... I don't own Detective Conan, but I would like a pistol, please.

Rapunzel

(CONTAINS: ECONOMICS, WEAPONS. DO NOT INGEST IF ALLERGIC.)

Once upon a time there was a queen who liked rapunzel; and when I say "liked" I mean really liked. I mean that she was obsessed with the stuff. I mean that if she did not get her regular dish of rapunzel every morning before breakfast she threw a hissy-fit which could be heard five kingdoms away, and which generally resulted in the poor king having to put in a large order for china and water-glasses before they could eat again.

Now when I say "poor king" I mean it two ways. I mean firstly as an expression of pity for his unfortunate state (though it was his own fault); I mean it secondly in a quite literal way. He did not have a lot of money, being lord and master of exactly sixty-point-three-five-nine miles of land which were populated by only seventy-three taxable persons. What money he did have he used to put in a bank account, but the week after he was married he sat down with a pencil and paper and did some sums several times, because he was an optimist and kept on hoping that he had somehow accidentally inserted five extra naughts into the estimated price of rapunzel for the queen per annum. He hadn't, though, so after he had done the sum for the fifteenth time and cried a bit, he raised taxes.

Now, this seemed like it would work out well, but it actually didn't. You see, rapunzel farmers in that kingdom were few and far between, because they all had to get ridiculously expensive licenses to grow or sell the stuff, owing to an unfortunate accident that had occurred several hundred years before. (It was a very sad incident, but I will only say that it involved a princess, a bowl of rapunzel, and a large family of middle-class caterpillars.) Also there was a very complicated law which I won't even attempt to explain, but which prevented the importation of foreign rapunzel by anyone other than a bishop over seventy years of age who had not one single white hair, or a farmer with more than twenty children under the age of five years and six months, counting nine months of gestation.

(Please note that the above two complications are called "plot devices" and are only permissible when the author means it for a joke and the readers know he does; otherwise it is simply poor writing. A really good author can build a story from the ground up without using a single device except ink and paper, though I must say that it is much messier that way, and uses up much more paper than it would if they would sacrifice Art to Common Sense and use a pen or something.)

As I was saying, all was far from well, even considering the new taxes – or rather especially considering the new taxes; for ever so often a rapunzel farmer would consider the rising taxes, and the mortgage, and the prospective college educations of his nine children, and the new dress his wife wanted (or, alternately, the new dress she had bought herself on credit), and then he would double the price of his goods; and of course all the other rapunzel farmers would, too.

Whenever they raised the price, the king would look at his dwindling bank account and raise taxes; and then the farmers would raise their prices, and the king would raise taxes, and it went round and round and round ad infinitum, or very nearly, anyway. (The above is called a "vicious circle", and I strongly recommend never ever getting caught up in one. You shall see why.)

This is why: less than a year after the king was married, almost everyone in the country went bankrupt and moved away. This left the king, the queen, the Lord High Steward, a few seedy soldiers, the rapunzel farmers, a few assorted farmers, two cooks, and a witch who lived down the road inside a big wall and never paid any taxes, anyway.

The next to go was the Lord High Steward, who made off in the dead of night, inadvertently (I am sure) taking with him the queen's favorite china salad-bowl and the last bag of chips. Half a week later both cooks quit and moved away; they said they were tired of coming up with inventive ways of cooking rapunzel, and they weren't interested in receiving pay in the form of the king's autograph. Then the remaining farmers went on strike, and when the king sent the seedy soldiers to persuade them to behave, they beat the soldiers over their heads with brooms and pitchforks, and then packed up and left. All but one of the remaining rapunzel farmers didn't even have to do sums to figure that importing everything except rapunzel was going to be too expensive to sustain. They followed in the wake of the other farmers.

Two days after that the queen announced that she was pregnant.

Under different circumstances the king would have been overjoyed, but pregnancy brings with it cravings, and chocolate-covered sticks of dried rapunzel were so expensive that all he did was heave an uneasy sigh, create a new tax on digging in previously uncultured land, and put all the soldiers on halfpenny-pay. That night the very last rapunzel farmer packed up his family and his remaining goods, and snuck away.

