Author's note: HI. Did ya miss me? Okay, no but seriously.

You will not believe how hard it was to write this chapter. Writer's block was seriously killing me because every time I opened this file, I just stared at it and nothing happened. BUT A FEW DAYS AGO I managed to write two sentences and after that my inspiration was back! Well, kinda. Sort of.

Soooo yeah. Thanks for all the reviews and for your patience! Hope this chapter was worth the wait. x3

Warning: Some more violence in this chapter with slight gore.

"So you're saying we've got no lead on this intruder? None whatsoever?"

About ten people were standing in the video control room, including Kaiba, Yami and Mai. They had watched the video to find out who broke into their office, but the thief had localized all the cameras and put purple post-its on them to prevent anyone from seeing their face.

Specialists had searched the place to find any other traces, or to find out what was missing exactly, but the odd thing was that nothing seemed to be missing. Everything was left untouched and there were no signs of violence.

The security guards stated that they had been too late to find him after they found out someone was messing with the cameras.

Kaiba banged his fist on the table when no one answered. One of the guards shot him a death glare. His light lilac colored eyes glared at him through the blond eyelashes. "I know we failed and that you're pissed. Looks like we're dealing with someone who knows what they're doing and you know damn well that cases like these are hard to deal with."

"And you're absolutely sure that their face didn't appear for a split second? Just a glance of their hand pasting the post-it?" Kaiba pressed, finally calming down.

"By all means, play the tape again if you don't believe us." The guard raised his hands in mock defense and nodded to the control panel.

A silence fell. Yami tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. The tension in the room was so thick that he could probably cut it with his pocketknife. He could feel Kaiba's body temperature rising and felt a bead of sweat trickling down his pale neck.

Mai was about to speak up, because, like Yami, she could feel that this was going to escalate very quickly, but Kaiba beat her to it.

"You're lucky I'm in a good mood, Malik. Otherwise I would've taken the damn tape and shoved it up your ass," he said with the creepiest cynical smile Yami had ever seen. "You can make it up to me by re-watching all of those tapes at least ten times until you're one hundred percent sure it's a male or female hand. That way you're at least a bit useful. And if you do find out, give one of these people here a call. Not me, because I really don't want to see your face for the next few weeks."

The guard watched him leave the room, looking guilty and scared at the same time. Yami looked at his feet for a few seconds before he followed Kaiba to the hallway, where his boss was reading someone else's report of Hayate's murder.

"That was kinda uncalled for. It's not their fault that thief, or whatever he or she is—"

"Look," Kaiba turned around, pinning him with his glare. "I'm not in the mood for this. We've got two murders on our asses, two in one day, plus someone broke into our department. I've got enough to deal with already and I don't have time to deal with crappy guards who aren't good at their jobs. Malik's an ass and needs to keep his lovely comments to himself. He's lucky that I didn't fire him."

Deciding that it was best not to go against Kaiba's wishes, Yami slowly nodded and sighed through his nose.

Kaiba brushed past him to his private office and Yami walked back to the autopsy room, where he had left his notebook. When he entered the room, he walked over to the sink right away to reach for his notebook; only to find out it had been shoved aside so that several pages had tears in them.

Water droplets were sticking to the silver counter, a wet washcloth lay right next to the crane, obviously used in a hurry and on top of that, a very thin black thread was wrapped around one of the cupboards' handles.

Yami stared at everything, completely dumbfounded. This was definitely not his doing since everyone in the department is required to clean up their own mess because it is important nothing gets lost. He looked around just in case there was anything else out of place, but the rest of the room appeared to be the same.

Carefully grabbing the black thread, he held it up to the light and squinted. It was not human hair, nor animal hair, so it had to belong to a piece of clothing. He grabbed a small napkin, placed the thread in it and folded it so it wouldn't fall out. He was not exactly sure if he was going to tell Kaiba, or any other person in their department. They would probably blame him for not cleaning up after himself (even though he really did).

