Part of Conan's brain told him that he should probably get up and go back to school after sitting there for who knows how long, but the other part just wanted to say "screw it" and go home. In the past, Conan had considered himself very rational. He was starting to think this maybe wasn't the most accurate assessment when faced with things with stakes higher than there were words for. He wasn't really sure how long he sat there on the grimy pavement hugging himself, not trusting himself to rejoin society. His palms were still sweaty and quivering and his heart still raced from the adrenaline. The sight of his sixteen year old face made him want to throw up. That was a life that was gone, slipped through his fingers just like that, no matter how desperately he wanted it. This was reality and he had to suck it up and accept it already. After all, the whole thing was his fault, wasn't it? A result of a childish sense of invincibility.

Conan's identity was at risk, Gin was still out there somewhere, as well as whoever—or whatever—that was that had imitated his (not his! Kudo Shinichi's) face, and Jodie-san was definitely going to kill him when she found out about the deal he had struck with Fenton. He had hoped to investigate Amity Park discreetly, but apparently every plan he put into place was going to go awry. One wrong move and everything he'd worked for for the last eight years could all fall apart into an irreparable mess that would continue to get more and more people killed or worse. Clenching his fist, he scooted backwards to lean against the wall, and rested his forehead on his bent knees.

How had the situation gotten so out of hand so quickly? Conan sincerely hoped that his intuition about Fenton and his friends was right, and that they didn't mean any harm. Even if he took the whole Kudo Shinichi debacle out of the equation, if his affiliation with the FBI got into the wrong hands, it could be game over for him. After all, he was an easy target; just some scrawny high schooler who was too curious for his own good. God, couldn't he do anything without having to look over his shoulder? Would the nightmare that had become his life ever end?

All he could really do now was pray that he wasn't making the biggest mistake of his life.

"Ku—Conaaaaaaaaaaan!"

That voice...there was no way. Conan looked up to see a very familiar figure shoving money in a frazzled-looking taxi driver's face before jogging up to him. "Hattori? What the—"

"Woah! You look terrible," Hattori cut him off, crouching down to inspect his face. "Have you been getting enough sleep? I bet you've been living on coffee. Sheesh. I leave you alone for five minutes and the first thing you do is drop any self care habits that the rest of us had to pull teeth to get in you!"

Conan sighed in mock annoyance, his best friend's presence was already lifting his spirits. It had been a long time. He shook his head with a dry chuckle; he was well aware of the grim state of his lifestyle. Constant, life-threatening events that cause massive amounts of stress will do that. "What are you even doing here?" he asked.

"Well, I know we haven't talked in a while since we've both been crazy busy, but I'm moving up in the world. I recently completed my training and got full Interpol agent status." Hattori stood back up with a wide grin on his face. It dropped as he lowered his voice. "I

insisted that I should be the one to come help on this case since I was the one with the most experience dealing with them, and I was front and center helping you during the takedown. I've hardly even seen you at all since then." His brows knitted together in concern. "I know things have been rough for ya, but are you okay? After everything?"

Conan frowned. People needed to stop feeling like they had to walk on eggshells around him. "I'm fine. I've been keeping busy with work. But we shouldn't talk about this here."

"Fair enough. Show me where your apartment is?" Hattori offered a hand to help Conan up, and taking it, his eyes lingering guiltily over the empty left jacket sleeve for just a moment. The familiar cold feeling returned to chest from the time spent in the hospital four years ago, and Conan shook it off. He couldn't dwell on this right now.

Conan sighed heavily. "Hattori, as much as I'd love to go home and get you up to speed on the case, I have to finish the school day first. And I might get detention 'cause I asked to go to the bathroom and I've been gone for a while."

"I'll walk with you there," Hattori offered.

Brushing off his jeans, Conan motioned for Hattori to follow. As glad as he was to see his best friend again, his mind still turned fretfully at the dangerous game he was playing. Maybe he should bring someone with him...? He definitely didn't want to reveal more than he had to in order to make this truce work, but he also wanted backup if things went south. Bringing an FBI agent probably wouldn't work since what he was doing was really, really against the rules of the mission. He needed someone who was a little more flexible when it came to these matters and that would be one Hattori Heiji. Perfect timing. Conan promptly arranged for Hattori to come get him after school so they could work out a plan with a hurried "I'll explain later."

After getting back, he parted ways with Hattori and surprisingly avoided detention (he kind of thought Lancer was being soft on him there because he was still a new student), getting there just in time for the bell for next period. Fenton and his friends stopped Conan in the hallway by his dented, peeling locker, the atmosphere immediately turning slightly hostile.

"After school. Where should we meet up for this supposed Q and A?" Fenton's goth friend asked, shooting a sour look at Fenton.

