So uh... For now this is just a one-shot, I would love to see it as a full story but I don't think I'm ready to commit to writing it in full myself at the moment. If there's enough interest in me continuing then I might at some point, but for the time being this is a pilot chapter that might not be picked up.
Nothing huge in this pilot, but if I do ever continue this then spoilers inbound for both series' because on the Conan side I have this set years after the main plot, and on the Bookworm side it's post Part 5.
It's been a long time since I've written a crossover story... I'll admit, I mostly just wanted to isekai Conan.
Fever
I wake in the night with a high fever.
It's been years since the last time I felt like this- at that time it had been when I'd taken the antidote and finally been able to return to being Kudo Shinichi full-time. So why was this happening now? After all this time why am I going back now? I thought I was done being Edogawa Conan...
I feel the sweat pouring down my body as the fever boils me from the inside out. My heart pounds irregularly in my chest, a painful frenzied beat that's only exacerbated by my desperate hope that this is all just a nightmare and I'll wake up soon to find that I'm still perfectly healthy and in my own body. My head is spinning and it's hard to focus as muddled thoughts float through my mind.
It's so hot.
I pry open my eyes, it's dark and my vision is blurred but I can make out some of the outlines of things in the room so with effort I raise a hand to my face. It's already so small... had I already shrank before I woke up? If that's the case most of the fever should pass soon like it always did in the past.
I lay in the bed for several minutes trying my best to focus my thoughts but the heat continues to assault my senses unrelentingly. It's hard to even breathe, like being in a room with a raging fire.
Is this a new side effect from long-term use...? I'll need to tell Haibara quick.
I reach around looking for my phone that should be charging on the bedside table, but I can't find it. I must have left it somewhere else in the house last night. If I can't find the phone I'll just have to go see her, she should be just next door at the professor's house, I can make it.
The blanket is thick and heavy but I force it to the side and slip out of the bed.
It's hard to stand without leaning so I move to the wall and cling to it as I make my way to the door. Only to find that even by jumping I can't quite reach the door handle.
Am I... smaller than before?
The thought sends a jolt of panic through my mind, the kick of adrenaline helping me avert my senses away from the burning sensation still tearing through my body.
Looking down at myself it's hard to tell If I'm smaller or not, I'd like to think that I'm around the same size as when I was Conan, but... much more disconcerting is what I'm wearing. I had assumed that'd I'd be wearing just the top of my pajamas but it seems I was instead wearing some loose garment made of linen cloth. Had someone changed my clothes while I was asleep?
Now that my eyes have adjusted more to the darkness of the room I realize- this isn't my bedroom.
It's a small room with an old fashioned western style. The décor is very rustic, the furniture is all wooden and looks hand carved. There's a carpet hung on the wall like a tapestry. There's no lighting fixtures and no window, but there is a small unlit candle on a brass stand next to the bed though I doubt that would do well to light the entire room even at this size. No signs of any modern amenities like heating or air conditioning either but the wood doesn't seem particularly old... so either this is a very well cared for old western style house, or it's a set piece of some kind.
Why am I here? Have I been abducted?
The thought of being kidnapped almost makes me feel nostalgic but the situation is far too dicey for me to let my guard down, if I was kidnapped as Shinichi and someone opens this room to find Conan... that would be dangerous. Or maybe it's a bit presumptuous of me to assume I was kidnapped, sure it happened a lot when I was Conan but even if someone had a reason to abduct me as Shinichi it's not so easy to move a an adult to another place without being noticed. Logically speaking it's more likely that I was just on a case and happened to pass out when the fever started and someone carried me here and let me use this bed since I seemed to be sick.
The reason I'm here doesn't matter, it'll definitely be bad if someone comes in expecting to see Shinichi but I'm a small child instead... in fact, it'd be bad for anyone to see me like this, If I show up now looking like Conan without having grown at all in the past few years-
Suddenly there's a sound as the door handle is moved from the outside and the door starts to squeak open.
On shaking legs I move to hide behind the opening door.
I peek around to observe as a man with light hair wearing clothing that matches the apparent era of the room entered and headed over to the bed.
