I don't own Detective Conan or The Frog Prince. I think The Frog Prince is probably in the public domain, though.

The Frog Prince

(Pretty Much Completely Slaughtered, Generally Speaking)

Once upon a time there lived a King and a Queen who, in the manner of so many fairy-tale kings and queens, had only one child: a daughter named Ran, whom they loved very much.

Now Princess Ran was a most accomplished and gifted princess, besides being as beautiful as the sun on a clear morning sun shining on a pond full of clean water and goldfishes (the magic kind that are real gold), and as kind as kind could be. She could sing like a bird and dance like the wind; she spoke seven different languages and had trig on toast for breakfast; she embroidered bautifully and cooked deliciously; and, moreover, she had attained the highest level possible in every form of martial arts known to man.

Add to this the fact that both King Kogoro, her father, and Queen Eri, her mother, had inherited kingdoms from their parents, both of which would of course become hers in the event of her parents' deaths, and I dare say that no one will be surprised to hear that eligible young (or, alternately, not) men flocked around her like Harry Potter fans around a bookstore on the eve of the release of the latest book - which, by the way, was quite good.

But no matter how much and how earnestly they flocked, Princess Ran would have none of them. (This pleased her father.) Let one of them pluck up enough courage to so much as begin to propose, and she would, with killing kindness, turn him down. Let him persist, and she would simply knock him down.

The suitors were generally very surprised at this cold (for her) reaction; but we, of course, are not; for we know that the affections of Princess Ran had long been engaged elsewhere - which is to say that she was already head over heels in love with someone else.

That "someone else" was Prince Shinichi from the neighboring kingdom. He had served first as a page and then as a squire in her father's court until he was fourteen, at which time his father had died, his elder brother had become king, and he had been called back by his mother to support and succor her in her widowhood. Prince Shinichi and Princess Ran had been best friends practically from the moment they had met; and Princess Ran had been in love with him since she was twelve, though of course she would rather have died than admitted it, even to herself. That is what comes of being a main character in a shounen manga.

Anyway, even after Prince Shinichi had returned to his brother's kingdom, he made frequent visits to King Kogoro's castle (Princess Ran couldn't imagine why); and on one such visit, a few weeks before Princess Ran's seventeenth birthday, there was something different in his manner - something that began to make our heroine suspect that Prince Shinichi's feelings towards her were not so different from her feelings towards him.

...Which was to say that he felt a great deal of friendship towards a girl who was practically his sister and was definitely his best friend.

(Emphasis hers.)

Unfortunately, half-way through the time Prince Shinichi had intended to stay at King Kogoro's court, he received an urgent message from home and had to leave suddenly. Princess Ran, of course, came to see him off, and they had a moment - no more than a minute - together alone, during which time Prince Shinichi stammered terribly, and didn't quite manage to say something before the messenger came dashing into the room to tell him they must hurry. So he was gone; but he left her with a warm, hopeful feeling in her chest - and also his soccer ball, which had rolled under a bush and been forgotten in the hurry-scurry.

Princess Ran waved as Prince Shinichi's entourage set off, and then went back inside and returned to her princessly duties, going about them with a gladdened heart. She even sang and danced as she worked. King Kogoro remarked to his wife that he had never seen her so happy, and she must be very glad to get rid of that silly Shinichi boy. Queen Eri, in her usual observant way, remarked that her daughter had sent every last one of her suitors packing in the half-hour since Prince Shinichi had left.

On the third day after Prince Shinichi's departure, it happened that Princess Ran, wandering the castle grounds, found the prince's soccer ball in a rose-bush. She rescued it and resumed her walk, kicking it before her and smiling remininscently. So absorbed in her memories was she that it took her a moment to realise that she was kicking the air and that the soccer ball had rolled in the exactly the wrong direction and fallen down the shaft of an old, dried-up well; and that the shaft was far too narrow for her to get down herself and retreive it.

"Bother!" said Princess Ran; and sitting down by the side of the well, she began to ponder.

She had pondered for only a few minutes when something shuffled in the grass in front of her; and when she looked up there was a small boy in front of her: short, thin, wide-eyed, bespectacled, and solemn. She was sure she had seen him before (was he one of the pages?) but she couldn't remember his name, so she asked him what is was.

"Conan," said the small boy. "I saw your ball fall in the well, Princess. What will you give me if I get it for you?"

"Can you get it?" asked Princess Ran, doubtfully.

"I can try," said Conan. "What will you give me?"

"Anything you like," said the princess, springing up happily.

