Chapter 20: The Lies Start Adding Naomasa watched the boy in his interrogation room wondering, for the millionth time since bringing him in, how it had come to this. He knew it had somehow all started with that stupid dating app Sansa had forced convinced him to download. How that landed him here, with an irate Eraserhead glaring at him and a seemingly resigned Izuku Midoriya handcuffed to a table, was a bit of a convoluted story.
Most of the men he'd chatted with on the dating app were nowhere near interesting enough to waste his valuable free time with. Then he'd matched with Yagi and, sure the man was a bit older than him and had an adopted son, but there was something about him that made Naomasa ask to meet for coffee. Coffee turned into lunch which led to dinner and soon they were going on regular dates.
The first lie had caught him by surprise. He was meeting Hitoshi for the first time, several months into dating the boy's father. Hitoshi was in his second year at UA now and they eventually started talking about his friends. That was the first time Midoriya had come up and Yagi, at Hitoshi's request, had told him the story of Midoriya saving the man from a mugging. Why the man would lie about that, he had no idea, but he'd avoided the subject of his quirk so far and he couldn't just call the man out on it without fessing up about having a truth quirk.
Thinking about it after going home that night, he realized that Yagi had also never brought up his quirk. Naomasa hadn't brought it up because so many people were at least wary of being with someone who always knew if they were lying, but it had never occurred to him before that the man he'd been seeing had also avoided the subject. Normally, that wouldn't be a red flag, but with him already being suspicious about the mugging story it seemed like one now.
He'd gone into work the next day and run a background check on Yagi. He had promised himself when he'd started dating that he wouldn't do that, but now he needed some kind of reassurance there was nothing fishy going on if he were to continue the relationship. Nothing turned up, Yagi had no criminal history and was registered as having a minor mood manipulation quirk. (Which would explain why he hadn't brought it up, people were probably wary of that as they were Naomasa's quirk). So he'd decided there was nothing he needed to be suspicious of and pushed it to the back of his mind.
If he noticed Yagi being skittish around him for a while after that, he wrote it off as the man being nervous about their developing relationship. They'd both confessed to not being in relationships for a while so it made sense that taking such a clear step forward like meeting his kid would make him nervous.
The second lie shouldn't have been a lie. Naomasa had been talking about something from his high school days and naturally asked Yagi about the school he'd gone to, ignoring that he already knew what school the man had attended from the background check. Yagi gave him the name of the school and it registered as a lie. How could it be a lie when it was the same as the file he had on the man? Something wasn't adding up.
Then he'd gotten Kyo's case and was too busy to spend much time thinking on the conundrum that was his boyfriend. It was the third case he'd had over the last five years of a quirkless person going missing without leaving a trace behind and he called in Eraserhead. There was a pattern here and Naomasa didn't know any other heroes with connections to the underground that he trusted to care as much as himself in regards to quirkless people.
She'd run from a clearly abusive foster home At thirteen years old, it shouldn't have been hard to track her down. Kids that age were usually not careful enough to delete any web or chat history that would lead an investigator in their direction. If that fails, they usually spill something to a friend who will talk as soon as they understand how bad things can be on the streets. Unfortunately, Kyo only had online friends according to her foster siblings and she was apparently very good at covering her tracks.
The officers assisting him hadn't been able to pull anything from her cell that had been left behind. Even searching her history on her school computers hadn't given them anything. The suspect part about all of this was that her history hadn't been completely erased, there were still regular visits to websites and apps, but not enough to match with the amount of online time reported by classmates and foster siblings.
Either Kyo had figured out how to delete all traces of her online presence that would lead them to her or she had help. The tech department at the station assured him that the level of sophistication needed to completely erase the data missing was far beyond the capabilities of the girl in question. After speaking with Kyo's foster siblings Naomasa realized they were right and not just being sexist, the girl couldn't work the TV half the time and needed help to find the settings on her phone. There was no way she wouldn't have left even a single clue.
Naomasa called in Eraserhead then. The similarities to his two previous missing quirkless person cases were too much to ignore and suddenly they were pulling cases from all over the country that fit a similar pattern. The most frustrating thing was that most of the cases had been handled so poorly, clearly done by officers that didn't care about people they considered a waste of resources. It took them far too long to determine that all the cases were connected in the fact that these quirkless people had seemed to simply vanish without a trace.
Aizawa had decided to talk to Midoriya, his quirkless student who may have known a few of the missing people. He had wanted to do so alone, but Naomasa insisted he be present as he was the lead on the case. Sitting across from the boy in his living room, Naomasa studied Midoriya. He'd heard about him, from Yagi and Aizawa as well as the news stories run on the quirkless student. He wasn't sure what he'd expected, but it wasn't the nervous looking teen watching him just as intensely.
When the pictures of the missing people were spread out on the table between them, Midoriya's face was carefully blank. "Yes I know them, quirkless people have online communities where we keep in touch." True .
"And were you aware that all of these individuals have gone missing?" Naomasa tried to keep his voice calm and open.
Midoriya nodded slowly, "Yes, I keep track of every quirkless person I know of. There's too much discrimination in the world and I want them all safe so I make it my business to know when they die or go missing." True .
Aizawa frowned, "Did you know they all went missing under suspicious circumstances?"
He shrugged, "I knew the cops didn't have any leads if they bothered to investigate at all." True.
Aizawa leaned back with a sigh, "We think their disappearances might be connected. Do you have any idea who would want to take a bunch of quirkless people? Did they say anything about suspicious individuals or groups before they went missing?"
"No, I wish I could give you more information."
That set off his quirk. It didn't register as false but it wasn't the entire truth, so Naomasa leaned forward, "Have you heard from or seen any of these people since they went missing?" Midoriya shook his head, and the lack of verbal response didn't escape his notice. "Could you respond verbally please?"
Aizawa was glaring at him and Midoriya tensed up. "No." False .
Shit. Eraserhead would kill him for this. "Midoriya, that was false. I need you to tell me what you know about where these people are."
Midoriya folded his hands in his lap. "Sorry detective, that's all I'm going to say without a lawyer present."
Naomasa stood. "Then I'm afraid we will be moving this to the station where you can have a lawyer present. You're being charged with withholding information and obstruction of justice. Do I need to cuff you or will you come willingly?"
Thankfully, the teen didn't resist and other than attempting to kill him with his eyes, Aizawa didn't cause a fuss. So now here he was, waiting for Midoriya's lawyer and wondering if maybe his suspicions of the boy were tied in with the lie Yagi had told him. Naomasa didn't know how the fake story of how they met could be connected to whatever Izuku Midoriya knew about missing people, but he was going to find out.