Disclaimer:

"Meitantei Konan" ("Detective Conan") belongs to Gosho Aoyama. I only borrowed it to write a fanfic for fun and am not making any profit with it.

Thanks a lot to my beta-reader Astarael00. :)

First Silvera

(Gin the Great)

x.

Learning Like Rats

x.

He was the youngest member of the Organization - that means the youngest with a cocktail codename. He joined the Organization at the tender age of nine and moved up to a senior rank at the age of thirteen. Now, at the age of sixteen, he was one the seven highest members of the Organization. He had dined with the Boss, went out with Vermouth several times, and killed so many traitors that even Vodka, his greatest fan, had stopped counting.

He had to live up to his reputation, to find more traitors, spies and double agents, to kill this FBI-agent who all of them feared so much, to go out with Vermouth more often (until he didn't need her to climb the career ladder anymore), and, which was more important than anything else, to keep the Boss in a good mood.

The keeping-the-Boss-in-a-good-mood was the most difficult thing to do, especially when the above-mentioned Boss wanted him to risk his reputation by babysitting a four-year-old. What the hell did the Boss have in mind when he ordered him to spend a day with her to "show her around"? What the hell could a four-year-old do in the libraries, torture-rooms and laboratories of the Organization except mess around? She was certainly an intelligent kid, judging from her intelligent eyes, her manners and the few well-chosen sentences she had said until now. Perhaps they had managed to teach her some basic theories which she could repeat when she was asked...

At least she was easy to handle and pretty to look at, Gin thought. If his heart were not made of ice, he would have grown fond of the reddish glimmer of her soft, light brown hair, her serious blue eyes and her quiet manners. She surely had a balanced personality and was everything other than that damned sister of hers, the little annoying brat who was always whining about going out and looking at the pretty flowers and pretty trees and "pretty beeezzzzzz". He had to baby-sit that stupid girl when he was nine although it was hate at first sight when they met.

The little redhead was, in contrast to her sister, a real cutie. She had spent two hours sitting quietly in front of the computer, surfing the net for new scientific discoveries. Of course she didn't understand anything she read. But the fact that she could read it was impressive enough.

Gin closed his eyes and leant back into the chair, which was one of the iron chairs where usually the traitors would sit during a trial and was therefore not particularly comfortable. But he didn't get to rest in the past night and needed to catch up some sleep. The little redhead didn't look as if she could do much damage, anyway...

Feeling something resting heavily on his chest, he woke up with a start and found his body, wrists and ankles firmly tied to the chair by leather ropes which the Organization used to keep the traitors still during the "cross-examinations". The little redheaded witch was standing in front of him, cocking her head slightly to one side as if she wanted to see whether she needed more leather belts or not. When he opened his mouth to curse, her tiny hand shot forward at an incredible speed and silenced him with a piece of cloth. Much to his dismay, she took his revolver into her hands and beheld it with obvious interest.

"They told me that you can shoot very well," she said, playing with the revolver. But there was something disturbingly close to awareness in her slow, precise movements. Either she had already learnt to shoot - or she was an extremely talented killer who instinctively knew how to handle a weapon.

Both of her parents died; they separated her from her sister, to whom she had a very close relationship; they forced her to study all day and to do experiments instead of playing harmless childish games like ripping off the petals of pretty flowers and watching pretty trees and "pretty beeeezzz"... It dawned on Gin that he was in the hand of a psychopath, no, worse, in the hands of a child-psychopath, who had never learned to distinguish right from wrong, and who had never been taught that you were not allowed to hurt people.

"I would like to learn it," she said quietly to herself.

Well, maybe she was just a small child who loved to play around. He only needed to wait until she released him.

She walked to the desk, put the revolver gently down and yawned. Perhaps she was getting tired, he thought. Perhaps kids like her took a nap at this time.

"I read that there are scientists who made some very interesting experiments with rats," she said, changing the subject.

