Full sentences of italics in quotes are thoughts

Single words or phrases of italics in quotes is for emphasis

Italics not in quotes are either sound effects or the narrator speaking...

After Classes…

"Hey, Conan-kun," Azumi greeted him after class, "Do you want to help Genzo-kun, Mitsuhiro-kun and I bust the myth about the ghosts in the western house on the fourth block?"

"Haah? Why would I bother busting a myth that's already busted? Ghosts don't exist, therefore there are no ghosts in the western house on the fourth block!" Conan answered skeptically. No, not just skeptically, disdain and total disbelief for the supernatural in his voice.

"Then how about you help me solve the murder there?" A tall, lanky teen with brown hair named Mitsuhiro asked, "Maybe you'll be able to find some new evidence!"

"Like hell that's gonna happen. The police cleaned the place out years ago," Conan thought dryly, then answered, "No thanks, I have better things to do."

Suddenly, a bulky, dark skinned, black haired jock named Genzo came up to him and grabbed him by the collar, "You will come with us, and you will help us, y' hear?"

"Fiiiiiiiiiine…" Conan agreed, very reluctantly, then realized silently, "I suppose I'll be less suspicious if I befriend people my supposed age. Besides, they're in eighth grade, they can't be thaaat bad."

At the 'haunted' house...

"So, everyone, show me what you brought?" Genzo ordered, "For example, I brought a metal bat!"

"I brought chips and chocolate!" Azumi grinned.

"I brought flashlights for each of us, and a compass," Mitsuhiro said as he took them out.

"And Conan-kun?" Genzo grunted.

"I didn't bring anything," Conan shrugged.

"Are you an idiot! What if the murderer from all those years ago set up traps! How will we survive if we don't go prepared!" Mitsuhiro looked at him with a baffled look.

"I'll try not to die," Conan thought dryly, then changed the subject, "Anyways, we should be more concerned about how to get in, I doubt the police would've left the gates unlocked for all these years."

"Don't worry about that," Genzo bragged, "I followed a kid who was snooping around here the other day, and I found a secret entrance!"

"Why were you following a kid?" Conan wondered for a second, but was soon interrupted when the other three were already leaving him behind.

After he caught back up to them, he heard Genzo saying, "Here it is, hidden in the grass,"

"Hmm… it's true. But why? Maybe this mystery goes deeper than I thought," Conan pondered.

"Conan-kun, hurry up. It's starting to rain," Azumi tugged on his shoulder, and before he knew it they were already inside.

When Azumi took her grip off of Conan's shoulder, the light that lightning brought allowed her to see the huge demonic statue in front of her, which in turn scared her, making her fall onto her knees.

"Mo, now I'm all dirty," Azumi complained.

"What did you expect? The place HAS been abandoned for around five years," Conan muttered.

Ignoring his comment, Azumi grinned when she saw a bathroom, and as she went over to it, Conan said, "Don't bother, an abandoned house won't have water ru-"

When Azumi turned the knobs on the sink, the water began to run.

"This mystery is starting to get interesting," Conan smirked.

After a while of continuing their exploration of the house, Genzo commented, "This is so fun! Reminds me of playing the hero in one of those RPGs as a kid."

"Then I'd be the cute Cleric, the one who can both fight and cast healing spells!" Azumi mused.

On the other hand, after pondering for a little while, Mitsuhiro said, "Then I'd be the sharp-witted sorcerer, the one with the low defense, but whose attacks could destroy whole hordes of enemies!"

After thinking for a moment, Conan started, "Then I'd be-," But was interrupted by Azumi.

"You'd be a villager!"

The three others looked at her with blank faces.

"Earlier in chemistry, math, and history classes I noticed he was blazing through his work, and when he turned in his papers, he had gotten 100 percents on all of them!" Azumi explained.

"Ahh! So he's a villager because he's a useful source of information!" Genzo realized.

"And he kind of looks like one too, with those suspenders on," Mitsuhiro snickered.

