chattering at Kaito in English and leaving it to him to translate.

Megure allowed it, though at first he was disapproving—and of course he was, Conan looked like a five-year-old for all he was claiming six, and honestly six wasn't much better. Then Kaito had quietly explained that Conan had Shinichi's luck, had always had Shinichi's luck, and that people weren't treating him as some kind of death-omen was a blessing in itself, but if he felt like he could help—there had to be a reason that he and Shinichi were pulled in like this.

After Conan pointed out the clues that made the cover unravel and the case come together, Megure was only looking thoughtful. He'd always been the superstitious one of Division One, though, and if Kaito could get him thinking that Conan was like Shinichi in calling because some force was determining he was the best one to find the truth, all of Division One would start hearing rumors.

Once Conan started proving his worth, Division One officers as a whole would start taking him seriously even when Kaito (or Hakuba or Hattori, he supposed) weren't there to prompt it.

And it was a good thing that Hakuba and Hattori both spoke perfect English, because that made leaving Conan with either of them seem like good, well-thought-out options. Which they were, but not for the English. Detectives were good people to leave mini-Shinichi with, and detectives that knew who he was (they hadn't told Hattori yet, but they might not even get the chance before he figured it out, considering the last time around he'd figured it without ever having met Shinichi before) were even better.

They could work with this.

xxxx

"How you holding up?" Kaito asked in English, sounding mostly casual as they walked home.

Conan gave him a wry glance and responded in kind, "Surprisingly okay. I'm attributing that to your influence, by the way—dealing with the police was easier than I expected. What did you say to Megure-keibu?"

"That you have the luck you do and there has to be a reason for it—keep with the clues and they'll start taking you seriously more quickly than the last time around."

Conan nodded, "I sure hope so. Having to trick them into thinking was a pain."

Kaito huffed out something that wasn't quite a laugh, "Yeah, I imagine it was. I've had to do that a few times with Nakamori-keibu when he was too focused on something obvious to notice it wasn't real."

Conan shrugged, "It's fine. After the first year, they started forgetting I was a kid, mostly. Occhan didn't, though—he always tried to chase me away. I think… I think he was trying to keep me out of it. He never was good at showing he cared, but he really hated that I saw all that death."

"… there are so many things that are different, now," Kaito observed aloud, sounding more wistful than Shinichi had heard in a while. He knew Kaito understood—they'd both lost everything, and coming back hadn't returned it.

It had only given them a chance to try again. The people they'd known, the relationships they'd built, the lives they'd lived—those were still gone. The fact that many of those people had been killed before made the second chance precious, because those people may not be the people they were as Shinichi and Kaito remembered, but they were the people they'd been before everything.

But Shinichi and Kaito weren't. They'd been through too much, were too different now to build back what they'd had. "Yeah," Conan agreed. "There really are."

Kaito glanced down again, smiling slightly, "We seem to be managing all right even so."

"Heh," Shinichi paused, considering the circumstances and how much worse things could have been—he was Conan again, true, but that was temporary, and if it hadn't been for the sheer luck of stumbling across Gin and Vodka earlier that same day, he probably would have been dead. "So we do."

xxxx

With the new knowledge of who exactly 'Edogawa Conan' was, Hakuba found some things in the classroom made more sense—the tapping fingers and 'Conan's' semi-interest in the lessons among them.

Still, it was really amazing how different Conan was to Kudo, despite the fact that he now knew they were literally the same person. It was almost enough to make him think of a dissociative identity disorder, except it was deliberate and completely controlled. It was more than acting, though—it was what Kid did to become someone else taken up to a higher scale, and Kid was terrifyingly good at becoming someone else.

That Kudo was Kid as much as Kuroba was suddenly made more sense. If he'd had to do something like this for years… well, no wonder he managed to fall into the role of Kaitou KID so seamlessly.

He was having trouble thinking of 'time travel' directly, but he could accept it as truth even if it was mind-breaking to dwell on. A lot of things made more sense with the concept of him having not seen Kuroba for the equivalent of eighteen years after the day before he'd shown up to school married.

The paranoia, the caution, the willingness to trust him where before Kuroba had only tolerated him—the fact that suddenly he was nowhere near as close with Nakamori-chan, that Kudo was the person he seemed to know best and care about most.

No, there was plenty of indirect proof of what Kudo and Kuroba had told him, on all levels, and Hakuba was grateful to be able to see with his own eyes that Kudo was… perhaps not 'well', but at least alive and relatively safe.

There was the slight problem of him being a significantly poorer actor than either of his Kaitou/Detective friends (and it still felt a little odd to have friends at all, much less ones that were internationally wanted criminals). He hoped he wouldn't give things away… maybe it wasn't such a good idea to spend a lot of time with Kudo and Kuroba while Kudo was Edogawa.

He'd have to talk to the two about that. He didn't want to start avoiding them without explanation—he may not be accustomed to having actual friends, but he knew that sudden shunning of friends often broke the friendship. He'd been a detective too long not to have seen some of those broken friendships turn a kind of sour that he had confidence would not happen with either of the two in question, but just because neither of them would go vengefully violent for it didn't mean that it couldn't cause some kind of permanent damage.

His first real friends were not something he wanted to lose. He'd rather not have to avoid them at all, but he'd rather avoid them for a few months than get one or both of them killed.

"Hakuba-kun, are you paying attention?"

Hakuba jolted slightly, startled out of his thoughts by the question. He grimaced, "Sorry, Sensei. It's been a long week."

Their math teacher sighed, casting a glance at the still-subdued Kuroba and the little boy in the seat in front of him that should have been occupied by a full-sized Kudo Shinichi. "It has," she agreed. "Still, you need to pay attention. Come do the problem on the board, please, Hakuba-kun."

Hakuba got up to do as he was told, grateful for the distraction from his circling worries. The teacher was right—school was for class. He could worry about the Kudo-and-Kuroba issues later.

xxxx