"James and Sebastian went into the scene of crime.

"James strutted around the scene. 'Unlike the previous one there is no evidence left behind here, friend. It seems I was right and the thief had deliberately left those clues behind.'"

"Sebastian was surprised and remarked on James's intelligence before asking, 'Then what do you suppose we do? What do you think is the thief's motive?'"

"'Of course, the motive is to provoke us and establish themselves in the criminal world. It all makes sense does it not?'"

"Sebastian and Holmes walked out of the crime scene and met up with Detective Lestray. 'Mr. Holmes, what of the connection of these cases?'"

"'Patience, Lestray, patience. I'm currently thinking on how we are to connect these cases. Meantime, fetch me all the witnesses.' said Holmes, storming back to home with Sebastian."

Flip.

---

Raphael strapped on his nitrile gloves and walked past the armor which was planted into the ground. 

The entire room had reeked from a foul stench of sweat and tears of the woman, mixed with the faint musky, gag-inducing stench of the dead body which had begun showing signs of decomposition.

'I can see why he had a reaction like that...' He remarked after seeing the head, the maggots squirming on it and the mosquitos feasting on it, along with the rest of the body. 

However, he wasn't repelled by it like Yoru was, instead he proceeded to calmly move one with the investigation.

First, he took a look around the entire room. 

'This carpet... isn't attached or glued onto the ground.' He bent down at the far left corner of the room, away from the body and head, and picked up the carpet, rubbing his fingers on it. 'This is too thin and smooth. It'd definitely move or be disheveled if a scene of violence took place... This gives in the first theory, or rather, the first fact for the situation.'

'This murder didn't take place here. He was killed elsewhere and brought here.' He got back up and drew near the window directly opposite of the door. As he did so, a clear breeze swept by him as he took in the fresh air outside. 

'Could it be that the murderer was the lady's son? The information Yoru had sent said, which Xianye had sent to him, said that the old woman's son was supposed to be home. She couldn't find him, but she did find this... corpse of a dead man.' He quickly cop a feel of the window railings to check if there were any signs of escape through the window, as due to the force, the railings would most-likely be bent. 

However, they weren't. 

He turned and made his way back towards the main focus, the body and head. 

He leaned down once more and began investigating. Starting from the top of the headless body. 

'The bones... look twisted, there's... some bruising and haemorrhaging. There's...' He carefully leaned sideways and studied from the top, horizontally. 'There's... signs of spiral fractures...?' 

'Impulse.' He blinked rapidly, his peridot-green eyes changed colors to pitch-black. 

'I was indeed correct. There's spiral and torsion fractures. There's jagged striations around too... Aside from that, there nothing wrong with the rest of the body.' 

He quickly moved towards the head and examined it with his Impulse.

'The... C1 and C2 of the vertebrae... don't line up...? The joints are off. They aren't in their natural alignment...' He quickly got up, his hand resting under his chin in such a manner that the gloves do not touch him or his clothes at all.

'It looks like the head was twisted then sawed off... It can't be a knife, it's definitely something with a more... coarser sharpness. Whoever this is, they aren't a normal human. Maybe a rogue Impulse user...'

Raphael got back up and walked up to the lady clamped up. 

"Ma'am." He leaned down and patted the woman's who had been blankly staring at the wall in front, her eyes were reddened and dry now. "I'll need to know about you son. You said that he was supposed to be here, yes?"

"Yes." She replied blankly. 

"Would you perhaps have his UII? Or perhaps anything related to him which can help us track where he is? He might help in our investigation." He questioned while elaborating. 

Instead of a reply like before however, the lady said coldly, "Are you... saying that my son might be- "

"I'm only considering it." Raphael replied in kind, got up and added. "Please, ma'am. It'd be very helpful for us." 

The woman stared at him with a blank and dazed expression. Her jaw hung low however no words came out from it. 

After a minute of tense silence she got up and walked towards her right, entering a room. 

Raphael didn't follow her, he only stood outside.

As she came out, she finally formed a few syllables and said, handing her son's UII with trembling hands and ragged breathing, "Here... He always had a habit of forgetting things... So he always stored copies of things for us..." 

Raphael smiled professionally and thanked her before going back to the truck. 

There, he pulled out two pairs of metal bars with fabric stuck between each pair.

He went back inside and stretched the metal bars, leaving him with two medical stretchers. He loaded the body on one and the head on another and carried each of them outside one after another, carefully. 

He loaded them into the pickup truck and quickly left for the Squad 8 Headquarters. As he did so, he realized that his shadows had grown short and the sun was especially bright with the air feeling even more hotter.

He realized that not only had he missed his lunch, it was possible that Xianye, Haori, Yoru and Ryo might've missed it too!

---

Vroom! Xianye drove the motorcycle past the grey poppies in the garden, then white chrysanthemums, then the drying snowdrops before stopping and aligning his bike within the Area of Perimeters. 

Whir!

As soon as he reached the garage, he parked his bike where it had been parked previously and moved into the hall. 

From there, he quickly made his way towards the second floor, then the investigations room.

His steps were strangely tense and heavy. 

Whir!

He tapped on his UII and went past the two Artifact rooms before reaching the investigations room.

There, he rushed towards his chair and sat down, not noticing the absence of Ryo, Haori or Yoru.

'I knew it. Those clues left behind were deliberate.'

'Maybe it means that the missing items case which have these clues left behind are the only ones related to this "person.'''

'Since the missing items case I just investigated was most certainly not related to them as I'd found the artifact within an hour or so, along with the thief, placing him behind bars at Iron's Prison!'