SailorStar9: With Chapter 91 uploaded, this is Chapter 92 of this fic. (Sighs) Guys and girls, is it too hard for you to leave a review, instead of just putting this fic up on your favorited list and story alerts?

Disclaimers: I do not own Sailor Moon or Detective Conan, I only own this plotline and the pairing.

Pairing: Established!Furuya Rei/Mizuno Ami

Chapter 92: Just Like a 17 Years Old Crime Scene, Part Two


"What a strange case." Professor Agasa mused. "The victim was murdered while holding a pair of scissors. There's honey in the wound of the body. On top of that, the sink was left running. Even if Senba wasn't the culprit because he didn't have a weapon, how did the culprit sneak into the annex when there are metal bars in the windows?"

"No," Okiya corrected. "The culprit..."

"Is him." Conan agreed. "It's Senba-san."

"We even know how he killed him." Okiya added.

"But we still haven't found the weapon." Conan pointed out. "Ojii-san searched Senba-san, right?" he turned to the two bodyguards. "Did Senba-san have anything unusual on him?"

"He had a plastic bag containing a small figurine about this small." one of the bodyguards gestured.

"And a little catalog of the series the figurine belonged to." his partner recalled. "He said it was a prize from his candy shop and he was going to give it to his grandchild. Although that shop has apparently closed down."

"Were there anything else?" Okiya took over.

"Besides that, he had a wallet, handkerchief, and keys." Bodyguard #1 remembered. "Come to think of it, one of the colored balls I used to buy at the neighborhood candy shop as a kid came flying over the wall. Just before Senba-san arrived, there was a yellow one about this size." he gestured. "We turned it over to the police. There's a park on the other side of the wall, so some kids were probably playing baseball. They never came to retrieve it, though."

"Do you remember where that ball came from?" Okiya inquired.

"We heard something strike the roof, so I headed to the back of the annex." Bodyguard #1 replied. "I think it was around here." he led the two detectives to the back.

"There aren't any bars in this little window." Conan peered at the rectangular window near the bottom of the wall. "Where does it lead?"

"The bathroom." Bodyguard #1 answered. "The one across the hallway from the changing room. Not even a kid could fit through a window that small. That's why there aren't any bars on it. The sound we heard was pretty loud for a colored ball. It sounded like 'clang-clang'."

"Professor." Conan hurried back to the entrance when he heard Professor Agasa's startled exclaim.

"It's nothing serious." Professor Agasa stammered. "But look... ants. The ants have formed a line. I was surprised when I saw them."

"Boy-ya," Okiya peered under the annex. "Come here. Looks like we found the weapon we've been looking for."

Conan let out a similar smile when he spotted the plastic capsule ball under the annex with ants crawling all over it.

"You figured out the culprit's identity and the trick he used?" Megure was astonished.

"We did." Okiya nodded. "We determined the method Senba-san used to bring a blunt weapon into the annex."

"You had a figurine inside a plastic bag and a little catalog of that figurine's series." Conan explained. "Then, you should've one of those, too, so why didn't you? I was referring to the round plastic capsule used to contain the figurine."

"I threw it away since it was getting in the way." Senba explained.

"Conan-kun." Takagi ran in. "I bought the capsule toy, honey, colored ball, and large marble you asked for. Did the culprit really use these?"

"Start by opening the capsule." Conan demonstrated. "Using tape holding the halves together to cover the holes in the capsule. Then, put the marble inside the capsule, pour honey over it and close the capsule again. All done. Could you throw this capsule and the colored ball on the roof of the bathroom?"

"The colored ball came down, but the capsule's still up there." Takagi blinked, the pink plastic ball rolled down the roof.

"Detective Takagi, keep watching over there." Conan requested. "Now, let's head into the annex." he told the others.

"Could you remind me what you did after being frisked and entering the annex?" Okiya inquired.

"I waited for Hiyama to come meet me." Senba retorted. "But he never showed up, so I went inside."

"No, when Hiyama-san met you, you told him 'I'd like to use your bathroom'." Okiya refuted. "Not to perform a biological function, but to collect the murder weapon."

"In any case, let's go to the bathroom." Conan urged.

"It should be arriving soon." Okiya added. "In the bathroom across from the changing room where Hiyama-san was murdered, if you open this small window near the bottom of the wall," he entered the toilet and slid the window open. "See?" he reached into the drain and took the capsule."

"What's that capsule doing outside the window?" Megure was confused. "Did you hand it to him, Takagi-kun?"

