This is the plot point that being able to understand the encrypted chapters or having read the previous stories (admittedly, kinda badly written at points) would help understand what's really going on here. But I'm trying to make sure that anything that needs explanation receives one.

Hope you're ready for this to get weird.

Chapter 6: Criminal

"Shinichi-niichan!" A childish voice called out behind me.

Chills run down my spine as I turn.

Not a child but a man in a black coat stood before me. I'd seen him before and knew him quite well- that long silvered hair that betrayed his age despite his youthful face which hadn't aged a day in decades, that playful smirk like a child looking at their favourite toy. This man was the reason that I couldn't help but jump at shadows, the reason I hated my own reflection. This man was the one who had made my life a living hell for the past ten years

Edogawa Conan.

He's an alternate personality that had been developed by another time traveling Shinichi Kudo who had looped himself jumping to the past so many times that he completely began to lose his grip on his sanity. He twisted, and twisted until he broke. Shinichi who wanted to continue looping to find a route that would avoid the suffering of the people that he cared about, and Conan who would achieve his own goals by any means necessary.

With Shinichi already in a very defeated mindset Conan managed to firmly take the reins of their shared body and commandeered a time machine and went back fifty years, ultimately becoming the leader of the organization that I and the other me had been fighting.

"This is impossible, you can't be here. You're dead."

I had made this trip to the past with the full intent to kill him before he could even come into existence. It was the last request of the version of me that had become him- he wanted to die without fully becoming someone besides Kudo Shinichi, he wanted to sacrifice himself for the cause and save everyone else.

The mission had been a success.

It's already been days, he should be rotting by now, he should be gone.

He cocks a gun and points it at me, "Did you really think killing me would be enough to stop what I've set in motion?"

I frown, "I killed you before you could even set it in motion. The organization shouldn't even exist now, you shouldn't exist."

"You shouldn't either, Shinichi-niichan. You went and killed the person that led you to where you are today."

"Stop calling me that already..."

He ignores my complaint and just keeps talking about whatever he wants to, all the while gesturing somewhat haphazardly with the gun in his hand. "It takes a bit for time to catch up when changes affect this long a span of time. I don't just suddenly disappear the moment that you kill my past self, the world has to take time to adjust and work out what new version of history makes the most sense."

He's proposing some sort of resolution to the grandfather paradox? If history is altered then it takes time for the new contents of the timeline to reach those involved. I never considered the possibility that such changes wouldn't be taken care of quickly.

I suppose that would make sense. I took part in several time travel experiments while the time machine was being tested, but they were all only over the span of minutes or hours so it's not strange that I never personally experienced any results of long term changes to the timeline… Conan arrived in the past fifty years ago, it may take a while for his death to catch up with him.

"Even if that is true, it doesn't change the fact I killed you. You'll disappear soon enough."

How long will I have to wait to finally be rid of him? Weeks? Months? Years?

If he's telling the truth then it's even possible that the fact I shouldn't exist if I've killed Conan may catch up with me before it catches up with him. What would that mean for the timeline? Let's not think about that. Nothing good I'm sure.

"And you know, Shinichi, what our goal was, don't you?" A jarring change of topic.

For a moment I don't understand what he's hinting at…

Then comprehension enters my brain with all the force of a truck rolling down hill.

A concern that I hadn't dared to even think before was racing through my mind with sudden startling clarity.

Raising the dead.

It had long been clear to me that their goal was something to do with immortality, reverse aging, or raising the dead… I suppose I know now which one it was. Or no, perhaps they were attempting all of them. Anything to either avoid death altogether or at least make sure that when it comes it's not permanent.

But if that's the case then just killing Conan may not be enough.

Was the entire goal of the organization just a contingency to make sure that if I did go back in time and kill Conan that he could simply be revived? No, no… Conan is smart but he had to take this course of action to guarantee the events leading to his own existence would happen, the chance to be revived if killed must just be a convenient perk that developed along the way. A useful card to play forged during the game- or rather it's still in development, it can't be used for that purpose yet.

"Even if reviving people is your goal you're clearly not quite there yet, Apotoxin is far from a perfect and-"

"Do you really think that poison was the only lead we were following? We've been looking into all kinds of options."

I suspected as much, I knew that they were pursuing at least one other lead through the branch of the organization that Kaito was having run-ins with; they may have different code names and style but the general goal was always more or less a different means to the same end. Who's to say there aren't even more branches split off like that, all under the control of Conan? One of them may have had some form of success in raising the dead.

"Oh~ What's wrong Shinichi? You're starting to look a bit pale. Don't worry… I can fix that."

There's a gunshot.

My ears are ringing.

I feel myself fall to the ground, it doesn't hurt, but I know that it should. It hurt last time.

My mind goes blank.

Then suddenly I jolt upright in bed.

That was all just a nightmare… right? It's still clear in my mind, not fuzzy like dreams normally are. I remember all of it. His voice, the discussion, the gunshot-

The gunshot!

Quickly my hands shoot all over my body, trying to feel for any wounds. I can't find any, thank god, it must have really been a dream. However even if it was all just some sick joke my subconscious had decided to play on my conscious mind, everything said in the dream was still genuinely something I should probably take into consideration I don't know for sure whether or not it truly does take time for changes to history to catch up to someone, so until I can confirm that the death of the innocent Conan was enough to destroy the organization I'd best operate under the assumption that the criminal overlord Conan is still alive and kicking.

I don't know what kind of research they were doing to bring back the dead, or what level of success they've had, but for now it is imperative that I make sure that they don't find the body.

