justonetruth | (no subject)

'You don't seriously think he's a ghost' died unsaid on Conan's lips. It was all too obvious that the other boy did -- and that it upset him.

Can't be too much older than the shounen tantei, he reminded himself. "Sorry."

"If you've met that many people, you've had to have been here a while."

He believes it whole heartedly. No pulse or anything.

"Several weeks at least, yeah," Conan said. "Since before Christmas."

Even longer than Ran's been here. Plenty of time to make a little kid believe anything. "What have you found out about this place in that time?"

"That there's a bunch of different people from different dimensions, going from almost the same to being WEIRD in how different it is. The halls never end. I've never found the attic and I've been trying to find any door to a basement. Stuff appears when people need it, even being really specific. Like Christmas presents appeared with markings for specific dimensional people that were easy to figure out."

Conan was beginning to wish he hadn't asked. He looked at his notebook, sighed, and started noting this down. "Do you have a celphone with you?"

"It's dead. I didn't have a charger," Conan said, pulling out his cell phone.

"Do you remember the date of your arrival? And Ran-niisan's charged his, so there must be some somewhere around here." Conan's pen was poised over the notebook.

He thinks about it a moment. "December...22nd," Conan said. "I was leaving to meet the others for sledding. I stepped out of the agency and was here."

"The others being Ayumi, Genta, Mitsuhiko?" This was just too weird. Conan shook his head, bemused. "You'll have been here long enough to know the points that make your world different from the others?"

"And Haibara," Conan added. "And I know...some. Like apparently there's mes who aren't really..." He trails off for a moment and shakes his head.

"And places where people are different genders, certain people do or don't know about the Black Organization, some where people aren't as good as they should be."

"Aren't as good as they should be--" Conan stops writing and looks up sharply at that. "You mean the Kaitou Kid that hurt you?"

Conan winced, but nodded. "Exactly."

Conan hesitated. "How did that happen? If you've not answered enough of my questions, I mean."

"That he became a psycho? I don't know," Conan said.

"Not that. How you wound up hurt."

And there's the shut down.

"...he plays games. Don't play them." And his tone said he wasn't going to say anymore.

"Everyone else has been fine so far. Some strange people, but no one really evil, though supposedly there are some."

Conan had the strong feeling he knew that tone from the inside. He folded his notebook away, at a loss -- he liked challenges, sure. But this entire situation was just too big to handle at once. If there was a pattern here, it was lost among the sheer scale of it.

"Ah," he said, feeling very much at a loss.

((icon chosen for expression -- still has glasses etc.))

Conan blinked. Good thing he's rather good at suppressing bad thoughts and bouncing back.

Which probably isn't healthy, but...

"Are you trying to figure something out?"

"This entire situation."

"...I think everyone is. It's a weird place. Like the ghost Shinichi-niichan. Usually people can't see him in his world. Everyone can here."

"As long as I'm not the only one." Conan paused as a thought occurred to him. "What do you usually do here?"

"Nope. Actually, he's the nicest Shinichi-niichan in my opinion. At least he wanted to tell Ran-neechan where he was," Conan said.

At least that should tell Shinichi why he thinks Shinichi is a jerk.

"Explore the place. Sometimes weird rooms will pop up and it's fun to find them. Read in the library. Talk to new comers. Play soccer with the ghost Shinichi."

Sadly, this Conan is still missing some of the pieces. "Why wouldn't I tell Ran where I was?" he asked. "Sure, he goes on about the back-up system a bit too much, but it does work."

Trying very hard not to dwell on the 'soccer with the ghost Shinichi', Conan nodded. He was planning on doing some exploring himself. "Weird rooms?"

"Because you're worried she'll become a target or something for the Black Organization and don't want to endanger her. Or something silly like that," Conan said. "And of course I can't tell her because who's gonna believe a little kid about an evil organization?"

"Well, there's a theater. I found a pool once. A dressing room. That sort of thing."

"So what you're saying is that there's a version out there of me who decided that with a deadly crime syndicate wanting him dead, the smart thing to do would be to hide from his best friend? That's --" Conan struggles to find the right word. "Stupid."

"A dressing room? Whose?"