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Chapter Eight: The Police Perspective

"Do you know what is so special about chess, Mabda?" All For One asked idly, fingering a chess piece with what would have been a long, drawn-out gaze if he still had eyes. Mabda found it fascinating how his master did that, acted like he still had his vision though his eyes had long since been scarred over. It was one of his superhuman nen-like abilities, Mabda had long since figured out. Some sensory ability.

His mind, slow and rumbling due to his age yet keen and sharpened due to his efforts, like a heavy oil rig forced to operate under finely tuned mechanics and precise instruction, returned to the question. He could make a guess, but wanted his master to explain, so he shook his head.

"There is no probability involved. All the variables are controlled, by either you or the opponent." The man set down the chess piece with a soft tap. "In real life, it isn't so. What does this mean for your strategy, when you cannot control all variables?"

Mabda thought for a second. "Well, I assume you account for unknowns. Or try to control the stage the variables play on as much as possible."

"Ah, yes, control." All For One chuckled. "Well, to continue this delightful analogy, I recently discovered a little game called Machi Koro. Not so unique in its methodology or story, and it's quite old, but there was a very simple principle behind it that I enjoyed - probability maximization."

"Probability maximization?"

"Yes. You could not manipulate the setting behind the odds, but you could gather them to yourself that the odds would likely come into your favor, no matter how it turned out. If you count the possibilities, set the stage right, you may gain your harvest without the carefully-executed stratagems and sequences required for chess. It comes to you, by roll of a dice. Rather than executing every move perfectly along a strategy - instead, cultivate your success and establish a probabilistically advantageous position. That is how I like to set my strategy, and farm my planted seeds. It has given me many pleasant and often unexpected results."

"... I see."

"Of course, it is not enough to only meekly accept the odds and work the system. You are correct, it is best to manipulate and set the stage as much as possible for results that require a certain… finesse and degree of certainty. If not, you would only have as much say as a common layman, and then where would you be, hmm?"

Mabda gave him a tight-lipped smile. His master well knew all the polticking that had earned Mabda his position. It hadn't been his disposition for acting and putting on many faces, though that had helped; it was all the careful maneuvering of the background characters and how he had placed them in his grip, and eliminated the ones he couldn't. Once he had a bit of power and money to throw around, his work had become even easier.

"Indeed," he said. "Sometimes it will do to force the circumstances into your favor, too."

All For One smiled. "Only so long as you do not lose your sight while doing so," he said, bending forward, steepling his hands together. He then inclined his head, then looked down at the chess board. "Though I find that chess, perhaps, is not so very different from this quaint game I found, either. Shall we play a match?"

.

"He's a child, but he's stronger than he looks." Naomasa spoke to the room, standing tall and keeping his expression steady as he debriefed his force. The very same force that had issued Killua's ID two months ago when he had first arrived in this world. A picture of the boy hung on the projector, along with pertinent case details, such as mug shots of the captured yakuza and their ID's and relevant history. "You all saw that video. We need to take him in before he does anything else. A cornered animal is capable of lashing out the worst - we need to prevent as much fallback from this incident as possible."

When the debriefing was over, his men streaming out, he found himself sighing in the empty room. He turned and looked at the photo hovering on the projector.

The gaze the boy wore in this picture - it looked so forlorn. Empty, somehow. He hadn't chosen the bright, mischievous picture the boy had in his ID picture for this presentation; he felt it would have given the police force the wrong impression and caused his force to take the boy too lightly. Instead, Killua's eyes seemed to burrow like dark holes through the screen, wrangling a deep feeling from Naomasa's chest.

But there was too much to think about to linger on it for long. He couldn't linger on it for long.

There had been an abrupt drop in crime and villainy in the past week. It left him feeling disconcerted. Before, Naomasa had been on over ten cases at a time – now it had dwindled to two hot cases, and Killua's case was the biggest one. He had been using the time to catch up on paperwork and scour the records and streets for any clues why this was happening.

Moreover… the recording of who had visited Kobayashi Koshiro's cell the other night…

He was furious at the slow reaction of the men on security cams that night. They had seemed to miss the moment when Kyoshi Hakira had jumped in, distracted by conversing with each other and eating their food evidently, and hadn't noticed the still figure in Kobayashi's cell until she had been there for at least minutes. Noamasa would have to instate more guards, or put in a request for higher-quality training programs to set their priorities straight. They had dangerous criminals in the cells; they needed to be able to react immediately upon infiltration. The only good thing was that it had reopened the case on Hakira Kyoshi, and confirmed that she was in this world.

