Alright here's a little burst of chapters I wrote ahead of time. Hope someone enjoys my return to this website after so long.

Chapter 2: Briefing

In the morning I wake with a stretch and find my old primary school uniform sitting on the dresser, it's folded neatly and smells like it's been recently washed. But it's simple presence here further reinforced in my mind that everything that happened yesterday wasn't a dream.

Begrudgingly I put it on and am disappointed to find that it fits perfectly.

I start trying to put my thoughts together on what happened the previous night, but then I notice a scent of bacon wafting from downstairs. Mom and dad are out of the country right now, it must be 'Shinichi'.

I walk downstairs and sure enough he's in the kitchen making breakfast.

"Ah, good timing Conan, take a seat I'm almost done," he says as he moves bacon from the pan to a plate.

I take a seat, frowning to myself as I discover just how much more effort it takes to perform what should be a simple task. Was it this hard to get into a chair when I was really a kid? It must have been and I simply never realized that it'd gotten so much easier as I grew.

Putting that aside I turn my eyes to Shinichi… he's still wearing the same clothes he was wearing last night, and there are slight dark circles under his eyes. He didn't sleep last night after all, in fact it looks like he probably hasn't slept well in a while.

He really does look like me though, is this kind of likeness something that can happen by coincidence? He can't possibly be from the future like he says he is, but what are the other options? A secret twin, I wouldn't put it past mom but I'm sure dad would stop her before it reached this point. A clone, that's about as unrealistic as time travel, but I'll concede that turning into a child is also unrealistic so maybe that's not a good basis to be taking options off the table. Plastic surgery, now that one would be possible but it wouldn't explain why his voice also sounds like mine. And acting and make-up can only get you so far.

A plate is set in front of me on the table with a surprisingly cute omurice, a few strips of bacon, and a juice box. What's with this cutesy meal, it's like something you'd give a child… is he picking on me?

I frown.

And 'Shinichi' sits down calmly with his own plate, "Alright, Q and A time. Ask me anything, There are some things That you're really better off not knowing but… well I'll tell you what I can, it's better than you going out and getting in my way while you investigate things yourself."

So he's admitting that he's going to be hiding information from me.

"Okay… so who are you really?"

He rolls his eyes, "you still don't trust me at all, huh? I really am Kudo Shinichi."

"You're sticking with that?"

"Yeah, I'm sticking with that."

I sigh and take a bite of the omurice, it's good. Really good. I can't cook that well.

As if he could tell I liked it 'Shinichi' grinned smugly, "Ran taught me how to make that."

"And when did that happen?"

"In the future. While I was 'Conan' like you are now."

"Sticking with the time travel thing too, eh?"

"It's fine if you're not going to believe me right away, there's only one truth after all." He takes a bite of his meal, it looks like it's the same as mine, maybe he wasn't making something child-like just to pick on me. Maybe it's just all he knows how to make well and he was trying to put his best foot forward- maybe.

"So, not that I believe you, but if you are here from the future, how far in the future are you from?"

"A little over 10 years."

I find myself blinking involuntarily.

"I am… 27 year old Kudo Shinichi, or 17 year old Edogawa Conan. I also shrunk like you did," he points at me briefly then takes a sip of his drink, "and I was never fully cured for various reasons. But in my case things didn't go down quite like they did for you last night."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I didn't have someone to pick me up like you did, so I woke up in the grass where I was poisoned, to the sound of cops talking over my body, stuff like 'he's still breathing', 'he's covered in blood', and 'are you okay little boy?'... That was when I noticed what had happened to my body. I'd like to say I wasn't freaked out but…" He chuckles with presumed nostalgia, "I spent some time trying to tell the cops what had happened- That I wasn't a lost kid I was detective Kudo Shinichi and that I'd witnessed a crime there, before I gave up and made a run for it. I ended up back home talking to Agasa-Hakase when Ran came in, I thought it'd be dangerous to tell her the truth so when she asked who I was I glanced at the bookshelf and blurted out the name 'Edogawa Conan' on the spot."

That does sound more or less how I might act in that situation, though I'd like to think I'd be a bit more tactful about things. "You seem like you had more time to prepare my cover name but you just gave me your hand me down ad-libbed one?"

"Heh, yeah, I lived 10 years with no one questioning it, you shouldn't even need it that long if things go according to plan. It should be fine."

I mutter, "I'd have preferred Sherlock."

"Don't make me change it to Moriarty." He jabbed.

