A/N: So, I'm sorry for the slow update. Unfortunately, the next couple of weeks are for exams, and there's only so many hours in a day to spend. It'll be a little slow for now, but it'll pick up once everything's done and over with. Hopefully.

On another note, beginning from the next chapter onwards, I'll be focusing on certain groups instead of everyone at once (for example, I'll have a chapter primarily focusing on the Detective Boys and their interactions). This is because I can't have everyone in the same location so conveniently all the time, but want to spend some time with each character. At multiple points, the groups and their activities will coincide with other groups, so don't think that from this point and beyond, they'll barely ever interact with one another.

Monica Moss: Thanks, I appreciate your appreciation for my strange humor, ha ha.

Fluehatraya: Actually, I was already planning on going more into detail on his amnesia, his feelings about it, and how it affects the other characters. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll leave it there.

DarkAlchemistAssassin: Unfortunately, Hattori couldn't quite make it for this chapter, but I'm positive he won't stand to be away for the next one.

As always, I really do enjoy reading all of the feedback I get.

RECAP

"In any case, I'm going back to the detective agency. I'll SMS Hattori and fill him in on what's happening right now," Conan called as he made way for the door, ignoring Shinichi's last comment. "We're most likely stopping by here on the way to school, so we'll decide our next move then."

As the professor began setting up a bed for Shinichi, the young detective could only wallow in this new situation that he had no clue about. He'd gone from a normal celebratory outing with his childhood friend to waking up with no memories, his life at risk by some huge criminal organization that he didn't even remember discovering.

What in the world is going on?

True to word, Ran and Conan arrived fresh and early the next morning at Professor Agasa's doorstep, ready to begin a brand new day.

"Sleep well, Edogawa-kun?"

"Shut up."

Well, one of them was ready. Despite her comment, Conan did look exceptionally bedraggled this morning. It hadn't been surprising, really. Ran had been anxious the whole night, wondering if Shinichi was going to disappear in the morning if she didn't try (and Conan made sure the key word here was try) calling him every five minutes, and Conan had the self-assigned obligation to make sure she actually went to sleep so that she wouldn't end up looking like a zombie the next day. In the end, he'd settled with grudgingly sending her to sleep using his stun gun wrist watch, only to find that he himself couldn't get to sleep. At breakfast, she'd oh-so-cheerfully graced him with a "You look awful, Conan-kun!" and "Didn't you get any sleep?" He oh-so-gracefully dropped his head into his rice bowl.

"Are you ready to come back to school, Shinichi?" The look of pure elation that lit up Ran's face when Shinichi appeared from the doorway (with Ai, but that's not important), dressed familiarly in his white dress shirt, green tie, and blue blazer, was enough to bring Conan's own spirits up a bit, even if he felt like collapsing in the street and just sleeping on the pavement. She hadn't been that happy since the school play. At least this time, it didn't look like Shinichi was just going to become feverish and disappear again.

"Have I missed a lot?" He questioned, a legitimate inquiry considering he'd lost a chunk of his year.

"Of course you have, it's been a whole year. I'm sure it won't be too difficult for a detective geek like you, though," she teased playfully, eliciting the response she remembered fondly from before he'd left: a pout, a mildly embarrassed blush, and a resounding "che!" followed by a barely audible grumble. Her giggle brought a tiny grin back on his face, and suddenly they were laughing as if they'd never been separated.

"You know Shinichi, I really missed you this past year, missed this," she finally admitted, wiping her eyes from all the laughing. "It's been a long time since we just…talked. In person, not over a phone." Her expression became nostalgic and somewhat dampened, but Shinichi merely looked at her as if she was crazy.

"Idiot, I'm here now, aren't I? Don't get weepy on me now." He folded his hands behind his head in true Shinichi manner, his eyes looking somewhere off to his left rather than at his companion. There was a brief moment of silence before, "Hey, you'll tell me about it, right?"

"About what?" Ran looked over at her detective friend, but he seemed to be trying his best to look at everything but her.

"The past year, the memories I don't have. You said I was away for a long time, but I don't remember any of that. Because I…" He trailed off, his cheeks coloring ever-so-slightly as to be almost unnoticeable.

"Because you…?" She'd lent into him, trying to read his expression despite his rather weak attempts to hide anything in his face that might give him away. Instead, he'd settled with simply playing it off and keeping his thoughts to himself.

"Ah, it's nothing. Are we meeting up with Sonoko?"

"Oh, there she is now!" At the sight of her best friend, Ran quickly raced over to tell her the good news about Shinichi's return. The high school detective just smiled at his friend's enthusiasm, shaking his head at himself for almost slipping before jogging to catch up with the other two, one of whom looked ready to give him a good talking-to about his spoken-of absence.

Idiot, it's because I can't imagine being away from you for that long.

Meanwhile, the two shrunken teens quietly detached themselves from the sentimental reunion taking place right next to them (not that the two noticed them anyways, but that's besides the point).

