Jangxia Tongzhi inexplicably scored a whopping zero minutes of brain cell activity all afternoon.
After leaving the arcade, eating dinner, and giving his motorcycle a little loving pat, he finally felt like his IQ, which had previously bottomed out, was slowly rebooting.
…His friends' brains were just too much.
Even after twisting the throttle and speeding down the road, Jangxia still had planes and beams of light spinning through his head.
…
Mid-ride, the back of Jangxia's neck tingled—Ghost Baby was poking him again.
"Huh?" Jangxia glanced sideways.
Ghost Baby, eager as ever, pointed in a specific direction.
As a ghost, Ghost Baby had a way better sense for this kind of thing than Jangxia—it could smell murderous intent.
At first, Jangxia sighed, assuming he'd run into Gin again. Murderous aura? That guy was basically made of it.
But the problem was, Gin's aura tended to stick around even after the man himself was long gone. Like glitter. Or trauma. You couldn't just shake it off.
He'd already gotten a whiff of Gin earlier that afternoon—what, was the guy doing a tour?
Still, Ghost Baby quickly corrected him.
—This one smells different.
More... dry wood. Bland. Not Gin.
Jangxia blinked.
Over the past year since he'd landed in the Detective Conan universe, he'd loitered around cemeteries, hospitals, and police stations like a good little corpse picker.
But no ghosts. No murder-y vibes.
Only Gin had offered a somewhat edible level of evil ambiance.
But now, in the last few days, he'd picked up a full-on ghost, and that ghost was saying it smelled murder.
Jangxia remembered the anime he watched as a kid and had a theory.
—If anything had changed recently, it was probably that Kudo Shinichi was about to get transformed into Conan.
If ghosts and murderous aura were a byproduct of plot energy conservation violations...
Then with Conan's awakening, the world might start spawning more unscientific stuff like ghosts and random homicide energy.
Jangxia thought of the original anime, where corpses and murder vibes were basically furniture. His eyes gleamed.
...Could it be time for daily ghost hunting?
His eyes lit up faintly as he followed Ghost Baby's pointing finger... and saw a middle school.
Murderous aura... at school?
Murderous aura = someone's up to no good.
And someone up to no good = Kudo Shinichi's turf.
Going by the timeline, Shinichi was about to get bonked by Gin, poisoned, and shrunk into a pocket-sized elementary schooler.
Shrunk Shinichi would wake up in the police station, stumble out to Dr. Agasa's, and—on the Doc's very questionable advice—hide his identity and start living at the Mouri household.
Ran's dad, Kogoro Mouri, ran a detective agency.
And then, per Dr. Agasa's beautiful mind:
Conan should use his brilliant deductive skills to make Kogoro famous ↓
Kogoro would get invited to elite-level cases ↓
Through those cases, they'd run into the Black Organization ↓
Conan would swipe another sample of the shrinking drug ↓
Dr. Agasa would whip up an antidote ↓
Conan becomes Shinichi again ↓
Shinichi rats out the Organization, saves the world, cue ending theme.
...
Conan, freshly bonked and not in peak mental shape, was somehow convinced that this plan made sense. Or maybe he just really wanted to live with Ran.
Anyway, right after moving into the detective agency, he and Ran watched as Kogoro Mouri ran into the street and flagged a cab.
Turns out, a rich guy's youngest daughter had been kidnapped by men in black. The rich guy was hiring Mouri to find her.
The moment Conan heard "men in black," he got all wide-eyed and hyper like a kid with a juice box. He shoved his way into the cab, insisting on tagging along.
And that case...
Jangxia's memories kicked in, and he turned his bike, heading toward the front gate of the "murderous aura" middle school.
He braked in front of the sign: "Second Bridge Middle School."
Yep, this was the place.
The kidnapped girl was stashed in a warehouse here.
Cute and sweet-looking at first glance, she was actually a bear child.
