The following morning found Deku dead on his feet. They had spent the entire night and most of the next morning analyzing the evidence and helping with rescue and cleanup efforts, which meant he had been awake for over twenty-four hours. It wasn't the longest he'd been awake in one go, but it was one of the most emotionally-draining. From the anxiety and nerves yesterday, to the adrenaline rushes in the morning and evening, to the disgust and horror of last night, he was numb. He was sitting in a cheap plastic chair at the local precinct, munching slowly on a bagel and hunched over in his chair, trying to garner some small form of energy that he could utilize to push through, but it was a very trying plight. Next to him, Eraserhead was much the same, though he had opted to sneak a few minutes' sleep in rather than eat during their break, and across the room Ground Zero was sitting trancelike on the floor with his legs splayed out in front of him, absently popping tiny explosions in his hand.
Officer Tamakawa peeked his furry head around the corner of the doorway at them after a few moments, calling, "Program's finished running," before disappearing back around the door jamb. The three of them looked at each other wearily for a moment before following the catlike officer to where Detective Tsukauchi and a few other officers were crowded around a large whiteboard. The board had pictures and documents detailing every piece of evidence they had collected on both cases and the current incident thus far, with the exception of a few things that were still being run through by forensics. Once they had joined the group, Tsukauchi detailed out the additional information they had just run through the police database and added it to the board. According to the new information, the victims were a mix of newly-missing persons and missing persons who were reported as long ago as decades previously. Some of the newest murders were victims reported missing earliest, whereas others were missing for only days prior to being left in the pit. One woman in particular had been missing for nearly thirty years but her body's decomposition was reminiscent of someone killed only about a week prior. Every body showed evidence of Quirk inhibitors and other drugs, of which forensics was still identifying the specifics, genetic manipulation, and teeth marks: someone had bitten the left wrist of every single victim.
Eraserhead's case's victims typically showed bruising at the neck likely caused by injections used to subdue the victims and markings around the body from where they struggled in restraints, but the important part was the bite mark each of them sported: he had confirmed that all of the teeth marks matched those of his serial killer, from the shape and location of the teeth marks to the depth and bruising around them. None of his case's victims had shown any of the genetic manipulation or any drugs past those needed to subdue their victims, but they were all in agreement that it was likely due to his case's victims being "rejected" somehow, as the rescued victims in Deku and Ground Zero's trafficking ring raid also didn't show any evidence of them, nor did they sport the identifying bite mark on their wrists.
During the night, the Heroes Ground Zero had sent to check through the tunnels had come up with much the same story: the tunnels ended in a similar doorway in the basement of various building around town, including but not limited to over fifty homes, several convenience stores, and even a hidden room under Aldera Middle School. Only a few of the tunnels came up differently, and all were due to Ground Zero's massive explosion: the tunnels had collapsed during the explosion, and teams were working the second half of the night and through the morning to determine if any of them continued on the other end of the crater. Meanwhile, they, a few analysts and forensic scientists, and half the police force at this office had spent the entire night working through all of this information from every angle they could view it, and the only thing they were certain of was that the perpetrators had some kind of requirement that the victims in Eraserhead's case did not match. Aside from that, they had pulled together several theories as the night had dragged on and additional information had cropped up: first, that the bite mark has to do with some kind of quirk and is likely the Modus Operandi for the homicides; second, that there is another large site somewhere with many, many more victims that they need to save before they met the same fate; third, that this is the work of some kind of underground syndicate, be it cult or yakuza, that has been in existence for a minimum of fifty years; and fourth, that whoever this syndicate was, they had the knowledge, resources, capabilities, and access to edit and destroy governmental and historical records that would show the existence of these tunnels.