"Conan?" He calls out, before continuing to speak in a language I can't quite place though it sounds vaguely Germanic.
A foreign man, and he's expecting Conan rather than Shinichi... how strange.
Is he from a foreign branch of the organization that failed to be shut down? Maybe he's staying in a simple house with no amenities in order to live off the grid until the police have stopped searching? Perhaps I was given more of APTX to force me to shrink again and they're using me as a test case? This awful fever could even be the result of another drug given to make it harder for me to escape.
No, even if I assume that there are still plenty of questions going unanswered, this situation still doesn't make sense. The pieces to this puzzle don't quite add up.
Suddenly the man looks over, and I fail to duck behind the door in time.
"Conan!" Once again he continues speaking though I can't understand, his tone sounds like he's trying to scold me as he easily picks me up and tightly tucks me back into the bed as if trying to express that he doesn't want me getting up again.
Well... I don't think I could move right now even if I wanted to...
...
The fever must have caused me to pass out, because I find myself waking up once again sometime later. The burning heat hasn't subsided at all, if anything it feels like it's gotten worse.
There's the sound of someone speaking in that same germanic language as before, but this time it seems to be a young woman, her tone is gentle like a prayer. With great effort I look over. She looks maybe fourteen or fifteen, with skin like porcelain, silky hair that's the same dark blue as the night sky, and large round eyes the colour of a harvest moon. She's wearing much more ornate clothing than the woman from before, there's a lot of excess cloth and flashy embroidery exactly the sort of thing that one might expect nobility to be wearing in the past but it would be quite the cumbersome to wear in the modern era.
At the edge of my line of sight I see a man in similar finery sitting just to the side of the young lady, he's older than her, maybe 30 or so. He has vibrant cyan hair that shows no signs of dark roots or failure to upkeep.
"That... can't be his natural hair colour..." I mutter weakly.
"Eh...?" The girl seems somewhat startled, "... Japanese?"
"Yes...?" I answer, more confused than before. If these people kidnapped me from Japan they shouldn't be surprised that I speak Japanese.
What's going on here... with this damn fever it's too difficult to think.
Unfamiliar language... limited access to technology... difference in attire possibly denoting status. It crosses my mind that perhaps if this isn't connected to the Organization I may have been abducted by a cult... though even that solution doesn't answer everything.
Nothing makes sense... I must be missing something important.
"Are you really Japanese?" She asks excitedly, her volume causing my ears to ring a little, "You understand what I'm saying?"
I nod.
The girl turns to the man who speaks to her with a deep voice and a tone that leads me to believe he may have been chastising her before she turns back to me with renewed calm.
She clears her throat a little, "Sorry, I got a bit carried away... you must be so confused... this may come as a shock to you but you're no longer in Japan, or on Earth for that matter, you're in another world."
What? That can't be-
Actually, given what I've seen so far, her words make some amount of sense. If I've somehow found myself in another world then that would explain the unfamiliar language and unusual clothing and old fashioned architecture. But I can't just take this strange girl's word for it, after all, even if it explains some of the oddities surrounding me it opens up yet more questions. The most concerning of which being, why am I small again, and how did they know to call me Conan?
I can't deny the possibility that this is some elaborate scheme by the Organization to disorient me and then once I've let my guard down try to determine how much I know, or some new cult that's abducted me with the intent to indoctrinate me with their beliefs.
She keeps talking without delay, "I'll explain everything I can later, for now the most important matter is... you have a disease called the devouring, it's what's causing your fever. Left untreated it will kill you."
She goes on to explain that magic exists in this world and that the devouring is a illness that occurs when someone has too much magical power in their body. She claims that the only reliable way to relieve the symptoms is to use magic tools that are expensive and primarily monopolized by the nobility, but that there are methods to bring temporary relief by compressing the magical power.
I don't believe her, at least not fully. All this talk of magic sounds ridiculous, but with the heat of fever threatening to consume all of my thoughts I'm desperate enough to try just about anything.