She believed her dad worked too much, so she kidnapped herself, demanding he take a month off to hang out with her.
While she waited at a hotel for her dad to cave in, a real kidnapper happened to walk by.
And naturally, real kidnapper thought, Free unattended kid? Score! and scooped her up.
Meanwhile, Conan had figured out the truth and dashed over to Second Bridge Middle School on the rich guy's dog, planning to save the day.
Not only did he fail to save the little girl, but he was beaten up by the kidnappers instead.
Also implicated innocent dogs.
...
Jangxia revved his bike in front of the school, eyes narrowed.
If this was that day, the murderous aura Ghost Baby sniffed out was probably the kidnapper's.
The more Jangxia thought about it, the more plausible it seemed.
And honestly, even if he was wrong, who cared? Ghost Baby was drooling—clearly something tasty was in there.
Jangxia turned sharply.
Behind him, his group of younger followers scrambled to match his movement. Those with solid riding skills followed smoothly.
Those without… overshot, looped back awkwardly, and pretended it was all part of the plan.
When they saw Jangxia stopping at the school gate, they braked, puzzled.
Before anyone could ask, Jangxia turned to them.
"Wanna play something else?"
Everyone froze—then lit up. "Yes!!"
The boss always came up with wild new games. Like this afternoon's "0-point challenge."
Golden Retriever leaned forward eagerly. "What game?!"
Jangxia fastened his helmet, smiled devilishly. "The dragon saves the princess."
"…What?"
Before they could process that, Jangxia twisted the throttle.
The motorcycle roared, hit a stone paver, and launched in a beautiful, physics-defying arc right over the sliding gate.
It crashed down on campus and vanished into the night like a fiery comet of justice.
The gang blinked, then scrambled to follow.
Some made it. Others decided discretion was the better part of valor.
A year ago, they might've risked crashing just to save face.
But now, thanks to Jangxia's motto—"No matter what you do, [harmless] style is art"—they'd matured.
So instead, they quietly surrounded the security guard's room.
The poor man peeked out, saw a wall of teenagers staring back at him like a zombie siege, and broke into a cold sweat.
A second later, the guard slapped his desk, glared into the void… and flipped the switch.
Click.
The sliding gate creaked open.
The teens nodded approvingly.
If one method fails, try another. Same result, better efficiency.
The boss was right again!
...
Second Bridge Middle School, in an abandoned warehouse.
A few minutes earlier, Conan had arrived heroically on the rich guy's dog.
As the dog lunged at the kidnapper, Conan comforted the tied-up girl. "Don't worry. Everything's fine."
Before the words left his mouth, the dog was clubbed unconscious and declared gg.
Conan charged in to fight solo.
Unfortunately, his stats post-shrinkage were worse than the dog's.
He dodged a few times, then got caught and combo'd into the floor.
After being knocked around for the Nth time, Conan staggered upright, wiped the blood from his eyelids…
Only to get slammed in the chest with another blow.
"Conan!" the girl screamed as he flew through the air like a rag doll, landing right on top of the dog.
The dog had just started waking up.
Conan's landing put it right back into dreamland.
Conan gritted his teeth and squeezed the dog's paw—"Thanks, comrade"—then turned to face the approaching kidnapper.
That was when he realized the cold truth.
He wasn't the teen detective with "combat power 1.5x a random passerby" anymore.
Now he was the passerby. The beatable kind.
As the kidnapper approached, swinging a bloodstained bat that scraped the floor ominously, Conan's hope withered.
If only I'd grabbed a car full of adults before rushing over...
The bat raised.
The little girl screamed.
And then—
A beam of light blasted through the dirty warehouse window, cutting through the dark.
The kidnapper froze, turning toward the light just in time to see it grow and grow and—
CRASH.
The window shattered.
A motorcycle flew in arrogantly, the tires aimed at the kidnapper's face aiming to run him over.
Glossary:
Bear child: A bratty, spoiled kid, usually clever and mischievous.