A/N: I made up this little one-shot while thinking how I would kick off a possible new Ran suspicion arc. Imagine the following would happen during the last two pages of a regular manga chapter. Enjoy.

"I can't believe a little kid saw through my trick. If it fooled the police, why didn't it fool you, you brat?!" The culprit asked Conan with a hoarse voice while being hand-cuffed by Takagi. "That's easy, Kakiro-san" the little detective responded "kids see the world from a much different perspective. You assumed just because you thought of a scheme that you would fall for yourself, it would also fool the everyone else. As you see, that assumption was false."

Kakiro just gruntled "Just my luck I guess" in a normal voice as he got into the patrol car that would take him to the station. Sato looked after the car for a second before kneeing down to Conan and his friends. "That was pretty good observation Conan-kun, even Takagi-kun missed it and he is a police detective." Beside her some nervous laughter could be heard from him "Ahh, but Sato-san, you missed it as well, didn't you?"

As the two police detectives/lovers continue their little banter, Ayumi spoke to Conan again. "But how could the man alter his voice so much without any technical stuff, Conan-kun?"

"He couldn't Ayumi-chan, that's why he wore a face-mask; he hid a portable voice scrambler in there. The police didn't search there, because they didn't expect the mask to be modified."

"And how did you notice?"

"I got suspicious when I learned that he faked his cold. Did you notice he dropped pretending to have a hoarse voice as he entered the car? He accidently did the same thing earlier when an officer startled him. That's when I got wary of the mask."

"A voice-changing face mask? That's so cool!" the little girl squealed in excitement.

"It's like something from Yaiba" the two other boys added, equally as excited.

"You really shouldn't be so excited about it. He used it to cover up a crime after all." Haibara scolded the children with her usual cold words and glare.

'And it's not like he is the first one to think of this…' Conan thought, remembering the last encounter between Amuro and Okiya. His thoughts were disrupted by a familar female voice calling his name. "Conan-kun!"

"Ah, Ran-neechan, how did you know I was here?"

"Sato-keiji called me to pick you up, since it is already so late. Come on, let's get going and have dinner."

"Alright Ran-neechan" Conan turned around to the other Detective Boys "Bye, see you guys tomorrow in school!"

"Goodbye" three of the children replied enthusiastically.

"Say, Conan-kun, what do you think about having curry tonight?"

"That sounds great!" The child responded rather absentmindedly, as his thoughts were circling around a certain distilled alcoholic beverage made from sugarcane byproducts again. Unbeknownst to him, his Neechan was also deep in thoughts of her own.

'A voice-changing face mask, huh…' Ran thought. As images of the events during her school's play came back to her mind, a familiar mischievious smile made it to Ran's face.

'I see.'

~27.02.2015