Your house of cards AU is really intriguing! I have questions about the lore and I hope you don't mind me asking them.😅
Soooo.... Heiji Hattori is in your AU an undercover person in the Black organisation, right? And he is Rei/Amoru little brother?(Did I understood that right? Or is it more like they are brothers in all but not in blood?)
Then there is Saguru Hakuba he's Pandora and has the ability to see (let's call it) the strings of fate, right? (I donno if that is what you called it) And he sees them on everyone and everywhere but Kaito aka KID, right? I'm really curious about how he would see Heiji Hattori and Shinichi Kudo/Conan Edogawa. Do you have thought about it how he would see the others?
Then we have Kaito Kuroba, he is KID and untouched by fate, is that all there is to him in the context of lore? Is it exactly like in Canon? He's kid, steals gems and gives them back because they are not what he's looking for and makes a spectacle out of it everytime and his motivation to do all this is revenge on the ones that killed his father? Or could there be more lore? Maybe a reason why fate (and maybe magic, if Akako is still a witch) can't touch him?
And at least what of Shinichi Kudo aka Conan Edogawa, is his lore that he was at the wrong time at the wrong place and got poisoned and shrunk and became Conan, just like in Canon? Or could there be more too? Is he still a corpse magnet? Does he have a special lore too?
How do they all meet together? Do they start working active together or is it every time more like chances that they are working together?
They look so goddamn badass in your art together, I kinda hope they are a team in the end.
I kinda hope that they all have some kind of special ability or something like that. 😅
Maybe it all has something to do with fate? Like Hakuba can see it? Kaito is immune to it? Maybe Shinichi is defying fate(he should have died but didn't and let's be honest that was more then one time)? And maybe Hejij is able to play with fate/manipulate fate? I thought that one could be able to knot the strings anew tho I don't know if that would fit to Shinichis defining or Hejijs playing with fate.
Eitherway. What do you think about it? I'm really curious about your thoughts about my thoughts and of course of the answers to my question too! I really hope this ask is no bother to you!
OOOOH Hello! Thank you for the ask! This is going to be a long answer too. OH boy, here we go-
Well, I was going to get into it later, but Heiji not actually related to Rei in any way. What happened was that Baijiu and Bourbon get teamed up (a lot) at some point and after some antagonistic behaviors from both sides (recognition of the self), (back when we still thought Bourbon was evil) things happen and they two realize that they're both working on the same goal. So then they turned more civil.
Then Rei slowly was like "holy shit this kid is young. what the hell are you doing here" and like, some deep rooted protective instincts kicked in. However, he didn't acknowledge it. It wasn't until they had to run an OP together and Heiji didn't have a good identity to use that Rei jumped in and was like "yeah this is my younger brother". And well, that identity stay even after the OP finished and now Heiji does it to annoy Rei for fun and profit. And unfortunately for Rei, he has grown rather fond of Heiji, and also he has introduced, as Amuro Tooru, Yasuaki as his younger brother already so he can't back out of it.
I'd like to imagine after the whole BO thing ends and Heiji comes clean to his family and friends, he brings Rei over like some kind of stray cat he found on the street, and to his parents be like, "can I keep him?" about a full grown man who's as a senior PSB agent. Lmfao.
The Rei gets invited to family dinners because Heiji insists. :)
So I don't want to put a full label on what Saguru 'sees'. Its implied to be strings of fate, yes, but in this, the 'strings' are meant to represent more of an idea of probability. Not that he literally sees strings. The best way I have explained this idea is like, you know in blackjack, people can win more easily if they learned how to count cards, right? Well, Saguru kind of can count the cards of life?
Like events are less of event and more of sequences and series of actions. Like everything is more than itself. Idk if this is making sense, but also this is what makes him a very good detective. But also he can get very lost in his own thoughts--hence the stopwatch. This also leads to him something reading too much or too little into things. Or missing social cues.
Anyways, Kaito, to Saguru, just kind of fucks up his card counting, in a way. Like he know/expects the events to occur this way because thats how the probability should go, and then BAM! Kaito comes in and it DOESN'T go that way. To Saguru, Kaito just feel unbound from the laws of the universe.
For Conan and Heiji, I would think Hakuba would see them tied and connected to as many events as he, himself, is. He, at some point, because of Shinichi/Conan's uncanniness and ability to deduce things, thought Conan was like himself, but alas, it wasn't true.
So, I want to keep this AU loosely out of the realm of fantasy. Of course introducing Pandora as some kind of magical gem already kind of break it, but I don't want things to be explicitly supernatural. Like, a lot of the 'powers' can still be loosely explained with some sci-fi realism.
So no, there's not any specific lore reason why Kaito is 'untouched' by fate. I think a big part of it is just Katio's personality and determination to win against the odd.
And well, if people want to imagine he has the blessings of Lady Luck, be my guest, but it's not meant to be explicit to this AU.
So yeah, for Kaito (and Conan) most of their story stays the same. Up until, yanno, Heiji and Saguru get involved.
Same as with Kaito, he's mostly same as canon. Of course, if we want to attribute the shinigami concept to him, that would be fine by me, but its not explicit or strictly canon.
Schrödinger's magic fantasy in this AU I guess lol.
So at first the plot is going to loosely follow canon as Conan and Kaito each start their respective stories. But as Hakuba and Heiji get more and more involved its going to deviate from canon quite a bit.
So we get duos working together first, Heiji + Conan and Kaito + Saguru. But then of course eventually, yes, all four boys will be working together as a team! <3
The concept of all of them having to do with fate is really interesting! If I had to say, I would imagine Kaito being able to "ignore fate", Hakuba being able to "predict fate", Shinichi being able to "unravel fate", and Heiji being able to "weave fate".
As I mentioned earlier, I'm trying to keep magic in a plausibly deniability zone for this AU so there's not going to any explicit usage of fantasy magic or magic-like powers. Mainly because the focus of this AU is "What of Heiji and Hakuba were also somehow involved with the BO and had secret identities too?"
Of course, my AU are open sandboxes and if you or anyone want to take my AU and build off into a fantasy AU version of it, I fully welcome it! I would love to see it! I might even make a spin off doodle for the fate concept!
Again thank you for the ask! It was fun talking more about my thoughts and hearing yours! I'm happy to hear yall like my AU and my art! :D <3
