Post by doctorpeggy on Dec 31, 2018 14:44:44 GMT
I had a bit of trouble with this one at first, and I had to restart a couple of times because I wasn't happy with how it was turning out, but when I did manage to start, I had a lot of fun with this, though I barely finished on time. I'll admit I added a few characters just for funsies, since I was switching perspectives around and I wanted to have a few different ones. I left the end of this story slightly open, more because I thought I'd ruin the effect if I tried to write more than for any other reason, so what happens at the end is up to you!
This might be a bit late for Christmas, so Happy New Year! I hope you like it!
In Which Shinichi Regrets Everything (And Ran is Probably Very Confused)
Ran was starting to regret everything. The idea of huge fancy Christmas party was becoming less and less appealing. She thought she’d get as many people to come as she could, and then they’d have a nice, huge hot pot all together with fried chicken on the side, and at the end of it all they’d eat some nice Christmas cake. Then they’d sit around and talk and play cards or monopoly or something until it was late and then end the whole thing with hot chocolate and cookies before everyone left... except the party was supposed to be tomorrow and Ran had only managed to finish preparing the stuff for the hot pot. She’d bought everything she needed, of course, but so much of her time had gone into buying gifts for everyone and getting Conan-kun warm clothes that now it was the day before Christmas and she hadn’t even started on the cookies yet.
She’d have to make her plan a little less ambitious... or she could use the fact that Hattori-kun and Kazuha-chan were here. Kazuha-chan wouldn’t mind if it all wasn’t a surprise, right? And she’d be happy to help. Hattori-kun… he’d lend a hand somehow, she was sure.
One call and twenty minutes later, Ran was feeling a fair bit better about her plan. Ran had a suspicion Kazuha-chan had psychic powers because she somehow knew exactly what Ran needed help with and when, and she’d told Hattori-kun and Conan-kun to get on decorations and given them a set of instructions. She glanced at the kitchen door, wondering about them. Well, if anything went wrong, she still had a day and a half before the party… it would all be fine.
* * *
“So, uh, what are we doing with these decorations again?” Heiji sighed. He hadn’t quite signed up for this when he had decided to come to Tokyo for Christmas. Okay sure, he thought he’d spend a bit of time with Kudo, he’d attend a Christmas party or two (Yes, he’d been invited to several, and he felt in demand. Never mind that most of the invites were from family who lived in Tokyo.) and then he’d solve the odd murder case and be back home, no problem.
But no, Kazuha has agreed on his part to help Ran-san, and now he was stuck here with Kudo, putting up tinsel and Christmas lights.
To be fair, it wouldn’t be so bad if either of them had been paying attention when instructions were being given. But as of now, Heiji was trying to figure out what they were supposed to do while Kudo, on a stepladder, seemed to be trying to put the decorations up his own way, unfazed by anything Heiji was saying.
“Kudo, you sure you’re doing that right?”
“Hmmm,”
“Oi, Kudo…”
“Hmmmmmmm,”
“Kudo!”
“What!”
“What are you doing?”
“Uh… decorating?”
“Yeah, but just however you want?”
“It’s okay, my mom used to make me do this whenever we were going to have guests over, and I had to meet her standards. I got this.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yep. Now pass me the mistletoe.”
“The mistletoe?”
“Yeah, Ran always gets mistletoe… it’s so she can trick her parents into standing underneath it. Never mind that she picked the trick up from my mom from when she used to hang up mistletoe just to catch my dad underneath it on purpose.”
“What even is your family?”
Kudo shrugged, which to him seemed explanation enough. Hattori sighed and picked up the mistletoe.
“Hopefully it’ll to a bit more good than what it’s for,” he murmured, before handing it over to Kudo.
* * *
Shinichi thought he’d finished up the decorations quite nicely. Yeah, maybe he’d left Hattori to just stand next to him and watch, but Shinichi was nothing if not quick after years of training with his mother, so he hadn’t kept Hattori waiting or anything, If Shinichi was honest, he thought he might just have heard what Ran was explaining about how she wanted decorations, maybe, he hadn’t been zoning out like Hattori, but he thought a little creative freedom wasn’t doing anyone harm. And Ran would be so happy with these decorations, she'd always loved them when he did his house up.
He’d kept the theme the same, at least, and he hadn’t messed with the mistletoe. That was really all that mattered, right?
He looked around the room. Not too bad, overall.
“Kudo, you gotta teach me how to do this sometime,” Hattori said from beside him.