He breathed. He'd file the request later. For now, one task at a time.

He moved to the interrogation room. It was time to get to the bottom of this case.

First, he again visited Kobayashi Kishiro, who he strongly suspected to be the yakuza boss.

The man, however, refused to say a word. It seemed like an exercise in frustration. Even when he pulled in one yakuza after the other, all of them refused to speak. It was clear that they had prepared for the possibility of capture.

Killua's hollow eyes again flashed across his mind. The latest cases to pain him and weigh on him heavily. Why couldn't he just move on from it? Why did he always seem to get caught on these hard things he couldn't solve?

Naomasa couldn't get that look out of his mind, even as he stared down the final, last hardened yakuza man sitting in the interrogation room across him.

Naomasa had always prided himself on his observance skills, beyond just his truth detection quirk. How hadn't he seen this? Had he been blinded by a spark of loneliness and a child's sweet tooth? Even when he knew the boy skirted mentions or real explanations of his past?

It caused him to be harsher now, bite into the interrogation like the last to be interrogated yakuza man, Hazuki Kato, was to blame.

"Where is Killua Zoldyck?"

"Why were you helping them?"

"Why was the League if Villains with you?"

Trying a different tactic, seeing how the man's finger was cut off at the pinky joint, "What crime did you punish yourself for?"

That got more of a reaction out of him than anything, the man's head jerking slightly upward, but still he said nothing.

"You can tell me," Naomasa said evenly. "One of your friends has already cracked. If you confirm the story, you will get a lighter sentence. Please cooperate. What crime did you punish yourself for?"

The other man scoffed, and behind it was a depraved, cynical chuckle. "Liar."

Naomasa was silent for a moment, but at least it had been a response.

"It's true," he said. "Your friend, the younger one. Hiruzen. He told me this story, about a young girl…"

This time, the man jerked back fully, eyes widened in surprise. If Naomasa could just get him to start talking…

It was dirty work. Taking a crack at the frail-looking member of the gang and Hazuki Kato's past suspected crime, however, did the trick. The man, seemingly bitter at the perceived betrayal of his fellow yakuza, cut out short and harsh sentences like sharp lashes of a whip. Once he started speaking, it was hard for him to stop and return to the earlier impenetrable silence, so Naomasa carefully guided the conversation from the girl the man had killed, to how the incident had forced the disbandment of the old Todou gang, to Kobayashi, then to Killua and the League. The man was not forthcoming, but the misdirections were subtle enough that he didn't pick up on it, and Naomasa was able to glean much from the conversation, especially when the man lied about something and his quirk was able to pick up on it.

A picture started forming in his mind. Hazuki was the least willing to speak about Kobayashi, seeming to hold a respect for him, while being eager enough to spit out insults about the other members. Hiruzen was a particular focus of the comments. The man also grieved heavily for Mori and his unnecessary death at Overhaul's hands, and surprisingly, in this, he did delve into elaborate and honest detail, talking about how the other gang had been incessantly pursuing and hassling them the weeks before, though Naomasa felt he was holding something back.

"What about the drugs?" Naomasa asked at some point. "Was Overhaul's gang responsible for planting them?" It would be a reasonable conclusion, since investigations had shown the Chie Hassaki's involvement in distributing Trigger, but not the one Naomasa believed.

"Huh?" The man's face bespoke honest confusion, however. "What drugs?"

"We found an unidentified bottle of white pills in the basement," Naomasa said, watching as recognition bloomed. Along with a plethora of medicines typically used to treat gout gout, but it was this unidentified set of pills that concerned him. Besides, Naomasa wasn't in the habit of giving out unnecessary information in an interrogation.

"Ah, those," Hazuki's eyes shifted. "The boss has a bad case of gout. You know, that old man's disease? Makes the bones and joints all painful? He keeps the stuff for that."

Interestingly, Naomasa's quirk told him that most of what he had said was true, but not all of it.

Hazuki's eyes shifted back to him, and the man said, almost concernedly, an emotion that had seemed reserved for Kobayashi alone so far, "You'll still let him keep that stuff though, right? In the prison? He needs it."

Noamasa considered it. The man had looked unusually pale, and his skin seemed flaky, unusually dry. And though he had always kept his face impassive and back straight, Naomasa had noticed how the man had winced when he had gingerly got to his feet in his holding cell, when Naomasa had first brought him in to the interrogation room.