So the boy asked for a rope, and when she had gotten it for him, he made a harness of one end and tied the other to a tree and lowered himself into the well; and presently back up he came, and he had the soccer ball with him. Princess Ran thanked him many times, and was just going to ask him what it was he wanted when a maid came running up the path and told her breathlessly that there was news of Prince Shinichi - bad news - and that her father wanted her. The princess told the boy to keep the ball, and that she would come back as soon as she could; and then she picked up her skirts and fairly flew.

The news was not good at all. One ragged, footsore page from Shinichi's entourage had staggered back into King Kogoro's kingdom to tell them that not a day's journey from the castle they had been attacked by Gin ("A djinn?" said King Kogoro, doubtfully; but the page said no, it was a Black Witch whose name was Gin; King Kogoro said: "Ah!") and they had been defeated and routed. The horses had gone mad with fear and run away, trampling provisions and people alike in their terror. To make things much, much worse, when at last they had gathered back together after the witch had gone, they had found that Prince Shinichi was not among them; and after they had combed the area for hours they had at last come to the conclusion that the witch had kidnapped him.

In the hubbub that followed this revelation, all thought of the child who had rescued her friend's soccer ball flew from Princess Ran's mind. Indeed, for a moment almost everything was gone in a terrible, empty moment of utter horror; but she was made of sterner stuff than many a princess before her, and instead of fainting or crying she saw to it that the exhausted page was fed and cleaned and his wounds bandaged, and after that she went to her room and let herself cry for one minute exactly.

Then she washed her face and put up her hair and went to supper, and concealed her grief so well that no one who saw her suspected that one minute in her bedroom, and even her own mother wondered at this sudden unconcern for the fate of her friend.

The meal had hardly begun when the old, half-blind gatekeeper shuffled inside with his hands in the pockets of his white coat, to say that there was a child outside who wanted to see the princess about a ball.

"Oh?" said Princess Ran, blankly, and then, remembering: "Oh, of course. Bring him in, please."

The gatekeeper shuffled out and then back in, bringing with him a small, grubby little boy with a soccer ball tucked under one arm; and he stood him before the table where the royal family ate, and told him (unneccesarily) to turn out his toes and straighten his back and for goodness' sake don't fidget when they talk to you.

Princess Ran smiled as well as she could at Conan and said: "I thank you for the service which you did me, and I apologise for not repaying my debt sooner. Ask me now for anything you want, and if it is in my power I will give it to you."

Conan looked at the princess solemnly through his thick glasses. "Anything?" he asked.

"Anything," said Princess Ran.

"Then," said the boy, "I ask that you let me be your constant companion."

"Say what?" demanded King Kogoro, shooting out of his seat and glaring at Conan.

"'Companion'," said Conan, and his tone was level even though his cheeks were flaming; "'a person who is frequently in the company of another' - but since I added the word 'constant' in front of 'companion', I'm asking that Princess Ran keep me in her company all the time."

King Kogoro glared at him. "Why should she do any such thing?"

"Because she promised."

"I did," said the princess. "Is something the matter, Father?"

"'Matter'?" said King Kogoro, staring. "'Matter'? He's a boy! I know what he's thinking behind that innocent look!"

The queen and the princess looked at Conan with raised eyebrows. He did look remarkably innocent, and from the blank look on his face, he had no idea what the king was talking about any more than a babe in arms would.

"My dear!" protested Queen Eri.

"He's just a child!" cried Princess Ran, indignantly. "How can you say such things? And I did promise. You wouldn't want me to break a promise, would you, Father?"

"Well, no, but - "

"Then obviously I should grant his request, shouldn't I, Father?"

"Well, yes, but - "

"Then that's settled," said Princess Ran, rising gracefully from her seat. "I must beg to be excused, Father - Mother ... Come, Conan."

Things were a little hectic for the rest of that day, but Princess Ran was glad of it, since it took her mind off her vanished friend - come to think of it, it was Prince Shinichi that Conan had reminded her of when she had first seen him. While King Kogoro was arranging for search parties and sending messages to all the surrounding kingdoms and Queen Eri was digging through her law-books, trying to find a law she thought she remembered that said that witches could only kidnap princes in their own territory, Princess Ran was setting up a trundle bed in the vacant maid's room that opened onto her own and doing all her usual duties, with Conan tagging after her looking alternately forlorn and innocent, and with the added strain of having to smile when she felt more like crying.

By the time night fell and everyone had to go to bed, it was hard to tell who was more exhausted. Conan wasn't - he had gotten more awake, if that was possible, and when Princess Ran retired to her chambers he kept kicking the soccer ball around until she begged him to stop, at which time he retreated to his bedroom and (from the sound of it) drummed his feet on the floor. And people kept on walking up and down the corrider outside.