“It took years of training. I was, maybe six years old when my mom started making me decorate the whole house… and then she’d keep correcting me about everything. I suppose I can teach you like that, but…”
“Your house? That mansion? I think I’m good. I’ll learn by watching.”
Then Shinichi heard the kitchen door open.
“Ran-neechan, do you like my decoration?”
“Oh wow! Are you done already? That’s… much faster than I expected. Well, it’s not like I said it should be, but it’s amazing… it’s like what Shinichi used to do all the time…” she frowned, “Conan-kun did you do this?”
“No, uh, actually we called Kudo because we didn’t know what to do!” Hattori said quickly. Shinichi didn’t know if he wanted to say Nice save, or if he wanted to say Why are you such an idiot? but he was pretty sure he wouldn’t have to choose if Ran had connected the words ‘call’ and ‘Kudo’ in that sentence.
“Wait, you talked to Shinichi?”
Shinichi mentally groaned. This was going to take a while.
**
Sonoko was proud to always be the one who arrived to Ran’s Christmas parties early enough to help her out with whatever was left to do. She would always finish up the decorating for Ran, help with the last bits of cooking, tell Ran what to wear… but when Sonoko arrived, the whole house was decorated and Sonoko for once could not even find anything to fix. In the kitchen everything was finished and cleaned up, except for what had to be dealt with once more people showed up. Ran, showing Sonoko the decorations and telling her the plan for the evening, was all dressed up, and in a really nice outfit, too. Sonoko glared at Kazuha-chan. Normally she liked the girl just fine, any friend of Ran’s was a friend of Sonoko’s, but if she was trying to replace Sonoko as Ran’s best friend…
“Sonoko-chan, do you want to have a little taste of the cookies Ran-chan and I made?”
Never mind anything Sonoko had thought about Kazuha-chan, she was an angel.
After cookie-tasting and maybe a little gingerbread stealing (Ran had not minded, so Sonoko did not feel guilty about it at all), they went to sit down on the sofa, which had been moved so the room could fit some extra chairs and so there was a bit more space to stand. Conan-kun and Hattori-kun had been debating something heatedly in low voices before Sonoko, Ran and Kazuha-chan joined, but the seemed to abruptly change their topic of conversation to something more pleasant, or at least less controversial, as soon as they saw the three of them coming. Weird.
“So, you guys did the decoration?” Sonoko asked conversationally.
“Yeah, we got help from Kudo!” Hattori-kun replied with more enthusiasm than Sonoko thought was strictly necessary.
“Shinichi-kun was here?”
“What are you talking about, Kudo was always—ack”
“Shinichi-niichan is always on a case, he keeps running into them, but we managed to call him and get some advice on decorating the room.”
Sonoko blinked. She could’ve sworn the saw the kid stick an elbow in Hattori-kun’s side, but she turned to Ran and Kazuha-chan to make sure she wasn’t seeing things, and they seemed unfazed. Sonoko tried not to frown. She wasn’t sure she had seen that, was she? She shook her head slightly. Of course she was seeing things, Ran would never let Conan-kun get away with stuff like that. Besides, Sonoko had remembered something.
“Oh yeah, speaking of Shinichi-kun, I thought I saw him this morning, and I grabbed him and I yelled at him for two minutes straight about not showing up ever, and about how he was missing your party, and about being an absentee husband—”
“Sonoko!”
“—and how he was a total jerk, and then the guy looked at me blankly and asked who I was. It was so embarrassing! But I swear he looked exactly like Shinichi-kun! The exact same face and everything! But no, he was some random guy, and when I looked closer he did seem a little different.”
“Sonoko-neechan, you said he looked exactly like Shinichi-niichan?”
Sonoko nodded.
Conan-kun grabbed Hattori-kun’s sleeve and whispered something in his ear. She watched as Hattori-kun’s eyes widened. Something was definitely up between those two.
“Sonoko-neechan, do you remember the name of that guy?”
"I, uh, don't think so, why?"
"No, nothing!"
**
Kaito was having a good day. He’d woken up late and eaten a number of random things from the fridge for breakfast after drowning them all in his mom’s maple syrup (he felt a little bad for suing up so much but then figures she’d just end up buying more so it didn’t matter), then texted Hakuba as much nonsense as he possibly could until Hakuba had snapped and told him to go bother someone else, then gone out for ice cream with Aoko, and on top of all that managed to find out about a party to which Kudo Shinichi was invited. And that meant Kaito was invited because he knew Kudo Shinichi was currently… unavailable. Kaito grinned as he rang the doorbell. This was going to be fun.
He heard the tail end of ‘who could it be now?’ before the door opened to Mouri-san looking pretty in a cute red dress that he was not going to do anything with because he was Kudo Shinichi now and not Kuroba Kaito.
