"Listen up, brats. What you're doing right now is kidnapping. If you don't let me go, the police will throw all of you in prison. Your parents will give up on you and sell you straight to the police..."
Seeing how young these little kids were, the long-haired suspect started making up all sorts of nonsense.
Ayumi kicked him. "You can't fool us! We already know you're a bad guy!"
"This person is too bad. He can't be a hostage." Yimi crouched down, took some tools out of her schoolbag, and started doing arts and crafts.
"Whether someone's good or bad has nothing to do with being a hostage, does it?" Conan could only spare enough attention to make a sarcastic comment while watching them mess around.
"But if the hostage is a bad person, he won't help you." A few seconds later, the little cat finished her craft and tucked the token marked "Slash," the same kind Ran had experienced before, into the long-haired suspect's collar.
Conan froze at what she said. It was Ayumi, the genuine seven-year-old girl, who realized that Yimi did not understand the word and explained it to her.
"Yimi-chan, a hostage and the person threatening them aren't on the same side. You watched Beika Channel's My Love Story with Mr. Robber, right? A hostage is actually..."
Hearing the definition of the word for the first time, Yimi looked as though a loading circle had appeared above her head.
She got along wonderfully with Flandre. Flandre had taught her all about tying people up.
Mitsuhiko shook his head and brought them back to the important point. "That doesn't matter at all. How do we make him tell us where his accomplices are?"
Genta picked up the thread. "I've seen how police interrogate criminals in movies. First, we handcuff him to a chair."
Hearing these hateful brats loudly plot how to interrogate him right in front of his face, the long-haired man felt his dignity as an adult shatter to pieces. His face twisted hideously.
"If you're talking about how police interrogate people in movies, why don't we just hand him over to the police?" Conan offered helplessly.
"Good point. Let's carry him over there together." Genta proactively lifted the leg the man was most likely to struggle with.
And so, under the confused stares of pedestrians on the street, several little brats carried the trussed-up man toward the police box.
A public parade of humiliation.
The long-haired man suddenly felt that confessing everything might not actually be such a bad idea.
...
In front of the police box.
"Congratulations, Host. Achievement unlocked: [I Remembered Something Funny]. Reward: Portal Energy +5%."
The achievement alone was enough to tell exactly what had happened.
"You kids have been watching too many gangster movies, haven't you?" A police officer crouched down, unable to suppress his amusement as he looked at them.
From the smile on his face, it was impossible to tell whether he was laughing at the children's innocence or at the fact that a grown man had somehow been tied up and carried all the way here by a group of seven-year-old brats.
"It's true! Please believe us. You'll know as soon as you go check, won't you?"
The officer pointed at the stairwell beside the police box. "We do recognize this gentleman. His workplace is right next door to us."
The bound long-haired man angrily chimed in, "Exactly! I was walking down the street minding my own business when this brat suddenly ran into me and then pinned me down..."
Yimi kicked him hard.
"Don't kick people. If you keep doing that, I'll have to call your guardian and have them spank you." The officer in charge raised a hand helplessly.
Once he had finished laughing, he started doing his job. "How about this? We'll go upstairs and take a look. If there's nothing there, you'll all have to apologize properly to this gentleman."
"Untie me first!" Sweat poured off the long-haired man.
They really had been bold enough to put their counterfeiting den right next to a police box, believing the most dangerous place was also the safest place.
"You can't untie him. The bad guy will run away." Genta dutifully kept him under guard.
"All right, if you keep this up, it really will count as unlawful detention." Two officers cut the rope, then escorted the man up the neighboring stairwell. There was no possible way he could escape with them around.
The elementary school students followed them up.
"Excuse us."
Only one room in the dark corridor had its lights on. The officer politely pushed the door open, but no one seemed to be inside.
At this point, Conan simply ducked under the officer's arm and began searching carefully.
Haibara Ai picked something up from the table and looked it over. "Paint for artwork?"
After putting it back down, the observant girl noticed that while everyone else was inspecting the room, the long-haired man they had brought along kept frantically glancing toward an upper corner of the wall.
Was there something there?
Without even turning her head, Haibara could tell from the angle alone that the man was probably looking at a security camera.
"You kids, stop rummaging around! Who told you to follow us up here?" The officer in the back shouted, trying to rein in the little brats.
Then he watched the white-haired little luck goddess pull out a stack of uncut banknotes.
"..."
"This... You were actually..."
Bang!
An iron bar struck the officer in the back of the head. The intensely familiar sight made the back of Conan's own skull ache with phantom pain.
"Watch out!" Conan's instinctive warning came far too late.
"Damn it! Hands up and behind your head!" The other officer reacted quickly, drawing his gun and aiming it at the sunglasses-wearing man who had suddenly rushed in and attacked his partner.
The man in sunglasses had a gun of his own, but apparently he had been afraid that a gunshot would alert the police next door, so he had attacked with an iron bar instead.
