Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha. In fact, I don't own anything. So no one can sue me. Mwaha.

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"So do I get her lingerie or her tampons?"

Inuyasha took his time glaring at Miroku. He had known it was a bad idea to bring him along. "You can take the bathroom. I'd be more afraid of you in the room where Kagome sleeps."

"You just want it to yourself," Miroku pouted.

"You would need it more than I do."

Miroku looked affronted. "What, do you think flirting with women is as far as I go?"

"No, you also grope," Inuyasha said, leading Miroku up the stairs. He had decided, after looking at a diagram of the house, that this portion of the upstairs was Kagome's home. There was another section dedicated to what must have been her little brother, Sota, and a smaller portion for any guests. There was a balcony, but it could only be reached through a hallway in between Kagome and the guest's bathrooms. Mrs. Higurashi's wing was downstairs to the right of the entryway, and the rest of the usual household rooms were spread about the downstairs.

"You underestimate me," Miroku said as they reached the bathroom.

"Just process," Inuyasha said as he proceeded further down the hallway to Kagome's bedroom.

The room was just as he had left it, he was pleased to note. Sometimes burglars had bad habits of stealing valuable evidence in abandoned mansions, especially if there was police tape around it. This meant that it was a crime scene and no one was allowed inside; therefore, no one could catch them in the act.

Inuyasha bent down and opened the briefcase he had brought with him, containing the supply of items required for a basic crime scene investigation. He paused here, thinking back through the steps of processing a crime scene. He was going to have to improvise, seeing as there were no witnesses or bodies and photos and had already been taken. Everything was already done, but he was lacking confidence in Naraku's team's ability to properly perform the final step. All he had to do here was reprocess everything, which sounded easier than it actually was.

Inuyasha's ring tone began playing. Slightly annoyed that he was being interrupted before he had even gotten started, Inuyasha reached into his pocket and flipped open his phone, growling at the name that appeared on the caller ID.

"You couldn't walk over one room?"

"I'm far too lazy for that kind of strenuous work," Miroku said. "I just wanted to keep the phone on speaker so that if one of us found something, we wouldn't have to stop the other's investigation to share the news."

"Clever," Inuyasha said sardonically, "but I doubt two minutes would be much difference."

"It will be if we have to process a secondary crime scene."

Inuyasha groaned. He had forgotten about that. "I'm surprised you even know what a secondary crime scene is. I didn't know you paid attention in college."

"As it turned out, the prettiest girl in my college was also the smartest. I had to start paying attention in class to have a decent conversation with her."

"What kind of secondary crime scene are you thinking? The house somewhere?" Inuyasha pulled out the fingerprint powder from his briefcase and a brush, placed his cell phone on speaker, and began to process the room. If they were going to process a secondary crime scene—that is, any other place worthy of investigation, such as the house, school, and work places—they were going to be pulling more than a double.

"You tell me. It's your theory that Arisa wasn't killed in the bathroom."

"I doubt it," Inuyasha said. "Arisa has her own wing downstairs. Why would she need to use Kagome's bathroom? I read Hachi's report; there was no record of any plumbing problems. It's too odd that she would be in Kagome's bathroom when she has her own."

"Could she have been starting a shower in her own bathroom and was shot, then moved up to Kagome's?"

"Why move Arisa to Kagome's bathroom if she was murdered in her own?"

"Who's to say? Oh, I found the tampons."

"Just what is it you're processing?" Inuyasha said skeptically. Before Miroku could answer, however, his phone beeped at him. "Hey, Miroku, hold on. I've got another call."

"Who is it?"

Inuyasha set down what he was doing and walked over to the bed, where he had placed his phone. He cursed and switched lines without answering Miroku. "What the hell do you want?"

"To know what has become of my little brother."

"Half-brother."

"Of course."

"I'm at the Higurashi house."

"What could you possibly be doing there?"

"Processing."

Sesshomaru was silent over the phone for a moment as Miroku walked through the door, amusement and curiosity mixed into one expression. "CSI have already been there. You have better things to do with your time than try and outdo them at their profession. Your feud with Naraku could be costing you a killer."

"I read their report," Inuyasha said, now grateful that, aside from Kikyo, he had no life. Miroku had not yet had time to read the CSI report because he had been otherwise occupied, and this left Inuyasha one step ahead. "No prints that weren't from the Higurashi's or friends I've already identified. No bloodstains anywhere but the obvious. And they didn't bother to process the rest of the house, mansion or not. With a rich family like this, it was probably murder from robbery. The lack of evidence they found suggests someone much more focused on not being caught in murder."

