15th July
There’s a man lying on a hospital bed, his chest falling up and down slowly. His skin is pale as snow, dark rings dragging his eyes down and making him look older. His brown hair is tousled on top of his head, like he's just woken up. A cast envelops his whole left arm, warping up around his shoulder and his torso. Whoever did this, did quite a number on him.
Detective Tanuma is acutely aware of what sort of pain the hero must be in as he opens the door of his hospital room with a polite dip of his head, “Fujimori Mikio?” he greets, “I am detective Eizo Tanuma, I was hoping you could spare me a minute or two to answer a few questions.”
The crippled hero waves him over with his good hand, and the motion itself manages to convene his exhaustion. “Go on, I’ve got nothing else to do anyway.”
The detective nods and drags a chair to sit by his bedside, shooting him a look of empathy. “Firstly, I’d like to verify the information you’ve given to the staff–”
The hero exhales sharply, a strained smile tugging at his lips, “Straight to the point, heh?”
“Pardon me, but I’m a bit running out of time?” Tanuma smiles apologetically, clears his voice, “You were assaulted last Saturday night, in Kabukicho?” Fujimori nods, “What were you doing in Kabukicho?”
“What does it matter?”
“Well, it could provide us a good lead, considering we have no way of knowing the motive here. You were attacked while off the job, sir, I think we ought to provide the attention this case deserves...”
At this, the man frowns, his lips pulling down in annoyance. “How the hell does that have anything to do with anything? Shit, I might not even be able to work anymore– and you’re, you’re asking me what I was doing? The fuck does that matter, just make sure the asshole who did this to me pays!”
“Like I said, knowing this might help us figure out why you were targeted while you weren’t on the job, sir.” Tanuma tries to explain somewhat softly, “The damage on your shoulder actually lines up with injuries we’ve observed in other incidents of this kind. We’ve got reason to believe that your assailant is a man called Neji Hyuga.”
Fujimori raises both eyebrows, some of his ire disappearing in place of surprise. “He’s known to the police?”
“Oh, yes, much so.” Tanuma forces a laugh out. “We might as well be pals from how often we hear about him back in the station.”
The detective allows a brief silence to lull the conversation, letting the bed-ridden hero soak in the information. One of his most valuable qualities as a detective, Tanuma thinks, has always been his ability to ease up a conversation and let it flow where he wants it to be.
Tanuma then sighs, breaking the silence, and takes on a grave tone, “You must know about the rumors, so to say, floating around about your… hobbies. Baseless accusations, of course.” Fujimori narrows his eyes, and Tanuma flashes a brief smile, all teeth and sharp edges. “Based on what we know about Neji Hyuga, we think that the man pictures himself a vigilante– a troublesome one at that. You're well placed to know how dangerous those are, vigilantes– all mighty morals and great aspirations,” he waves a hand in the air, “but one little push and they tip over the edge.”
“So, this isn’t your first time dealing with him.” the hero prompts.
Tanuma latches onto the opportunity, “Well, no. He’s responsible for many cases of physical assault and vandalism– and God knows what else we haven’t discovered yet. I’m the detective in charge of bringing this individual into custody. Actually, can you describe him to me?”
“Uh.” the man says, fumbling for a moment. “He had long hair, pale skin… Kind of slender, too. He was actually kind of… I mean, he kinda looked like a woman.” Tanuma nods along the description, clearly recognizing Neji Hyuga in it, and faintly surprised that the man remembers this much. The people Tanuma has met concerning the cases that had popped up this last month– mostly petty criminals, had failed to provide any sort of meaningful description, except for the recurrent ‘I felt something was wrong then I was writhing in pain on the ground.’ Simply put, the whole thing happened too quickly for them to see anything. It did paint a rather uncanny picture, the mysterious quality of it almost seemed like something straight out of a movie.
Having met Neji Hyuga himself, though, Tanuma knows that there is one of his most recognizable features that hasn’t been mentioned: “Anything you’ve noticed about his eyes?”
The man blinks rapidly, confused, “No? Well, he did have…” he gestures to his own eyes, “sunglasses. Wouldn’t take them off.”
Tanuma resists the urge to raise his eyebrows– this was new. “Did you engage in any sort of communication with Neji Hyuga?”
“We talked.” the detective just stares, so Fujimori clarifies, “Well he did threaten me, before, you know…” he gestures to his cast.
Tanuma hums. “You said he wouldn’t take his sunglasses off?” he waits for Fujimori to nod uneasily, “Did you ask him to?”
Between the rumors of the hero's peculiar taste, the police’s own investigations and various filed complaints that had been pushed down, the loopholes, and the sheer suspiciousness radiating from the man in front of him, it wasn’t hard to deduce what had gone down. However, Tanuma, like any other detective, had to have proof– personal speculations were worth nothing.
“Well,” the hero makes another vague gesture. What was that sound Tamuna was hearing? Perhaps the sound of the rope tightening around Fujimori’s throat. “I didn’t really ask him, it just… Came up? No, it’s more–”
“Mr. Fujimori, sir,” Tanuma begins again with a certain look, folding his hands, “is there any reason you can think of, at all, that might have prompted Neji Hyuga to attack you?”