After a few minutes, the entire place was cleaned up again and Yami was about to walk out when he accidentally bumped into someone.

"Sorry," he mumbled quickly and continued to walk, but the person grabbed his arm in a gentle yet firm grip.

"You're Yami Tanaka, right?"

"Apparently I'm famous." Yami turned around with a cheeky grin only to frown in confusion. A tall, quite attractive woman stood in front of him. Her baby blue eyes glittered with warmth, but her lips formed a thin line, making it look like her face was not sure which emotion was in control. Her long black hair was tied back in a low bun, which was brushing against the back of her small neck, and a few strands of thin hair were sticking out.

"I wanted to talk with you," she said, her low voice almost making Yami nervous.

"Why? What'd I do?" he said defensively.

The corner of her mouth twitched slightly. "You panicked while you were on the job and you confessed you had arachnophobia. I'm here to help you."

For a minute, Yami was completely dazed. "… That was, what, 2 hours ago? How'd you know that?"

"News travels fast here. You get used to it after a while."

"Yeah, but— Wait, who are you?" Yami was casually trying to get his arm out of her grip, but she continued to hold on tight. It was rather embarrassing because it almost looked like she was his mother who had caught him stealing cookies from the jar and was about to punish him.

"Ishizu Ishtar, psychologist, specialized in anxiety disorders. I can help you with your phobia so it won't bother you anymore. You do realize that this could cause a lot of problems with your job, right?"

Yami felt his face reddening. He had made up a stupid lie and it was already back to bite him in the ass. He had no idea how he was going to get himself out of this one, especially since he was facing a psychologist who was probably a master in reading people and their body language. Licking his dry lips, he put on an awkward smile and said, "'Twas nothing. I can control myself just fine."

"Then why'd you scream?"

"… I was unprepared."

Ishizu raised an elegant eyebrow, obviously not buying a word of what he was saying. With an annoyed sigh, Yami managed to tug his arm back and quickly took a step back in case she would try to grab him again.

"Look, I don't have arachnophobia—"

"So, you lied."

She folded her arms over her chest and blinked dryly, as if she was not surprised at all. It took a few seconds for Yami to fully comprehend what was going on. He narrowed his eyes to slits, studying her carefully. The other didn't flinch under his gaze, au contraire, she looked rather pleased.

"I expect you in my office next Friday, 9:00 am sharp. You and I are going to have a nice, long chat."

"No, we're not. There's nothing to talk about."

She stopped right away, not turning around or showing any signs of irritation. "I think we have plenty to talk about. If you don't show up, I'll have a word with Kaiba. He, too, thinks it's important you're in control of your own body and mind. Worst case scenario," she turned around and pinned him with a cold glare. "I'll drag you to my office myself. Stop acting like a child and do as you're told."

Shinagawa, Japan
September 8th, day 29, 01:57 pm

Luckily, it was Yami's day off. It gave him time to think about everything that had happened in the past 24 hours. It had felt like an entire week.

His roommate, Anzu, was seeing her parents at the moment so when he got home, he was faced with an empty apartment. There was a small note taped to the fridge which said,

"Hey,
I'll be at my parents for the next few days. Sorry, mom's been calling me for ages and I couldn't say no this time. I won't be long, just a couple of days. I already went to the grocery store, because I know how time-consuming your job is, and got you enough food for the rest of the week. You can thank me by keeping the living room clean.

Later!

Anzu"

The note made Yami smile. But he couldn't help but feel bad for not having anyone to talk to for a bit.

He had decided to visit his dad and his little sister, Mana. It had been three weeks and he was pretty sure Mana was driving his dad insane. The thought made him laugh; even though she was sixteen, she could still act like a child sometimes. Thinking about how many times she had told him she wanted to have memories of their mother made his heart beat faster. All he could do was tell her about his own memories, which were not that great since he had only known her for six years of his life.

Shaking his head, he forced himself to focus on happy thoughts. Then again, he had pushed these thoughts away so many times that he was pretty sure his head was going to explode one day, but he still had time.