"Stuff it," Conan growled under his breath.

After a couple more minutes...

As the four teenagers continued to wander around the house, a door suddenly swung open at a very quick speed.

"Ahhh!" The three truly-thirteen year olds screamed as they huddled behind Conan.

"Oi, oi, what are you doing? Hiding behind the villager's back doesn't seem like the smartest choice," Conan complained.

The four young 'detectives,' if you could call the physically younger three of the teenagers detectives, then walked over to the door that had opened, and entered the room that whatever opened it came from.

"Ahh, the window is open. It must have just been the wind!" Mitsuhiro assured everyone, though it seemed it was more for himself than anyone else, "This must've been what the ghost really was!"

The most feminine and most bulky of the three others seemed to buy his explanation, but the smartest of the three wasn't.

Conan, the smartest of the four youthful sleuths, noticed that although the window had been open, there were no signs of wear from wind or rain, which should have been there if the window had been open for a long period of time.

"Ahh, I have to go to the bathroom, I'll be back in a moment," Mitsuhiro told them as he left.

A few minutes later they heard his scream.

"The scream came from down below! Let's search downstairs!" Conan shouted over the other two's frightened voices.

After a few minutes of searching, Conan ordered the other two teenagers to go hide in a nearby room, "No buts, you two hide in a nearby room, I'll search for him myself!"

Although the other two did as he said, they were complaining about it as they hid.

After continuing his search alone for a while, though more so for whoever was secretly living in the mansion than for Mitsuhiro himself, Conan found a picture of a family of three. After pondering over it for a couple moments, he remembered who they were.

"This is the family of three that used to live here. The young man on the left with a mole under his eye would be the son, the old woman with bunned hair on the right would be the mother, and the old man on the bottom with a funny looking mustache would be the owner of the house."

There was then another scream, this time it was Genzo's.

"What did I tell that idiot?" Conan complained inwardly.

As he snuck over to where he heard the scream, he saw a shadow, and approaching the shadow was Azumi.

"Crap!"

Conan quietly hurried over to where Azumi was, and putting his hand over her mouth so she couldn't speak, he pulled her back into another hallway so the owner of the shadow wouldn't notice them.

"Shh, don't raise your voice!" Conan quietly hissed at the attractive-for-her-age girl. [Author's Note: No, this isn't my way of saying that Conan is attracted to her]

Azumi nodded, tears in her eyes.

As they waited they saw a shadowy woman with long hair, a candelabra in one hand, and a cart in the other, walk through the hallway, and take a turn into another.

As the two continued on to follow her, the discovered that the hallway she had turned to was actually a dead end… and she wasn't there.

"Sh-sh-she's a ghost!" Azumi gasped, on the verge of tears.

"No, she isn't. She's nothing more than a somewhat clever human," Conan smirked, and pointed a finger at a trap door on the floor, "Help me lift it up, I doubt I'll be able to do it alone."

They tried to lift it, but they couldn't lift it anymore than a few inches.

"I got an idea! I'll make a pulley!" Conan exclaimed, tying one side of his suspenders to the trap door, and threw the other side over a nearby light source that was sturdily connected to the wall, and grabbed the side he threw over the light source and pulled. The pulley was strong enough that with Azumi's help he was able to open the trapdoor. The problem was keeping it open. Thankfully there was a small gargoyle statue that was connected to the ground, and they were able to tie the suspenders to that.

"Sheesh, that was a lot of work, I'm going to have to get Agasa-Hakase to make a mechanical pair of these," Conan groaned.

"Stairs to a basement!" Azumi realized, gazing through the hole the door had once hidden.

They then travelled down the stairs, and when the arrived at the bottom, they opened a door to another room. After going through the door and then closing it, they saw a cell with a messily haired man in it.

The door began to creak open again, so Conan dragged Azumi behind a nearby storage locker.