"We'll get our doctors to take a look at him," Naomasa promised, but it seemed that the answer wasn't enough for Hazuki, because then he scowled and refused to talk again.

Overall, when Naomasa had left the interrogation room, he had felt that he had spoken with a man full of great hatred and bitterness, but Naomasa had been able to find a thread to connect with him on. ...Certainly, what had been recorded was enough of a confession to implicate Hazuki both for the girl's death and for obstruction of justice in Killua's case. The ancient anti-yakuza laws had been enough to hold the group in prison until the 20 day term was up – a common holding tactic used for extracting confessions – but now Naomasa had a case he could viably take to court, especially given Sir Nighteyes' witness testimony. Of course, while he still held the men in his own department, he still had some leeway on how to treat the case...

He decided to try to keep it in-house for as long as possible. He still needed to figure out how this all connected to Killua and the League of Villains. The man hadn't told him much, but Naomasa had gotten the impression that he didn't know much about it, either. Strangely enough, the man had honestly told him that none of them had helped Zoldyck escape the police. Which was strange because – a week ago, after the Overhaul incident had occured, they had clearly captured on camera Zoldyck, Freecss, Bakugo, and the yakuza escaping through a police blockade together. Which meant Kato had been referring to a different incident, likely the most recent "escape" attempt. Unfortunately for Kato, his honest statement was a bit of cleverism that had only resulted in more information for Naomasa. It was more than clear already that the yakuza had been involved in harboring those trying to escape the law.

He sighed, then decided to focus on his next task. It was a shame that Nighteyes' group had tipped their hand too early, before a full force could have penned them in and caught everyone in the yakuza stronghold in one fell swoop. But, he couldn't deny, that man got results.

Maybe, he thought, as he reached over to his computer, where he could access the tracker and bug Sir Nighteyes had managed to implant on the group of runaway children, it is better this way, after all.

Naomasa skimmed through the clips, listening to snippets of uploaded content from the past few hours, frowning when he initially only heard recordings of childish banter and laughter. It was almost eerie, given the severity of the case. Still, at least their location and heading was clear - they were headed East, moving quickly, on a train, though Naomasa didn't know what was there other than some mountains. They would have to coordinate a capture, quickly before the signal disappeared or the tracker's battery ran out. But - that wasn't Naomasa's job, he just had to coordinate and pass on the information to heroes in the area. His force just had to be ready if Killua came back and, in the meantime, provide any strategic resources for making the final catch to the involved regional heroes. Even though it was their case, they'd have to work it from afar. They were still needed here; his force couldn't run off to chase teenagers off to the mountains after all.

Needed, huh? It was concerning. As quickly as the rise of homicidal cases had begun, reaching an uptick just after Gon Freeccs' interview, so had it disappeared. Crime was suddenly on a record low in Musutafu the past days, and almost all his active cases had gone cold just as suddenly. It had Naomasa on edge. Something was certainly going on, and once again, he didn't know what.

Out of curiosity, some thoughts connecting, Naomasa put the computer records aside and instead searched the records for some reports, for when black market drug deals had been a hot case two weeks ago – before it suddenly cut cold after they'd busted the labs, like the backer's had cut their strings and divested their hands of the business without another word. Checking the documented inventory listings, his eyebrows raised as he found the same listings of gout medicines Kobayashi had, listed in excessive amounts on the black market inventory. Aloprim. Colcrys. They were marked as prescription medicines, but when Naomasa looked them up online, it seemed that they were hardly rare enough to warrant the excessive stocks.

He found himself scratching his chin. So how did all these pieces fit together?

The simplest story was that the Todou gang had gotten involved in the black market drug trade, and for whatever reason, Kato had been largely unaware of it, given his truthful responses. The story didn't sit right with Naomasa though. It didn't explain the larger picture. Why gout medication? Was it simply a cover for an illegal steroid distribution that had recently gained a fad-like popularity amongst their customers? Why wouldn't Kato be in on his gang's dealings, anyway? Peddling prescription drugs was hardly the type of high-profile crime that yakuza would feel the need to hide from their members, particularly the splinters of such a small gang. Maybe the gout medication connection was a coincidence.