"Ow!" Someone had bumped into him quite hard and because of his trained reflexes he instantly reached for his gun. "What's— Oh, it's you. Sorry, Mutou-san."

Sugoroku Mutou looked up at him, looking more disturbed than ever. Yami had known this man his entire life; he had to watch out for him and his sister all the time when they were younger since his father—

He cleared his throat, instantly bowed and wanted to apologize but the middle-aged man quickly grabbed his shoulders.

"Thank god I ran into you, Yami. I was just on my way to the police station."

"What, why?"

They exchanged a few looks before Sugoroku slowly looked over his shoulder. Yami followed his gaze and his eyes fell on his old home, which made his eyes widen.

"What's going on?" he asked in a forced calm voice.

"I-It's Mana, son, I think something's terribly wrong."

The calmness in his voice disappeared right away and he wriggled out of the other's grip. Without saying another word, he started running towards the small house. It looked peaceful as usual, except for the fact that the front door was open and with each step closer, the noises got louder.

Glasses shattering, yelling, shrieking, furniture being knocked over… Yami's breathing was getting out of control and not just because he was running faster than ever. The handcuffs were smacking painfully against his thigh but the only thing he could think of was getting into that house as soon as possible.

Since the front door was still open, he ran into the house right away and looked around frantically. "Mana? Dad?"

A terribly loud shriek filled his ears and he practically flew to the living room. The sight was something that would haunt Yami for the rest of his life; Mana was standing in front of his father, Aknamkanon, with a pair of scissors in her hand. His baby sister was planning on killing their very own flesh and blood.

She was breathing heavily, staring at her brother with wide eyes. Her emerald orbs looking absolutely horrified but also angered. "What the hell are you doing here?" she spat.

Yami's feet were nailed to the floor. His mouth was slightly open, his dry eyes were shifting between his two family members constantly, drinking in all the details. Mana's brown hair was completely messed up; it was tied up in a messy ponytail but the elastic band was barely keeping her thick hair together. Loose brown strands were sticking to her sweaty face, which was also covered in smeared make-up.

She had been crying heavily and it scared Yami to death.

"Yami, you've got to—"

"Shut up!" Mana screamed, pointing the scissors at their father threateningly. Her voice broke and she took a step closer to him. Yami didn't think twice and leaped at her, wrapping his arms around her waist to keep her in place. "Let go! I have to do this!"

"Mana, what are you doing?" Yami yelled at her, tightening his grip because she was squirming so much. Her arms were flailing around and letting the scissors getting dangerously close to Yami's body.

"If I kill him the pain will stop!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. "Let. Go!"

Adrenaline was pumping through his veins and making his heart beat unnaturally fast. In less than a second, he had her pinned to the floor, pulled her arms behind her back and cuffed them together. The scissors slipped out of her grip and he kicked them to the corner of the room right away.

"Get the scissors," Yami panted to his father, straddling his sister's waist. She was screaming uncontrollably as he kept her pinned to the floor with his weight. Her screaming slowly turned into loud sobbing and Yami winced in pain when she started kicking his back with her heels.

Aknamkanon came back with the scissors and looked down at his children with an incredulous look on his face.

"Mana, please calm down—"

"No!"

Before Yami could stop her, she kicked him off of her back with such force that the air was knocked out of him and she jumped to her feet. Yami landed on his chest, making him grunt in pain and curl up a bit. Mana angrily slammed her foot onto his lower back and he heard an awful crack.

A loud, painful scream escaped from his lips as he was now pretty sure he could not stand properly anymore.

"Keep your nose out of other people's business, asshole," she growled, pressing her foot deeper into his flesh, making him moan in pain. Mana stepped off of him and he could hear Aknamkanon falling to his feet with a yelp and he was about to get up, but the pain in his lower back was too overwhelming.

"I don't need those stupid scissors, anyway."

