AN: …well, I did it. I actually did it. I wrote this. Ever had that thing happen, where a semi-silly idea bounces around for a while before suddenly grabbing you by the front of the shirt and DEMANDING to be written immediately? …yeah, me neither. This one was planned :grin:

This is a silly fic. It's supposed to be. It was inspired by a conversation with my sister, and further egged on by my two pals and muses, Fred the Mutant Pickle and Foxie. Furthermore, I'd been thinking that I wanted to take a stab at writing an original (I hope!) take on a very clichéd idea in this fandom.

So here we go—the prologue of sorts! I no ownie da show. It sucks to be me.

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Star Light, Star Bright...

"Goodnight, Conan-kun!" Ran said cheerily, having just tucked the aforementioned seven-year-old into bed. He had resisted, as all children did when bedtime rolled around, but as usual, he acquiesced without too much of a struggle, and allowed himself to be ushered through the nightly ritual of tooth-brushing, face-washing, and tucking-in-ing.

"Goodnight!" Conan chirped back at her, snuggling under the covers. The door closed, and the room fell into partial darkness.

But once he was alone, the Conan-mask dropped, and Shinichi came through in the young boy's eyes—older, more tired. He sighed, and rolled off his futon, crawling over to the window. It was a lovely evening, clear and cool, with a healthy number of stars dotting the skies around a full moon. A romantic kind of night. A night for lovers.

Like something out of a bad romance fan fiction, really…

It had actually been a good day, all things considered. He'd managed to shake his pint-sized entourage for a while, though Haibara had been particularly evil today and had gotten Ayumi to all but glue herself to his arm, earning angry and reproachful glares from the other two boys. But once alone, he'd managed to sneak away and give Ran a call. They had a great conversation, aside from the yelling about when he was coming back and the one time when she insinuated that his parents had never been married—but she was always a mood-lifter for him.

His own personal Prozac!

But now here he was, alone. The girl he loved was on the other side of the wall, and he couldn't be with her. It was a lonely togetherness, and he was one of so very few who knew about it.

His melancholy thoughts were interrupted as he glanced aimlessly back at the sky, just in time to see a shooting star rocket by. He traced its path with his eyes, and smiled. "That was nice…" Then he sighed again and turned away from the window. "I wonder if Ran and I will ever be really together…"

A huge yawn split his face then as he suddenly became very sleepy, and he gave up the struggle for independent thought, deciding instead to take to his bed and try to get some sleep, and hope that the Magical Hormone Fairies would not invade his dreams…again.

Unbeknownst to Shinichi, however, he was not the only one who had seen the shooting star.

And wheels were being set in motion…

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Ran lay on her stomach in bed, her elbows propped up on the mattress and her chin resting comfortably in her hands. She was watching the stars, absentmindedly sighing every few seconds. Her thoughts were on Shinichi, Shinichi, Shinichi.

This should surprise no one.

She'd talked to him earlier that day. His phone calls were a rare treat, but they always felt so short, with long pauses that said far more than any words could. She wondered briefly if he was all right—not because she was particularly concerned or anything, of course, but God knew the man was incapable of taking care of himself! But hearing his voice over the phone…it always made her realize just how much she missed him, and how long he had been gone.

Her eyes had absently dropped to a photo of the two of them on her nightstand. She smiled fondly at the memory before turning her eyes back to the sky—just in time to see a shooting star go whizzing in an arc across the heavens.

She smiled and sighed. Shooting stars were good luck, so she should make a wish.

"I wish…" she whispered out loud, pausing for a moment, "I wish I could be closer to Shinichi. Even if it's just for a day, I wish we could be together again." The night gave her no answers.

Suddenly, Ran felt very drowsy—odd, considering that up until that second, she had been wide awake. And she wanted to think about Shinichi more before going to bed. She struggled to stay awake for a minute before surrendering and letting her head slump forward. She was asleep seconds after her head touched the pillow.

In fact, Ran zonked out so quickly that she didn't have a chance to notice the strange purple mist floating in through her bedroom window, hovering over her, surrounding her…

It was just a wish. An innocent wish.

But shooting stars can be whimsical, and wishes are such tricky things. And besides, somebody up there really likes to play around with Shinichi Kudo's life. And so an innocent bystander, making an innocent wish on an innocent shooting star, became part of a big, hilarious, not-so-innocent cosmic joke.

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AN: And so it begins…I look forward to this one. This was a set-up chapter, folks. A prologue. A teaser, if you will. I'm still finalizing this outline, so it might be a bit before the next chapter, but I really wanted to get this started. So feel free to tell me what you think of my prologue—what little there is of it :grin:

NEXT CHAPTER: When the sun rises, the actual implications of Ran's wish are realized, and it will not be pretty. Something tells me that this really isn't what she had in mind…oh yeah, and Heiji will be in this story. I hope you'll come back and check it out!