The next morning all the people five kingdoms away had to wear earplugs. The poor king, however, had sold his last pair on eBay in an attempt to raise money to buy a cradle for the baby, and went temporarily deaf. The queen went temporarily insane and ordered the soldiers to go and get her some rapunzel from the witch's house, which she was convinced was stuffed to the beams with it. As the soldiers were bored, they shouldered their weapons and tramped off down the street.

An hour later they returned, whistling cheerfully, but also remarkably dirty, and devoid of any thing bearing any resemblance whatsoever to rapunzel. The queen fainted away in despair, but the king did not.

"What the devil have you been doing?" he demanded peevishly.

The oldest soldier tipped his hat to him respectfully. "Lookin' for rapunzel in the witch's house, sire."

"What's that? Speak up!" shouted the king, who had not heard a word. "Do I pay you to stand about lolly-gagging like idiots and – what's that all over your face?"

"Ashes, sire. See, sire," said the oldest soldier, apologetically, "we ain't sacked a buildin' in nigh on twenty years, and as the witch was out, we took the liberty of doin' a little pillagin' on our own count, as you might say, sire, if you please."

Of course the king still could not hear, so he was very displeased indeed; but this was nothing to the displeasure the witch exhibited when she swooped down into the courtyard on a broom five minutes later. She expressed her displeasure by turning all the soldiers into frogs, and then she settled down to expressing it to the king, who was very bewildered, but eventually (when his hearing had come back) grasped the idea that something was very, very wrong. This was about the time that he realized that he had traded his child and his kingdom for a lifetime supply of rapunzel for his wife.

By then there was nothing he could do about it, and so he and his wife lived with the witch for nine months until the baby was born. The ex-queen wanted to name him Alfred Ferdinand Washington Bertram Archibald Maximilius Harold the XXXVII after a very, very, very great-great-great-great-grand-ancestor, but the ex-king put his foot down and named the boy Gin, which he said was a very fine name for a fine little boy. But anyway it didn't matter, because the witch took the baby and kicked them out the next day, and she called him Rapunzel.

The ex-king and his wife went away to another country, where he became a cobbler, and did not get into any more stories.

As for the witch, she took little Gin away and locked him up in her N0-G0 T0w3r(TM) by KeepsDrakes(TM), which in those days was the "in" tower for keeping princesses in. Of course Gin was not a princess, but princes have almost as difficult a time escaping a tower with no door and only one small window on the fifteenth floor as princesses do.

At first the witch used her broom to get up to the window, but by the time Gin was ten years old his hair was so long that she could just stand at the bottom and rhyme at him until he tossed it out of the window for her to climb up. (She was a very agile old witch.) This was rather painful until Gin got her to install a sort of hook on the windowsill so that he could loop his braid around it first and then throw it out.

Oh, and in case you're wondering why he had such long hair, it's because the witch was a dreadful combination of protective and suspicious. She never let him near anything sharp or pointy, because she was afraid that he would hurt himself, or her, or possibly both, like in a Greek play. (This is not a plot device; it is a fact. Everyone knows that witches are paranoid and over-protective.) He would occasionally get hold of a holly leaf (there was a large forest surrounding the tower) but the witch always took it away from him on her next visit.

Being a prince, Gin managed to grow up without being too traumatized by all the repression, and by the time he was fifteen he was a very nice young man; only you couldn't really tell, what with all the hair, and he tended to be grumpy and was inclined to pull the wings off flies when he could catch them.

One day as he was sitting by the window calculating how long it would take for him to tunnel through the tower's six-foot stone walls using a cordless plastic hair-dryer and his fingernails (the answer is a very long time) when he saw a girl emerging from the forest into the clearing.

Gin knew about girls; he had read about them in books. They wore long skirts and had long hair and screamed when mice ran at them. This girl, however, was wearing pants; her hair was rather shorter than Gin's, by two or three miles at least; and instead of being run at she was the one who was running. She made a beeline for the tower and circled it, appearing disappointed to find that there was no door. Gin gathered that she was disappointed by some things she said about the architects and their ancestors.

