We're above the system. Over it. Beyond it. We're "them." We're "they." We are the Men in Black.

It was a tepid summer night when Ai Haibara and Conan Edogawa trudged down the street. They had been on the road with the other three Detective Boys, but now the children were home and the two remaining kids were on their way to Professor Agasa's house.

Well, they were actually no kids, but young adults that had been shrunken by a mysterious drug.

Suddenly they noticed something strange. They saw two familiar cars parking a little further away.

"Hey. These are the cars of James-san and Akai-san, aren't they?" Ai asked whispering.

Conan nodded to that. "That means the FBI is here… but why?"

He spun around and locked eyes with his fellow shrunken adult. Seeing the FBI here, in a very quiet part of the otherwise bustling city of Tokyo, could mean only one thing.

They were hunting something. And this something was not your average everyday criminal.

No, the FBI was after a very dangerous criminal syndicate.

Even though Ai was shaking – she was a traitor in the criminals' eyes after all – she quickly followed her friend and comrade towards the only ware house there. They could see four dark figures trying to open the door and sneaked closer. And Conan recognised the figures immediately. They were the FBI!

"Hey! Shuichi-San!" he called out, silently enough so only the FBI would hear them. The four agents spun around with their weapons drawn, but relaxed notably when they saw the two familiar heads of the children.

"Goddammit! Conan! What are you doing here?" Shuu hissed.

"We're only passing here by pure chance" the shrunken detective said sheepishly.

"Keep it that way" Shuu grumbled and turned back to picking the lock, "Get out of here, it's too dangerous for children!"

"It's about the Black Organisation, isn't it?" Ai whispered tense. Shuichi said nothing then, but the other three – Jodie Starling, James Black and Andre Camel – nodded once.

Conan smirked: "So they are…"

"Oh no, Cool Kid" the bespectacled FBI scolded, "You will not come with us. You stay here any wait, do you understand?"

-0-

Of course, Conan did not stay as he was told. When the four agents entered the dark warehouse, the two shrunken adults followed not too far behind.

Now the six peeked around the corners of some crates. And they found what they were looking for.

A little in front of them were two men clothed in black and a rather small, thin man. The man looked with panic in his eyes from the burly sunglasses-wearing man to the taller one with long silvery blonde hair and scary green eyes.

They seemed to negotiate with the scrawny looking man – meaning, they threatened him.

"Do we act now?" Jodie asked, barely audible.

"Not yet" Shuu hissed back, "we wait until they pull their weapons"

This happened sooner than they thought, actually.

"You should know that it can be really dangerous to be all alone here at this time" Gin told the shivering man with an icy smirk.

Vodka added: "Escaping from us was one of the dumbest things you'd ever done in your live, Ned" He crossed his beefy arms in front of his equally beefy chest, making Conan wonder how his suit could withstand this amount of stress. "Hey Aniki, could you remind our friend what he deserved to face us?"

Gin smirked again and shifted the cigarette in his lips a little. "Let's see…" he begun darkly. Then the tall BO agent straightened up and began to recapitulate the scrawny men's deeds. "Possession and dealing of unregistered illegal Reverberating Carbonizers, tried heavy theft of the planet's atmosphere, resistance against enforcement agency…" The hidden FBI blinked in confusion, "Jailbreak from the Alpha Centaury high security prison and ultimately theft of a class 6 interstellar travelling vehicle" The tall man paused, moved his hands towards the pockets of his trench coat and sneered: "You are in for one long detention"

The FBI agents looked dumbfounded to the shrunken Detective. But Conan stared just as confused. Finally he mumbled: "Must've been some kind of code…"

"Oh yeah" Akai grumbled, "Must've been a code… sure, what else?"

In the next moment he saw something flashing in Gin and Vodka's hands, cursed silently under his breath and signalled the others to start their mission. Guns drawn the four FBIs jumped from behind the crates and shouted: "FBI! Drop your weapons and hands over your heads!"

The two black men were surprised by this sudden event and lowered their weapons for a tiny second.

And the scrawny man they called 'Ned' used this. With an inhuman shriek he shouted: "I will not go back into that Hellhole of a prison! Never!" And suddenly there was a loud tearing and cracking sound, as if bones and skin tore. Gin and Vodka spun back and aimed their weapons at the scrawny man, but a huge insectoid claw hit first Vodka, then his partner and threw them like puppets through the whole warehouse were they crushed into some crates. The FBI's eyes and the children stared in horror when the small, unremarkable man was suddenly transformed into a fifty feet long centipede-like monster. The beast roared at them, smashed Camel and James away and broke through the wall, leaving several really disturbed persons behind.

"What the…" Akai begun. Suddenly there was a cough and he turned around, facing a very angry Gin.

