I don't own Detective Conan. I used to own a gingerbread man, but I ate him; alas.

The Gingerbread Man

(Revised, Adapted, and Pretty Much Completely Slaughtered, Grammatically Speaking)

Once upon a time there lived two very bad men whose names were not Gin and Vodka. I don't know what their names were. But whatever their names were, really, they were called Gin and Vodka, so that will have to do for now.

Anyway, these two men, Gin and Vodka, lived in Tokyo, where by day they ran (respectively) a soup kitchen and a used book-store. By night they wore black clothes and killed people. As I said, they were very bad men.

One day the bad man called Vodka was siezed with a desire that was as inexplicable as it was overpowering: he wanted to be a father. (I said it was inexplicable, didn't I?) He confided in his good ... er, bad friend Gin, and together they hatched an evil plan to get Vodka a child. However, being very bad men, as opposed to just plain old bad men, they couldn't do anything as simple as snatching a baby out of a stroller at a train station. Oh, no, indeed. Instead, they created a whole organisation - and this took years to do, mind - of evil people dedicated to murder, abduction, robbery, etc., to help them with their evil plan. They did this without telling any of their subordinates what their eventual aim was, too; they called their objective "Pandora" and generally gave them the impression that it had something to do with riches beyond measure or immortality. Or something. As a matter of fact, their subordinates didn't even know that they were their subordinates, since Gin and Vodka masqueraded as subordinates themselves. Before long they could have ruled Japan if they'd felt like it.

But this was only Stage A of their evil plan. Once it was completed, they went on to Stage B, which meant blackmailing a promising young scientist, Miyano Shiho by name, into creating a poison that was capable of (you'll never believe this) reversing ten years of growth in anyone who took it.

They were most awfully clever.

As soon as they had the pill, they dumped the organisation they'd created without so much as an it's-been-nice and skipped off to find someone to poison. As it happened, the first youngish person they came across was something of a celebrity: highschool detective Kudou Shinichi, out on a not-really-a-date with his friend Mouri Ran; and they figured they could do worse than have somebody famous for Vodka's long-awaited son. So they contrived to draw him away from the Mouri girl. Then thet hit him over the head and poisoned him and stashed him in the back of Vodka's used book-store while they fixed up some fake birth certificates and things and changed his name to Edogawa Conan. Then they sat around and waited for him to wake up.

Now, what do you suppose that boy did the instant he woke?

I'll tell you. It's a cruel, cruel thing, considering all the hardship they had gone through to catch him; the amount of people they'd murdered and kidnapped and robbed, all to get Vodka a child, but it happened and it has to be said: the instant Conan woke up, he ran away.

Naturally neither Gin nor Vodka was pleased about this.

"Stop!" they shouted, and ran after the boy; but Conan didn't stop. He ran faster.

Before long he had lost them in a crowd. The he slowed down a little, and normally, in his position, he ought to have chanted something - a witty little ditty; something like "Run, run, as fast as you can; you can't catch me, I'm Edogawa Conan," - but he utterly refused to do so when I suggested it to him. You see, Shinichi, being a detective, was rather clever, and he had figured out long before he was ever kidnapped that if you're running away from someone and don't want them to find you, it's rather a giveaway to sing at them, because then they can follow your voice.

Conan was even more clever than Gin and Vodka put together.

So Conan didn't sing. He ran on, a little slower, until he happened to bump into three children who were playing at detectives. The children had been wanting someone to play the murderer, so when they saw a boy about their own age running past looking hunted, they decided it should be him.

"Stop!" cried the first child, Ayumi.

"In the name of the law," added the second, Genta.

"Anything you say ... " began the third, Mitsuhiko; but Conan didn't stop to hear about anything he said. He ran faster.

Before long he had lost them as well. Then he slowed down a little, as before, and, as before, didn't sing anything at all.

After a while he passed his not-girlfriend, Mouri Ran, who, as soon as she saw him, shouted "Shinichi! Stop!"

Understandably embarrassed about his, ah, condition, Conan picked up the pace and fairly flew. So did Ran. It took him much, much longer to shake her off his trail than it had taken to get rid of his other pursuers, and when he finally did, he was so tired that he decided he needed to rest a bit. But he also needed to keep on going. So, as he happened to be near a river at the moment, he took a ride on a ferry.

He thought it would be nice and quiet, as he was the only passenger, but he couldn't have been more wrong; for as the ferry reached the middle of the river the ferrier tore off his whiskers, glasses, and false nose, and was Ran.

"Shinichi!" cried Ran.

"I can explain!" cried Conan.

"Now, look here," said Ran severely, "you silly!"

There wasn't really anything he could say to that, now, was there?

"You silly," continued Ran, "if you'd only stopped when I told you to, I could have explained that I've got the antidote."

"I just didn't want you to get hurt," explained Conan, "so I thought I'd better ... WHAT?"

"An-ti-dote," said Ran, "which I've got." She waved her hand in front of his face, and lo and behold, there was a pill in it which certainly appeared to be the antidote.

"But where did it come from?"

"Ah," said Ran sagely, "in my great wisdom I ... well, to tell you the truth, it fell out of a plothole. But aren't you glad?"

He was, rather.

So then he took the antidote, and when he had grown back to his usual size he thanked her with many blushes and stammers, as is appropriate for a hero from a shounen manga. Then he boldly ventured to take her hand in his, and opened his mouth, and at that moment my mother called me away to help her with dinner, so I'm not entirely certain what happened; but anyway when I got back they were discussing baby names and arguing over what color the living-room carpet should be.

Now isn't that nice?

The End

A/N: I rather think this was inspired by reading "The Not-Stinky Cheese Man". There isn't a whole lot of similarity between the two stories, except that they're both adulterated fairy tales, but there you have it. Before I read "The Not-Stinky Cheese Man" this story was not in my head, and after I did, it was. I may, however, be committing the "post hoc propter hoc" fallacy.