“Shinichi!?”
Kaito cleared his throat.
“Yes, it is I, the great detective!”
Mouri-san frowned. From inside the house Kaito heard a groan. He flashed a winning smile.
“Long time no see, Ran,” he said smoothly, then for good measure added “Did you miss me?”
Mouri-san stood there and stared. Kaito invited himself in.
From the corner of his eye he saw the real Kudo Shinichi grab what-was-his-name-again by the arm and drag him out of the room, and Kaito just could not help but feel even better about himself. This night was going to be perfect.
**
Masumi was not one to try and ruin a Christmas party, but someone had to tell Ran-chan that the Kudo Shinichi here was not the real thing. Never mind all the things Masumi already suspected about where the detective was and what he was doing, this guy was not even trying to be convincing. He just looked the part. Masumi had to do something.
Or did she? This Kudo Shinichi seemed to be a lot of fun. He was doing a lot os stupid things, sure, but mostly he seemed to be making jokes and playing pranks and generally having a good time. Maybe he wasn’t the real thing, but he wasn’t doing anything wrong.
Masumi considered him for a minute. He definitely had Conan-kun all worked up. The kid was clinging to Hattori-kun’s arm like a limpet and whispering a constant stream of something or the other into the older boy’s ear. What was even going on between those two? They’d been like that the whole time. Did Ran-chan honestly believe this weird Osaka guy was a good influence? Never mind that it probably didn’t matter either way, but…
Wait now the fake Kudo Shinichi was talking to them. And now he was walking across the room while talking to them. And now… what was he doing, walking to the corner of the room where nobody was sitting?
* * *
Shinichi had a bad feeling as soon as KID started talking to Hattori. He knew something was up. He knew something bad was going to happen.
He followed KID Hattori who was following KID anyway, while furiously trying to figure out how to get KID out of here without blowing his own cover completely. Ran seemed to be very confused and very angry, and he needed to do something to fix this all.
KID had stopped walking. Shinichi glanced at Hattori, who looked like someone was throwing hammers at him and he was trying to dodge them while standing still… which was pretty much what any conversation with KID was like. Conan turned to his impersonator. He was not liking the grin on the thief’s face.
KID silently pointed upward, then disappeared with a crack. Where he had been standing was a card that said ‘Gotcha!’ and was signed off with a KID doodle. Well, at least his Ran problem was solved.
Then he made the mistake of looking up. Dammit, how had he forgotten about the mistletoe?
This might be a bit late for Christmas, so Happy New Year! I hope you like it!
In Which Shinichi Regrets Everything (And Ran is Probably Very Confused)
Ran was starting to regret everything. The idea of huge fancy Christmas party was becoming less and less appealing. She thought she’d get as many people to come as she could, and then they’d have a nice, huge hot pot all together with fried chicken on the side, and at the end of it all they’d eat some nice Christmas cake. Then they’d sit around and talk and play cards or monopoly or something until it was late and then end the whole thing with hot chocolate and cookies before everyone left... except the party was supposed to be tomorrow and Ran had only managed to finish preparing the stuff for the hot pot. She’d bought everything she needed, of course, but so much of her time had gone into buying gifts for everyone and getting Conan-kun warm clothes that now it was the day before Christmas and she hadn’t even started on the cookies yet.
She’d have to make her plan a little less ambitious... or she could use the fact that Hattori-kun and Kazuha-chan were here. Kazuha-chan wouldn’t mind if it all wasn’t a surprise, right? And she’d be happy to help. Hattori-kun… he’d lend a hand somehow, she was sure.
One call and twenty minutes later, Ran was feeling a fair bit better about her plan. Ran had a suspicion Kazuha-chan had psychic powers because she somehow knew exactly what Ran needed help with and when, and she’d told Hattori-kun and Conan-kun to get on decorations and given them a set of instructions. She glanced at the kitchen door, wondering about them. Well, if anything went wrong, she still had a day and a half before the party… it would all be fine.
* * *
“So, uh, what are we doing with these decorations again?” Heiji sighed. He hadn’t quite signed up for this when he had decided to come to Tokyo for Christmas. Okay sure, he thought he’d spend a bit of time with Kudo, he’d attend a Christmas party or two (Yes, he’d been invited to several, and he felt in demand. Never mind that most of the invites were from family who lived in Tokyo.) and then he’d solve the odd murder case and be back home, no problem.
But no, Kazuha has agreed on his part to help Ran-san, and now he was stuck here with Kudo, putting up tinsel and Christmas lights.