"I was going to ask you the same thing." Picking at his sleeves, Conan contemplated where would be the safest place. Would it be too much of a risk to have them to his apartment or would that make it safer since it was his turf? Or would it be better to have it somewhere open but secretive?

At the lack of response, Fenton hesitantly said, "Well, if we can avoid my parents, my house should be good."

Conan raised his eyebrows. An unexpected suggestion, but at the same time it gave him more of an opportunity to study the Fenton house. It could work.

"Fine by me," Conan agreed. "I'm assuming all three of you will be there?" Affirmative nods. "All right, well I'm also going to bring someone. And that's non-negotiable, we're not doing a three on one situation. And he can help if..." Images of the organization storming the house flooded Conan's mind. "If anything unexpected happens."

Fenton's other friend looked up from his PDA. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that there could be a situation. We should all be careful." If Fenton really was a target for somebody, he didn't want to take any chances with unpreparedness.

All three of them looked at each other. "Okay," Fenton said slowly. "Come to my house at 7:30 this evening and we'll talk. Peacefully," he glanced at his friends and back at Conan.

They went to their respective next classes and the rest of the school day passed by rather uneventfully. Conan had a knot in his stomach the whole time, worrying endlessly about all the ways that this meeting could go wrong. If all went well, Fenton and the others would walk away none the wiser as to his true identity and purpose, but if he let a single thing slip...the consequences could be disastrous. Would be disastrous.

Before he knew it, the last bell of the day rang and he found himself wading through the swarm of teenagers to get through the front door of the school. Hattori was leaning against the big leafy oak tree around the side of the building texting someone on his phone. He looked up as Conan approached and slipped it into his pocket, striding to meet him in the middle. As he stopped, he tilted his head. "Are you going to tell me what all this is about now?"

"Yep." Conan put his hands in his pockets and began the route home. "But on the way, I want to know what you've been up to. I know I get really focused on work."

"That's the understatement of the century." Hattori, in typical Hattori fashion, reached out and ruffled Conan's hair. "Make some time for the rest of us every once in a while, yeah?" He lowered his volume. "Though honestly, I've also been pretty much just doing things for work lately. Solved some murders, got a promotion, came here to coordinate the detention and arrest of him, and help you in any way I can. Have you talked to Ran-san at all lately?"

Conan sighed, patting down his hair in a half-hearted attempt to fix it. "I haven't really talked to her since the truth came out. Things were awkward, and while she understood why I did it, she was really unhappy about all the lies that kept piling up over the years. And I certainly don't blame her. I kept her hopes up for so long that it was all going to work out, and then...it just didn't, and we both knew it never would after the takedown. So we stopped pretending."

"Maybe you should try calling her again. I'm sure she'd love to hear from you. You guys used to be so close. I hate to see that waste away because you won't talk to each other."

Conan looked at him over his glasses. "It took you and Kazuha-chan how many years to actually communicate enough to start dating?"

"Hey!" Hattori protested, a small blush coloring his cheeks. "That's totally different! Besides, it's all water under the bridge now! And we're still friends, in any case, not this whole thing you have going on with Ran-san. You should try, anyway. You don't have to cut everyone off just because of what happened."

Conan grunted in response, and the walk lapsed into silence. Truth be told, he'd often thought about trying to reestablish a relationship as friends after the Organization headquarters had burned down, but between the sheer exhaustion of spending every waking moment tracking down scattered members and the bad terms that they'd parted on, he'd just never been able to bring himself to take that step. Maybe he should reach out.

As soon as the pair stopped in front of the apartment building, Conan pushed all thoughts of home out of his mind and led Hattori through the wood-paneled hallway to his own room, Hattori frowning at the various items strewn around the room haphazardly.

Conan decided to ignore this and sat down, saying, "Okay, so I know you've been told about the possible Organization rebuild effort. There's...there's been some complications since then." He went on to explain the Penelope Spectra and Danny Fenton ordeals in a somber tone of voice.

Hattori gave a low whistle when Conan had finished. "That's even worse than I expected."

"Bottom line," Conan added, "I agreed to a truce with Fenton and I'm meeting him at 7:30 and I want you to come with me for backup. Please."

Hattori went quiet and a serious expression flickered across his face. "You know I will."

Conan couldn't help but be reminded of the night before the takedown, when he had asked Hattori to help him. Then, everything had been on the line and it was the commitment of a lifetime for his friend to make, but he had done it and paid the price.

Hattori didn't take agreements lightly anymore.

"It's settled then," Conan said, leaning back into the sofa.

The time to leave came in the blink of an eye and they set out, both with their guns concealed in their jackets, arriving at the Fenton house right on time. Fenton was already waiting outside on the step, and ushered him inside and up the stairs (some of which had a mysterious goop stuck on them that Conan wanted to study) into his bedroom.

"Sam, Tucker, it's time" Fenton said as he shut the door behind him, nodding at each of them as he said their names.

