tushanshu_logs | Memory Catch All

Entry tags:

Memory Catch All

Characters: Conan, Sherlock, Watson, Penny, Valdis, Raine, anyone who wants to join in
Date: Feb 8-12
Location: The apartment Conan shares with Sherlock, Watson and Penny, KPD, Around the streets of the Central District
Situation: Catch-All for the memory event
Warnings/Rating: murder, mysteries, explosions, small child doing absurdly dangerous things

1 The Apartment

It had been a very long month.

Conan wasn't a great patient at the best of times. A month to recover from his concussion, the inevitable respiratory illness that followed it, followed by another week to recover from falling into the extremely cold river while still sick from his cold?

Conan had spent the last week being decidedly underfoot and grumpy. Even his latest stack of mystery novels weren't doing the job of distracting him. He puts them to the side of the couch in annoyance and reaches for a crossword puzzle. Even if it wasn't really challenging, at least it gave him something to occupy his mind.

2. KPD

The moment he was cleared for getting out of bed, Conan had headed straight for the police department. He had high hopes of finally being able to work on something interesting. Even if he was still mostly limited to paperwork and the forensics lab.

3. The streets around Central District

After three weeks of being stuck inside, Conan was more than happy to spend some time walking about the central district. He takes notes of changes in the district, of course, as well as the progress on repairs after the storm. But much of the time he simply spends observing.

4. Your choice

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"I help out at the KPD sometimes too."

Even though he was fully aware that much of the arrangement was aimed at keeping him out of trouble."

"You are aware of how abnormal that is, right? Helping out the police but not going to school. If it was just Sherlock you were living with it wouldn't matter because those kinds of thoughts don't really occur to him. He doesn't look at you and think that you should be getting an education."

John on the other hand - people would wonder why the good doctor wasn't looking after this kid that suddenly landed in his lap. At this point Conan has already put together that the need for a list of places he was going to be that day happened on the same day that the doctor arrived.

Edited 2017-02-09 02:19 (UTC)

"The person I was living with before didn't care about that kind of thing either." Conan shrugs. "There is such a thing as self-education, you know."

He was about to continue on with further arguments. Conan had no interest in being sent back to primary school. But he suddenly finds his thoughts turning to his real parents, perhaps reminded by the distinct parental flavor this conversation had taken.

“Who are you, old lady?”

Conan was in a car, pressed against the passenger door as he looked up at the driver with alarm. His tone is sharp and just a little panicked.

The somewhat heavy set woman with the horn rim glasses smiles down at him in a kind way. ‘Like I said, I’m your mother.’

Conan’s tone gets sharper. “That’s wrong! My mother is-”

“Kudo Yukiko, correct? “

The woman… She’d given the alias of Edogawa Fumiyo, through Conan already knew that was a lie. She smirks down at him, releasing the facade of motherliness like it had never existed. When she starts speaking again, it is with an air of quiet menace.

“That’s right. Your mother once captivated audiences around the world. At a mere 19 years old she was a beautiful actress who won award after award around Japan. But she fell in love with a young writer named Kudo Yuusaku and got married at twenty years old. Then she left the acting world. She had a son, but she left him in Japan. She then went overseas with her husband, who became a famous mystery writer. You’re that son, aren’t you?”

She turns slightly to stare at him.

“Kudo Shinichi.”

Conan flinches back against the corner between the seat and the door, desperately trying to think of a way out of this. But then he stills as she uses one hand to aim a gun at him.

“Whoa, don’t move. If you hold still I’ll take you to a very special place. A much more fun place then here.”

As the car slows for a light, Conan suddenly jumps over her lap, and slams both feet onto the accelerator, then hits the brakes hard, trapping the car in the middle of the intersection. He makes a jump for the door and runs.

Edited 2017-02-09 02:31 (UTC)

Whatever John had been going to say about education went completely out the window... or perhaps the car door would apply better to this situation. If he had no idea about Shinichi - about Conan or even the Black Organization that memory would not have made any sense whatsoever. He should be surprised and completely confused about the fact that he saw the memory in the first place but honestly John has seen a lot of strange things in the last few months.

Nothing like this has ever happened before but John shook that part off for now. Instead he frowned deeply and stared over at Conan. At this point he's no longer concerned about what he should and shouldn't know about the secrets the kid is keeping. The fact that a gun is being point at the kid is way more important.

"Who the hell was that? Is she part of the Organization?"

Conan freezes, his expression remarkably similar to what he had justheld in the memory.