"Right…. So you mentioned doing 'something' about my situation last night, do you have a way for me to return to normal?"

"Hmm, so you don't want to listen to the rest of my tragic backstory then?"

"Uh… we'll get back to that later, I'm more concerned with the present."

"Suit yourself…" He shrugged, "I do have a medicine that will turn your body back under the right circumstances… it's temporary on me because I was the tester in the development of the drug, but in theory there is a high chance it'll be more permanent on someone who hasn't built up any immunity to the antidote, especially since you haven't had as much time to adapt to the poison."

"Then give it to me."

"Look even if you don't have immunity you still need to wait for the right circumstances in order to maximize the chances of it actually curing you, until then I'll hold on to it so you can't take it early."

"Okay, so what are these 'circumstances' you're talking about anyway?" I ask annoyedly.

"You'd need to be immunocompromised. A cold would work, but the more distracted your immune system is by other things the more likely the antidote is to be effective."

"That… seems odd, why would it work like that?"

"The poison, Apotoxin4869 effectively becomes a part of your body after being ingested, it's designed to accelerate the process of apoptosis in cells of the body, and also has an added effect to lengthen the telomere chains in DNA. So because it's become a part of your body you'll have better luck in reversing the side effects if you weaken your body's ability to fight back against the antidote... if your sick that'll work, certain alcohols can help but I trust that you won't go around trying that looking like a six year old."

I feel my brow furrowing, "That's ridiculous, who would design a poison like that?"

"They designed it as a medicinal drug I think, however the tests with mice were showing it to be lethal in nearly 100% of cases so because it also had the convenient tendency to make the body completely dissolve thanks to the apoptosis boost they started employing it as a poison for when it's better if the target disappears without a trace rather than being found dead. I have my own theories as to why they're developing it but I believe the rare side effect that you've experienced is more in line with the intended effect than the more common toxic effect. After all, I can think of plenty of reasons why someone may want to invest in a drug that can instantly make them appear ten or more years younger with out effecting their intellect. It's a shame that the success rate is so low that out of hundreds of subjects I can count on one hand how many people have survived it, and only one of them was before your case last night."

Just how many people has this organization given this poison to? How massive is this organization? Still if he's to be believed then there's someone else stuck like this somewhere, "If you can time travel why didn't you help that person, or me for that matter?"

"Ah… because the first to be hit by this side effect was a mouse in the lab developing the poison, it would have been about a month ago. As for you, I am helping you in the best way I know how."

I raise an eyebrow and take a sip from the juice box. "Forgive me if I don't believe you, you claim to have a time machine but still let me fall prey to a poison and make myself a potential target for what you claim is a massive criminal organization.

"I knew you would survive because I did... My time travel is somewhat limited, so I wanted to minimize the risks involved in my plans to alter history. In my timeline Shinichi Kudo got poisoned and 'disappeared' so that needs to appear to happen too so that I can still predict what will happen next... there are more dangerous events coming. Events where peoples lives are actually on the line, I intend to make use of my foreknowledge to save them when possible."

I suppose that's a noble goal if he's telling the truth, I can't complain that he didn't save me from becoming a child if it's the basis of how he intends to go about saving some unknown number of other people from a worse fate. Well, now I feel a little bad about complaining, maybe he actually is doing something.

I decide to change the subject, "So... you suspect that the purpose of the drug is reverse aging?"

"Yes" He replies simply, continuing to add details I didn't even ask for, "Possibly even stopping the aging process altogether. I imagine they'd finetune it later in production so that people can pick an age to be and then stay at that age. I know that even though I aged from six back to this point I likely I won't be aging from this age onward, but my hair may still grey, it'll depend on what batch of apotoxin I ended up with."

Well that seems to be a hole in the logic of his story so far, "How would you know that if you were the first human to get hit with this shrinking side effect?"

After all how would he know he would stop aging, much less that different batches of the poison could result in grayed hair. If he's only from 10 years in the future then he hasn't spent nearly enough time poisoned to know about long term effects like that.

He looked at me for a moment, hesitating, "I… I am not the only person that has time traveled. There are two time travelers in the organization that have also been affected by this poison- they've been in the past long enough for it to be noticeable that they're not aging. I'm here to stop one of them from getting what they want, and the other will be willing to help me… probably."

"Probably?" I raise an eyebrow.

"Er… well she's a bit of a wild card, from her perspective she hasn't spoken to me in a very long time and I haven't spoken to her since arriving in this time so I'm not really sure what her agenda is anymore perhaps she's changed sides, but I think she'll help me."