To be fair, it wouldn’t be so bad if either of them had been paying attention when instructions were being given. But as of now, Heiji was trying to figure out what they were supposed to do while Kudo, on a stepladder, seemed to be trying to put the decorations up his own way, unfazed by anything Heiji was saying.
“Kudo, you sure you’re doing that right?”
“Hmmm,”
“Oi, Kudo…”
“Hmmmmmmm,”
“Kudo!”
“What!”
“What are you doing?”
“Uh… decorating?”
“Yeah, but just however you want?”
“It’s okay, my mom used to make me do this whenever we were going to have guests over, and I had to meet her standards. I got this.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yep. Now pass me the mistletoe.”
“The mistletoe?”
“Yeah, Ran always gets mistletoe… it’s so she can trick her parents into standing underneath it. Never mind that she picked the trick up from my mom from when she used to hang up mistletoe just to catch my dad underneath it on purpose.”
“What even is your family?”
Kudo shrugged, which to him seemed explanation enough. Hattori sighed and picked up the mistletoe.
“Hopefully it’ll to a bit more good than what it’s for,” he murmured, before handing it over to Kudo.
* * *
Shinichi thought he’d finished up the decorations quite nicely. Yeah, maybe he’d left Hattori to just stand next to him and watch, but Shinichi was nothing if not quick after years of training with his mother, so he hadn’t kept Hattori waiting or anything, If Shinichi was honest, he thought he might just have heard what Ran was explaining about how she wanted decorations, maybe, he hadn’t been zoning out like Hattori, but he thought a little creative freedom wasn’t doing anyone harm. And Ran would be so happy with these decorations, she'd always loved them when he did his house up.
He’d kept the theme the same, at least, and he hadn’t messed with the mistletoe. That was really all that mattered, right?
He looked around the room. Not too bad, overall.
“Kudo, you gotta teach me how to do this sometime,” Hattori said from beside him.
“It took years of training. I was, maybe six years old when my mom started making me decorate the whole house… and then she’d keep correcting me about everything. I suppose I can teach you like that, but…”
“Your house? That mansion? I think I’m good. I’ll learn by watching.”
Then Shinichi heard the kitchen door open.
“Ran-neechan, do you like my decoration?”
“Oh wow! Are you done already? That’s… much faster than I expected. Well, it’s not like I said it should be, but it’s amazing… it’s like what Shinichi used to do all the time…” she frowned, “Conan-kun did you do this?”
“No, uh, actually we called Kudo because we didn’t know what to do!” Hattori said quickly. Shinichi didn’t know if he wanted to say Nice save, or if he wanted to say Why are you such an idiot? but he was pretty sure he wouldn’t have to choose if Ran had connected the words ‘call’ and ‘Kudo’ in that sentence.
“Wait, you talked to Shinichi?”
Shinichi mentally groaned. This was going to take a while.
**
Sonoko was proud to always be the one who arrived to Ran’s Christmas parties early enough to help her out with whatever was left to do. She would always finish up the decorating for Ran, help with the last bits of cooking, tell Ran what to wear… but when Sonoko arrived, the whole house was decorated and Sonoko for once could not even find anything to fix. In the kitchen everything was finished and cleaned up, except for what had to be dealt with once more people showed up. Ran, showing Sonoko the decorations and telling her the plan for the evening, was all dressed up, and in a really nice outfit, too. Sonoko glared at Kazuha-chan. Normally she liked the girl just fine, any friend of Ran’s was a friend of Sonoko’s, but if she was trying to replace Sonoko as Ran’s best friend…
“Sonoko-chan, do you want to have a little taste of the cookies Ran-chan and I made?”
Never mind anything Sonoko had thought about Kazuha-chan, she was an angel.
After cookie-tasting and maybe a little gingerbread stealing (Ran had not minded, so Sonoko did not feel guilty about it at all), they went to sit down on the sofa, which had been moved so the room could fit some extra chairs and so there was a bit more space to stand. Conan-kun and Hattori-kun had been debating something heatedly in low voices before Sonoko, Ran and Kazuha-chan joined, but the seemed to abruptly change their topic of conversation to something more pleasant, or at least less controversial, as soon as they saw the three of them coming. Weird.
“So, you guys did the decoration?” Sonoko asked conversationally.
“Yeah, we got help from Kudo!” Hattori-kun replied with more enthusiasm than Sonoko thought was strictly necessary.
“Shinichi-kun was here?”
“What are you talking about, Kudo was always—ack”
“Shinichi-niichan is always on a case, he keeps running into them, but we managed to call him and get some advice on decorating the room.”