Naomasa was much more concerned by the presence of the unknown drug. He was still waiting on lab results, but so far, his team had been unable to match it up with anything out there. If they were dealing with something new and addictive, then that would be big, and something the other department heads across the city would need to know about immediately.

"Tsukauchi?" A head poked through his office door. It was the receptionist. "Someone's here to see you."

Speak of the devil. When Naomasa went to the front to greet his visitor, his eyebrows raised to see Police Chief Hakoshi, in charge of the next district over, waiting for him.

This is trouble, he thought, eyebrows furrowing a fraction.

"Detective Tsukauchi," the man said politely with a smile and a brief incline of his head. "Good to see you doing well."

"Chief Hakoshi," Naomasa similarly greeted. "What brings you here?"

"No need to be so stiff," the man chuckled. "Why don't we talk in your office?"

That wasn't promising. At this point, Naomasa suspected he knew what this ws about, and was racking his brain for ways to avoid it. But, not seeing another alternative, he led the way in silence, until he could close shut the office door for privacy.

Once listening ears had been warded away, the other man didn't mince words. He knew Naomasa wasn't one for that.

"I came here to offer my help. Transfer the yakuza over to my department," Police Chief Hakoshi said. "I believe we have better resources to handle the case."

"I don't see why," Naomasa said stiffly. "We are handling the case. You have no jurisdiction."

"Oh?" Hakoshi raised an eyebrow. His face then turned sympathetic, leaning in with a lowered voice and the ways the shadows played they emphasized the crook of his nose. "Naomasa, I'm trying to do you a favor. Your department is overworked, you know it, I know it. Wasn't there that slip in security, just yesterday? I'm sure it'd take a huge load off your hands if you didn't have to watch over anyone in the holding cells." A pause, sharp brown eyes searched his face. Then, "Hell, I'll even send you a couple of my security guards to pick up the slack, if you're having trouble getting good recruits. Top of the notch. You know how hard I drive them."

Naomasa grimaced. Him and Hakoshi were occasional drinking buddies; he had heard the stories, and besides, his words rang of truth. But, importantly – the fact that Hakoshi had come today of all days, knowing of the security slip so soon after the incident had been filed, that could only mean –

"Are you sure you're not just interested in Hazuki Kato?" Naomasa asked severely, against his better judgement.

Immediately, the other man's face darkened.

"You know I can't lie to you," Hakoshi said with a false smile. "Yes. I'm after that bastard. And damn it, you have him. Give him to me. You know how much this means to me, damn it."

"So you can milk the time as much as possible before sending him off to the courts with a life sentence," Naomasa said wryly, sighing. This was the ugly side of the police department. "No. I'm sorry, Hakoshi. I won't let you do what amounts to torture for your own private revenge. You're too close."

The man's face turned dangerous, and he stepped closer, face stretched out and ghastly.

"He killed my daughter," he said in a pale whisper.

"And from the records," Naomasa said evenly, but gently, "she ran into the crossfire. I don't know the full situation, but..."

He found himself drawing to a halt, seeing the expression on the other man's face.

Hakoshi looked murderous, eyes wide and burning, lips curling. In that moment, it was like the mask of a demon stared at him.

Naomasa swallowed. Anything he could say would be a mistake now, he knew, but he held his ground, staring back at the man, staring him in the eyes, urging him to recover himself, to remember that he was a better man than this. Slowly, slowly, in a thick silence, the man's expression leveled out, became a parody of calm.

"I see," the man said tonelessly. "I don't envy you, Naomasa."

"What?"

"I don't envy you, Naomasa… for having such a low-resource department. For being unable to keep a proper eye on your prisoners. When the higher-ups find out, I'm sure they'll want to remedy the situation."

Naomasa's eyes widened, and he clenched his fist in one hand. He had expected many things of Hakoshi, but blackmail had not been one of them. He had been alarmingly caught off guard.

"I've looked into your department," the man continued. "Over fourty high-profile cases in the past month? It's no wonder your department needs a break. You're being stretched thin. I'm sure the higher-ups will agree that a transfer is in order, so that your department can best handle the current active cases optimally without a pause in operations. It is only logical."

But Namoasa was not one to lose his cool easily.

"The report was already filed," Naomasa said deliberately. "Proper procedures were followed in response to an infraction. The problem is being dealt with. There is no need for further action. You're inflating a single incident beyond its importance."

"But the rest of it is true, and you know it, Naomasa." The man's gaze was intense. "Like it or not, you could use my help."

