A bit of repetition from the other exposition conversation chapters, but a bit more honesty from the occasionally unreliable narrator that is Shinichi.
Chapter 9: Reunion
A shrunken Shiho Miyano is currently on my doorstep.
It's good to see her again, I only wish it had been under different circumstances.
On the bright side, I suppose this is exactly the confirmation I needed that the organization still exists, even though it's exactly the opposite of what I was hoping for. I'm not sure I'm mentally prepared to deal with the implications of this.
I can't just leave her there though, so I gently pick her up and carry her to the couch.
We can talk once she wakes up, but what do I do until then?
I'm certainly not going to go to school as originally planned. I guess I could go out and get her some clothes that'll fit, but then she might wake up while I'm gone- she'll hate it, but she'll have to make do with wearing some of Conan's clothes until I can get some more in line with her taste. I can't leave her alone, all I can do is wait.
How much should I tell her? She came here expecting to find a shrunken Shinichi, when she wakes to find me she'll undoubtedly be surprised, and at worst she may think I'm Vermouth here to take her back. It can't be helped that I'll have to tell her that I'm from the future, giving information that even she doesn't know about Apotoxin should be adequate proof, but….
Do I stop there or tell her everything? She's probably the best chance I'll have at finding someone that'll understand why I've done the things I have- she could be exactly the unlicensed therapist I need to help me get past this growing guilt complex from my crimes.
I guess it'd be better to just start at the beginning and gauge her reaction from there, I don't want to overwhelm her.
Hmm, should I make her something to eat? I don't know where her lab was but it can't have been easy for her to get here without being noticed by any organization members or police in her current state, it must have taken a while, maybe even all night. It's no wonder she's exhausted.
I head to the kitchen and start preparing some soup. Sure, she's not sick, but you can't exactly call the state she's in healthy either, some soup should do her good. Soup is rarely ever a bad choice. Maybe it will to warm her up a little inside.
Half an hour passes. Maybe I was a bit too quick to prepare soup, it's going to get cold…
Just as I think that I hear a noise from the other room. She's moving.
Slowly I approach as though she's some small woodland creature that I'm trying not to spook. She's always been quick to startle, "Good morning, how was your nap?"
She visibly jumps a little as I come into view, "... Kudo Shinichi?" She hazards, uncertain- after all Shinichi Kudo should either be dead or a child, but if that's not who I am then it's all the more reason to be scared.
"Kudo Shinichi, the great highschool detective." I confirm. But that definitely won't be enough to convince her, "Pinch my cheek if you'd like, it's not a disguise, I'm not Vermouth."
I kneel down a few feet away from her, letting her close the rest of the distance between us at her own pace.
Glaring slightly she pinches my cheek, wearing her surprise on her face clearly when she saw I wasn't wearing a mask or any kind of makeup.
Come to think of it, she didn't so much as flinch at the mention of the name Vermouth, I suppose this Shiho doesn't have as much of a history of her as the one I knew did, or maybe Vermouth simply is truly no longer around thanks to the changes I've made to history. The later makes more sense given the evidence thus far.
She pinches in a few more places, apparently not convinced that I hadn't encouraged her to check my cheek because it was the only place not covered by a disguise.
"Ow… Ow! Come on, that's enough right? That should be enough to understand this is my real face."
Finally she stops pinching me.
"But how, you should be…"
"Stuck with the body of a child because of Apotoxin 4869, correct? I'll properly explain my side of events, but I'll need you to explain yours too, there's a lot of information I'm missing."
We aren't friends yet, this is an alliance. She needs to know at least some of the truth about me in order to trust me, and I need valuable information from her about the operation of the organization in this timeline.
"I'll go first," I offer, "My story is a little hard to believe but I'll start at the beginning… I am Shinichi Kudo, while at tropical land with a friend I was given the drug Apotoxin 4869 which caused my body to shrink until I had the physical appearance of a five year old. After that I began seeking out information on the criminals that drugged me and making efforts to bring them to justice. The reason that I don't currently look like a child is because those events happened to me 10 years ago, and I came to this time from the future to change the past."
I can see her start to open her mouth to object, but I interrupt her and continue.
"I can only speak for events as they happened in the timeline I came from, but… you came to me for help there too. Following the work of your parents you were the one that created the drug that caused us both to shrink, your name is Miyano Shiho, but the codename given to you by the organization was Sherry. They weren't able to confirm my death explicitly so when you found yourself de-aged by taking your own poison it was fairly easy for you to put two and two together and understand that the child seen in the newspaper solving crimes, Edogawa Conan was a in-fact the missing high school detective. You didn't want to wait around to be killed by them so you went to someone who you knew would believe what happened to you."
"... that is almost uncomfortably accurate, given that I can't imagine how you would have gotten your hands on some of that information even as a detective," She keeps her sharp glare pointed my way, "But my employers had never given me such a codename, they always just called me 'Shiho-chan'."
Her tone made her disdain for being referred to that way pretty clear. Got it.
But come to think of it, Toichi didn't mention anyone with alcohol codenames, so if Shiho wasn't Sherry on top of not recognizing the name Vermouth then are the alcohol codenames not being used at all in this timeline? That's somewhat unexpected, I had thought my actions would erase the organization entirely or fail completely, but I suppose the truth lies somewhere in between.
I'm not really sure how to feel about this.
"I can tell you a few things you probably don't know about your drug too, if that'll help you believe that I'm from the future and an ally of yours."
Is that look on her face curiosity or animosity? It's hard to tell with her sometimes.
"I'll start with one you can test later if you'd like… there's a kind of chinese alcohol, Baijiu, that has the effect of reversing the anti-aging effects. However it won't last long. Once the you in my timeline was aware of it though you were able to make an antidote that lasts longer than the alcohol at least, but it hasn't really had a wide enough focus group for proper testing, and if you take it you'll build up an immunity to it pretty quickly." I reach into my pocket and toss her a small pill box.