After the person entered, Conan took a peek and saw that it was the same woman they had seen earlier, now without the cart, though she still had the food. She looked at the man in the cell and said, "Another nightmare? Aww, poor thing. But you should forget about that already, it's been five years already! Once someone dies, they're dead, and they can never come back."

"Five years ago, a death… the mansion murder case from five years ago! And the person in the cell has a mole! That must mean he's the son of the murderer, and the woman must be the wife!" Conan realized.

Suddenly, as Azumi's foot shifted, a broom that was behind them began to tip over.

"Kuso!" The two teenagers cursed silently, and although Conan was thankfully able to catch the broom with his foot, in the process he accidentally pushed on the locker, causing a bucket to fall.

Crash!

"Kuso." The two teenagers cursed, not even bothering to silence themselves.

"Well, it seems the two I found earlier weren't the only rats hiding in my mansion. Come out now, you can't hide any longer," The old woman hissed, picking up a knife from the tray of food she had brought down for her prisoner.

"Heh… We can't hide any longer? I should be saying that to you, Okusan, I saw the photo in the study. The one of you with the person who was murdered here 5 years ago. And right beside you in the picture was your son, who also happens to be the person in that cell right now! His appearance may have completely changed, but he has the same mole under his eye," Conan deduced, "I could tell there was something strange here the moment I stepped in! The water in this mansion was never cut off, and not only that, but after the door opened out of nowhere from the wind, I noticed that there was no sign of wear in the whole room, none the less near the window. Lastly, there was the entrance in such an inconspicuous place, made of wood much newer compared to that of the bricks used to make the wall," Conan then rhetorically asked, "So why is it necessary for the remaining two members of the family to stay hidden? Well, your conversation just a few moments ago helped me piece that together, so now I know just about everything."

"W-who are you?" The woman hissed, fazed by the skillful deduction.

Conan jumped out from behind the locker and smirking, he introduced himself, "Edogawa Conan, detective."

"De-detective?" Azumi blushed, images of mystery romance movies conjuring themselves into her mind.

"A detective?" The 'Okusan' growled, shocked.

"I see two possibilities of what could've happened. First, you were the murderer and you locked your only son up as the sole witness, or he himself was the culprit, and you locked him up to stop him from turning himself in to ease the guilt," The miniature detective deduced.

"Shut up… shut up… SHUT THE HELL UP!" The woman roared as she ran up to Conan, knife ready to slash.

But, in his still teenage, though barely, and still fit body, Conan managed to dodge the slash, and kick her into the locker from behind, causing it to fall on her, knocking her out in the process.

After making sure that the woman was actually unconscious, and not just faking it or highly dazed, Conan turned to his new classmate, and suggested, "Azumi-san, can you hurry out of the building and call the police? I'll stay here and search for the key to the cell."

Azumi nodded and left.

After she left, the murderer from five years ago, the son, asked, "W-will I finally be able to atone for my sins of five years ago?"

"Yes, you will. Once the police arrive they'll arrest you for the crime you commited. Your mother will be charged as well, though for messing with evidence and for keeping you in a makeshift prison for five years rather than murder."

"Thank you! Thanks you so much!" The man began to sob hysterically, feeling blessed that his eternal-seeming misery would soon be over.

When the police arrived half an hour later...

"Ahh, so you're the kid who was almost killed after figuring out that the son was the murderer, but managed to knock her unconscious?" A chubby police officer asked, raising an eyebrow, pondering, "How could a scrawny kid like this do that?"

"Almost is a bit of an exaggeration, she wasn't exactly skilled," Conan murmured, "But yes, K-" Then remembering that as Conan he had no way of knowing that he was an inspector rather than a detective, he finished, "K-Keiji-san."

"Keibu, not Keiji [Translator's Note: Translates to Police Inspector, not Police Detective]," The inspector grunted, "Well, I'll need your contact information and name before you go, we'll need to question you about the circumstances behind the capture of these two criminals."

"Ahh, yes, I live at," He then gave them his current address, "And my name is Edogawa Conan."

"Please give me your real address," The inspector glared at him.