Naomasa was caught on the back foot. The problem was, he wasn't wrong. How often had Naomasa complained to himself about being worked to the bone? How often had he worried about details missed in cases, when Tanuma and him poured over reports, and the rest of the force was just as exhausted? Taking in the yakuza and interrogating them hadn't helped the workload any, especially when holding criminals wasn't their area of specialty.

If only it wasn't Hakoshi offering...

"Tell you what," Hakoshi urged, "Just give me Hazuki, and I'll be satisfied. You can keep or give the other yakuza, depending on your department needs. You'll get free access to any interrogation results, as it is pertinent to your active case. I'll throw in a couple of security guards from my place to help you out pronto. And you have my word that I will not go too far."

It was damn tempting. Though Hakoshi had just overstepped the line, his tone of voice and expression was now reasonable again, and so were his words. Naomasa wanted to believe him, that he was a better man than he had just shown, and that his word was true. But Naomasa had seen too much to trust it, and had made too many infinite, small such mistakes to fall prey to such self-lies. He could hope that he was wrong, but hope wouldn't stop his guilt if he learned Kato had been kept in solitary confinement for nearly three weeks straight, or "accidentally bruised", or a dozen other small vindictive punishments that would easily stay off record or be brushed off. Some could excuse that punishment on criminals. Naomasa couldn't. There was a reason why you waited until the trial to enact a punishment, and a reason why police gathered evidence, and a reason why people too close to the case didn't get involved. Naomasa, for his own sanity and for his own humanity, believed in that.

He opened his mouth, and perhaps Hakoshi saw something in his expression, because he cut him off and said, somewhat desperately,

"Please. I just… need to know what happened, for real. Your priority will always be on the active case, not this dead case; I can find out more. For our friendship, if nothing else, Naomasa." Then, "... You can come by to check that I'm doing it the right way. I trust you. Free interrogation access, not just to the records. You can walk in anytime."

Naomasa hesitated. His quirk had told him the words were honest, that the man believed all that he had said – at least at the present moment. The insurance of being able to check the man's behavior was what tipped him, however. Truth could be a fickle thing that was not always followed by action. "Too far" was a line drawn in the sand, but at least this way, Naomasa could still control the situation.

"Detective Tanuma too," he said, after a dragged-out pause. "Give him full access too, for interrogation and checks. And if you cross the line even an inch…"

"Deal."

"... In that case, I'd like you to take all the yakuza. Send over two of your security guards to help train mine. Give me five days before we make the transition. I still reserve jurisdiction for how to treat the case until then. Some of the yakuza might be dismissed before then. This is only a courtesy warning."

"... you won't take it easy on me, will you, old pal?"

"You came in here with a demand, calling it a favor," Naomasa said sharply. "I'm trusting you to keep your word. If it wasn't for the fact that I think you can be better than the hollowed, unashamed man who just spoke to me, I wouldn't be accepting this at all."

To his credit, the man looked chagrined, face reddening. To Naomasa's eyes, it looked genuine. He breathed out a harsh breath.

"I'm taking a chance on you," he told the police chief. "Keep your pride, and don't prove me wrong."

The other man started back at him for a long moment, then nodded in a sharp jerk.

Naomasa opened the office door, gesturing for him to leave. The open air felt like a blessing, and they walked together back to the front entrance, where a couple of Hakoshi's men were comingling with his own. With a gesture, from their police chief, the three visitors snapped to attention and were ready to leave.

Hakoshi really must have expected to take Hazuki today, Naomasa thought with disappointment. Had he thought Naomasa hadn't known?

"One last thing," Hakoshi said, just before they left, tipping his police chief hat lower as he surreptitiously leaned in, "I heard the state attorney's getting real interested in your case. You might want to watch out for any interference, when you bring those UA kids in."

Noamasa nodded even as he frowned, dubiously glad to at least be forewarned but now skeptical of the man's intentions. His trust in him had been broken.

"I'll take care," he said, meeting the man's eyes and trading a short nod. Police Chief Hakoshi then shuffled out of his station without another word, message passed on and deal brokered.

Naomasa sighed.

.

They were incomparable powers, the physical and the political. To meet either front, political or physical, you needed an expert of that front in order to entangle with it; the two realms were not interchangeable. Strength in one aspect did not mean strength in another. These days, someone extremely powerful by physical strength would have a hard time finding a place for themselves within society if they had no skill with people, either. And if they tried to undercut the lives of others using their physical prowess to enforce their will – well, then, heroes would band together, uniting on a stronger front of physical strength, to bring down such a foe until consequences such as law and society were able to take hold.

