Just This Once

Disclaimer: This is fan fiction.

A few meters away, Edogawa Conan was laughing happily with his friends. He was in a group of people that he had only just met that day, and one watching thief could already tell from the small boy's twitching that something was about to go terribly wrong.

As they headed away from the place they were staying at, one of them excused them self, saying that they'd forgotten something. They'd be right back.

His eyes widened in horror as he remembered that someone was still back there. Using the stealth of the Phantom Thief he was, he tailed after them in time to catch them slipping around to the back entrance. His suspicions confirmed, he clamped a hand down on the person's shoulder but made sure that they didn't turn around.

"You don't want to do that," he said coolly.

The person tried to call his bluff, but he was the king of bluffers and knew a lie when it hit him in the face – especially ones as bad as the suspect was telling.

"You know, you really wouldn't want to," he said, trying to reinforce his argument. "Trust me."

"And what the hell do you know about it?"

Their voice was getting louder.

"You don't know what I've been through because of them!"

He sighed. "The kid out there's actually relaxing for once. I'm not about to let someone I actually found, caught in the act and confessed get away with something that'd ruin his fun. I'd say I'm sorry about this, but I'm really not."

Later, when Conan and the others came back, they found the person tied up by multi-coloured ropes in front of the house, asleep in a chair. When they rushed over to figure out what had happened, Conan found a plain white piece of card stuck into the person's pocket . His eyes widened.

Just this once, nobody dies. The thing I stole is in the other pocket. Aren't I clever, Tantei-kun?

The KID caricature was slightly different, the monocle being replaced by a magnifying glass.

On further inspection, the person's other pocket was found to contain a cassette tape, which, when played, gave an account of how they would have – if not timely interrupted – killed somebody.

Edogawa Conan, also known as Shinichi Kudo, often wondered about that particular heist.

. . . Maybe you are, Kid-san. And maybe you're not so bad.

Somewhere, Kuroba Kaito sneezed.

Spur of the moment idea inspired by two things - an episode of Doctor Who where the Doctor says "Nobody dies! Just this once, nobody dies!", and a scene in Relative Truth where Kaito says that his speciality is reading people, so why can't he tell when someone's going to be a killer?