"Wh-what? What organization are you talking about?"

Jesus Christ. This was not how John wanted to do things. He wanted Conan to trust him a little bit more but there's no going back now. The doctor ran a hand down his face before fixing his gaze on the kid, obviously not joking around.

"You know exactly which one I'm talking about, Shinichi. The one who tried to kill you at Tropical Land but ended up shrinking you instead. The one with black suits and codenames based on various alcohol. That Organization."

He was fighting past the immediate feeling of panic brought on by hearing anything of this, let alone all the details John seemed to have.

But above all else, Conan was a creature of logic. He knew the futility of denying the truth when it was already know.

"How did you find out?" He asks at last.

Because he knew for certain that he hadn't told anyone here any of those details.

John heaved a sigh. Definitely not how he wanted to do this at all.

"I'll explain everything but you have to calm down first. It's going to be complicated and even unbelievable but panicking isn't going to make it easier to hear or understand any of it."

Obviously he's not going to get his answer to whether that woman was a member of the Organization right now. Whether it was or not, Shinichi was alive so he must have gotten away just fine and everything else can just wait.

As for dealing with the panicking teen, John doesn't move from his chair and both of his hands are completely visible to show that he doesn't intend to harm the kid. If he had wanted to then he would have done it in the weeks before Shinichi was aware that John knew the secret.

"First of all, I'm the only one who knows. I haven't told anybody what I do know."

He takes a deep breath and nods.

"I'm calm." Enough to listen through this, anyway. He'd deal with the rest later.

"You kept it from Sherlock." Not a question. "Why? I'm sure you know that this is something he wants to know."

"Yes." An answer to a statement. It is a big deal to keep something from Sherlock. "Because it's your secret and I promised."

As for the explanation, well here it goes. "This isn't the first world I've been brought into. The first one was... it doesn't have a name as far as I'm aware. But there was a ship called the Charon and the ones responsible for everything was a company called COMPASS. They were bringing people onto the ship from all sorts of different worlds for the sake of an experiment. A fear experiment. When I got there Sherlock was already there. Had been for weeks."

This is where it got weird. "He was living in a shipping container down in the cargo hold, pulled off the mattress to his bunk and got himself a private place to live. Loads of people were doing it. Except he wasn't living alone. Sherlock was living with you. I didn't know anything for a long time, not the truth about you or how in your world the pair of us were fictional characters. You were a kid I looked after."

A small sigh and he leaned back in his chair, making sure to keep his hands were visible. "While I said COMPASS was experimenting was fear half the time it felt more like they were researching pain. People got hurt on a daily basis sometimes, definitely on a weekly one. They'd sometimes pit us against each other by using some sort of drug or chemical or they'd send in some monster of the week. People disappeared and we didn't always know where they went or what was happening with them. We'd all say they went home but I don't know how many of us actually believed that. So when two of your friends from home disappeared - Heiji and Hakuba - I went to see how you were doing."

He nodded towards Conan. "That's when you told me the secret. Sherlock had already known then but didn't tell me. He wanted you to do it except you didn't trust me then. Guess after patching you up a couple of times that changed." John does not go into details about what these injuries might have been. "In the time that followed you'd tell me things. Things you wouldn't talk about with just anyone."

Now is when John skips part of the story. Something to save for later.

"Eventually I ended up here. Neither you or Sherlock remember any of the time on the Charon, don't even have any the wounds so I can't really explain why you don't know or the physical differences. All I can say is that Sherlock is from further along in the future here in this world than he had been in the other one." How much of this Conan believed, John didn't know. "I told Sherlock some of that but knew you wouldn't trust someone who wasn't supposed to be real so I didn't say anything." Pretended to not know the kid he was living with.

Edited 2017-02-09 04:24 (UTC)

Conan had promised to listen, and so he does. All through the entire explanation, no matter how shocking it became.

He had toyed with the idea of theorizing about other realities. Between the the current situation and hearing of the odd similarities between Sherlock;s world and the fictional world created by Doyle.... It seemed possible. Even likely. Even if there was no way to prove the theory.

But this... this was something else altogether. Yet how else could John know? John Watson was not a real person in Conan's world. And he knew very well that there was no one here who knew the secret.

And even more so, how else could he know of Hattori and Hakuba. Conan had never mentioned their names in Tushanshu.

Conan frowns deeply as he considers everything.

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. That is the thing to say at a moment like this, isn't it? But even so, this is very improbable."