Yet, physical power is always the baseline that the rest of society was built off of, Naomasa knew; it was the baseline for political power and power of the law. It was why they needed enforcement of the law, and could not rely only on the dubious inherent goodness of people. Once enforcement becomes an inevitability and physical security is established in a society, concerns shift to be that of the law. No longer does only physical power matter; instead, the ability to make appearances and connect with the people around you matter more. Social and political abilities become a valued and treasured ability for navigating the social eddies and currents of the times.

… this is what Naomasa got for listening to Makoto's sociology lectures. He couldn't pretend to be an expert like her, but many of the thoughts she had spoken were interesting to him and he had brought them as a useful addition to his constantly-growing repertoire of knowledge.

For his part, Naomasa played the line between physical force and the power of the law – he was the converter between the two, the one who ensured the smooth interaction between the two. It was Naomasa's job not to just maintain the peace, but to maintain that power of the law. Heroes were enforcers, the court formed the word of law, and Naomasa was the gears between the two. As such, he had to have some specialization in both matters, in both physical force and legality. He would have to handle both the criminals directly and the attorney. That was the job he had signed up for.

But damned if it didn't make him feel like a cynic sometimes.

Unfortunately, it meant that, in addition to the tangled messes at his office, he also had to deal with the media and politics. That was what Makoto was for, bless his sister.

Just some weeks ago, when he had first called for help from her, he had explained what he wanted to accomplish. She had understood immediately.

"So a positive ad campaign, huh? You want to restore Killua's – and Gon's – reputation, as representatives of their universe."

That was exactly it. Naomasa was sure that he wasn't the only one who had the idea, but he was sure that he was the only one with the scary marketing-genius power of his sister on his side.

Today, they were reconvening again to discuss their strategy.

So immediately, once Naomasa returned home from the police station, they got to work.

"I just don't know where to start," he groaned, running his hands through his hair, already fed up when they had barely begun. He just wasn't cut out for this kind of political work. There was a reason why he wasn't a reporter. Or a politician, heaven forbid.

Makoto, instead, smiled. "Then I suggest we start with the online forums." She paused, seeing her brother's quizzical expression. "You have no idea how much it's been blowing up over there, have you?" She sighed, lifting a finger. "For most young people nowadays, their most formative information comes from the internet and forum hearsay. If we can influence the topic of the forums, then we can influence the general consensus of the young." She smiled, a shark smile. "But that's only the first piece. To get the rest of Japan – no, the world – on board, we're going to have to do a lot more."

She thunked a suitcase heavily on the table, dragging it up from who knows where.

"The first step," she proclaimed, meeting Naomasa's eyes, "is to contact Killua and Gon. This will be impossible without them. They need to make a good showing – explain what happened on that day with good press backing them up. Before then, however, we have to set up a good backstory for them. Give me your records of any incidents they were involved in, and I'll see if I can cook up a good story. That can be our focus for today."

His sister really was a chatterbox, and a bossy one too. Naomasa groaned, rubbing at his forehead with one palm.

"I can't just give you records," he said. "Those are…"

"But you can give me stories," she retorted quickly. "Any general reports, involvements… for example, was there anything good Killua or Gon were involved in with the class, or student statements, or indications of cultural misunderstandings…"

"Well," Naomasa said, thinking, "there was that mall incident."

Makoto perked up. "Mall incident?"

"Yeah. About a month back, a fire villain identified as Dabi, League of Villains member, attacked the Musutafu mall, along with a small-time villain with a shark mutant quirk. Killua actually happened to be there, and from reports, rescued a small girl, bringing her out of the mall within moments of the attack beginning. He also returned inside the mall, to face the villain… All Might reported that he had provided crucial distraction for letting the rest of the crowd escape before he himself arrived on the scene."

Makoto was nodded, twirling around a pen in her hand.

"Cutting out that part about Dabi," she said, "that makes a good story. Otherwise, I'm worried about the implications. That was Killua's first contact with the League of Villains?"

Naomasa shrugged, lifting his hands helplessly in the air. "I assume so, but we don't know very much. Dabi, at that point, wasn't confirmed to be a League member. And Killua's dealings with the League of Villains are largely unknown – somehow, he managed to track down and rescue Bakugo, UA student and friend, from the hideout of the League without any police help."