He raised his brow. That could become interesting, he thought. She was only a kid with an unstable mind. She was dangerous. But she didn't look as if she would shoot him just for fun. Moreover, she didn't look as if she were stupid enough to do that kind of thing. She was an intelligent kid with an unstable mind...

But then she said something which was more disturbing than anything he had expected to hear.

"I read that one rat could learn things from another rat by eating it," she said, beholding him with a greedy glint in her eyes. "They gave some rats the flesh of other rats to eat. And the rats suddenly could do things which they couldn't do before..."

Her eyes roamed about the room until they stopped at the "torture-box", which contained the sharp instruments which the Organization used during the "cross-examinations". The box was on the top of a shelf which was too high for her. But, as he had already feared, she didn't even bat an eyelid and immediately moved her chair from her desk to the shelf and carried a few big volumes of a scientific series to put them onto the chair.

She could fall, Gin thought. She could hit her head on the floor and stay unconscious. The Boss would send somebody to search for them when he noticed that they had not returned from their little trip. It would be embarrassing. It would ruin his reputation. But it was still better than being eaten alive by this psychopathic brat. Still, it was his own fault. He had cast all caution into the winds only because she looked like a harmless little kid. If he survived this day he would learn his lesson; and he would never be able forget the impression which her hair made on him. He should have known that she was a little witch.

Of course she didn't fall. She climbed off the chair just as gracefully as she had climbed onto it and carried the huge torture-box to the desk.

"I really don't want to do this," she said. "But you see, I really want to shoot as well as you. I don't want anybody to shoot me, or my nee-san. I want to be able to protect her and me when I grow up."

He tried to look gentle and understanding, which was difficult to do with the cloth in his mouth.

"I have to do it," she said decisively and carried the torture-box towards him. "I hope you don't mind."

Gin's body was covered with sweat when the girl crouched in front of him and chose a small, sharp knife. But to his relief, she hesitated, gazed hard him and then put the knife back into the box.

"I was just kidding," she grinned. And he had the feeling that he had never seen such a bright, lovely grin on another face before. She was not going to hurt him.

"You know, I've never liked knives and forks," she explained, and bit into his arm.

--

She didn't like how he tasted, she told him later, when she had removed the cloth from his mouth to "call a truce for the time-being". His arm was sweaty and didn't taste half as good as she had imagined, she said. By the way, his cursing was the reason why she couldn't treat him better. Of course she knew that the room was soundproof. But she had to put the cloth into his mouth because she didn't want him to scold her. He should stop shouting and listen to her instead. She wanted him to promise to her that he would satisfy three demands of hers if she released him. And afterwards they were not going to talk about this matter again.

After all, he didn't have a choice. Firstly, he had learned from his lesson that you could never know what her evil mind could come up with (which seemed particularly disturbing to him now that he knew that she knew that nobody could hear them in the soundproof room). Secondly, he would lose his reputation if the other members found out that he had been tied to the chair and scared to death by a four-year-old kid (he couldn't kill her no matter how much he wanted to do it, for she was one of the Boss' favourite prodigies). And thirdly... Well, her wishes were not that hard to meet.

Her first wish was for him to help her convince the Boss to let her visit her sister on her sister's next birthday. He knew that he would have to baby-sit her again if she got the permission to see the annoying brat. But that was still better than the alternative choice (the gossiping, Vermouth's mockery, Vodka's dumb questions etc.).

Her second wish was that he teach her how to shoot, which he gladly accepted, as she was a brilliant kid who wouldn't need much time to learn.

However, when she told him her third wish, he realized that it was almost impossible to fulfill.

And he only fulfilled it because she told him that she had wanted to do it since she saw him for the first time... and because he had a weak moment in which he would have promised anything to get free from that chair... and because she swore that she would never tell anybody about anything that happened in this room. She would never tell anybody that he had let her do that to him. Never!

He couldn't believe that he had really allowed her to give him braids.

x.

Author's Notes: Just an insane one-shot which suddenly entered FS' mind and which she decided to type down before she lost the plotbunny...