"It doesn't sound like you trust her very much…"

"At this point there are very few people I can trust. Not even myself… and especially not you."

Well that's just rude.

"And why can't you trust me, if I was supposed to be you?"

"Well… I did just say I couldn't trust myself either."

"Yes but you said especially not me."

Once again he hesitated, "... the more you know the less likely I am to succeed in my mission. I have to keep you in the dark."

"But… why?"

"I can't tell you that, it's dangerous information."

That doesn't really make sense. Even if I were to accept the nonsense about time travel the only way I can think that it would matter to him whether or not I know things is if I become an enemy in the future, but he's also claiming to be me, so that can't be the case… well unless this is a multi-world timeline situation, but in that case he shouldn't know my personal future.

I sigh, "how does time travel work anyway?"

"Finally admitting I might actually be from the future?" He replied with a smug grin.

"No, just looking for flaws in your story."

He rolls his eyes, "... A friend of mine that you haven't met yet built the time machine itself in conjunction with Agasa-Hakase, I don't know most of the mechanical details of it myself but I was told it runs on the black hole interpretation of time travel to takes advantage of special relativity. It can't travel forward though, so I can't show you the future."

"Okay… and what about paradoxes?"

"Multi-world theory but the worlds tend to fix themselves at a certain level of paradox-iness. People forget things sometimes, or wake up to find that previous occurrences were apparently dreams, or perhaps a sense of deja vu as the world corrects itself around you… I have very little experience with such things personally, but I was told about a few occasions by another time traveling Kudo Shinichi."

Well that checks out so far at least.

"Wait another-"

"Your future self in the event that I fail to adequately alter history. We're caught in a stable time-loop… I'm here to try to break out of that loop."

Well, then I guess it makes sense that he knows about my personal future. Though I must admit it's a bit troubling that he'll tell me that much but nothing important about the future. If he told me anything useful I could help, couldn't I? So why won't he tell me?

"Anyway, back to what we were talking about before…what happened last night, in most timelines, 'Conan' goes to live with Ran at her place."

"Eh?" He's changing the subject, don't get drawn into it. Don't let him command the flow of the conversation.

"I did it too, while I was 'Conan'." He smirked a little tauntingly.

Bastard.

"She lives with her dad, there's no way anything happened."

"Yeah… and 'Conan' is 6 anyway. So get your mind out of the gutter." With a bit of a dismissive hand gesture he continues, "Just her taking care of a relative of Agasa-hakase… and of course with her dad being a bit- shall we say 'unreliable' as a detective I, or rather you would end up leading him to the solutions of many cases while you pursued the organization that did this to you."

Suddenly a chill runs down my spine.

Is he saying what I think he is?

It can't be… right?

He's me so he would never- hmm before I knew it I had started thinking of him as me but in actuality I still haven't been able to confirm that he actually is me. If he can't or won't prove it then I shouldn't just blindly believe in him. Even if most of what he's saying does make an infuriating amount of sense…

Kudo Shinichi wouldn't just let criminals go without being brought to justice.

"If 'Conan' is supposed to be helping Ran's dad with cases then… what's going to happen to those cases if I'm not living with them?"

"Mouri Kogoro isn't really suited to being a detective… he is more perceptive than most give him credit for to be sure, but he has a tendency to jump to conclusions and get stuck on ideas with very little to no evidence. His style of detective work tends to be to make up a motive and aggressively accuse whoever he thinks is suspicious until they crack. And Ran isn't much better, she's smart and good at noticing details others might overlook, but she lets her feelings get in the way too much to solve cases. Without Conan around to give the Mouris a push in the right direction there's a pretty high chance a lot of the cases he'll be getting in the next few days will go unsolved, maybe even the case they got last night… and the later ones will end up in the hands of other somewhat more competent detectives in the area because Mouri Kogoro won't have as good of a reputation as he did with me helping."

I frown, "And you're okay with that? With some of those cases going unsolved?"

"It's a risk I'm willing to take at this point."

"If you're me why would you-"

"It's about time for you to head to school, go make some friends, Conan-kun. We can talk more later."

I tried to complain but he continued to shut me down, and before long I was begrudgingly making my way to school.

"As if I could make friends with a bunch of kids," I mutter to myself.

I don't care if he ever was Kudo Shinichi, but if he's willing to let cases go unsolved- to let crimes go unpunished... He's certainly not Kudo Shinichi now.