The establishment of the Time Travelers Alliance began in the first year of Conan

Chapter 246 Professor Agasa ruthlessly crushed Kogoro Mouri's hopes.
In that basement room, which resembled a prison cell, Professor Agasa gazed silently at the holographic projection floating in front of him.

Countless images flashed before his eyes—the first-person perspective of the task force members, surveillance cameras on the street, images transmitted back from high-altitude satellites, and even images from the eyes of some people.

For example, a projection of an executive member.

The acting chairman of the executive council, the seventeenth member, was facing Professor Agasa. The blue projection highlighted the solemnity between his brows, but his gaze was very firm.

After Shigenobu Hitomi entered the [Core Layer], the power of those [Circular Computers] could be fully mobilized.

More importantly, as mentioned before, in this new blank timeline, the alliance, which can only indirectly utilize the CYZ effect, can no longer make any breakthrough progress.

"Except for the psychological analysis department that involves Shinichi Kudo himself, and some departments that are involved in the Third Pointer Project, most of the personnel have entered a state of 'hibernation' to save resources."

Ota Akikawa gave Professor Agasa a brief overview of the current situation on the moon, and then a series of numbers, codes and names appeared in front of Professor Agasa.

Dr. Agasa was even familiar with the names of several of these organizations, such as the Future Clock Company or the security company called Changyu An—these were all aliases used by the Gray Party in the past to belong to the "Science Frontier".

"These are their communication keys and the code names of the associated covert agencies, and you need to pay attention to the connections between shipping, land transportation, experimental research, psychological analysis, intelligence gathering..."

Regardless of the analytical conclusions given in the "Alliance Management Manual" or the analyses from departments such as the Narrative Studies Department, the Alliance had no choice but to, or rather, had to, hand over the work on Earth to Professor Agasa.

Because he is "Professor Agasa".

It's Watson from [Conan Edogawa].

He is the newly elected leader of the "Science Frontier" faction and an important mediator within GSSRA between those who lean towards the "Yusaku Kudo" faction and the "Science Frontier" faction.

After all those past developments, Dr. Agasa's identity has become so complex that even he himself is sometimes unclear about it.

This is thanks to his past admission of his "amnesia" to Conan, and his admission that he may have joined the "Frontiers of Science" and learned the "truth".

Dr. Agasa is still able to perfect many things.

Just like how he immediately used those purely 20th-century technologies, combined with time crystals, to create a "memory interferometer".

This is to ensure that Ai Haibara's "reset" can be "adjusted" in detail, retaining that little bit of "exception" in the vague details.

Da Tian Xiaochuan's voice was deep.

"As it stands, you remain Conan Edogawa's most trusted and 'recognized' person, and the RSI anomaly across the universe has had no effect on you."

"This 'recognition' status has even affected the alliance's overall assessment and renovation of your villa."

"Today, your basement is the only spatial node on Earth capable of handling such a high computing load and information transmission pressure."

This is also one of the most difficult problems to solve in communication between the Earth and the Moon after technology became limited.

Contact between the task force and the Alliance, and between Earth and the Alliance, is no longer instantaneous.

At the Beika Town cargo transport port, both the [Panoramic Monitoring] and the [Plot Guide] received contingency plans that were postponed from a certain point in the past.

For this reason, the Alliance lost a task force simply by discovering that the operation could only be carried out by a "two-person team".

Ryuya Iwata and his team were the second batch after the plan was temporarily revised. Fortunately, no new accidents occurred after that.

"But such luck can't happen all the time."

At the post-mission debriefing meeting, one member of parliament pointed out this obvious fact: "It is unrealistic to keep the operatives in constant communication with the lunar side."

"In fact, if the action level hadn't made them adopt a rotation system to concentrate the CYZ effect, their TDD would have only been able to use basic functions."

“What if we add a separate member specifically responsible for using the communications functions?” a voice suggested, “like the telegraph operators of the past?”

“Then a team of operators would need at least five people.” A councilor who was responsible for daily liaison with the Reality Intervention Department said that this would not work. “As long as they get close to Shinichi Kudo, both three-person and four-person teams are at great risk.”

"Furthermore, even for a five-person team, or even a larger group, we cannot be certain that the universe or [Shinichi Kudo] considers them as a whole."

“Especially in the case of covert operations.” Another member of parliament nodded.

Therefore, the relevant inquiries were quickly sent to the action level.