He tips his head back against the couch and stares at the ceiling.

"Is there anything you have that could serve as proof?"

When Conan then proceeded to quote Sherlock - or to quote what Doyle had written Sherlock to say as it were - the corner of John's mouth lifted up because it was a phrase he was familiar with. One that he has already heard his friend say.

"Yes well, we are living on the back of a giant turtle in another world. Fairly certain that the improbable is not out of reach in this place."

He isn't all that surprised when the following question came, asking for proof. While he does have physical proof there is also more information stored inside of that otherworldly pocketwatch that he hasn't yet shared with Conan.

"We've just been given a way to prove it. That memory I saw, the one where the woman came and claimed to be your mother, took you away from Ran and her father then held you at gunpoint. That really happened, yeah? If it is, I can show you." Once they figured out how the whole thing worked.

He grimaces. He wasn't ready to fully trust John yet. This was a trust born out of necessity, because there wasn't much he could do about it.

Even if another Conan (and how strange that was to contemplate), even if another Conan had trusted him, this Conan still needed time to become accustomed to the situation.

But there wasn't much point in keeping this secret, if he already knew the rest of it.

"Actually, that was my mother."

Jesus. His mother. John has never had great feelings about Shinichi's parents. Thought they might be all right for someone who was seventeen years old but not for someone who'd turned into a seven year old physically. They were off in America while their kid had nearly been killed - at least once - and was hunting some deadly Organization. He does understand that it's partially Shinichi's choice, that his parents do help him out some but John's not sure he could ever do the same if it was his kid.

And part of him does consider the teen his kid. Though Shinichi doesn't feel the same, maybe never truly did. John has to try very hard to keep the disappointment off his face but doesn't succeed entirely.

Not wanting to talk about it, he moved on. "Right, so I'll show you a few memories and then... I've got something else you can look at. During my time on the ship, I wrote about it and I've got the device I wrote it on. Those are just words, though. Something that could be faked. Memories are harder to mess with."

His parents were his parents. He'd long ago gotten accustomed to what he could and couldn't expect from them. Maybe they weren't very involved in his life, but they did care. Mostly from a distance, granted. But that mostly suited him just fine.

With all their eccentricities, sometimes his parents were best in small doses.

"The blog Sherlock mentioned?"

John is aware that they care, seem like nice people even with interesting lives but that doesn't mean he has to like how they sometimes handle parenting. He has absolutely no doubt that if Shinichi asked, they would drop everything to help their son but they also have to realize how strongly that same son doesn't ask for help. At least not nearly often enough.

They would be willing to do anything for their kid but they're also halfway across the world most of the time from what John understood and it would take them hours to get home. Sometimes that's all it took for something to go horribly wrong. A situation like Shinichi's couldn't always be easily predicted.

"Of a sort. It's more like a private blog these days, written for me and not something I show to others." He shrugged. "Sherlock steals it from time-to-time to read it."

"Somehow that doesn't surprise me." He'd known Sherlock enough to know that aspect of his personality.

"And letting me read it won't bother you?" After all, from Conan's point of view he barely knew John.

"It's something I've come to expect from him at this point," John states bluntly. Sherlock has been stealing his computer and sticking his nose into other parts of his life that he's tried to kept hidden - like what his middle name is or how his romantic life is going.

A shake of his head. "No, not really. I was never going to share it with the whole world but I don't mind showing it to others." He reached into his pocket and pulled out something like a pocketwatch. It does keep time like its supposed to but John touches the face and the clock blinked out to reveal that it sort of acted like a smart phone.

"You can't connect to the network from this world or even look at the posts from the other place but it still has my blog entries written up on it. Doesn't need a charge or to be plugged it. Has some useful features like a flashlight, calculator or alarm clock and the program I used to keep my entries in. I'd appreciate it if you didn't take it apart but otherwise, you can keep it as long as you need." John opened up the notepad where his blog entries were kept before handing it over.

The watch itself is ornate, gold and old-looking - something from the twenties yet brand new at the same time. There aren't many scratches on it so clearly it's not been in John's possession very long. Upon using the device, Conan will find that there are all of the apps he mentioned earlier along with a camera that allows for photographs and video, a touch-screen keypad for typing, it serves as a stopwatch and even has a couple of games on it. Tetris and bowling but doesn't seem a way to get more. There's an e-mail system but should Conan try to get into it an error message pops up saying that it cannot connect to 'compass.net'.

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Memory Catch All

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