I successfully kept him away from any black organization business, so they shouldn't have been able to do anything to him besides that initial dose of Apotoxin. That on it's own shouldn't be enough to bring him back, that's not what Apotoxin does after all- though now that I think about it, thanks to the limited sample size Conan might be the first person affected by Apotoxin to actually die…

The lab mouse would have been a good case study for this eventuality, but Shiho would have disposed of it when she faked a confirmation of my death and ran away so unfortunately we're lacking any data that could have been collected by observing that mouse's life cycle. No one in the remaining test group has actually been killed.

Consequently, I suppose the possibility that apotoxin will revive someone that's been affected by the shrinking side effect after they have been killed can't be completely discounted. However it seems a bit far-fetched, so I'll put the possibility aside for now and deal with that if it comes to it.

So if they want to do anything to him, they'll need to find the body first.

So I just need to make sure they can't find the body, but that's easier said than done.

Certainly, I already tried to make sure it wouldn't be found but we're talking about Conan here, he's a variant of me, he understands my thought process better than anyone, he'll be able to easily guess what I did considering it's a corpse I can't risk the police finding. That could pose a problem.

Unceremonious though it may be I had just put him in a trash bag and sent him out with the scheduled garbage pick up, I made sure in advance to be sure that the trash collection agency I use didn't have a policy of opening up bags to sort for recycling, it will just be taken to a landfill or trash barge and hidden beneath mountains of other inconspicuous waste bags.

There's very little risk of the body being found by accident, and no one that isn't affiliated with the black organization would have reason to look for it. Edogawa Conan was never a real person to begin with, so as long as I tell people that knew him that he was sent back to his parents then there won't be any missing persons report or attempt to search for the body. Any DNA evidence at the scene of the crime will simply come across as being that of Kudo Shinichi, and I can just make excuses for the traces of my blood in my room- a paper cut perhaps.

It's certainly far from being the perfect crime and I'd have much preferred to give him a proper burial rather than treating him as garbage, but burying the body would take time and leave more evidence that could be potentially discovered by the police. No matter where it's buried it would take a while to dig even a child sized grave, and there was the chance someone may witness me doing it. Even if no one sees, the fact that whether it be weeks or years a body that had traces of Shinichi Kudo's DNA on it could be dug up when someone decides to develop the land it just happened to be illegally buried on would be a serious problem for me.

But because the plan is so simple Conan should be able to more or less predict that thought process.

He would have arrived in the past fifty years ago, that's plenty of time to both formulate a plan and amass enough money to achieve it. It wouldn't be a surprise if he has enough disposable income to buy the waste disposal company and send some organization grunts to search the landfill my garbage would be sent to. The only thing potentially getting in the way is he has no way to know for sure which day I would kill him on, but that can be solved with resources and brute force.

Surveil the area through the network of traffic cams, keep an eye on school attendance records, local newspapers…. If Edogawa Conan or any other child that looks like Kudo Shinichi appears then abruptly disappears then you can get a pretty good estimate of the approximate time that he died.

I really should have just killed him right after he shrunk, it would have saved some of this trouble. Better yet, I shouldn't have sent him to school, I should have hidden him away like Sera did with her mother… but he wouldn't have liked staying still like that, at least this way he got to enjoy himself with the shonen tantei before the end.

More important than what I could have done differently, what can I do now?

I can't risk going to get the body and re-hide it because doing so would not only reveal where it was and not guarantee that it could be hidden again, but also inevitably draw suspicion to me, especially when the landfill would be potentially crawling with organization grunts anyway. I can only hope that my efforts so far were enough.

This is a battle of wits, and I'm completely outmatched. Or rather, for all I know I may already be losing.

If I had considered that he may try to bring Conan back to life then I'd have burned the body so that nothing remained but ash that could be scattered anywhere, despite the risk of more mundane suspicion falling on me by keeping the body around longer while preparing a means to burn him without the smell drawing any suspicion my way. As much as I don't want Ran to see Shinichi convicted of murder, going to jail for a murder I'm guilty of would be better than failing to stop the organization. But it's too late for that now.

The phone rings, breaking me out of my thoughts. I answer quickly.

It's Conan's school, calling about him not showing up today and asking if he's sick. I suppose I should have done something about this in advance, but I informed the school that he's moving back to his parents and I apologize for giving them no advanced notice of his withdrawal.

The School will tell his class, they didn't know him for long but a single year can feel like forever to a child and knowing those kids they would have gotten attached very to him- with this I shouldn't have to worry about them getting in over their heads and looking for him. They'll probably want to visit him or at least call or text but if they come to me I'll just tell them that they can't because his family is in hiding.

I'll have to tell Ran later too, she'll probably be a bit disappointed that she didn't get to say goodbye and that I didn't manage to throw a farewell party like I promised but that can't be helped. She can't say goodbye now. He's already dead.

Honestly, I didn't say goodbye to him either. At least, not until after. If I'd done something like that I probably would have lost my nerve and not been able to go through with it.

I had to be heartless, so I was. In that moment I had felt nothing but once it had passed, once I'd finished putting my plan into motion all the emotions came back to hit me all at once. Anxiety, depression, hatred, paranoia… a soup of awful feelings swirling around inside me.

I'm such a hypocrite aren't I? All this time I've been trying to stop criminals, or at least making sure that they get properly arrested and justly punished for their crimes, but now here I am- a criminal actively hiding the truth. I killed someone. I killed an innocent child, I definitely deserve jail time, but if I were to turn myself in this mess would just get even more complicated. That isn't the reason I'm hiding it though, I've gotten very good at dealing with unnecessarily complicated situations.

I just don't want Ran to see Shinichi go to jail for Conan's murder. I don't want to completely shatter her view of who I am. I don't want to make her feel lonely. I don't want her to be left to cry all alone in yet another timeline.

I've made my bed, now it's time to lie in it. There's no way I can turn back now, not when I've already gone so far.