The projection of the director of the Reality Intervention Department and the Reality Intelligence Center appeared out of thin air in front of the conference table.

"More importantly, information reception is crucial. The inability to observe the specific situation on the timeline means that we can only make predictions based on each definite present moment and send as many contingency plans as possible to Earth."

"However, the TDD of the action members no longer allows for the acceptance of a near-unlimited amount of instantaneous information transmission, unless we use the CYZ effect to actively enhance this connection."

“Or,” he paused, projecting the analysis of the personnel’s actions at the harbor, “like the operation just now, give them sufficient autonomy and a goal that they must achieve.”

"This can only solve decision-making actions in a single task."

The legislator, who did not want to rely on luck, countered, "The key is the error correction mechanism. I need to remind you that the premise for doing so is that the decisions we make are definitely correct."

"If every action needs to achieve this, we need to use the CYZ effect to anchor the outcome."

“Yes,” he nodded, then projected the satellite imagery of Professor Agasa’s villa, “so we can set up an information relay station to act as an error correction mechanism.”

As a result, the relevant arguments were quickly approved.

That's how it was decided, in order to minimize the CYZ effect and to allow for more flexible adjustments to the plan based on the current situation.

Dr. Agasa will be fully responsible for mobilizing all members on Earth and will have the authority to make decisive decisions in emergency situations.

"After all, you are the only one who stood on the side of the Alliance in the past [Ritual Case] ​​and was able to take advantage of 'Professor Agasa's' inventor persona by disguising the timeline."

The projection of Da Tian Xiaochuan finally showed a coordinate location: "The first batch of supplies is expected to arrive in three days. At the same time, we hope you will take over the authority of the remote sensing satellites and monitoring satellite networks located in the atmosphere as soon as possible."

The executive layer, or rather the entire alliance, granted him the highest authority over Earth.

"Then, I'll leave everything to you, Professor Agasa."

……

Therefore, starting at midnight on the fourth day, no, starting from when we took over command authority from Earth.

Dr. Agasa stood amidst the layers of projections in the basement, beginning to use the memory transfer device to "temporarily load" those contingency plans onto himself.

He just watched—

On the night Conan slept soundly, on the night Ran Mouri slept soundly, the "Sleeping Kogoro" awoke.

For Kogoro Mouri, the casebook laid out before him was like honey, the characters, the pictures—his own handwriting, the circles he drew…

The secrets revealed between the lines were like a black hole, firmly drawing his gaze and soul to them, leaving him confused, exhausted, and cold.

He even noticed Conan secretly trying to get closer and eavesdrop on his conversation with Hattori Heiji, which made him subconsciously close the boring case collection and reveal his greedy nature regarding the so-called "foster care money".

"Go to sleep now, you brat!" He picked Conan up. "I'm telling you, if you don't bring back a perfect score on the next exam..."

However, after confirming that Conan was fast asleep by the faint light emanating from the city outside the window, Kogoro Mouri quietly bypassed the mattress on the floor and entered the living room without disturbing Conan.

The doubts that lingered in my heart in the past have, over time, reached a point where they could no longer be ignored.

Deep within the moon, the [Loop Computer] represents everything that Dr. Agasa "saw" using probability and data, presenting it to Dr. Agasa through the remaining base of the "door" in the villa's basement.

The "clumsy detective," the clear-headed Kogoro Mouri, is circling back and forth before the door to the truth. He has already checked this case collection twice, and everything is normal except for page thirty-three.

That was definitely his own handwriting; Kogoro Mouri would never mistake that.

"But what does this mean?"

Looking at each of the circled "Shinichi Kudo" and "Heiji Hattori," Kogoro Mouri scratched his head in frustration. The lines drawn under "Detective" and "Case," the circled numbers, and even some patterns that looked like simple line drawings...

Kogoro Mouri couldn't understand why the traces he left in that page of the case seemed to be despising him.

"Did I suffer from temporary amnesia? Or did I draw it unconsciously during my afternoon nap?"

However, Kogoro Mouri had to face the fact that those densely packed notes were definitely made by someone after careful consideration.

"That's right! My second personality!"

Using the dim light from the desk lamp, Kogoro Mouri took out his stash of beer—the beer he had hidden under the sofa.

On this chilly night, the aluminum can felt as if it had been chilled.