As he was a prince, Gin decided to offer what assistance he could.

"There's no door," he called down, helpfully.

The girl did not appear to be impressed by this display of Christian charity. "Oh there isn't, is there?" she said, grimly.

"No," said Gin, "there isn't."

"Then how the blue blazes did you get up there?" demanded the girl.

"By broom, I expect," said Gin, who had thought this out years before.

It was at this point that the girl seemed to lose interest in the conversation, which was a pity, as Gin had been rather enjoying it. Instead of answering she cast a nervous glance at the forest, as if she thought there might be a mouse in it, and then gyrated a bit in an agitated manner.

"Can I come up?" she called.

"Well," said Gin, thoughtfully, "I suppose so, but it might be difficult."

"Blast difficult!" said the girl.

"You see," said Gin, and began to explain about handholds and things, but she interrupted him impatiently.

"Never mind that!"

"What do you want up for?" asked Gin, curiously.

"Never mind that, either, just help me up!"

"But – " said Gin, thinking about the witch's many warnings about talking to strangers.

"Do you mind?" shrieked the girl. "Let me up there at once!"

And as she was in such a state, and as he was in a good mood, Gin let his hair down; and the girl, after giving it a look of dumbfounded inquiry, scrambled up its long, plaited length with the haste and skill of a woman who suspects that mice may presently begin coming out of forests and running at her. It was not done a moment too soon, either, for mere seconds after Gin had tidily collected his hair back into the tower a large company of horsemen cantered out of the forest and into the clearing.

The had evidently expected to find the girl there, for they milled about for several minutes looking for her and discussing possible explanations for her continued non-appearance, loudly and almost as colorfully as the girl had discussed the pedigree of the inventors of the N0-G0 T0w3r(TM). At last they decided that she must have given them the slip in the forest, and retreated to its murky depths in a ragged line.

It was about that time that Gin's fair guest rose from the floor (she had been rolling on it in an agony of mirth) and pointed at his hair in silent supplication.

"Oh," said Gin. "She won't let me near the scissors. She says I might hurt myself."

The girl collapsed again, and Gin waited patiently for her to recover. After five minutes she was well enough to inquire: "Why doesn't she cut it herself?"

"She says I might snatch them and hurt her," said Gin, "which I might," he added truthfully.

"Your mother?"

"No, the witch."

"What witch?"

"The one that's keeping me locked up in this t0w3r(TM)?" suggested Gin.

The girl considered this. "I thought witches only locked up princesses."

"I don't think she knew I wasn't a princess when she bought me," explained Gin.

"Oh," said the girl, and then said nothing in an awkward sort of way.

"Yes," said Gin.

After a moment the girl observed, "If this was exactly backwards – I mean, if you were a princess and I was a prince – then I could rescue you."

"But I'm not and you're not so you can't," said Gin, who was very practical about that sort of thing.

"H'm," said the girl, thoughtfully.

After that the silence stretched on in a stretchy, quiet way, until Gin finally broke it by asking again why the girl had wanted up into the tower.

At this she launched into a lengthy and verbose explanation, the gist of which I lay before you now. It seemed that the girl was Princess Vermouth of the kingdom next door, and that her father had recently married a stepmother who had turned out to be a witch who objected to pretty stepdaughters on principle (although what principle she objected to them on I'm sure I don't know) and that the horsemen belonged to her stepmother and had been looking for the princess in order to do away with her.

"I can't think what Father married her for in the first place," said the princess unhappily. "She must have put a spell on him. She's hideous. And mean. And she always smells of vodka."

Gin gave a start. "Does she have a nose like a potato?"

"Yes, and posture like a sack of potatoes, and – how did you know what her nose looked like."

"Because that's my witch," explained Gin.

"Is she really?"

"Oh, yes."

"Then I expect I'd better be going," said the Princess Vermouth, and rose gracefully. "If you would be so kind..."

Gin, still being in a sort-of good mood, was so kind.

"By the way," called Princess Vermouth, when she had reached the bottom of the tower, "if you ever manage to get your hands on something sharp, you can just let yourself down by your hair and then cut it off at the bottom."