With a gun already pointed at him, the sunglasses man could not possibly make the suspicious movement of reaching for his own weapon. Unfortunately, he had other accomplices behind him.
A woman dressed entirely in black walked in, pressing a gun against a young man who had been tied up. "I think you're the one who shouldn't move. We have a hostage."
The young man was an innocent university student they had kidnapped and forced to draw the counterfeit bills. The boy who had just missed Yimi and the others at Teitan Elementary School was his younger brother.
The black-clad woman sneered. "If you don't want the hostage hurt, put your gun down nice and slow, then kick it over to me."
The officer gritted his teeth, slowly lowered his gun, and kicked it toward her.
"Boss!" The long-haired man, who had been tormented by the little brats for quite a while, was overjoyed.
Yimi bent down and intercepted the gun sliding across the floor. Copying the woman, she raised it and pointed it at the long-haired man they had been tormenting. "If you don't want the hostage hurt, put your gun down nice and slow, then kick it over to me."
Woman: "?"
Long-haired man: "..."
While the woman's brain stalled at the absurdity, Conan, who had already calculated the formula for his next moves, did not even flip open the sight on his watch. He quickscoped the nearest sunglasses-wearing man with a tranquilizer dart, then cranked up the professor's high-tech sneakers and kicked a bucket of dye straight into the woman's gun hand.
Because she was still holding the university student hostage, Conan did not dare kick it at her head.
"A tranquilizer gun?" The woman immediately released the hostage and lunged for the pistol that had been knocked away.
But Haibara Ai got there first. She picked up the pistol, aimed beside the woman's face, and pulled the trigger without hesitation.
The bullet clipped through the woman's hair. Coming within a single step of death made her slowly collapse to the floor, all her earlier arrogance gone.
Conan stared at Haibara Ai in shock.
...
"I took a hostage, and then she didn't dare move."
By the time Inspector Megure arrived, Yimi puffed out her chest like little Nezha and proudly claimed credit. This incident still had not helped her complete her Main Quest, but at least the little cat had learned the true purpose of a hostage.
Inspector Megure pressed down on her head and scolded her. "That's something robbers do! Good people can't do things like that. And criminals like these don't care whether their accomplices live or die, understand?"
"Nn."
He turned to the handcuffed woman. "You're a repeat offender. This time it isn't just kidnapping—you even got your hands on firearms. You'll be spending quite a while in prison."
The woman who had just been frightened limp narrowed her dead-fish eyes. "I didn't fire a single shot this time. The one who shot just now was that little girl with coffee-brown hair."
"What did you say?" Inspector Megure bent down toward Haibara Ai and began scolding her too. "How could you do something that dangerous?!"
"B-Because... Waaah!"
Ai, who had maintained an aloof face all day, covered her face and burst into loud sobs.
Inspector Megure's expression changed instantly. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. That was Uncle's fault."
Yimi parted her lips slightly and looked upward in thought. She had also done something useful and been scolded, but nobody had comforted her.
She covered her face too. "Waaah..."
"Why are you crying too? All right, all right..."
...
Things had ended pretty well after all. When the woman pulled her gun, Conan had half expected her to suddenly drop dead on the spot.
After something like this, Inspector Megure had to call everyone's guardians, so the plan to go see the kittens fell through. Once everyone split up to go home, only Yimi, Conan, and Ai were left. Yimi was supposed to eat dinner at Ran's house today.
"Don't cry. Look, I'm not... crying anymore." The little cat held out a perfectly straight stick to the still-sobbing Ai, trying to comfort her.
Conan stared speechlessly at Yimi. The little cat-child who had been crying along with Ai had recovered her normal expression the instant they left the adults' sight.
You were completely faking it just now, weren't you?
It was not his imagination. Whether it was the robber from the first time they met or this case, the girl had never shown the slightest nervousness or fear from beginning to end.
This was not some lack of emotion. From what Conan had observed over the past few days, Yimi was perfectly capable of feeling both whenever she faced Kisaki Eri.
It was simply the fearlessness of someone who knew she had something to fall back on...
"The professor's house is right up ahead. You can get home by yourself from here, right?" Conan stopped and looked at the still-sniffling Ai. He intended to send her away first so he could talk to Yimi alone for a while.
Come to think of it, this new transfer student was pretty bold too. She had fired a gun without the slightest hesitation. And since when did the professor have a relative like her?
"Bye-bye." Yimi clawed her fingers in a little wave at Haibara.
With his back to the two girls, Conan did not notice that Haibara had already lowered her hands and was watching them expressionlessly.
Just thinking about what Haibara Ai was about to do made her want to laugh.
Her lips parted slightly.
But the boy in front of her stopped after taking a single step.
Without looking back, Conan spoke directly. "Haibara-san. APTX4869—that's the name of the drug you took, isn't it?"
Haibara Ai: "?"
At that instant, Conan had suddenly remembered Yimi saying earlier that Haibara looked like someone's mother. Combined with all the odd things about her behavior and the sheer implausibility of her living at the professor's house, he decided to test her.