And sure enough, when I try focusing on the burning feeling and try to imagine folding it down like a large blanket then unceremoniously shoving it into a suitcase that it barely fits within the fever actually recedes and I feel as if my mind is once again my own.
I'm not happy to admit it, I have enough experience with such things to know that fever can't be beaten down like that with force of will alone. I couldn't help but think it may have been a trick, but how would someone be able to forcibly make me feel a fever until I think a set of oddly specific thoughts and then make it disappear? It completely defied common sense either way I approached it.
I found myself beginning to accept that this might truly be another world- a place where things don't necessarily follow the same logical patterns that I'm well acquainted with.
"... that feels better. Thank you, miss." I say, finally able to comfortably sit up in the bed.
She smiles a little, "You're welcome, but it isn't going to be easy for you from now on. As I said, I'll loan you a magic tool, but you will have to make some difficult decisions soon about what you'll do with your future."
"What kind of decisions do you mean...?" I ask.
Well, if this is indeed another world that has magic there should be a way for me to return to Japan... but perhaps it isn't something that can be achieved easily considering that this girl seems to be staying here.
"You won't be able to return to Japan."
Her blunt statement immeadietly dashes my hopes.
She continues, "Whoever you may have been before, you'll have to start over and live out your life here. I'll help how I can but magic tools aren't something that can just be casually given. Once you're of age you will have three choices; you can become a priest and use the temple tools, you can find a noble you like and become a servant of theirs, or... I can adopt you."
"Priest... Servant... Adoption... none of those sound that appealing," I try to process the options she's listed for me but I don't yet see the reasons why those should be the only choices. I suppose being adopted by her sounds like the best option of the ones she presented. Being taken in by someone that should understand me certainly sounds better than becoming a priest for a religion I know nothing about or becoming someone's servant. Adoption was the only option that didn't seem to be treating me as lesser in some way. But I only have a limited information set, so they could very well be trying to manipulate me by offering one option that's objectively better than the others.
I don't yet know enough of the situation to be certain of anything. I need more information- preferably from different sources. If everything I know about my current situation is all derived from this one girl then it'll be difficult to be sure if it really is the truth. I want to see things for myself and reach my own conclusions... but that seems like a longshot at the moment. Even if I'm feeling less ill now, I won't be able to exit this room by my own power and there doesn't appear to be much in here that will help me gain any new information.
I'll have to trust this strange girl for now, she hasn't shown any signs of being malicious... yet.
"You should rest now, your body has been having a rough case of the devouring lately. I'll send a summons for you in a few days time and we can talk more."
With that, as though that was enough to bring the conversation to a close she turned to speak again with the cyan haired man, and pretty soon they stand up and start to walk towards the door.
"Wait... before you go, I have one question." I speak up.
The girl turns back to me, "Yes? What is it?"
"I was called 'Conan' earlier, why is that?"
It didn't make sense for strangers in some completely different world to recognize me as Edogawa Conan. While on the surface it did seem to match the vaguely European setting that this other world seems to have, Conan is a name of Gaelic/Irish origins so it is actually at odds with this seemingly Germanic setting... it could be a coincidence however, since this girl can speak Japanese she must also be out of place here. Did she recognize me from Japan, I suppose I had been in the newspapers a few times while I was Conan it's not strange to think I may have been seen. That is, of course, only if this really is another world- if it isn't then it's simple they already knew my alias and have been using that to refer to me.
The answer to this will go a long way in determining whether or not this has all been some kind of ruse.
"Oh, so you noticed that..." She smiles softly looking ever so slightly embarrassed, "Honestly, your parents in this world work for me, and they asked for advice on what to name their new son... I told them that Conan would be a good name for an intelligent young man. Like in the books."
A name for a smart boy... I can see it. Arthur Conan Doyle is certainly an intelligent author for his works writing the original Sherlock Holmes stories. It's an unusual coincidence that's led me to once again using this name.
"I see... wait- my parents?!"
Her smile turns a little sad, "Conan was born in this world, you've taken his body as I did with Myne... but I'll explain properly when we meet again. Rest."
This time I let them leave.
I still have many questions I so badly want answered. But I leave them unasked.
I already have far too much to think about.