"Don't do it!" Yami exclaimed. All he could do was stare at the wooden floor and try to get to his feet, but it was useless. Aknamkanon wailed in pain and Yami could only guess Mana was kicking his head repeatedly. He knew that it would only take a few blows and he was done for. Tears were welling up in his eyes as he listened to his father's jaw breaking and Mana's continuous sobbing.

It went on and on, until Mana placed both of her feet on the floor with a content sigh.

It was over. Their father was dead and he hadn't done anything to stop it. Almost choking on his saliva, he let his head fall on the floor, completely defeated. One single tear leaked out of his left eye and crawled down his cheek until it hit the floor. Mana remained silent, just like him. Yami stayed silent because all the words he knew, were just gone; it was as if his entire vocabulary had disappeared.

"Wait…" His ears perked up at the change of tone in Mana's voice. "O-oh my god… What-what i-is this? Why a-am I…? Oh, no… No… No!"

Yami painfully managed to look over his shoulder and saw his sister staring at Aknamkanon's mutilated face with complete and utter shock. Several teeth were sticking to the tip of her shoe, making Yami almost gag.

Police sirens were wailing in the distance; Sugoroku probably went to the police station and they were going to walk in any minute and see them in this position. On one hand, Yami wanted nothing more than hand Mana over to them but on the other hand he wanted her to run away and not look back.

Said person looked down at him, fresh tears rolling down her tears. Small droplets of blood, mixed with salty tears were sticking to her sweaty cheeks. Her eyes were filled with horror and sorrow at the same time, making Yami feel even sicker. He didn't know what to think anymore.

"W-what is going on?" she whispered, her voice hoarse from all the sobbing and screaming. It was so quiet and broken that you could have mistaken it for a blow of the wind.

The cars were getting closer and Mana looked up in panic, her puffy eyes darting around the room. Then, she noticed her hands were still cuffed together and she looked back down at her brother again, quietly begging for an answer. Even after all those years of living together and always knowing the answer to give her when she felt hopeless, Yami could not help her. After witnessing what he just saw, he didn't even know the person that was standing in front of him and yet, he felt sorry for her.

More hot tears were burning behind his eyes, threatening to escape from his eyes. He shook his head and before he could blink, Mana was running towards the back door without even looking back. With a small grunt, she pushed it open with her shoulder and ran away.

With a painful groan, Yami laid his head back on the floor. Raising his fist high up in the air, he punched the wood quite hard. It was the only thing he could do since he couldn't even talk, move, or anything for that matter. This couldn't be real. It just couldn't. This was beyond sick and incomprehensible.

The screeching of the cars made his eyes dart up to the ceiling again, completely on red alert. He would yell, but words were still impossible to form and it hurt too much to move his diaphragm. Instead of yelling, a soft wheezing sound came out of his mouth, which hurt and made him moan in pain.

"Tanaka!"

The wood vibrated beneath him as policemen came running into the living room. Said room echoed with heavy footsteps and Yami shut his eyes, wanting to block it all out.

"Man down! We need help here!" It was Kaiba's voice and it was awfully close. Yami felt a warm hand on his back and he instantly flinched. More men came running into the room and he even heard Mai's voice in the distance, yelling commands. "Tanaka! Can you hear me?"

More running, more commands, more shouting. "You, check the house."

"Check that man's pulse, I think there's a chance he might still be alive. You there, call an ambulance. Go! Now!" a voice called out.

His lips separated but no sound came out except for a small wheeze. The hand moved to his shoulder and shook it gently. Another wheeze made its way past Yami's lips.

"Oi, Tanaka! You're not dead, use words."

"—Severe damage to the head, possible internal wounds, no pulse."

"House is clear!"

"Did you check the garden?"

"Yes, ma'am. Only found a pair of our own handcuffs."

Those words were enough to snap Yami out of it. Mana was gone. His eyes flew open and he saw Kaiba's face hovering over his. The usual ice-cold eyes were now gentle and reassuring, even though there was still that hint of alertness. "Yami? Can you tell me what happened?"

"'m not the victim 'ere, dun' treat me like one…" Yami managed to croak out, even though he wasn't exactly sure how coherent he sounded. "Now, move."

