Disclaimer: the lack of ownership from the previous chapter remains. /sigh/
A/N: I apologize for how long it took me to get this chapter up – I was working like a madman his week (bleh… work). Also, I forgot to mention that this story should really be classified as being romance/angst/humour. Yeah, I know, it seems like a nasty combination, but my moods affect my writing so greatly that my stories only make sense if I write with such a broad range. This chapter, by the way, should be more "slight smile" humorous than "laughing hysterically" humorous. (Nothing I write is really very funny, after all.) Anyway, many thanks to all of my gracious reviewers. Take comfort in the fact that you all are probably the only reason this chapter is up now and not (even) later. /yawn/ Hrm? Oh. Right. Here's chapter two of "I'm Not Nietzsche:" basic idiocy.
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Miayno Sh- no, Haibara Ai awoke to the feeling (or lack thereof) of numbness in her left hand. With half of her dreading the sight that awaited her, and with the other half quietly amused, she turned her head slowly to see the form of a sleeping Kudo, whose right hand had her left in a death grip. She quickly dismissed the blush that had risen to her cheeks upon the sight, blaming it hastily on the flu she still had. She dismissed, too, the vague, half-formed romantic thoughts in her head. I'm just tired, she thought, tired and sick.
Instead, she turned her attention to extracting her hand from Kudo's. She gripped his wrist tightly, leaned back, and pulled her left arm back as roughly as she could. For a second, nothing happened, but her hand eventually slipped from his with a barely audible 'pop.' She stifled a sarcastic chuckle as his hand went immediately slack and he remained deeply asleep. Rolling her eyes and ignoring the smell of smoke wafting from the kitchen, (how could Hakase have lived alone for so long while being such a terrible cook?) she made her way upstairs to get ready for school.
Approximately ten minutes later, she made her was back down the stairs, thinking idly about how, now that putting on make up was no longer part of it, her morning routine went so much faster. However, the sight that greeted her upon her entering of he living room derailed those idle thoughts, only to replace them with other, marginally less idle ones. Kudo was fast asleep, no surprise there, her thoughts derailed again, though, as her gaze slid over to where his hand lay, still outstretched, as if silently begging her to place her hand in it again. For a split second, she was tempted to do so and curl up on her end of the couch, but she caught herself. This flu is worse than I thought, she mused, holding hands with Kudo? Honestly. Hakase'd better have bought that medicine by now. With that, Haibara left the room, pausing only to cast one quick look back at Kudo. Still asleep, she thought, and she knew she didn't have the heart to wake him up.
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After another hour of relatively uninterrupted sleep, Edogawa Conan awoke to being shaken violently. He had to grate out a slurred "'m tired… leave me 'lone…" before the infernal vibrating stopped. Unwillingly, he slowly opened his eyes. Who had been so utterly cruel as to break off his first decent rest in almost a month?
Instead of seeing the smirking face of Haibara, as he'd expected, he instead was treated to an "up close and personal" view of Professor Agasa. With a groggy yelp, Conan sprung towards the back of the couch and curled up into a ball as he shielded his eyes from the light that was mysteriously piercing the curtains.
"Come on, Shinichi! You're late for school already!" Conan winced. How could they punish me anyway? It's primary school for heaven's sake… He thought, as Professor Agasa mumbled something about Haibara not telling him where he'd been sleeping. At the moment, Conan couldn't care less about how long Hakase'd been looking for him – seeing as he'd woken him up, he hadn't spent nearly long enough looking, and far too much time finding.
Conan rolled to his right, off the couch, and onto the floor. Wincing again, he stood up and swayed groggily for a second before stumbling out the door of the living room. He lifted a hand in goodbye, and Professor Agasa nodded in acknowledgement as he sighed. "These kids'll never learn…" he mumbled, and headed down to the lab for a long day of surfing the web.
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Conan had been wrong about the lack of punishment. Very wrong. Detention, he mused, well, I could think of worse punishments. Wait… Kuso! I'm going to miss soccer practise! Kuso, kuso, kuso…" With this little swearing mantra repeating in his head, he looked slowly to his left. As he'd expected, Haibara was sitting there, calm as always, looking at the teacher, but obviously oblivious to the lesson – that much he could tell from the smug expression she wore.
Just as he was about to turn to face the board again, she turned to face him, tossed her hair, and smiled sweetly. As Conan's eyes widened in shock, she simply returned her focus to the lesson, her eyes on the board once more. The teacher, however, whipped around, most likely due to seeing the quick movement out of the corner of her eye. Conan hastily tried to look back at the front of the room, but despite his soccer-honed reflexes, (as he'd once described them to Ran,) he was too slow.