"I didn't do anything." Takagi replied from outside.

"Then, how?" Megure was confused.

"Inspector Megure, weren't you watching?" Conan chided. "The colored ball rolled off the sloped roof, but even if you tilt this capsule..." he put the capsule on the toilet seat and lifted it slightly to demonstrate his point. "The marble gets stuck in the honey and it doesn't roll very well. So, unlike the colored ball that fell right away, the capsule rolled slowly. Once it entered the gutter, it slowly rolled along. Then it fell to the bottom the same way rainwater would and came out the end of the gutter. Gutters are slanted slightly towards the edge, so rainwater flows through them better."

"By the way, Senba-san threw the colored ball along with the capsule from outside the fence to disguise the sound." Okiya supplied. "Since the bodyguard mistook the colored ball as the source of the sound, he left the area immediately."

"Is this marble really enough to kill someone?" Megure was skeptical.

"What was inside the capsule was a heavy iron ball rather than a marble." Okiya corrected. "If you put that ball inside a sock and made a blackjack, it would dramatically increase its lethality. The honey around the wound on the murdered Hiyama-san's head proves it."

"What about the blood?" Senba snapped. "If I hit him hard enough to kill him, I'd have blood on me. But there's no blood on any of my clothes."

"You probably got naked inside the bathroom so the blood won't get on you." Conan reasoned. It seems like you dressed yourself in a hurry. You washed off the blood that got on your body in the bathroom next to the changing room. You could've dried yourself off using toilet paper and flushed it."

"After retrieving the iron ball from the bathroom, Senba-san put the ball inside a sock, undressed and called Hiyama-san to the bathroom." Okiya continued. "Claiming 'the toilet won't stop flushing' or something similar, then Hiyama-san was struck by Senba-san with the iron ball containing the iron ball. He fled into the changing room opposite the bathroom, but the door was broken down. He threw a cup to resist his attacker to no avail before being finished off by Senba-san. Senba-san meant to wash off the blood and honey-stained sock along with his body. But if he wore slippers over a wet sock, that slipper would be unnaturally wet. So, he deliberately injured himself by stepping on the shards of the cup Hiyama-san threw at him and use it as an excuse to take off the sock. After hastily dressing yourself, you went to the entryway and told the bodyguards Hiyama-san was murdered in the changing room. While they left their post to investigate, you hid the weapon beneath the main house. Forensics has already found the capsule containing the iron ball that was swarming with ants, and even though you stepped on the shard of glass with your heel, there was blood all the way inside the slipper because it's Hiyama-san's blood. Naturally, it should be on your body, too. You can't erase traces of blood from your body just by washing it once with water."

"I'm sure it's all over for me." Senba admitted. "When I washed myself off in the bathroom, the tiles were red with his blood. He talked to my son and his wife into selling my land while I was in hospital. Not to mention, the accident that landed me in the hospital was something Hiyama put his underlings up to. I asked him about it before I killed him, he promised to pay my hospital bills if I spared him. My family ran that candy shop since my grandfather's generation. I was shocked to find it gone once I returned to the hospital. The shop had been smashed to pieces and a giant iron ball was swinging in the air. So, I smashed his head open with my own iron ball."

"What about those scissors the victim was holding?" Megure wondered after Senba was led off.

"That was Hiyama-san's dying message." Okiya responded. "The letters on the shards of glass on the floor were F, U, A, and R. The shard stuck to the slipper read D. If you arrange the letters left after removing FUARA from FUSAE BRAND, you get SENBA."

"It's hard to imagine he was able to precisely cut those little letters with scissors while the changing room was about to be broken down." Megure noted.

"The chemomechanical effect." Professor Agasa realized what happened. "If you try to cut glass with scissors, it shatters. But if the glass is submerged in water, the water molecules permeate the glass, which weakens it. It allows you to cut it."


Later that evening...

"Chawanmushi?" Amuro looked at the steam egg custard Ami put in front of him as an appetizer before dinner.

"Oh, this isn't the chawanmushi from back at the academy." Ami grinned.

"Smooth." Amuro whistled at the fluid texture of the custard's surface. "Time to eat." he scooped a spoonful and bit into it. "You used fish stock." he concluded. "And I think I tasted snow crab in there."

"Right on." Ami nodded.


SailorStar9: Any OOC-ness is regretted. *Sighs* Don't you just hate plot bunnies sometimes? Read and review.