Ignoring the burning pain in his lower back, he pushed himself up, slowly walked towards the front door where Mai was still standing with her arms crossed. His captain asked him a question, but Yami walked past her, keeping his eyes focused on the tree that was standing a few feet away.

His feet carried him to the bushes surrounding the tree and when they stopped, Yami took a deep breath, closed his eyes and threw up.

This was so utterly ridiculous that Yami would have laughed if it hadn't been for this huge black hole in his body. It ached beyond measure and it was probably not going to stop until he would find out what drove Mana to do this. She would have called if this had gotten out of hand. He knew their father had lost a great amount of his personality after his wife died, but it couldn't have gotten that far.

The handcuffs jingled when Yami sat up straight in his seat. The sound of those stupid things around his wrists made him roll his eyes. Of course he was a suspect because he was found at the scene of the crime, but seeing he was lying on the floor, wounded and not capable of moving, someone with more than one brain cell would be able to figure out that he couldn't have done it.

They had brought him to the interrogation room and if he was going to be honest with himself, the room looked a lot more intimidating from this angle. The other side of the table, with his hands cuffed to it, facing the door, seeing the water cooler standing in the corner with another chair next to it for observers and finally, the small pile with his files.

He could still taste the sourness and feel his throat burning and his body begging for some fluid. The water in the bottle bubbled teasingly, making Yami throw his head back so he wouldn't get tempted to lose his patience.

It had been about thirty minutes and from experience, he knew this was just a way of testing him. To see if he would lose his mind, start babbling or shouting, get nervous, maybe even go insane; anything a real murderer would do as soon as he was arrested.

A small camera was casually hanging in the above the door, monitoring every move and every word. Yami licked his dry lips, fighting the urge to kick the chair he was sitting on, get himself out of those stupid handcuffs and walk out of the room. But he was almost one-hundred percent sure that that's what they, especially Kaiba, would want him to do.

Fight, become violent, get angry… A voice in his head told him he had every right to do so, but he remained calm and continued to count the seconds in his head.

Minutes passed and he finally opened his eyes again, feeling his cracked lips curling into a smile. The situation was so ironic that it was actually hilarious.

"Okay, we're gonna keep it very simple and clean," Kaiba's voice said. Yami's head snapped to the door where his boss was standing. The door closed, Kaiba walked over to the table, took a seat and leaned toward him. "Just tell me what happened and we can get this over with."

Yami raised an eyebrow and raised his hands so the metal would clink. "Are you gonna let me go?"

"No."

Snorting, Yami placed his hands back on the table and leaned back in his chair as far as the handcuffs would allow him. "Whatever you say, boss," he said, not even trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

"This might be a joke to you, but to me it's as serious as a heart attack."

"And not to me?"

"Obviously not, since that's the first thing you ask."

"Fine, can you get some water, then? Since I'm still chained to the table like a dog."

Kaiba narrowed his eyes, but didn't show any signs of losing his temper. "Answer my questions and maybe I will get you some water."

The only that Yami hadn't thought about was what he was going to say. "Yeah, boss, my sister, my own flesh and blood, almost knocked me out and beat my dad to death. Then you guys found us and I have no idea where she is now. Sorry."

The smartest thing to do was just tell his part of the story and not leave out any details. "Around two I was on my way to my old home in Shinagawa and when I was almost there, I ran into Sugoroku Mutou who told me he was on his way to the police station because he thought there was something wrong at my house. When I got there, I saw… my sister, Mana, standing in front of my father with a pair of scissors in her hand. Now the weird thing was that…"

A silence fell. Now that he remembered what she said, he realized that it didn't make any sense whatsoever. His boss moved a bit in his chair and quietly said, "What?"

"She said something about pain… that if she killed him the pain would stop…?" Yami blinked and noticed how dumb it sounded. However, Kaiba didn't say anything and simply motioned for him to continue. "I fought her, pinned her to the floor, managed to cuff her hands behind her back and kick the scissors away, but she threw me off of her. She was so aggressive that it honestly scared me because she's usually this bubbly and cheery girl that wouldn't hurt a fly."