"Congratulations, Shuichi Akai" he snarled, "You just allowed a criminal, extraterrestrial Bug to escape. Now we have to bring him back before it manages to escape into the city" Hissing Gin desisted from the confused Shuichi and growled: "Vodka! Tell Vermouth that we need a containment team on standby"

Vodka nodded as he fought himself out of the destroyed crate and flipped open his mobile phone. Gin stalked over to his – blessedly – undamaged Porsche and heard Vodka say: "Vermouth. Get Chianti and Korn. Our target managed to escape… yes, prepare them for one hell of neuralyzing"

Shuu, Jodie, James, Conan and Andre blinked confused at the situation playing out in front of them, then back to each other, then back to the men in black.

By now Gin had opened the trunk of his car and was getting something from there. Looking up he discovered Ai standing there and called: "Hey Sherry! Care to give us a hand here?"

Conan whirled around, afraid that Gin found her after all, but Ai was… cool. She simply shrugged and said: "Sure" She then walked over to Gin and Vodka.

The FBI and Conan followed after a while of confusion. But as soon as they reached the trunk of Gin's Porsche, their breaths stuttered. There were futuristic looking, strongly polished chrome firearms of various sizes in there. Gin just grabbed a shotgun-like chrome weapon and handed it down to the shrunken Ex-BO-Agent (even though Conan was not sure whether Ai was really an Ex-BO anymore).

Ai grumbled: "Only a Series 4 De-Atomizer? Oh Gin! Why don't I get one of the Tri Barrel Plasma Guns?"

"The Jackhammer?" Gin questioned. Without wavering he explained: "Right now the De-Atomizer is more than enough for your small body, Sherry"

Just as those words left his lips Vodka and he slung huge chrome guns with three barrels and the size of Conan over their shoulders and closed the trunk of the Porsche. The three were already moving towards the hole left by the huge bug when Akai stopped them.

"What do you think you're doing, Koibito-san?" He had his gun out and trained at Gin's head when he growled: "I want an explanation right now"

Gin said nothing, he simply glared. It was Vodka who said: "Later. First we need to contain Neddy out there"

"If you do not want to support us, then stay out of our way" Sherry added.

Conan looked at Ai in utter disbelieve. When did she begun to work with the BO again? Did she ever stop anyways?"

"There's no way I'm letting you out of my sight, Koibito-san" Akai finally hissed.

Gin sighed and said: "Well, since we're going to neuralyze you lot later anyways… There's no need to keep this a secret now…" He reached into one of the inner pockets of his trench coat and produced… a toy gun? It was barely as long as his palm, had a small handle, over-sized trigger and a needle-like tip. "Noisy Cricket" he said and shoved it into Shuichi's hand, "Works better than your normal guns – just do not aim at any of us, do you understand?"

Shuu glared first in humour and disbelieve, then in utter annoyance at the teeny-tiny gun, muttering: "Hopefully I won't break it…"

-0-

It was rather silent when Ran and Sonoko strolled down the boulevard. They had been shopping and drinking tea and now they were on their way back home.

However, this quiet evening would soon end.

Suddenly they heard a strange, unearthly screech. Both girls and most of the bystanders stopped and turned – just in time to see a gigantic, fifty feet centipede running towards them. It had large claws with sprawling, sharp talons and even sharper teeth in massive maws. The centipede screeched again as it hopped over the crowd and disappeared around a corner.

But only a few paces behind it were some other persons running. Four of them were FBI, two were men in black and two children. One of the kids – Ai Haibara – stopped, took aim at the retreating centipede with a chrome-glistering weapon and shot a few rounds of plasma orbs at the beast. Then she was back to running, ignoring the baffled stares of the people around while she and the others ran after the beast.

"Was that… that Ai-chan?" Sonoko asked bewildered.

"Yes… yes she was… and she had a gun…"

The crowd stood there in silent bewilderment, not able to compute the situation. Suddenly a blue Dodge Viper stopped in front of them and two persons wearing black exited the car. A woman with short dyed blonde hair and a butterfly tattoo around her eye waved them over and said: "Hey you people. Could you please all look here?"

Then there was a bright red flash.

-0-

Gin, Vodka and Sherry had managed to drive Ned the Bug into the now deserted city park. Here they finally cornered the massive alien centipede at the banks of a large lake. Gin and Vodka pointed their 'Jackhammers' at the beast and the tall BO agent growled: "Now turn around Ned, nice slow and raise all of your limbs and mandibles"

Indeed the huge centipede turned around, only then it did something unexpected: it leashed out with its hindquarters, hitting the tall BO agents and sent them flying. It missed Sherry since her small body saved her from being hit. She immediately reacted and opened fire with the so-called De-Atomizer.

Angrily roaring the centipede dove after her, only then Shuichi was already on it. With the toy-gun Noisy Cricket he aimed at the beast and pulled the trigger.

Nobody would have expected what happened next.

A huge orb of energy shot from the weapon with a distinctive chirping sound, hit the centipede, blasted a huge hole through the critters' body and sent it into the lake. Shuu on the other hand was hit back by the massive rebound and hurled several yards through the air where he ended on a tree.