"You seem surprisingly okay with this new development, Edogawa-kun." In truth, Conan had been a little shocked himself to find that, as his grown-up self became re-acquainted with his "sister" of the past year, he felt no negative feelings towards his clone when he should've been seething with jealousy. Originally, he'd chalked it up to the incapability of being jealous of oneself, but now that they were technically no longer the same person, this wouldn't hold true.

"I don't know, it's like my feelings for her just…vanished." It took him a moment to realize just how silly he sounded for saying that, but rather than mocking the other about the idiocy of such a possibility, Ai looked deep in thought, as if she was trying to piece something together. "What I mean to say is, I still care about her a lot, but it's not like, you know, before. I love her like I'm actually seven now. Is it possible that…?"

"It isn't completely improbable. Perhaps when you were cloned, your feelings for Mouri-san transferred over to the older version of yourself. It's as if the counteragent succeeded in separating your identity into Kudo Shinichi and Edogawa Conan, both physically and mentally. Kudo Shinichi in his purest form only experienced up until he was knocked out and fed the poison. Perhaps the antidote took into account the fact that each identity could be categorized based on the absence or presence of the Apotoxin in your body."

"Haibara, do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?"

"Do you realize you were just cloned due to taking a pill meant to cure the first pill that de-aged you ten years?" It was perhaps the way she'd worded it, but he'd never realized just how crazy their situation really was from an outside point of view. It was a wonder if anyone would ever believe such a story when they decided to reveal their secret identities. He was about to make another comment to her, but she'd already stopped in her tracks and was giving him a rather deadpan look.

"I hope you don't plan for me to fix this, too." To her astonishment, Conan seemed to stop for a moment, his visage giving away nothing as they seemed to search each other for any faltering in poker face. One second passed. Then two. Then, for a split, blink-and-you'll-miss-it second, something seemed to flash in the young boy's eyes and he broke into an enigmatic grin instead, his hands finding their way into the pockets of his shorts and his head turned to look at the group of teenagers.

"You know what? Maybe it won't be so bad this way. With Ran finally happy again, it's like a huge weight's been lifted off my shoulders. I can't be suspected of being Kudo Shinichi anymore because I'm not, which means I'm free to just be myself in front of adults." He ticked off each point with his fingers before turning to face her fully, taking in the slightly surprised expression she donned. The smile he was sending her was so radiant, she had the sudden urge to put sunglasses on. "This antidote didn't give me my body back, but maybe it gave me one better. For the first time since becoming Conan, I feel like I can actually be a kid again, Haibara."

The response hadn't been what she'd expected. Maybe the antidote did something to his head, aside from the obvious alteration of his feelings. Before she could burst his bubble with a "Yes, because that huge organization that wants both myself and Kudo Shinichi dead doesn't really exist," the other three children showed up to join the trek to school. The Detective Boys usually met up with them at another junction, but the three kids admitted to being drawn to the loud yelling Sonoko was doing in the middle of the street.

"We heard Sonoko-oneesan from down the block," Mitsuhiko had said, pointing in the direction they'd just come from.

"Hey, who's this guy?" Genta was looking over at the yelling brunette ("Do you realize how long it's been, you detective freak?! If I were you, I'd…") and the poor teenager at the focus of her rage. Ayumi looked positively offended by the question, as if she'd been personally wronged somehow.

"What do you mean, Genta-kun?! It's Ran-oneesan's boyfriend, Shinichi-niisan! Don't you remember?" At this particular statement, both aforementioned people turned red and immediately made to clear up the misunderstanding.

"It's not like that!"

"We're just childhood friends!"

Nobody in the vicinity was convinced.

"Come to think of it, who are these kids?" In a ditch effort, Shinichi attempted to steer the conversation away from himself and Ran by turning the focus to the three children he didn't recognize. He hadn't been expecting the confident looks on their faces. Or the strange, Sentai-Ranger-like poses.

"We're the Detective Boys!" They exclaimed simultaneously, trying to maintain serious looks and flaunting their detective badges. Shinichi sweatdropped, beginning to regret he'd asked. Oi, oi, really?

"I'm Kojima Genta, the leader of the Detective Boys!" The plump boy introduced.

"I'm Tsubaraya Mitsuhiko, nice to meet you, Shinichi-niisan."

"And I'm Yoshida Ayumi! Conan-kun and Ai-chan are in the Detective Boys, too," she added, gesturing towards the two not-children that had only just then realized they were being included in the conversation. For the sake of appearances, Conan gave his best kid smile. At the mention of the other two, Shinichi's interest was piqued. Unbeknownst to the others in the group, an exchange of blows flew between the three geniuses as they seemed to communicate through fleeting glances alone.

"So? What is it you guys do?" Shinichi finally decided to ask, kneeling down to the children's level so he didn't have to look down. Off to the side, Conan and Ai gave each other a look.

He suspects us, doesn't he?

Looks like it.

Guess telling him our true identities were on a "need-not-to-know basis" wasn't such a good idea, hm, Edogawa-kun?

Whatever.