The princess was already in bed, with the covers over her head, when the door to Conan's room creaked.

"Princess Ran?"

Princess Ran sat up, and perhaps something of the frustration she felt leaked into her voice. Certainly Conan seemed to cringe when she said "What is it?"

"Could you ... " stammered Conan; "c-could you give me a goodnight kiss?"

He sounded so timorous that the princess instantly repented of her crossness. "Of course, Conan," she said; and she got out of bed and reached down to pick him up.

At that moment the door burst open and King Kogoro hurtled through, with Queen Eri latched on to one of his arms. He was shouting loudly and almost unintelligibly, but the words "don't you dare kiss him" were scattered liberally throughout his sentences, as were references to what he was going to do to Conan for seducing his daughter.

"Father!" cried the princess, shocked.

"I won't have you marrying some six-year-old!" bellowed King Kogoro, swiping at Conan.

"My dear," said Queen Eri, as calmly as any woman can who is having to physically restrain a husband intent on infanticide, "don't be silly. This isn't the twentieth century, you know. There aren't any laws against this kind of thing yet. Besides, I think they make a cute couple."

Of course this did not help things at all.

Princess Ran and Conan turned identical shades of red at the same instant, and King Kogoro was rendered completely speechless with rage. In leiu of saying something which ought not be said in mixed company, he made another furious grab at Conan and caught hold of one of his arms.

"And," continued Queen Eri, who evidently had never heard about how sometimes you should stop while you're ahead, or at least not very far behind; "you could do far worse for a son-in-law," she said. "Think of Prince Eisuke and then tell me you still don't want Ran to kiss Conan."

"Mother!" cried the princess, shocked.

"I don't want Ran to kiss anyone," howled King Kogoro, tugging on Conan's arm. "Come here, you wretch!"

Princess Ran seized hold of Conan's other arm. "Do stop pulling on him, Father - it's not like that - he's only a child - and it's only a goodnight kiss -see!"

She made an attempt to demonstrate what she meant by "only a goodnight kiss", but somehow, in the hubbub and hurly-burly of King Kogoro shouting for guards and handcuffs and the army and Conan's instant execution, and tugging on Conan's arm; and Queen Eri shrieking something about a law that said that princesses could kiss anyone they liked, and pulling on King Kogoro's arm; and Conan spluttering wordlessly, red with embarrassment, and trying to wriggle away from the princess and the king at the same time ... but somehow, as I say - either because Princess Ran's aim was off, or because Conan wriggled in exactly in the wrong direction at exactly the wrong time - somehow Princess Ran missed Conan's forehead by about six inches, and ... well, it has to be said: she planted a kiss smack-dab on his lips.

There was a moment in which everyone except Princess Ran and Conan froze and gasped.

Then there was a sort of explosion, and Princess Ran found that instead of Conan, she had hold of Prince Shinichi, which was not a very displeasing discovery to make, considering the amount of worrying she'd been doing in the hours since she had heard that he had disappeared. King Kogoro, however, was less than thrilled.

"What the devil do you mean by all this?" he roared. "Stop kissing my daughter!"

(This was unneccesary and uncalled-for.)

"I - I'm sorry," said Prince Shinichi, rather red-faced. "I didn't mean to - no, I did, but I wanted to say - what I mean is - oh, blast it! Ran! Will you marry me?"

"Yes," said Princess Ran.

"Now see here - !" began King Kogoro, explosively.

"My dear," said Queen Eri, "you know the rules: once a princess kisses a prince, she has to marry him."

"Yes, but - "

"My dear."

"Oh, very well," grumbled King Kogoro. "But you're not sleeping in here, my lad!"

Off he went, dragging the reluctant and astonished prince behind him, while Queen Eri remained to offer congratulations on the engagement and advice about the wedding.

I would like to say that this was the end of their troubles, but I would be lying if I did, since it wasn't. It would have been the end, if King Kogoro hadn't mistaken a dungeon for a guest-bedroom, locked Prince Shinichi in out of habit, and accidentally thrown the key into a well; but even though it was a trouble, it was only a minor one, and after Princess Ran had knocked the door down they were able to get back to planning the wedding; and in the end they did live happily ever after, as was customary for princes and princesses in those days.

The End

A/N: I'm afraid this fic doesn't live up to the standards set by the first two. My brother cracked up over the end of it (from where the eavesdroppers make their appearance) but the fairy tale is completely slaughtered and the characters aren't much better - can anyone here imagine Conan asking for a bedtime kiss, even if it would reverse the effect of the poison?

Thanks again (and more) for all the lovely reviews!