Sonoko blinked. She could’ve sworn the saw the kid stick an elbow in Hattori-kun’s side, but she turned to Ran and Kazuha-chan to make sure she wasn’t seeing things, and they seemed unfazed. Sonoko tried not to frown. She wasn’t sure she had seen that, was she? She shook her head slightly. Of course she was seeing things, Ran would never let Conan-kun get away with stuff like that. Besides, Sonoko had remembered something.
“Oh yeah, speaking of Shinichi-kun, I thought I saw him this morning, and I grabbed him and I yelled at him for two minutes straight about not showing up ever, and about how he was missing your party, and about being an absentee husband—”
“Sonoko!”
“—and how he was a total jerk, and then the guy looked at me blankly and asked who I was. It was so embarrassing! But I swear he looked exactly like Shinichi-kun! The exact same face and everything! But no, he was some random guy, and when I looked closer he did seem a little different.”
“Sonoko-neechan, you said he looked exactly like Shinichi-niichan?”
Sonoko nodded.
Conan-kun grabbed Hattori-kun’s sleeve and whispered something in his ear. She watched as Hattori-kun’s eyes widened. Something was definitely up between those two.
“Sonoko-neechan, do you remember the name of that guy?”
"I, uh, don't think so, why?"
"No, nothing!"
**
Kaito was having a good day. He’d woken up late and eaten a number of random things from the fridge for breakfast after drowning them all in his mom’s maple syrup (he felt a little bad for suing up so much but then figures she’d just end up buying more so it didn’t matter), then texted Hakuba as much nonsense as he possibly could until Hakuba had snapped and told him to go bother someone else, then gone out for ice cream with Aoko, and on top of all that managed to find out about a party to which Kudo Shinichi was invited. And that meant Kaito was invited because he knew Kudo Shinichi was currently… unavailable. Kaito grinned as he rang the doorbell. This was going to be fun.
He heard the tail end of ‘who could it be now?’ before the door opened to Mouri-san looking pretty in a cute red dress that he was not going to do anything with because he was Kudo Shinichi now and not Kuroba Kaito.
“Shinichi!?”
Kaito cleared his throat.
“Yes, it is I, the great detective!”
Mouri-san frowned. From inside the house Kaito heard a groan. He flashed a winning smile.
“Long time no see, Ran,” he said smoothly, then for good measure added “Did you miss me?”
Mouri-san stood there and stared. Kaito invited himself in.
From the corner of his eye he saw the real Kudo Shinichi grab what-was-his-name-again by the arm and drag him out of the room, and Kaito just could not help but feel even better about himself. This night was going to be perfect.
**
Masumi was not one to try and ruin a Christmas party, but someone had to tell Ran-chan that the Kudo Shinichi here was not the real thing. Never mind all the things Masumi already suspected about where the detective was and what he was doing, this guy was not even trying to be convincing. He just looked the part. Masumi had to do something.
Or did she? This Kudo Shinichi seemed to be a lot of fun. He was doing a lot os stupid things, sure, but mostly he seemed to be making jokes and playing pranks and generally having a good time. Maybe he wasn’t the real thing, but he wasn’t doing anything wrong.
Masumi considered him for a minute. He definitely had Conan-kun all worked up. The kid was clinging to Hattori-kun’s arm like a limpet and whispering a constant stream of something or the other into the older boy’s ear. What was even going on between those two? They’d been like that the whole time. Did Ran-chan honestly believe this weird Osaka guy was a good influence? Never mind that it probably didn’t matter either way, but…
Wait now the fake Kudo Shinichi was talking to them. And now he was walking across the room while talking to them. And now… what was he doing, walking to the corner of the room where nobody was sitting?
* * *
Shinichi had a bad feeling as soon as KID started talking to Hattori. He knew something was up. He knew something bad was going to happen.
He followed KID Hattori who was following KID anyway, while furiously trying to figure out how to get KID out of here without blowing his own cover completely. Ran seemed to be very confused and very angry, and he needed to do something to fix this all.
KID had stopped walking. Shinichi glanced at Hattori, who looked like someone was throwing hammers at him and he was trying to dodge them while standing still… which was pretty much what any conversation with KID was like. Conan turned to his impersonator. He was not liking the grin on the thief’s face.
KID silently pointed upward, then disappeared with a crack. Where he had been standing was a card that said ‘Gotcha!’ and was signed off with a KID doodle. Well, at least his Ran problem was solved.
Then he made the mistake of looking up. Dammit, how had he forgotten about the mistletoe?