"She threw you off of her? How the hell did she do that? You are a trained police officer. You're supposed to be able to pin her to the floor within less than ten seconds without even breaking a sweat."

"She wasn't herself," Yami mumbled, feeling even more stupid now because Kaiba had pointed that out.

"That's not an excuse."

"They don't train you for situations like these. How would you react if you saw your sibling threatening to murder your only parent?" Yami snapped, his fingers curling into a fist to the point where his short nails were digging into the skin. "What, I should've knocked her out? Put a bullet in her leg? She's my sister! A sixteen-year-old girl who still thinks the world is full of rainbows and puppies and calls her father "Daddy"."

The more he talked about, the less sense it made. Another silence followed after that sentence. The two stared at each other, Yami's hands were shaking with uncontrollable rage and Kaiba was calmly scanning his face with his eyes.

"She's a teenager?"

It took a minute before Yami slowly started shaking his head. "Don't go there."

"Well, it's all there, isn't it?" Kaiba got up from his chair, his eyes getting that familiar sparkle again. "She did kill him, right?"

"She crushed my tailbone with her heel after that so that I couldn't get up. Then, she kicked my dad to death, got all disoriented and ran away through the back door."

"Aha," Kaiba brushed it off, he was obviously more interested in his own theory about this. "This is good. Really good… Aren't you seeing a pattern here?"

"She would never be part of this. I told you she was disoriented—"

"That doesn't matter!" Kaiba barked at him. "These kids, they… must have formed a club of some sorts. Shizuka said she heard all this clattering of the pans in Rebecca's kitchen, which would indicate that Rebecca was upset. When Rebecca fled, she stared at her for a couple of seconds before disappearing into the night. Chisako told us that Leon was not himself and was crying the whole time he hit his father with that wrench and that he ran away with tears in his eyes. And now you're telling me—"

"You couldn't find my sister, could you?"

Yami's darted up to the other's, demanding an answer. If there was truly a pattern, then Mana was gone. His hands were still shaking slightly but this time it was out of fear and sorrow.

"No, Yami. I'm sorry. The only thing we found were the handcuffs, which had your and her fingerprints on it. We asked around but unfortunately no one saw her running away. My team's already on it so you don't have anything to worry about. If there really is some club, those kids will come around. Apparently their plan is to kill someone dear to them, leave an object behind and disappear. So, they want to leave a track. They want us to find them."

"Then how would you explain the fact that they were all so upset, according to the witnesses?"

"You don't just kill a loved one like that," Kaiba said, snapping his fingers to emphasize his last word. "Maybe… Maybe they're following someone's orders and they actually don't want to do it so they get upset and run away. And I think, that those orders include leaving an object behind so we can identify them. They're young and easy to manipulate or blackmail."

Yami leaned towards his hands so he could place his cheek in one of them. This was a lot to take in and he was close to his breaking point. He would never believe Mana would be capable of killing someone, let alone on someone else's orders.

"She was so scared," he mumbled to no one in particular. "and looked at me like I had to give her an answer, but I couldn't give her one."

"Give me your hands," Kaiba said, not really paying attention to him. He gently grabbed Yami's wrists and unlocked him. "We have that old man as a witness of Mana tearing up the house and you, a police officer, witnessing the murder itself. There are no wounds on your hands or your arms, nor do you have any blood splatters on you. We will have your tailbone checked to see if you're also telling the truth about that and if you are, then there's about enough evidence that you're innocent. And I believe you, which is the most important part."

Yami cracked a smile at the small joke. "Yeah."

"Here, I'll help you up." He felt one of Kaiba's hands on his shoulder and the other one between his shoulder blades to steady his back.

Author's note: … Drama. I felt so sorry for Yami but they're getting closer and closer now. So sorry for the long wait. *pouts*

Please leave a review on your way out~!