Hell Hath No Fury

On a Mystery's Black Wings

Ran’s phone, sitting on the table, buzzed. She checked it and sat up straighter. “Oh my gosh!” Her hands clapped over her mouth. Picking up her phone with one hand, she read over the text again. “Oh my gosh,” she breathed incredulously.

“What is it?” Her dad leaned over to see what was on her screen.

She showed him the message from Conan. “Conan-kun’s coming home tonight! He says his flight lands in twenty minutes!”

I’m coming home! Can you come to the airport in twenty minutes? Agasa-hakase can't. I wanted to surprise you

“No kidding.” Looking at the papers scattered across the table, his brow furrowing, he nodded, jaw set in deliberation. “The airport’s not too far away. If we clean all this up quickly, then we should be able to make it.” He started pulling the papers into a pile.

Ran pushed papers together into a stack hesitantly. “But why do we have to put it away? We need Conan-kun’s consent,” she said.

Her dad pursed his lips, his mustache forming a straight line. “I don’t know if we really can adopt him yet, and I don’t want to let him down. We’re not going to tell him anything. Not until we know it’s possible.”

Ran stopped what she was doing. “Tou-san, this is Conan-kun we’re talking about. He’s going to know something’s up. And what are we going to do about your friend coming tomorrow?”

“Take him out of the house.” Her dad took the stack of papers in front of Ran and added it to his own. “You mentioned that new ice cream place you and Kuroha-kun went to? You can take the kid there.” He nodded to the coat rack. “Grab your coat. We'll grab a cab to go and get him.”

She stood and got her coat and her dad's. “I’ll ask Hikaru to come with us. If he's there, we'll already have a policeman on site when we run into a murder,” Ran said, only half joking.

Her dad took the papers and put them away in a Manilla folder. Crossing the room, he tucked the folder between two thick books in the bookshelf. “That's where they are.” He stared at them for a moment. “The adoption papers.”

Ran nodded silently. It was surreal to think that finally, Conan would be her brother. No longer Edogawa Conan, but Mouri Conan.

Mouri Conan. She repeated the name in her head. Foreign but not necessarily bad, it felt like her first day of high school. Her stomach churning with an energizing mix of butterflies and excitement, she both couldn’t wait for the day of adoption to come and had some deep sense of dread towards the event (after all, if Shinichi really was Conan, he’d become her little brother, and that was all kinds of wrong). It all felt like some dream she didn't want to wake from but was too afraid to let it continue. Time, however, moved on, so there was nothing she could do but look forward with optimism.

Taking his coat from her, he opened the door for her. “Come on. Let’s go get the freeloader.”

(⌐▨_▨)          ┐( ˘_˘)┌

The parking garage was lackluster and dull, dimly lit with little to do. Agasa fell asleep half an hour ago, but Conan and Ai sat in relative silence, neither willing or mentally capable of initiating small talk.

Ping! went Conan’s phone. Shinichi’s died sometime during the plane ride, and he didn’t have a charger on him. Conan (restored to his diminutive height), checked his phone and quirked an eyebrow. He frowned inquisitively and typed a quick response as Ai looked on curiously. “Who’s that?” she asked.