"But that is my real address!" Conan assured the police inspector.

"No, it isn't. I know the people who live there, they don't have a male child, nor even a child your age."

"No, they don't." Conan agreed.

This got him a weird look from the inspector, "So you're saying that you live there, but a male child your age doesn't live there? Are you saying you're female?"

"N-no!" Conan blushed, "And that isn't what I was saying! I'm saying that I'm not Kogoro-Ojisan's child! I'm a cousin of a friend of theirs that is living there for the time being."

The inspector then had one of his subordinates, a lanky detective with black hair, who the inspector had called Takagi-kun, confirm that with the Mouri family.

"Yes Megure-Keibu!" Takagi nodded, then took out his phone and called the Mouri household, "Ahh, is Mouri-san here? Ahh, this is detective Takagi of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police District's homicide division. We'd like to confirm if a teenager known as Edogawa Conan has been living with you for the past few days? No! He hasn't murdered anyone! No, he's fine, he hasn't been killed either. He just happened to run into the mother of a murderer from five years ago who then tried to kill him after he figured out who the murderer was! Ahh, sorry, I have to go," He then hung up, and turned to the inspector, "He has indeed been living with the Mouris."

Megure sighed, "Well, you can go for now, we'll have a police officer pick you up when we need to get your statement."

"Ahh, before I go, I did find the key to the cell," Conan handed it over, using a handkerchief so that his fingerprints wouldn't get on it.

"Th-thanks," The slightly surprised police inspector thanked the child, "What child knows to use a handkerchief when at a crime scene to prevent getting fingerprints on evidence?"

"Also, before I go, I don't want my name revealed to the media for being the person to solve the crime," Conan added before leaving.

"For some reason that seems off to me," Megure realized, but soon shrugged it off.

When he got home…

"Conan-kun!" Ran shouted, obvious relief in her voice, as she saw the teenager walk into the detective agency.

"Hi," Conan waved nonchalantly, as if this were a completely normal day in which nothing weird happened.

"Hi? That's it? You nearly get killed and that's all you say?" Ran growled at him.

"I didn't nearly get killed, there were inches to spare between my throat and the knife!" Conan laughed it off as if it was nothing.

"Inches? A knife was inches away from your throat! Can you please explain why in hell there was a knife inches away from your throat!" Ran shouted at her charge that was in fact only three years younger than her physically.

Conan then explained what had happened there, adding a few lies like, "I was about to suggest we leave, when," or, "We were about to leave when the door began to open," and such.

"His deductions weren't that impressive, but from the sound of it he's pretty observant," Ran noted, then asked, "What I don't understand is how you know about the case from five years ago."

"Ahh, I read about it. Obviously," Conan gave her a confused look, like, 'What's so weird about that?'

"You read about a five year old case?"

"No, I read about it when it first happened," Conan looked at her as if this was obvious.

"You read about a murder when you were, what, eight?" Ran raised an eyebrow.

Realizing why it was confusing, he gave himself a mental facepalm, and answered, "Y-yeah. I've always been a fan of mysteries, so why wouldn't I have read it?"

Ran gave him a weird look, and then sighed, "Please don't do something so reckless again,"

"Yes Ran-neesan," Conan nodded solemnly, though in fact he wasn't planning to respect his promise.

About an hour later…

"Okino Yoko-chan!" Kogoro hollered from the living room, watching to his favorite idol on television.

"A middle age detective with a pop star crush?" Conan sighed in disgust.

Knock, Knock!

Kogoro mumbled something and opened the door, "Sorry, we're closed for the night, please-" Then after seeing the face of his new client he changed what he had to say, and sputtered, "What! Okino Yoko-chan! Impossible, you're on the Television!"

"Uh, sir, that's a recording," Yoko commented.

"Oh, of course. Please have a seat. Oi, kid, clear up the table." He ordered Conan.

"Hai," Conan grumbled, and did as he was told.

TBC…

Next Chapter

Bloody Idol Case!