"Don't you guys think we should be getting to school? We're gonna be late if we keep sitting around talking," Conan finally butted in, an exasperated expression aimed at the lovely little conversation Shinichi seemed to have struck up with the kids. Said detective promptly smiled, but replaced it with feigned urgency instead.

"Glasses Kiddo's right, we should get going. It was nice meeting you, Detective Boys. Always a pleasure to meet some of my fans," he ended with a smirk and a wink, dragging the other two girls in the other direction towards Teitan High despite their confused protests.

Glasses Kiddo? Seriously? Conan thought humorlessly, but then another thing came to mind. In any case, I'm a terrible actor. I should've known how curious I'd be about two kids that don't act at all like kids. He was nudged from his thoughts by the girl beside him, an amused ghost-of-a-smirk aimed at the three children.

"Don't look now, Edogawa-kun, but it looks like your adult twin has some new admirers." She was only proven right when he glanced over at his friends, all of whom had wide, glow-in-the-dark-bright eyes in the direction the high schoolers had just left (been dragged away) in.

"Shinichi-niisan is so handsome!" Ayumi bubbled excitedly, and the other two boys were too starstruck to even complain about how Ayumi seemed to develop a crush on everybody except them. Not that the girl didn't like them at all (they were her very best friends since childhood; there was probably some universal rule about how childhood friends like theirs were together forever or something), but even Ai was probably higher in the running for her affections.

"Yeah, he's pretty awesome, huh? And he acknowledges us!" Mitsuhiko tittered, unable to hold in his happy jittering. They'd heard a lot about this "Shinichi-niisan" ever since becoming acquainted with Conan, but this was the first time they'd encountered him in person and held a real conversation with him. To say it was anything but life-changing would be an understatement.

"He must be seriously rich with how famous he is. I bet he could buy a whole bunch of unagi for us!" Rather than making some kind of mention of how the only person who liked unagi that much was Genta, the kids cheered in unison, anxious for the next time they would meet their detective senior.

If only—

"'If only they respected me that much'," Ai casually stated, startling him from his musings. "Something to that effect?" Oh, how he wanted to wipe that smirk from her face. It was frightening when she read his mind, especially when she worded it to the letter.

"He doesn't even know what he's done," Conan replied dryly, keeping a safe distance from the exuberant group and their conversation on whether the famous high school detective would be willing to let them tag along during one of his cases. It probably wouldn't matter if he let them or not, they could always just sneak into the crime scene as they always did. Or, more accurately, be there when it happened.

"Aren't you excited about Shinichi-niisan coming back, Conan-kun?" Ayumi asked innocently, feeling that her friend wasn't contributing enough to the general hype of the situation.

"Huh? O-oh, of course!"

Yeah…right.

"Shinichi, what was that for?!" After having gotten a safe distance away from the grade schoolers, he'd let the two girls go and resumed walking as if he hadn't just forced them away from the others. Sonoko, dusting herself off from the bumpy ride, chose this moment to make an honest-to-goodness statement about how she felt.

"Ran, I think that huge case he was on has melted your husband's brain."

"Where'd they come from exactly? Conan-kun and Ai-chan, I mean," he asked suddenly, pointedly ignoring Sonoko's stabbing opinion. It was certainly an out-of-the-blue thing for Shinichi, having just gotten back from that "huge case" he was working on and missing a year's worth of his life, to take an interest in two children that were just a little bit out of the ordinary. Just a little bit.

"What do you mean? I remember telling you yesterday that Conan-kun is a distant relative of yours and Ai-chan is the daughter of one of the professor's friends."

"They told me the same thing, but I don't recall any relative of mine with the last name 'Edogawa'." Not only that, but he and that little girl look much too intelligent to really be seven year olds.

"What's with the sudden interest in Conan-kun and Ai-chan? I mean, they might look a little mature for their age—"

"A little? Ran, those kids are freaks. Like, seriously. That brat in glasses always says he learns things from TV, but some of the things he says are a bit too unreal. And don't even get me started on the girl. She gives me the chills. It's like they aren't children at all." This definitely caught Shinichi's attention, and even as Ran pouted and reprimanded her best friend for calling her little brother and his friend "freaks," he agreed that they weren't normal. Mentally, of course.

Maybe Sonoko's on to something here. Maybe they aren't kids. But then what? A Fountain of Youth doesn't even exist. Plus, it doesn't answer the question of who they are, either. I'm almost certain Edogawa Conan and Haibara Ai are aliases, too.

"Shinichi, are you coming? We're gonna be late!" Ran called from some twenty feet in front of him, waving for him to hurry up.

"Ah, yeah, I'll be right there!" There's also this gaping hole in my memories. For the most part, I just need to get used to everything that's changed, but still, it's really frustrating not knowing what's been happening. Maybe if I could remember, things would become a lot clearer. Aarghh. I hate this feeling. I know that I know it. Why can't I remember?

Calm down. For now, I should work on observing those two kids. Something tells me that, whatever they're hiding, it's huge.