"And you find it impossible that someone killed the Higurashis specifically for that purpose—to have them dead?"

"No," Inuyasha said. "And from the people I've interviewed, I'd find it quite likely. But I do think Naraku is an incompetent bastard, and I still stand by the fact that he needs to get fired for letting Kagome go to Touran. To not realize that a living girl was still alive and send her to a coroner is strong evidence that he obviously isn't fit for—"

"Inuyasha." Inuyasha was silenced. "Do what you wish. But if you're doing CSI work on FBI time, you're not getting paid for it."

If only Sesshomaru could have seen Inuyasha's face. "Fine."

Inuyasha didn't touch his phone, letting it automatically switch back to Miroku's cell phone when Sesshomaru hung up.

"You're in a good mood," Miroku commented.

"How could you tell?" Inuyasha snapped bitterly. "I'm doing work for a case and he refuses to pay me for it! Damned fluffball."

"Just think of all the people you're helping," Miroku suggested with a wry smile, knowing this would console Inuyasha none.

"They should learn to help themselves and not get shot," Inuyasha said. He returned to his fingerprint powder and then looked over at Miroku. "What the hell are you still doing here? Go back to the bathroom!"

Inuyasha went over every inch of Kagome's room, determined to find some kind of foreign fingerprint there; he'd even settle for a partial. The more he went over Kagome's room with the black powder, however, the more he began to realize what had really gone on the night Arisa Higurashi was murdered.

"Do you think," Miroku's voice came over Inuyasha's cell phone, "that there's any chance of suicide? Kagome kills Arisa, brings her up to her bathroom, then tries to kill herself?"

"No," Inuyasha said, now confident of this fact. It was definitely homicide. "You should see this room, Miroku. It was nice and neat before, and now it's black. But I haven't gotten a single print in this entire room. It's a girl's bedroom, her sanctuary, and she didn't touch anything in it? Even her hairbrush is clean, though it's obviously been used."

"Cleanup," Miroku said in understanding.

"I don't know what to do with this room. I can check for blood, but I doubt anything's going to be there. Anything worthy of note would have been found by CSI, however incompetent they are. They surely couldn't miss another blood spatter or anything of the sort. How's the bathroom coming?"

"Prints galore. I'll have Hachi send them out so it doesn't go by Naraku. These are all probably Kagome's, though, her friends, her brother, her mother. Nothing out of the ordinary."

"Just because it's probable doesn't mean that's how it is," Inuyasha said. "It was probable that I'd find some prints in here, but look at how that turned out."

"Well, since we're both doubting any blood worth notice is there, check for hair fibers."

Inuyasha groaned. "Now I know why I never became a CSI."

"Why's that?"

"Too much precision in this line of work. I want to throw someone in prison after figuring out that two plus two equals four. CSI have to get the clues. I want to piece them together."

"And you do. As I recall, Sesshomaru said that you're not getting paid for this."

"How the hell do you expect me to piece clues together that haven't been gathered?"

"Well, if there are no clues to be gathered—"

"Don't even joke," Inuyasha said. "There's always a clue."

There was silence on the other line, something that surprised Inuyasha.

"Miroku? You okay?"

"I'm fine. Inuyasha, I've printed and sprayed luminol all over this place, but nothing seems unusual. No shoe prints either, I already looked. Hair is all over the place; I took a few that might useful, but this is a bathroom after all. I'm starting to think there really is nothing else here except the mess Kagome left behind."

"The mess," Inuyasha said, taking that in. "That further helps the case that this room was cleaned up. The entertainment room down the hall? That was messy too. This room alone is clean, spotless. I'm thinking there was a struggle here, and the killer cleaned up afterwards to try and remove evidence of their presence."

"But they forgot something."

"What?"

"They left the bodies."

Inuyasha nodded. "I'll spray this room, see what else comes up. You should go ahead and start on the other room. The movie that was paused indicates she was in there shortly preceding her death. We need to figure out how she got back to her bedroom."

"Done."