With his body swaying unsteadily, and fueled by drunkenness, Kogoro Mouri tentatively stuffed two or three bottles of liquor upright under the sofa. He then sat back down in his chair, roughly flipped to page 33 of his casebook, and buried his face in it.

In that blurred vision, a kind of terrifying silence arose with the sound of skin rubbing against the pages of a book. Light danced on the ink stains, then one by one, joyfully rushed into those somewhat unfocused pupils.

Professor Agasa watched as Kogoro Mouri made one deduction after another in that case collection, watching him get closer and closer to the truth, only to completely deny himself before taking the final step.

“We’d better not get close to him,” Masked Man said to Professor Agasa. “Kogoro Mouri’s personality dictates that if he finds out the truth, he will immediately take Ran away from Conan Edogawa.”

"But if we explain all of this clearly..."

"How many times do you think he was reset?" Another version of himself directly stated the cruel truth.

"The reasoning he made while drunk was based on what Kogoro Mouri considers his 'second personality.' Unless he deduces the truth himself in a sober state, all of this will just be a dream."

……

That sorrowful expression had been on Professor Agasa's face since midnight this morning.

He was like a decision-making machine, responsible for inputting the images on the screen into his brain, and then mechanically spitting out slips of paper, slips of paper with commands.

Professor Agasa had no idea how long Kogoro Mouri had been preparing for this moment, nor how many times this had happened before.

Within sight, the plummeting data, the glaring warnings, all the reminders about the "accident"...

The [Cyclic Computer] will project the present moment and the next second into every dimension of all the objects in front of you.

That ocean of data, its waves transformed into knights, attacking Professor Agasa's eyes and ears—images, sounds, numbers, probabilities, all roaring in.

"You make the decision yourself."

But deep down, the masked man knew that those statistics and those results had already won.

Professor Agasa knew that he had no other choice.

The death of Yusaku Kudo, the deaths of other members of the alliance, Ran Mouri's amnesia, Kogoro Mouri's amnesia, the reset of almost everyone he knew, and even the disappearance of Lord ZC-01...

Even Professor Agasa himself, like the self he separated onto the mask, and himself, or perhaps the self that disappeared...

For Professor Agasa, even the question of "who am I" is no longer important.

"Doctor, I'm counting on you for all of this."

The voice never stopped; it was the list of the dead. Dr. Agasa would think of these things whenever he closed his eyes.

For Professor Agasa, and for the League—

The truth is no longer important.

What they need now is an ending—a “good ending.”

That's it.

Kogoro Mouri realized that this would only make things worse.

Whether he panics because of the truth, remains calm, or does something else—any unexpected behavior could alert Conan Edogawa.

If you want him to act out something he doesn't know, then he doesn't need to know it.

Now, Kogoro Mouri is just one step away from "knowing".

While Conan was in class, he picked up the receiver from the police station and continued the actions from yesterday's nightmare:

Call up.

In his dream, Kogoro Mouri made phone calls all night.

A number that can never be dialed.

He sat in complete darkness, in that familiar chair, the dim light from the desk lamp barely illuminating the exterior of the old telephone.

I picked up the flimsy microphone, pressed the answer button, and listened to the unchanging, never-ending busy tone.

Now, the dream has dragged him here, and he is repeating reality according to the dream.

Kogoro Mouri mechanically sat in his chair, found the location of the case on page thirty-three, found the phone number of the local police station, and then dialed it.

The call was answered.

—However, the one who "picked it up" was Professor Agasa.

"Moshi moshi." Kogoro Mouri's voice rang out from the basement loudspeaker, carrying a sense of relief. "Thank God, we finally got through!"

Dr. Agasa remained silent for a moment, listening as he continued.

"I'm Detective Mouri from Beika Town. I'd like to inquire whether Hattori Heiji and Kudo Shinichi have solved any cases before..."

Professor Agasa patiently listened to Kogoro Mouri's cautious and careful questioning.

But now he wants to continue this dream.

"Ah! You're talking about the case where Detective Hattori and Detective Kudo teamed up, right? The situation was like this..."

Dr. Agasa recounted the details of the fabricated case in a gentle and clear tone, as if casually extinguishing a thread that could have led to the truth.

Kogoro Mouri was completely unaware that the truth was being erased little by little.

In that familiar voice, in that almost impeccable tone.

With the phone signal hijacked, Professor Agasa ruthlessly crushed Kogoro Mouri's path to discovering the truth.

(End of this chapter)