I'd been keeping them with me in case I needed to suddenly not be Shinichi the high school detective, but instead someone that no one would recognize. I'll be keeping a few for myself, but even if this isn't the same Shiho, this is the culmination of her work, she deserves to have access to them just as much as I do.
She takes one out of the pill box and looks at the blue and white pill appraisingly.
I know that she's not likely to want to go back to her original body, but I still give her a rundown of the basics of the antidote just incase she finds herself in need of an adult body, "You can take it if you'd like but I'd advise not taking it unless you're immunocompromised if you want it to last a while, it has the best results under that condition, but it should work under normal conditions as well. I'll get you access to a lab sometime if you'd like to give it a proper analysis."
"I'd like that." She says almost shyly.
"I could keep going but its your turn now, tell me what you can about the organization."
"What organization?" She asks.
Cheeky little…
"The organization that you were working for. The people that had you and your parents working on that drug. Everything I know is from my original timeline, but I've been changing things, so I'm not sure how much my memories can be relied on- I need to know more about them so I can keep you safe."
She seems to hesitate a moment, then, "Look, I don't really know what you're expecting, but isn't it just a weird company? It's normal for humans to want to stay young or not die… the boss was just some guy that got rich young and has spent his time trying to find a way to stay alive and really cement himself in the history books or whatever. I was only ever in contact with like two or three people that he'd hired as assistants, I don't think it was any kind of huge organization. Just secretive."
Just some rich guy that wants to stay young… that checks out with what Toichi told me too. But it doesn't explain everything, there are still some rather noteworthy loose ends.
"If that's the case then why are people being given your drug as a poison, and why did you take it yourself?"
She ran from them and came here, she has to have some degree of fear for her life, she wouldn't have felt that way if she really thought that she was just working for some eccentric rich man that wants to live forever. Plus, if it was just a pharmaceutical company run by a rich guy then there would be no reason for Shinichi to have ever been poisoned- but she came here because she saw a young boy in the news that had to be a de-aged Shinichi, so that means that even with the changes to the past I've made at the very least Shinichi became Conan.
The timeline is acknowledging his existence.
She sighed, "They hired mercenaries and gave them some of my unfinished samples to use for some unapproved human testing. Apparently my employer was getting a bit impatient, he must be pretty old to be rushing a project meant for eternal youth and freedom from death."
Mercenaries, I guess that matches Kid's testimony too. No consistent theme to code names and reaching out to talented criminals that may be able to achieve desired results.
Moreover it seems that Shiho probably didn't have any interaction with the 'impatient employer' otherwise she'd have a better idea of what their age might be.
I'm starting to get an idea of what I'm dealing with in this world, but it seems to be so much lower profile of a case than the organization I knew that it's almost laughable. This might actually be something I can handle. Is this the difference Conan made in the world?
"I didn't like seeing my work used that way… so I took some of it intending to kill myself only to find that I had become a poster child of the intended effect. The rest is… more or less as you said." She finishes her exposition rather lazily, clearly not caring to give more information than she feels is needed.
"I see… it seems things really are a fair bit different than they were in my original timeline after all."
"So let's say for a moment that I do actually believe this time travel nonsense, your claims would mean that the you from this timeline was the one I saw in the news, so where is he? I looked into it a bit after seeing him but apparently he was withdrawn from school and disappeared a little more than a month ago."
Ah. I suppose this is the moment of truth.
My line of thinking earlier had assumed that she'd be more or less the same as the version that I knew because she'd ended up in the same situation. But the same result doesn't mean the same process was taken.
This Shiho doesn't seem to have nearly as much animosity towards her former employers as mine did. Perhaps that's because nothing happened to her sister this time around, or maybe the absence of Vermouth had a part to play in it- perhaps even both. Whatever the reason, if she doesn't completely hate them then she might not see the justification in killing an 'innocent' person just because it might wipe them out.
If I were to tell her the truth and she reported me to the police then while it would be difficult for them to prove anything it would still at the very least be an awful lot of unwanted attention.
"He's dead, let's leave it at that please."
She eyes me suspiciously, but she's smart enough to know when it's not a good time to push for an answer. She changes the subject for me, "...Can you prove you're from the future?"
"The time machine is out of fuel, and I can't predict future events because of the difference in timelines, the best evidence I have is…" I point at her with a bit of dramatic flair, "Is the antidote I've already offered you. When you analyze it you should be able to tell that it's your own work, and while I'd prefer not to without reason I could very easily take a dose and become my real age."
She looks at the pill capsules again for a moment, "hmm… I'll believe you for now. So, I assume you have a plan, what happens from here?"
A plan? Hardly.
"That will actually mostly depend on you," I reply, "What would you like to do? I can easily get you papers so you can get a new start as you are now if you would like, or you can try to continue the work of another you and perfect the antidote so you can go back to your original body. I'll support you with whatever you choose. A new life or a second try at your old one, it's your choice."
Granted, she took Apotoxin with the intent to kill herself, so of course she probably won't want to go back to her old life, but she'll be a lot happier with her new situation if it's a choice she'd made herself rather than a life she feels has been forced upon her.
"I'll decide later." She says somewhat noncommittally.
Not exactly the answer I was expecting, but I can work with this.
"Then I'll prepare the set up for a new life, but you can always change your mind later if you manage to perfect the antidote. After all, it'll be hard for you to live as Shiho with your current body, and it'll likely take some time for you to get the antidote perfected in the event that you do want to return to your former life."
"Don't use my name so familiarly."
"Fine, Fine… How's the name Haibara Ai for your current body?"
"Hmph, I suppose it'll do."