Inuyasha took out the luminol spray and, like the fingerprint powder, began to engulf the room in it. He had completed this task twenty minutes later, but only the spot where Kagome had been found glowed blue. Highly annoyed now, Inuyasha returned the luminol to its rightful place in his briefcase and collapsed on Kagome's bed. He was not looking forward to getting on his knees and searching the carpet for microscopic hair slices that were likely covering the place. A girl did live here after all.

Since he was already lying there, Inuyasha began with her bed. Most of the hair he located on the pillow alone, but there were also some down the bed where Kagome might have collapsed from exhaustion, just as Inuyasha had. Resigning himself to the inevitable, Inuyasha crawled off the bed and searched for anything out of the ordinary, taking several of his handy evidence bags around with him. He found more hairs, though tried to be selective about which were probably Kagome's and which might have been someone else's. The most interesting thing he found, which admittedly was not very interesting at all, was a microscopic portion of what looked to be a latex glove near Kagome's desk. Comparing them to the pair he had on, they seemed to be the same substance. This was clearly another sign that Naraku and his team were incompetent, leaving traces of their presence behind. In Inuyasha's opinion, which had formed at the very moment he came to this conclusion, CSI should be like ghosts, never leaving evidence they were there.

It was while Inuyasha was down on his knees that he noticed a discrepancy. The mattress of Kagome's bed was raised slightly in one spot. It was curious, like something had been stuffed underneath it.

His heart raced as he stood up and lifted the mattress, expecting the gun, the cleaning supplies used to clean the room, anything to shove in Naraku's face. Instead he came upon a leather-bound book, the word Journal typed across the cover. Inuyasha gave an aggravated sigh as he lifted up the diary and set the mattress back down.

"I've got a diary," Inuyasha said to his phone.

"That's really good," Miroku said. "Anything of interest?"

"I don't know! I don't want to read some teenage girl's diary."

"She's not a teenager…"

"Close enough. She could be my daughter."

"Stop exaggerating. She's only a few years younger than you."

"Yeah, well she looks thirteen. Probably writes thirteen-year-old stuff in her diary too."

"Since when have you taken to insulting the victims?"

"Since I had to process this room so damn thoroughly."

"Find anything else?"

"Piece of latex, by the looks of it. Naraku left it when doing his crappy excuse of processing."

"Look through the diary. I'm serious, Inuyasha, and I know what face you're giving me right now. There may be something useful in it."

Inuyasha growled at the phone and sat down on Kagome's bed, flipping the diary open to a random entry. He hated Miroku. He really did.

December 16

Nothing unusual really happened today. Then again, nothing unusual ever happens to me. I really wish it would. I beat Onigumo in debate again. He never wins against me. He really is a good debater, though; he'd be an amazing prosecutor. I ate lunch with Sango today, and then everyone went to Buyo's after classes. Ayame tagged along again and got mad at me. I don't know why she doesn't like me so much. I mean, I know she's in love with Koga—which is really the cutest thing ever—but I have no interest in Koga. I'd sooner date Hojo than Koga, but of course I'd never tell anyone that! Well, I'd tell Sango, but that's all. I still wouldn't even date Hojo. He's very nice and sweet and all, but he's just… not what I'm looking for, you know? I can't really see myself with a gentleman. It's nice that he holds open doors and stuff, but I get kind of flustered when that happens. It's so unusual nowadays that it's nice, but very awkward. At least I'm not as bad as Sango, though. When she dated Kuranoske, she used to punch him whenever he acted gentlemanly around her! She's all for the "I can do everything myself" attitude. She's always been that way, kind of forceful and a feminist. I guess that's why we get along so well! I'm not quite to the extremes that she is, but we've got the same things going on. At least we don't get into many—

Why didn't Miroku just lock him up with Naraku? At least Naraku was a man. Inuyasha was listening to the random thoughts of a twenty-four-year-old that was writing like she was still a teenager. Inuyasha flipped to the last entry, dated the day before Kagome's hospitalization, and skimmed a few lines about beating Onigumo again before shutting the journal and placing it in an evidence bag. Maybe when he was bored to tears he would look through it again. Until that time, he had better things to do—preferably things that would get him paid.

Inuyasha closed his briefcase, grabbed his cell phone, and left Kagome's room, leaving the real CSI to clean up his mess when they returned. He walked into the entertainment room, but was forced to stop only a step inside. Miroku had already blackened the place with fingerprint powder.

"Find enough prints?"

"More than I need," Miroku commented without turning around. "Anything in the journal?"

