I don't own Sonoko or any criminals. They cost too much.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

(Made from One Hundred Percent Recycled Material.)

Once upon a time there was a curious little girl named Sonoko, and if you know what "curious" means when it's in the same sentence as a word or phrase like "little girl" then I expect you know where this story is going already. However, in case you don't, I'll go ahead and tell it to you.

Curious children are not exactly a rare breed, but wherever they go they cause confusion and consternation. An adult, you see, is bound by social conventions and the like, whereas children have not quite finished evolving their sense of when-it-is-not-a-good-time-to-ask-a-question, and will ignore even such broad hints as a hissed "shut up!" or a smack on the leg. A curious child will ask the most astonishing question in what we certainly hope is innocence; and, furthermore, if he is not answered instantly, he will go on asking, and sometimes he will increase the volume of his speech each successive time, on the off chance that the adult at which the question was directed simply did not hear the first fifty-three times. Curious children (and this is very curious) almost always (and hopefully inadvertently) choose crowded, quiet places to ask their questions. Churches and classy restaurants are two most often picked for their questions:

"Mommy, why is that lady so fat?"

"How come there's no good food here?"

"Hey, didn't she have any money to buy nice clothes with?"

"Look at that nose like a banana! Isn't that nose like a banana, Daddy?"

...Et cetera. Probably it's the parents' fault in the first place, but even if it is, they more than make up for it with constant blushing. (And people talk about the blood of the martyrs!)

However, to return to the story: once upon a time there was a curious little girl named Sonoko, and once upon a time Sonoko was looking down from a window into the alley behind her house and saw a man dragging another man through it by his heels. Of course she couldn't keep quiet.

"Hey!" she said. "Is that a corpus?"

"Gah!" said the man, dropping the corpse. "No, little girl, it isn't, it's a dummy. Come and see."

Silly, curious Sonoko went to have a look, and of course the man chloroformed her. You mustn't blame him; it was in his Criminal's Handbook of Rules (Article II, Section 4a: all witnesses of a crime or evidence of a crime must be chloroformed ASAP and dragged off to the nearest available Coal-Cellar of Evil) and as he was a novice he always went exactly by the book.

When she woke up, she was in a dimly lit room with no furniture, but plenty of rats and coal dust. She correctly identified it as a Lair, and she correctly identified the sounds coming from three people in a corner as an Argument.

"It says it right here in the Book," the man who had chloroformed her was saying. (His name is Vodka, so we will call him that from now on.) "Cement shoes – or an iron coffin – and drop them in Tokyo Bay. Very tidy. Very clean."

"But she's just a baby," said the second person. She was one of the many Female Criminals you find hanging around with Male ones for apparently no reason. (You can pick your preferred type from a list and apply it to her. I thought she was rather nondescript.)

"At the very least a more sophisticated approach is called for," said the third person. "We could always demand a ransom first and then sink her in the bay."

"Gin!" said the nondescript female criminal, reproachfully.

"It says it right here," began Vodka again, but Sonoko interrupted him.

"Hey!" she said. "Are you harbored criminals?"

"Gah!" said Vodka, again. "No, we're not. We're – we're hatchet men. We make hatchets," he added.

"Nuh uh," said Sonoko. "Hatchet men are murderers and assassins and hit men and, and, butchers. That's what you are."

"Where'd she learn all that?" said the nondescript female, faintly.

"Thesaurus," said Sonoko primly.

"Well now," said Gin. "She's kind of cute, isn't she? I'd almost like to keep her."

"I won't," said Sonoko, decisively. "You're ugly and you stink. Cigarettes are bad for your health. I'm going to get lung cancer from all your second-hand smoke."

Gin retired with an air of insulted dignity. The nondescript criminal said (still faintly), "Would lovey-ducky like a sandwich, then?"

"I'm not a ducky," retorted Sonoko, "and I want caviar."

So the female cooked her a grilled-cheese sandwich. This was not out of malice aforethought; it was just that it was all they had besides sardines, and neither of the men wanted to leave because Vodka thought he had seen a policeman-shaped shadow sidling along the ground outside.

