Shinigami, Edogawa Conan
Author's Note: Enjoy the story and R&R.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of Detective Conan.
Pairing: Established Conan x Mitsuhiko.
Summary:
The sheer surplus of crime in Conan's orbit isn't a coincidence.
A canvas stained black with crime. With brilliant detective skills, its colour is changed! The trail of bodies doesn't end. Conan is a god of death? Not determining the one truth with the body of a child and the mind of an adult anymore. His name is Detective Conan!
…
In due course, it clicked. The crime rate in Beika City…No, more accurately, the crime rate everywhere Edogawa Conan focused his studious gaze…The numbers didn't make sense.
Conan should have realized something was off after three Christmas cases and like twenty-six New Years greetings within the same year of him being dosed with Apoptoxin 4869.
Had the drug altered his perception of time?
Did Gin succeed in killing him, and all his experiences since were the dying message he wrote in Tropical Land's grass?
It felt like every day of the week, he and Uncle Kogoro and/or Ran or the Detective Boys walked into the next big case.
The cases usually involved one body at minimum. Yes, more bodies than anybody should encounter in a lifetime (detective or not)!
Unless Conan vastly overestimated the baseline good of humanity, it couldn't be that this many normal citizens were coincidentally bloodthirsty killers.
But the fact remained: Acquaintances, longtime friends, and strangers they met on the street were committing crimes. As past incidents had proven, odds are a lot of individuals were secretly culprits in mysteries Conan had to solve.
Murderers, kidnappers, drug dealers, and thieves. They were everywhere.
Himuro Juri-san, the youngest of three sisters at the Ice Room boarding house, who set a trap to dispose of her boyfriend.
Higaki Mitsuru-san, the apparently nice woman in the neighbourhood whose cat got along with Haibara, who imprisoned her in a fake house and feigned imprisonment herself to create an alibi for her husband's murder.
Aijima Yasuko-san, the seat-poisoning waitress at that family restaurant, the name of which could be displayed, but was preferably not spoken.
Conan was certainly endowed with the brains to unspool each perpetrator's plot. But were all the suspects actually sufficiently intelligent to carefully plan such elaborate schemes, slay their targets, then hide the evidence?
Not every store owner, hotel manager, and old lady was as sharp as Plamya, the indiscriminate bomber who almost married former Senior Superintendent Muranaka Tsutomu, gunned down her wedding guests, and lit Shibuya up in purple flames. Conan had gotten so used to the structure of cracking a case, he never paused to question the incongruity between average people and the complicated stunts they pulled off.
Genuine masterminds like Plamya existed.
Akai Shuichi of the FBI previously infiltrated the Organization as "Rye," and now lived in Shinichi's old house as "Okiya Subaru."
Furuya Rei of the Public Security Bureau made sandwiches at Café Poirot as "Amuro Toru" while moonlighting as "Bourbon" and carpooling with Vermouth.
That didn't even account for manipulations Conan didn't know about. Like the moves of Rum, the Organization's number two, disguised as sushi chef and mystery enthusiast Wakita Kanenori.
Conan himself was that duplicitous. "Edogawa Conan" was a fiction. The pseudonym of de-aged great detective, Kudo Shinichi!
There had to be a reason so much lawlessness took place in his backyard. After deep consideration, Conan settled on a supernatural explanation.
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
Holmes, you genius!
Whether the result of divine intervention, curse, or a chemical reaction of the drug he was given…Kudo Shinichi had become Death.
Its personification.
Its inviter.
Hence him being drawn to crime scenes.
Hence the inflated output of murders and convoluted trick crafting from the accused.
A homicide during a kite flying competition.
A homicide during a hot air balloon race.
Death clung to him.
Once Conan uncovered what he really was, his first step was to distance himself from those he cared about. His parents, Ran, Uncle Kogoro, Professor Agasa, the Detective Boys, Sonoko, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, Hattori and Kazuha…Conan left Beika City with a fake passport so anyone associated with him would be protected from the vortex of high-velocity blood spatter around him.
That was ten years ago.
His unfinished business with the Organization, he'd resolve by himself.
Unfortunately, you order a kid not to do something, and he'll do the opposite.
"I'm capable of learning too, you know?"
"You're going to die if you're this close to me, Mitsuhiko."
"I'm not dead yet, Shinichi-san!" Mitsuhiko handed him back his tracker glasses.
"Hey, I told you before, didn't I? Don't make this weird."
"Yes, I got it! Sorry, Conan-kun! You do look more like my Conan-kun with your glasses on."
"How did it go? Did you acquire the information?"
"If I'm not mistaken…" Mitsuhiko reviewed his detective notes. "The hit at the Macademy Awards presentation was definitely the work of the Organization!"
"The Organization isn't sloppy. The assassination on Tuesday was."
"It was carried out by a new member! He hadn't received a codename yet!"
Which means Gin has silenced him by now.
The level of deceit in Conan's orbit, it wouldn't be long before transfer student Higashio Maria unmasked as the true identity of the Organization's leader, Karasuma Renya. The Moriarty to Conan's Holmes.
…but that was a joke, right?
Right?
So…Mitsuhiko was Watson?
"Maria-chan is Karasuma Renya."
"We're starting again from square one. That's a ridiculous deduction."
Mitsuhiko wagged his finger. "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth!"
"You sure you aren't the Organization's boss, Mitsuhiko?"
"That isn't funny, Conan-kun."
"I'm reanalyzing the security tapes. To bring in the real Karasuma."
"Before that, get some sleep. You've been up investigating two nights straight, Conan-kun!"
"No."
"The Organization will still be there tomorrow!"
"That's why I need to keep investigating, Mitsuhiko. Are you sure you aren't the Organization's boss? You're trying awfully hard to dictate where I should and should not be."
"You're a shinigami, Conan-kun. Bystanders will be hurt if I'm not here to limit where you go."
"So you followed me out of Beika City, conscious of what a danger I would be, to monitor me?"
"That –" Mitsuhiko kissed Conan behind the ear. "That and I enjoy sleuthing with you, Conan-kun."