"Edogawa-kun!" Conan winced at the expected roar.
"Yes, sensei?" he squawked.
The teacher drew a sigh as though she despised punishing students for their transgressions, but Conan was fairly sure she enjoyed it. "Edogawa-kun," she said, shaking her head from side to side with the aggravating slowness that adults reserve for disappointment, "do you really want me to add another hour of detention onto the one you have already?"
Suppressing the urge to roll his eyes, Conan simply said "no, sensei…" in his best "apologetic little kid" voice and leaned back in his chair. With a smile that spoke of her having accomplished something great on her face, the teacher returned to the English lesson on the board.
Conan looked to his left out of the corner of his eye and saw that Haibara's smug smile had grown. She's playing with me! He fumed, After not waking me up this morning, leaving me to end up in detention, and hiding my super sneakers, she tries to get me another hour of sitting in silence? After pausing to stop himself from snapping a perfectly good pencil in half, he resumed his thoughts. Ok, so since we've been through this particular bit of schooling before, we generally amuse ourselves by trying to get each other in trouble, but not to the extent of detention! Honestly, I have cases to work on, and a certain organization to find! What is wron-
His thoughts were cut off by the sound of someone screaming his name at a decibel level similar to that of a speeding freight train. With his third wince of the day, he shot up in his chair and tried to look attentive again. "Erm… gomen. What was that?"
The teacher's brown eyes flared with a potent mixture of amusement, annoyance, and anger. "Edogawa-kun," she growled, "please at least attempt to pay attention in class. I know you get straight A's, but that doesn't mean that you can slack off. Now, translate this sentence into English for me."
One little sentence? Obviously, she has no grasp of my abilities, he thoughta smug smile to match Haibara's appearing on his face, fine then. Let's see… he read through the sentence quickly, and froze. Wha- what? How on… he was sure his eyes were deceiving him. I must be reading this wrong, he thought, his smug smile suddenlygone,he read it again, slower this time, and, to his horror, he hadn't gotten it wrong. It read, written in that excruciatingly clear script that only teachers possess, "Kudo Shinichi, the great high school detective of the east, has recently disappeared." Conan nearly gagged.
There was a long pause before Conan said a word. Within that time, the teacher cleared her throat, Ayumi-chan looked at Conan worriedly, and Haibara's grin grew ever wider. Finally, Conan choked out the words in his usual immaculate English. Again, silence reigned for a while – the only noise was of Ayumi-chan letting out a shaky, nervous breath. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Conan wondered why she'd been so worried, but his musings were cut short by the teacher's harsh words. "Alright, Edogawa-kun. I'll only add half an hour to your detention for that."
While Conan mulled over his added half hour, the teacher went from annoyed to cheerful in the time a Ferrari can go from one to twenty. "Thank you, Haibara-chan," the teacher said, "for giving us that wonderful little sentence." This time, Conan actually choked. As in, he coughed mightily and spluttered as he pounded himself on the chest. Did she say Haibara? The teacher ignored his sudden fit and carried on teaching, while most of the girls in the class leapt from their seats and rushed over to ask him if he was all right.
After assuring his "fans" that he wasn't going to die (at least, not immediately) and they returned to their respective seats, he slowly turned to face Haibara once again. Unsurprisingly, the same excruciatingly clam expression from before was still on her face. Eventually, he faced the board once more, not bothering to hide his own expression of boredom.
Haibara allowed him ten minutes of "focus" before she tossed a carefully folded paper onto his desk with a flick of her wrist that even Conan didn't see. With his hands shaking for no reason he could discern, he unfolded it and groaned under his breath as his eyes scanned the page. It was in Haibara's immaculate handwriting – then again, everything about her, everything she did, was always immaculate and perfect. He wasn't sure if he envied it, hated it, or admired it.
The note was short, but it was far from being 'sweet.' Well, Kudo, it read, have you learned your lesson yet? Lesson? What lesson? The teacher sent him another glare, and he pocketed the note – he would force the answer out of Haibara tonight at Hakase's. The teacher snapped at him again, for no particular reason, and he knew that detention would be hellish.
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Conan grumbled quietly to himself as he made his way out of detention and out of the school building. Missing the second soccer practise of the season was something that, as captain of the soccer team, he most certainly wasn't supposed to do. Therefore, he was sure he'd find most of his team waiting outside of the school for him, murderous intent foremost in their minds. Well, perhaps not murderous, exactly. They were primary school students, after all.