It was quite a nice sandwich, but Sonoko threw it on the floor.

"Caviaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar," she said, with rising inflection.

"Shut up. We don't have any caviar," said Gin.

Sonoko was horrified. "This," she said, "is a Den of Inquistiny." And then, as an idea struck her, she began experimentally to scream. "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee," said Sonoko.

Vodka said something rude and went out. When he came back an hour later with the caviar, Sonoko was still going "eeeeeee" with occasional breaks for breath, and the female and Gin were in a corner together looking harassed, and not in the least dignified. (This was mostly because of the bits of cotton balls sticking out of their ears.)

While Sonoko considered her caviar, they all three retreated to a window and peeked out at the police car parked across the street. The nondescript female muttered something about an iron coffin, and Gin smoked the wrong end of his cigarette. They had just gotten settled down to a good game of poker when a shuffling sound at the other end of the Lair announced that Sonoko was standing up.

"This floor is nasty," she said, in a threateningly plaintive voice. "I want a chair. And a table."

So Gin and Vodka spent an hour hammering bits of wood together into a chair (they turned the refrigerator on its side for a table), and the female kept watch at the window. She counted five more cars of policemen before the table and chair were finished. She counted another two while Gin and Vodka ripped their trench-coats up to make a tablecloth for the table and a cushion for the chair.

"I think we're in for it," she whispered to them when they rejoined her, and they all looked grimly at the policemen and fingered their firearms, and tried to ignore the muffled sniffs Sonoko kept giving in order to remind them who exactly was in charge.

They spent the next fifteen minutes watching more policemen arrive, making a doll for Sonoko out of a lump of coal, a handkerchief, and some of Gin's hair, whispering conspiratorially, making a bed for the doll out of Vodka's hat and one of the female criminal's sleeves, and watching more police cars drive into the adjacent parking-lot. There were more than ten cars by then, and most of them had disgorged two or more policemen, who milled about looking grave and noble. There were also a few dogs, which milled about looking hungry and noble.

The situation was undoubtedly serious when at last one of the most grave and noble policemen came forward bearing a megaphone, and began bawling gravely through it in the direction of the coal-chute.

"Put your hands in the air," he boomed, "and come out..."

"Oh, dear," said the female.

"In light of our circumstances – " began Gin.

"The Book," said Vodka tersely, "says that under no circumstances is surrender to be..."

There was a shuffling noise behind them, and all three froze. From the depths of the coal-cellar came Sonoko's shrill, imperious voice:

"I want – "

But what Sonoko wanted we may never know, because the three criminals chose that moment to defenestrate themselves. It was a very small window, and as it was in a basement it necessitated throwing one's self up rather than out, but they all three managed it as if they had been doing it for years. (Perhaps they had been, but we'll never know that, either.) They hurled themselves desperately into the waiting arms of the policemen, and were summarily handcuffed and led off to jail. The female criminal was in hysterics most of the time, but she was in them in a decidedly relieved way.

It took the policemen almost an hour to persuade Sonoko to come out of the coal-cellar, and when they finally did, she got passed around from car to car very quickly until a nanny came to take her back home. She was soundly spanked for associating with the masses, and also for being too inquisitive by half, and tearing her pinafore. She became a Reformed Character and lived happily ever after.

The End

A/N: Somehow Sonoko was the only fit for a story like this. (Sorry, Sonoko.) I imagine she was a very precocious child, but I'm not sure about the curiosity.

Thanks go to all my reviewers: randombutterflies, AVAAntares, Animefangirl2007, RanMouri82, katiesparks, Rosienessness, 30Kyu, Rani07, Lluvia-the-Wolfgirl, PunkDetectiveGeek6, s2lou, sweety-1914, Marq Fyori-Josdyas Auricor (the story about the shrunken Prince Shinichi is currently attempting to take form in my mind, by the way), kchan7853, and aPeurDeFISH1412. There's nothing cheerier than opening my inbox and seeing an email beginning "FF Review Alert" sitting there waiting for me to open it. :-)