"Plenty," Inuyasha said, which caused Miroku to look at him, "but the hell if I'm gonna read it all."

"Of course you will," Miroku said, as if there was no other way it could be done. "What did you find?"

"Yeah, right. I didn't find anything."

Miroku looked confused. "How can you know there's plenty of information without finding anything?"

"Because it's seventy-six pages long! The one I read was some boring crap about her pathetically boring life."

"Was that so described by her or by you?"

"Both."

"Well, her life certainly is interesting now. Help me process this room, would you? You're being boring by just standing there."

"Go to hell."

Miroku chuckled but said nothing.

A complete processing of the entertainment room revealed far too many fingerprints to count, just as many hair fibers, no blood, and a lacking of anything that wasn't boring. Inuyasha and Miroku picked up their kits and left the room, stretching several tense muscles as they went. They did a once over of the other rooms in the mansion, checking for anything that might be suspicious without processing the entire house. Nothing struck them as unusual, and since they were far too exhausted to reprocess a picture frame, they unanimously decided none of the other rooms were secondary crime scenes.

"Well, this was a waste of time," Miroku commented as he lazily collapsed onto a couch in the Higurashi's living room.

"Was not," Inuyasha defended immediately as he sat across from Miroku, the strain from hours of intense concentration written across his face. "We found stuff."

"I was hoping for something more enlightening," Miroku said.

"Like the gun?" Inuyasha said.

"Oh, was it never recovered?"

"That's right. You haven't read the report."

"I have far too many important things to do with my time than to sit around reading paperwork." Miroku smiled knowingly. "Especially when you'll read it and can say the exact same thing in two sentences that it took the CSI four pages to explain."

Inuyasha took his time glaring at Miroku. "Friends shouldn't use each other for their own selfish gain."

Miroku's smile didn't falter, but the twinkle in his eyes disappeared. "Then neither you nor I have many friends, do we?"

"Feh," Inuyasha said, repositioning himself in the chair to hide his discomfort. "We both have friends. They're just the friends that let us walk all over them."

"That's true," Miroku said, and Inuyasha immediately knew his thoughts had wandered to Hachi. "At least I only do it for women, though."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"I only manipulate people so that I'm happy in the end, which usually involves a woman," Miroku explained. "You're never happy, so your only excuse is that you enjoy making other people miserable."

Once more Inuyasha enjoyed glaring at Miroku. "Just because I don't act happy doesn't mean I'm not."

"Ah, so the impenetrable beast has a heart!"

"You've got one hell of a mouth, you know that?"

"You tell me often."

"So fix it!"

"Inuyasha, I think I lied."

"Join the club."

"I don't antagonize people just for women. I find annoying you fun."

There was silence.

"I don't know if I should feel relieved that you don't think of me as a romantic interest or pissed that you like annoying me."

"Probably the latter since you know I don't like you."

"Which 'like' are you talking about?"

"Oh… both."

"Thanks," Inuyasha said sardonically.

"See how fun annoying you is?"

"I think I missed it."

"Pity."

"Don't pity me!"

"Did I say I pitied you?"

"Yes!"

"No, I said the word 'pity'. The word alone means nothing."

"Of course it means something! Everything means something!"

"Well if that doesn't go against one of the basic rules of investigation."

"'Not everything you see is of relevance,'" Inuyasha quoted mockingly.

"Ah, but then there's part two," Miroku said. "'Not everything you don't see is of relevance.'"

"That's stupid," Inuyasha said. "What's the point in that? How the hell are you supposed to know what you don't see at a crime scene? If I don't see a stapler at a crime scene, how the hell am I supposed to know if it's relevant?"

"I imagine that rule is more for the obvious things," Miroku said. "If you have a victim shot but there's no gun at the crime scene, as our victim was, obviously the gun is imperative. It's just that some things aren't worth the time of investigation."

"Like what?"

"Like a missing wallet. Just because you find a victim without a wallet doesn't mean the wallet is of any importance. The location isn't always relevant to the crime. It could have been a crime of opportunity, the victim could have been moved postmortem. Even something like a bullet casing isn't always important to find a—Inuyasha?"

Inuyasha had sat up so straight that Miroku stopped mid-sentence. As it occasionally did, the lightbulb that was so dim in Inuyasha's mind seemed to have been sparked. Inuyasha sat in silence for several moments as information raced about to form a connection. Then, quite suddenly, Inuyasha pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number, then stuck the phone to his ear. Miroku gave him a look, and Inuyasha was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he didn't even protest to putting the call on speakerphone.