As he stepped out into the fading late afternoon sun, he was faced not with a murderous band of soccer players, but instead with a placid Haibara Ai, reading calmly through a chemistry book no average sixth grader could understand. Conan's eyelids drooped, and the corners of his mouth twitched. She waited for… me? Another twitch… and he snapped. "WHAT THE HELL, HAIBARA!"
She hid her smile aggravatingly well. Really, he thought, she should go into acting. She didn't even react to his indignant roar – she simply put down her book, stood up, stretched, and said, "Ah, Kudo. I've been waiting for you."
Conan knew there was a good sarcastic retort for that, but he suddenly couldn't remember what it was. She… distracted him. Wait… Ah, yes, that was it. But despite his attempt at being strong and witty, his words came out with a stammer. "R-really, Haibara? I ne-never would have guessed."
Her smirk just grew. "If you're curious, Kudo, the shounen tantei have been called out on yet another lost cat case, your fangirls left dejectedly about half an hour ago, and the soccer team was too impatient to wait for more than twenty minutes."
Conan blinked. There is no explanation for that other than that she read my mind. Some other part of his mind rolled its imaginary eyes. Somehow I doubt she read your mind. Your expression, certainly - she may have shrunk us into this body, but she probably doesn't have supernatural powers… Baka. Conan winced once more. For the love of… he thought, I must be developing bipolar disorder or something. Anyway, back to the matter at hand. He cleared his throat and his thoughts and asked, "Haibara, how did you-"
Haibara cut him off with a laugh. "Who knows how I knew, Kudo. I'm not Nietzsche, after all." With that, she brushed herself off, picked up her backpack, and strode briskly out of the school gates.
I'm not… what? Conan didn't move for a while – his deductions went more smoothly if he stood still (unless he had a soccer ball) – but no matter how many different ways he looked at what Haibara had said, nothing made sense. Snapping back to his normal mode of being, he broke into a sprint and headed after Haibara with a yell of, "Hang on, Haibara! That doesn't make any sense!" Haibara, still a good bit ahead of him, just smiled.
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It was three hours after that when he finally got the courage up to ask her what she'd meant by, well, everything that had happened that day. Why had it taken him so long to ask? Well, she'd started working with the APTX data immediately after they'd arrived at Hakase's – a sign that she was in a bad mood. However, she'd let him join her in the lab – a sign that she was in an unusually good mood. So, Conan had sat down in the lab, watching as she worked, and had remained perplexed as to what she was thinking. So much for last night's "explanation of the female mind"
But finally, he'd concluded that she would at least listen to his question, if not answer it. "Haibara?"
"Hm?" It was the first thing she'd said since they'd entered the lab.
"What did you mean, earlier, when you said 'I'm not Nietzsche?'"
Haibara smirked once more. She'd been expecting this question. "Well, I'm not, now am I?"
Conan blinked. You'd think I'd be used to it by now, hemused, her usual technique of blunt sarcasm combined with blunt, obvious, and truthful answers. "I mean, as in…" He trailed off, and she took her opportunity to jump in.
"Now tell me, Kudo… Which one of us is the detective?"
Conan looked rather mystified. "Well… I am, obviously."
Though her back was turned to him, Conan could sense Haibara rolling her eyes. "Alright then, tantei-san, why don't you figure it out. Her tone was mocking, and that drove Conan over the edge.
With a muffled "fine, then," he stalked up the stairs and into the kitchen. Folding his arms indignantly, Conan – no, Shinichi – began pacing back and forth. The voice in the back of his mind that had been telling his to call Ran as Conan to tell her he wouldn't be home for dinner was slowly disappearing, and the voice that had been telling him to call her as Shinichi to say that he was fine had disappeared completely.
At any other time he might have thought about how quickly priorities change and, more importantly, how quickly people change. Was he the same person he'd been when he was forced to take the APTX? He already knew the answer to that, and it was no. The same answer applied to Haibara and to Ran. None of them were the same, and he wasn't sure if that was for better or for worse.
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A/N: Well… No matter how I look at it, I still just don't like this chapter. /frowns/ Ah well. I apologize for the lateness once more (work… /fretfretfret/ ) Anyway, please review and such. Chapters three and four I actually have inspiration for, so they should be better than this sordid attempt at humour was. Adios for now! (also, the first chapter of a completely random, romance/humour, Conan/Ai-centric fic by the name of: "Of Mice, Men, and Plot Devices" should be up soonish, but I shall make no time promises.)