"So he already knew where they were," Makoto surmised, brows furrowing together. "And now that they've been caught escaping the police together on camera…"

"It doesn't look good," Naomasa affirmed. "Not for them, or for Bakugo."

She steepled her hands together, thoughtful.

"Do you know where they might have gone?"

"... That's confidential."

"So yes, huh?" Makoto grinned, shark-like. "Well, then, all the better once you get in contact with them. Let me know when you bring them in then, alright, big bro? I bet I can do a good interview for you."

When Naomasa didn't respond, making incomprehensible sputtering noises, Makoto brought down her pen an inch from Naomasa's nose. He stared at it cross-eyed, before he stared at her, angrily. He hated that she had so easily teased confidential information from him, and that she was right. It wasn't the first time too, damn her. It was part of the reason he was always so hesitant to get her involved in anything.

His little sister was always too curious for her own good.

"Makoto -"

"Nevermind that for now. First, let's discuss nomenclature," Makoto said intently, retracting the pen with a whoosh. "If we want to put a positive spin on the other world, first we have to name it. Give it our own brand. There's been a couple names tossed around - the 'other world', 'alterverse', 'Hunter world', 'dimension B', but so far, nothing has stuck. If we push forward with an official police statement and work with the media, we can push an appropriate name for referring to the world that will cast it in a better, or more realistic, light."

Naomasa frowned, forcing aside his irritation at his sister. He had asked her to help, after all, and she was doing that, at least.

"But do we really know enough about the other world to name it?" Naomasa said dubiously.

Makoto pointed her pen at him, a sharp gleam in her eyes. "That's exactly the problem. Do we? Does anyone else? By naming it, we take the first step to understanding it." She ruminated for a moment, then grinned. "So why don't we ask a native of the world for some input?"

"But," Naomasa frowned, "the only natives of that world are currently on the run…"

Makoto rolled her eyes. "You really haven't been paying attention, have you?" She pulled out her phone, rapidly tapped the screen a few times, then turned it over to him. "What about this?"

As Naomasa scrolled over the article she had pulled up, he found his eyebrows rising.

"Is this real?" he asked.

She shrugged.

"As real as we can expect, probably." She grinned sharply. "At least, it's probably something worth checking out."

Naomasa nodded his head slowly, agreeing. He hadn't been on the net much recently, instead nestled deeply in his cases and report files, so it was no wonder he had missed this. This woman, Uyeda Yuri, who was claiming to be from the Other World too - she would have been lost in the litany of other false claims and reports and eccentric news, if not for Makoto's sharp grip on the pulse of today's happenings.

"Yes," he said slowly. "We can probably go tomorrow, or – "

His work phone rang with a sharp beep. Worried, he cut his words short and immediately pulled it from his pocket, flipping it open as he pressed the device to his ear, nudging Makoto's own smart phone back at her.

"Hello?" he said. "What's wrong?"

"There's been a situation in Jaku," Detective Tanuma's tweedy voice came over the line, all its usual twang and humor drained from it. "We need you here, Tsukauchi. It's related to your active case, and the drugs you picked up."

Naomasa cursed, and tottered to his feet, flinging on his trench coat and hat as he rushed out the door. Tanuma would only call him if it was urgent.

"Sorry, Makoto," he called out. "We'll have to continue this later." This was hardly the first time these past weeks he had had to run out on his sister because of a case. He had to trust her to understand.

"So what's going on?" he asked into the phone. "I'm headed there now. How urgent?"

It was always one thing after another. If some lucky criminal didn't drive him into an early grave, he was sure the grind would, someday, take its toll.

"Trail's hot, but given the way things have been going, it might escape soon. I'll give you more details once you're in."

The line then clicked off.

Grimacing, a foreboding and ominous feeling filling him, Naomasa remembered the latest drop in crime, all the clues and mysteries he hadn't yet managed to tie up, and couldn't help but worry if something bigger was coming for them all instead. There were too many signs, too many little pointers and big cases suddenly dismissed, that it added up to something he didn't much like the sound of. It might just be paranoia speaking, but… well, Naomasa had long since learned not to lie to himself.

It wasn't the grind Naomasa should be worrying about – but rather what it meant, for him, for all Might, for Tokyo, and for the world at large.

Something was coming, he knew it in his bones, knew it just like a dog knows a heavy storm's coming.

Something big.