"Tsuzitani," came Naraku's voice over the phone.

"Yo, Naraku," Inuyasha said. "In your report on the Higurashi case, you never mentioned the gun, bullets, or bullet casings. You didn't even say there was an absence of them."

"Quite obviously if I did not say we had found them, they were not there."

"No gun?"

"No."

"No bullets?"

"Are you deaf? Nothing was there!"

"No bullet casings either?"

Naraku hung up.

Inuyasha would have been shocked and angry at this event normally, but his brain allowed him no emotion, only adrenaline.

"What've you got?" Miroku asked.

"Nothing was found, Miroku! It either means a dump or the killer still has it!"

"Which means more evidence to be found."

Inuyasha pushed a number on speed dial and waited for only a few moments before someone picked up.

"Takahashi."

"Fluffs, I want a ten man search party down to Higurashi mansion stat. Have them ready to search the surrounding area, and search it damn well too. We're not looking for something big."

"Do remember that I'm your superior."

"Just get it done," Inuyasha snapped.

"Inuyasha."

Inuyasha hated authority. "Yeah, yeah, I've got a lead, so let's make it snappy!"

"Really?"

"Yeah!"

"What might this lead be?"

"The weapon was dumped or still in the killer's possession!"

There was silence on the phone.

"Is that all?"

Inuyasha glared at his phone, and had looks been able to kill, he was sure he would have sent death through the phone line. "What the hell does that mean?"

"That is not a lead, Inuyasha. Anyone who read Naraku's report could have told me that. You are heading an investigation, Inuyasha. Why don't you start to investigate?"

Inuyasha seethed, but Miroku kept him silent with a warning look. Miroku knew how Sesshomaru worked. If he thought he had won a battle, he would give Inuyasha what he desired. Inuyasha would fume and rage afterward, but they would get what they wanted.

"Ten men will be there within the hour. Start doing your job or I'm going to fire you."

With Inuyasha's bubble burst, Miroku knew the foul mood that was upon him. He stood up and stretched as Inuyasha began his ranting, something about "that fluffball bastard". They would get the search party here and go through the neighborhoods, hoping for a stroke of luck. Miroku wasn't counting on anything, though; if their killer had cleaned up after themselves so well, it was highly unlikely they had dumped anything relative to the crime. Then after that exhaustive search was over, which would certainly take hours because of Inuyasha's determination if nothing else, Miroku would force Inuyasha to return home and sleep. Miroku never really asked Inuyasha's permission to do things; he just sort of did them. As such, he had not told his superior what his plans were for the next day. He did know, however, that while Inuyasha would never admit it, he would be grateful for Miroku's actions after returning to Shikon University.

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A/N:

Oh wow. How long it's been. The last time I updated, I still hadn't gone on that tour yet? O.o Well, the tour was great. I was inspired. I loved it. When I'm 18, I'll go shadow a CSI for a day and see what it's really like. Yeah, it was an experience.

I believe I should apologize here. RL is a troublesome thing, but I really haven't been doing FF. It's not that I don't want to, but I just… don't. And I apologize. I have so many fics right now unfinished. I shouldn't start them and not finish them… my problem is that when I get excited about an idea, I drop everything else to pursue that one, and then I have ten fics incomplete. I'm going to try to get these finished, though, you guys!

SASUKE UCHIHA! … Just wanted to see who'd give a reaction from that. I was thinking about writing a Naruto fic actually… and I had another idea for an Inuyasha fic… dang it, I need to stop this! But do you want to hear the summary I made up for the Inuyasha fic? It would be such fun to write knowing the dark secrets behind everything! But NO MORE FICS! I have to focus!

With the guilt of her friends' deaths still haunting her, Kagome transfers to Shikon High hoping for a new start. But no matter where she goes, she can't forget those friends… those faces… and their killer may be closer to her than she realizes.

Next chapter… I think (but I can't remember because I'm exhausted) Inuyasha and Miroku split up to actually do some investigating. Characters from earlier chapters come back in, and Inuyasha and Miroku have to start deciding who they trust and who they don't.

Thankx for reading, but since you've bothered to read it, take a moment (or several, since long reviews rock) to review it and tell me your opinions. Thankx again!

Riles