The goth friend, Sam, stepped forward to face Conan, and gestured towards Hattori. "Who is this?"

"Insurance," Hattori replied coolly, grabbing Conan's sleeve and dragging him out of the doorway.

Crossing her arms, Sam nodded and sat down on Fenton's bed. "Care to tell us why and how you were involved in a million and one murders in the nineties?"

Hattori and Conan exchanged glances. They must have done some pretty serious digging to actually translate archived Japanese newspapers. That certainly did not bode well. Well, he had gone into this knowing he would have to give up a little personal information he'd rather avoid.

"Back in Japan," Conan began slowly, carefully choosing each word, "I lived with the detective Mouri Kogoro for a few years. I tagged along on all his cases, and sometimes I noticed things that turned out to be important for that particular murder."

Hattori coughed, covering up a snort, and Fenton, Sam, and Tucker all looked positively incredulous.

"But you were six when you started doing this, right?" Fenton asked, absently scratching his head. "People let you come along on murder cases?"

Conan shrugged nonchalantly. "Ojisan isn't a terribly responsible guardian."

"Okay, but murder? Seriously?"

"Yep. Now, my turn. What's with the hair and costume change?"

Shifting uncomfortably, Fenton broke eye contact and stared at the ratty blue carpet, almost with an air of resignation about him. "You haven't figured it out?"

"No? Am I missing something obvious?" Conan wracked his brain for anything he'd heard that remotely resembled the appearance changes. "Both you and your sister said 'Danny Phantom,' but that doesn't mean a whole lot to me. It sounds like a badly thought out alias for an alter ego."

"Hey!" Fenton raised a fist indignantly. "It is not badly thought out!"

Hattori's very sharp elbow connected with Conan's side, and he turned to glare at the culprit. Mouthing "don't provoke them," he cleared his throat. "I think what my partner here means to say is just that it's strange. It is a different identity? Why make one in the first place?"

"We also have the right not to answer stuff," Tucker piped in.

Fenton looked tired. "I don't know how much good that'll do, Tuck. Researching Phantom isn't exactly hard. But Conan, can you at least tell me why you have a freakin' gun? Does it have something to do with Shinichi Kudo?"

"That's—" began Conan, taking a sharp breath, but was cut off by a gasp from Fenton, a very faint blue mist coming out of his mouth. What?

Fenton immediately shifted his posture, one that Conan recognized as a stance for hand-to-hand combat, pushing Hattori out of the way to see out the window, only to be knocked back by...glowing green humanoid things? Suspended in the air as if by magic, they moaned hauntingly and fixed their otherworldly stitched gazes on him. Fenton uncharacteristically cursed and shouted over his shoulder, "This gets out to no one, understand?"

Everything seeming to fall into slow motion, a brilliant white ring appeared around Fenton's waist, illuminating the room with a dazzling light. His clothes disappeared like they were melting away as they were replaced with the familiar black and white suit. His hair changed color as the ring went further up and dissipated into thin air. Standing before him was Danny Phantom, he presumed. And like before, Conan was completely stumped as how he could achieve that effect.

Fenton's hand appeared to catch on fire with some kind of green energy, which he shot out of his hand at the humanoid figures. One cumbled and faded away into nothing, while the other one was left with a gaping hole in the middle of its chest that it closed with a nauseating squelch like nothing had even happened.

Conan reached for his gun, pausing and fumbling to awkwardly catch another gun that someone had tossed his way. He looked up to see Sam pointing the same type at the humanoid things. "Don't bother," she grunted between shots. "These are ghosts. Use ghost weapons like a sensible person." She proceeded to toss another one towards Hattori (who looked just as startled as Conan felt).

"Ghosts?" Hattori asked, opting not to question the gun business.

"Where have you been? You live in Amity Park, remember?" Sam retorted. She rolled out of the way (Poor Fenton's wall did not have this same luxury, and debris spilled out onto the floor and knocked over the lamp on the bedside table) as one of the figures charged her and made a beeline for the bed, practically somersaulting over the mattress before taking down another ghost by shooting it through the stomach.

Conan figured this wasn't the time to question people who obviously knew what they were doing and raised the peculiar round silver gun to face one of the 'ghosts,' as Sam had said. As he pulled the trigger, a similar neon green beam came out and hit the nearest of the ghosts. Okay, so these did work, but what exactly was in them? What exactly were these beings? They couldn't really be ghosts, could they?

Conan was totally on the verge of insanity. Ghosts?

He shifted the gun's aim to hit the one currently attacking Tucker, pausing at the horrified expression on the boy's face. His eyes were glued to something behind Conan. A stone settled in Conan's stomach as he turned around to come face to face with one of the ghosts. It raised an arm and he flinched, prepared for the worst. He opened one eye with trepidation just in time to see some sort of powder falling around him.

The world around him quickly dissolved into blackness.