"Shuu!" Jodie yelled appalled while the others had to pick up their jaws first. Who would have thought that such a small weapon was capable of such strength?

Then there was a slosh of water when Ned suddenly resurfaced and attacked again, obviously injured and pissed.

Only it did not come very far when two blue orbs of plasma hit it and turned it into a puddle of green goo, showering everything with quite an amount of organic residue.

Gin and Vodka stood there with their Tri Barrel Plasma Guns in firing position. White smoke was spiralling up from the barrels.

Conan – still shocked – took off his now soiled glasses and looked to the two BO agents.

"Ach Aniki…" Vodka begun, "Now you need to file in reports because you vaporized the alien again"

"Don't remind me, Vodka" Gin snapped. In the same move he took out his mobile phone, activated it and said: "Vermouth. Send a cleanup team to my location" With that said, he put the device back into his pockets.

Shuichi somehow managed to come back to his feet. Limping he went over to Gin and returned the Noisy Cricket back to him with a glare of anger.

"You should have warned me about the recoil" he growled while Bourbon and Kir appeared on the scene, wearing black suits with white protective garments above and sunglasses. They started to remove the remains of the killed – vaporized – alien bug.

"Okay, Koibito-san" Shuu hissed, "And now you owe us an explanation"

"Should we neuralyze them now, Aniki?" Vodka asked.

Gin, however, shook his head and smirked: "Not now. Let them know the truth. We can neuralyze them later on"

Sherry – she too was bathed in green goo, only she did not mind – went over to her partners, crossed her arms and began to tell: "The Black Organization is a top secret government organization meant to police and monitor alien activity on Earth – this is the Japanese branch of an originally American organization" she said matter-of-factly. "We work in private to keep the human population from panicking"

"…Alien… activity…" Conan echoed in disbelief.

"Aliens do exist and they are here because Earth is a neutral zone" Vodka said. "And we chose to disguise us as a Crime Syndicate to warn off possible investigators"

"Wait…" Akai stuttered, "…so you are actually… the Good Guys?"

"Good, Bad, whatever" Gin growled, "We are only interested in keeping earth safe"

"But… why did you kill Akemi then? When she was one of you?"

"Gin did not kill Akemi!" Ai threw in, "She had been killed by a Klythonian spy while on duty, who then disguised as her. Gin and Vodka killed the Klythonian, not Akemi"

"And what about me?" Conan shouted now, "Why were I and Shiho shrunken and then hunted by you guys?"

"Easy, Mr Kudo" Gin said, crossing his arms, "To keep our disguise as a Crime Syndicate we specifically chose you to hunt us down and keep our disguise in this way" He looked down to his now shrunken partner. "As for Sherry – she volunteered to keep an eye on you, to spur you on your 'quest' to stop us. Also she was transferred to guard the Arquilian scientist Hiroshi Agasa"

"Agasa… is an alien?"

"Correct. Or how was he supposed to create such technique as you use if not with Alien Knowledge?"

Now Conan's head was swimming, but he was surely not the only one who could not really compute this situation.

"Oh, by the way…" Gin began anew and waved Kir over to him. "Kir's our liaison officer with the CIA" Glaring at Akai he added: "You, Rye, were supposed to link us up with the FBI… but you were not suited. You screwed up big time, if I may say that"

Gin sighed again and reached into a pocket of his trench coat, pulling out a pair of sunglasses and put them on. Sherry did so, too.

"But this does not matter anyways" Gin said and produced a strange cylindrical object, "Because you won't remember anything. This…" he pointed at the thing, "…is a standard electro bio-mechanical neural transmitting zero synapse repositioner, also known as Neuralyzer. Now take a good look at this red light here…"

And then there was another flash of red.

Gin took off his sunglasses again, put his hands into his pockets and explained to the now highly confused and blankly staring crowd: "We are no organization that has to do with alien activity, there are no aliens on earth and you did neither see chrome alien weapons nor a giant centipede. We are a Crime Syndicate and had a little shootout. If not for that gas explosion you would have cornered us" With that said, Gin and Vodka disappeared into the dark of the night.

-0-

Some days later the elementary class around Conan and Ai heard something about the moon from their teacher. After class the Detective Boys collected around Conan's desk.

"If there's life out there?" Ayumi finally asked.

"Yeah! Wouldn't it be cool when we would be visited by them?" Mitsuhiko added.

"But wouldn't they try to invade us?" Genta asked unsure, "They did it in that one Kamen-Yaiba episode"

"Dummies" Conan sighed out, "Of course there's life out there, would be really strange if we were the only ones. But even if they should be able to travel through space, what would they want to conquer our planet for? Why would they want to visit us?" He leaned back and continued: "I don't think that we ever meet an alien face to face"

Ai – who was sitting a little bit aside – smiled at that. "And we are here to keep you believing in this" she thought to herself. Her gaze drifted outside where a black Porsche 356A drove past the school.