The new information from the police force's database that they were now reviewing was regarding the two men and the woman Ground Zero had encountered the night before. The woman was long gone by the time Ground Zero was able to make it back to where she'd been, and they could only hope she made it home safe and would come seek out the police today. They had sent out a request to local news channels to ask that the female victim involved contact them as soon as possible so they could ensure her safety, but no one had called in yet; the morning was still young, however, so they weren't giving up hope on that quite yet. The man that had disappeared and the man who had been blown up, being their only leads regarding the people involved in the case, were immediately looked into. However, since Ground Zero had little to no information about any of the three of them aside from catching view of their features under cover of night and the assumed Quirk of one of them, the database's search program had taken until now to compile a list of possible identities for the two suspects and one attempted victim.
The guy with the Quirk was easy, since it appeared to be an Emitter Quirk that enhances other Quirks around it, so they had been able to narrow it down to a list of seven men (it would have been eighteen, but eleven of them were women), and then further down to three by the physical description Ground Zero had given the data analysts (brown hair, tall, stocky build, around 40-50). The woman was next in ease of identification, since she was in Musutafu late at night, had somewhat striking features (white hair, slight build, short, around 20), but they were only able to narrow her down to just under a hundred candidates. The other suspect was most difficult, since they had only a general description to go off of and it was pretty common (black hair, slight stature, short, around 30-40). They narrowed it down further from the thousands of hits that got them by determining which of those hits were too far from Musutafu and which had the potential to have been involved with any of the three suspects they had already identified, to a still-rather-large three-hundred and sixty-seven potential suspects. Now, they were looking at those results.
Ground Zero looked at the three potential suspects for what they had identified as Suspect A for a few moments, before declaring one of the three was "Not the right facial structure, I'd remember that ugly mug," which helped narrow things down further: they now had two Suspect A's, ninety-eight Victim A's, and two-hundred and twelve Suspect B's. One of the officers pulled the full spread on both of the two Suspect A's and pinned them up next to each other for comparison, things like blood type, age, criminal records, Quirks, last known addresses, and dozens of other details listed factually on the long feeds. Deku and Ground Zero didn't noticed anything that looked out of place or that stood out to them, but Eraserhead asked for a list of cases the second one was involved in, both as suspect and as victim, an odd look on his face. Once one of the officers pulled up the information, Eraserhead rubbed his eyes tiredly and pointed out that about twenty years back the guy went missing for about three months. He only remembered it because it had been one of his first cases out of UA, and they hadn't been able to find the perpetrators. The guy, Takeshi Kirimoto, had had no criminal record prior, was a model Gen Ed student at a local high school who went on to be a "kind, happy, and decent" office-floor worker until he went missing at just under twenty-three years of age. When he returned home safely a couple of months later, Kirimoto was described as "angry, dissatisfied, and rough" and eventually dropped out of his job and took up a record of petty criminal charges.
"So you think this Kirimoto is the more likely suspect, Eraserhead?" Tsukauchi asks in confirmation. With an affirmative, he turns to the staff and asks two of them to attempt to locate both potential suspects. Whichever one they don't find will be Suspect A. In the meantime, the rest of the team are ordered to look into the just-over-two hundred candidates for Suspect B and see if any of them have been recorded as kidnapping victims at some point in the past. Any that have, are to be located and taken in for questioning. "Now, I'm sure the three of you need some sleep. This will likely take at least another four hours, so I recommend you go home, get some rest, then report back here after lunch. I'll contact your Agencies and let them know you'll need to be taken off the patrol routes for the next couple of days minimum, so you just focus on getting home to rest." With that dismissal, Tsukauchi turns back to his team and gets to work while they head out of the precinct.
"Ground Zero's and my parents are at my apartment with Toshinori," Deku starts up as he leads them through the precinct's lobby to the front door, "We should probably head over there to check on them, and update them on when they're going to be allowed to go home. It's also closer. It'll be a bit of a squeeze, but do you want to come with, Eraserhead?"
Eraserhead shakes his head, "No, I need to check on Eri and get a change of clothes. If we're going to be spending a lot of time at this precinct I'll likely take you up on that offer later, but it will include two cats in the deal; that a problem?" He side-eyes Deku as he says this, one eyebrow raised, and Deku beams as he agrees to the terms. Behind them, Ground Zero bears a shit-eating smirk.