Fated Friendship

Dreams Spell Disaster

At first, Heiji had no clue where he was. Everything was dark and hazy and unclear. There was a foggy mist curling up around his ankles. And despite the atmosphere he was in, Heiji felt strangely the mist slowly parted to reveal someone. A figure, shrouded in darkness, was slowly moving towards him. Yet, Heiji remained lax. Unmoving. Unbothered.

It was Kudo.

And then Heiji had to blink – because it really was Kudo! Not Conan, but the seventeen year old, arrogant, self-assured version of the Eastern Detective; Kudo Shinichi!

"Kudo! W-What...?"

"Hey, Hattori," Kudo spoke as if this was a completely natural thing.

The darkness had begun to recede now, and Heiji could make out streets, lamp posts and houses. They were in Osaka.

Osaka? Wasn't Kudo supposed to arrive this weekend? Or was it already the weekend? Things weren't making much sense to him...

Both detectives started walking, side by side, in complete silence. The quiet atmosphere felt neither oppressive nor comforting. In fact, it didn't feel much like anything at all.

But, it seemed, Heiji's senses were perfectly content with not knowing anything about of the situation. Deciding to simply go with the flow, Heiji said nothing, accompanying Kudo to where it seemed they were going.

The hazy background cleared out soon and a street came into sharp relief. And there, lying in the middle of the road was a dead body.

"Another case?" Heiji muttered in disbelief, but readily began the investigation.

The scene changed; a sudden and drastic change that left Heiji feeling disoriented. His momentary confusion fading, he realised that he was running. In front of him was a man – presumably the culprit – and he and Kudo were chasing him.

"Stop!" Kudo called out authoritatively, but the man ignored it.

Heiji wondered how he came to the conclusion that the man was the killer, but nothing made much sense anyway, so the Osakan detective just went along with it.

Time seemed to slow, or was it perhaps faster? Heiji didn't know, didn't understand...but the next moment, the culprit had drawn out a knife and rushed towards them, plunging the knife into Heiji.

"Hattori!" Kudo's frantic shout made the killer turn towards him, the knife being pulled out of Heiji's side.

Heiji slipped down to his knees, a hand clasped over the wound. The blood kept flowing from between his fingers but strangely there was no dizziness, no pain, no...

"Die! All of you die!" The culprit let out a crazed shout as he then began to stab Kudo repeatedly.

'This is wrong,' Heiji thought suddenly, 'That we'd be so easily hurt...with all my kendo practice he shouldn't have been able to land a single hit on me! And Kudo's athleticism should make him equally agile! This is wrong...'

But no matter how wrong it was, it didn't stop Shinichi from collapsing and growing as still as the cold and dead corpses Heiji saw as a homicide detective. The murderer laughed manically, standing poised over Kudo, knife held in a victory pose before he turned tail and ran. Heiji...Heiji didn't care about the killer, scrambling up to run towards Kudo, bending down and pressing two fingers against his neck to check for a pulse – nothing. No pulse.