"Thank you," said Gin, dutifully, who had figured that out years before. Then he settled down as the princess trudged away through the forest, and began calculating how long it would take him to get rid of his hair by breaking it off one strand at a time. (The answer, for anyone interested, is that it does not take quite so long as digging through a six-foot stone wall with a hair-dryer, but still ranks among the top twenty on the List of Things Which Take a Ridiculously Long Time to Do.) It was very boring.

Two days after that, he was looking down out of the window again because the princess was standing at the bottom and calling again, and this time she was also waving something: something longish and dull grey and pointed and – oh, joy! – it looked as if it even had an edge capable of cutting things like flesh and bone and, most importantly, hair.

"I decided to rescue you anyway," she shouted, "so don't dawdle!"

Gin did not.

He clambered out of the window and shinnied down his own hair in less time than it takes me to tell you how quickly he did it. Then he took the sharp pointy object (it was a dirk, but the witch had censored all the dirks out of his books) and in one fell slash was rid of his hair. Or most of it, anyway. He left five or so feet to balance with, but even with that weight he felt dizzy and lightheaded. However, he overcame his euphoria in order to ask about the sharp pointy thing.

"What is this?" he asked.

(Neither of them noticed a witch-shaped speck swooshing towards them above the forest in a meaningful sort of way).

"It's a dirk," said Princess Vermouth. "It's my father's. I had to borrow it from him because I didn't have any knives. I like these better."

She pulled something from a fold of one of her garments. Now, these instruments are very hard to describe, but I'll do my best. It was mostly a rectangular metal bit and another rectangular metal bit that mushroomed a bit near the bottom; one end of the rectangular bit was attached to the top end of the mushroom bit so that it was almost perpendicular to it; there were several little spiky bits sticking out near the join, and also there was an odd little piece of curved metal projecting from the side of the rectangular bit that was closest to the mushroom bit, and another curved piece of metal joined at one end to the rectangular bit and at the other to the mushroom bit, so that it enclosed the smaller curved bit.

"What's this?" said Gin, puzzled, and took it into his hands to examine it.

"It's a – good Lord, don't put your finger in there!" (Gin had discovered that the rectangular bit was hollow.) "Don't point it at your face! No, don't point it at my face, either! Here, just give it back."

"But – " said Gin, and held it out reluctantly; the princess put her hands on it fumblingly, and the thing promptly bucked like a spurred horse and made a noise like this:

BLAM!

(Neither of them noticed the witch-shaped speck dropping from the sky in the manner of a witch who has just been shot with a 9 mm. pistol.)

"...And don't press on that," said Princess Vermouth, belatedly, and shaking her head, as if that would somehow help the ringing in her ears. "Haven't you ever seen a gun before?"

But Gin was staring at the thing with a glint in his eyes (if he had been looking at the princess instead I would have called it the light of love) and all he said was:

"Can I have one?"

"Not without a license you can't," said Princess Vermouth firmly. "But suppose you come back to the castle with me and be my bodyguard – after you get your license, I mean."

"All right," said Gin, who would have said "all right" if she had demanded that he climb to the top of Mount Everest and back in one day after talking with the tooth fairy about her stingy ways.

He became a master marksman after exactly two weeks' worth of training, and was the princess' bodyguard for several years, until it became apparent that her stepmother was not coming back. (No one ever found out what had become of her.) Then he left the kingdom and took up with the Assassins' Guild. This is not generally considered the kind of genteel trade that a prince, if he must learn a trade, should learn; but we will blame it on his parents and the witch and their poor parenting skills, and rejoice that at least he was doing something interesting.

We will also hope that he lived happily ever after. I'm sure I don't know if he did.

The End

A/N: I started out writing this with Gin and Sherry, then changed it to Gin and Vermouth, then wondered if it oughtn't be Genta or Mitsuhiko and Ayumi or something like that, and eventually stopped second-guessing myself and stuck with this one because the idea of Gin locked up in a tower with all that hair is simply a lot more funny than the idea of Mitsuhiko or Genta in the same situation.

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