Tanuma leaves the hospital, walks to the sidewalk, and lets himself in the police car waiting for him. Rather predictably, Fujimori hadn’t taken well to his integrity being questioned, and Tanuma had been promptly kicked out. Unfortunately, the detective had no legal rights to force the man to answer his questions. A shame, that. As if his job wasn’t already a hassle.
“Any luck?” Kenta Kudo asks once he shuts the car door shut, sitting up from his position in the driving seat. He’s a newbie at the station with unnerving blue eyes, fresh out of school, but with a good head on his shoulders and a pretty convenient quirk that could let him detect blood stains, even hidden. It certainly saved them the trouble of wasting luminol on crime scenes.
“No, no,” Tanuma huffs, letting out a sigh of relief at being back in the comfort of the car, “Neji Hyuga's the quiet kind of villain, and he’s annoyingly careful.”
The younger man nods knowingly. “They’re the most difficult to deal with.”
“And the most dangerous.” Tanuma adds, securing his belt. He rolls down the window on his side and starts smoking his cigarette, skillfully ignoring the other’s look of disapproval. The detective touches his shoulders, wincing around the strain at the back of his neck, “But he’ll make a mistake. They always do.”
“I’ll send some undergrounders on site, see what they can find.” Kudo says, and Tanuma grunts in agreement, rubbing the stubble on his chin in thought. He doesn’t mention that the scene is most likely cold by now, but the kid seems to know it all the same.
“Well,” Tanuma starts again, with bravado, “one thing has been cleared for sure with this interrogation: pro-hero Flashfire, otherwise known as Fujimori Mikio, is a fraud.” he says, like the title of one of The Spells’ articles, a famous tabloid newspapers.
“That wasn’t a secret to anyone with working eyes, though.” Kudo mumbles, fanning his hand in front of his nose to clear the smoke.
“True that.”
“A shame he’s got the HPSC in his corner.”
“A shame.” Tanuma repeats, and takes a particularly long drag before tossing his cig out. “Guess it doesn’t help that he's from Endeavor’s agency either.”
Kudo taps his nails against the wheel, staring straight ahead with an intense look to his eyes, and says, like a promise: “He can run all he wants. One day. One day, justice will come.”
Tanuma closes his eyes. He wonders how long this innocence will last.
On the morning of the fifteenth of July, Neji rolls over his measly bed– an abandoned mattress, really– at exactly 6AM, his internal clock urging his eyes to open without his say. Neji hates waking up, hates the sluggish state of his body, the crust in the corners of his eyes, the blinking to reality, the leaving this state between life and death, hates how stiff his limbs are, how knotted his hair becomes, how inadequate and out of place he feels in a world that isn’t his own. Neji cracks a yawn.
After taking his shower in a nearby gym, Neji takes more time than usual grooming his hair and carefully trims his nails, so that there’s no risk they’ll break or bother him while using the gentle fist. He goes through a longer series of intricate stretches, bending his body in impossible ways and making sure to eliminate every discomfort in his neck, shoulders, hips.
He buys a modest but healthy breakfast at the bakery down the street, not tasting anything. At exactly a quarter past seven, he walks the streets of Hosu, circles the target’s building three times before heading towards it.
Okada’s tower is, simply put, a monster of a building– indeed stretches so high up it seems to brush the sky, with a paranoid amount of cameras, and a myriad of people entering and leaving even early in the morning. Neji blends in with the crowd and enters by the front door, then hides from the camera in the corner of the lobby behind a large man with a goatee, and disappears with a few hand signs to appear back into a secluded area. Then, he sticks his feet to the wall and walks up to the air vent, pressing the pad of his pointer finger to the screws and sending out a sharp take of chakra to undo them.
Neji is grateful for the vents’ size as he sucks in his stomach and squeezes himself in. He can feel the chill on his elbows, braced against his chest and on the floor, as he wiggles his body forward, carefully and quietly. He knows the building’s layout by heart, and even then his byakugan offers the sort of clarity that makes for a sound infiltration.
After a few minutes of careful navigating, the vents split into two paths. He takes the left one, the one that opens to a deserted hallway connected to the staircase. Neji then drops down to the grown, and there he comes face to face with his greatest obstacle so far.
“Ah, my soulmate–” Neji says, resisting the dumb urge to run his fist through the thing, “technology.”
A heavy door stands between him and the staircase that leads to the upper level of the building (Nomad did argue that taking the elevator would be a quicker way to the top, Neji insisted he wouldn’t.) There’s a scanner, both for face and touch ID, as well as a four digits code to enter. If it were just the code, Neji could deal, but scanners are way out of his league.
Fortunately, Nomad had warned him against this, and so Neji knows what he has to do to bypass it. If he remembers correctly (and he certainly does), the employees here have their fingerprints and face registered in the database. In short, Neji can hunt down an unassuming employee, use them to unlock the door, and leave them somewhere in a way that wouldn’t alert the others.
He heaves himself back into the vents, and crawls back to the intersection where he takes the other path that leads straight to a staff-only room. Neji stops right above the opening in the ceiling, elbows braced against his chest, and stills. By the looks of it, this must be some sort of break room– there are chairs, a table, a printer, and a worn looking coffee machine. Also, three people are conversing rather animatedly in the room, obviously employees judging by their name tags.
“I’m telling you,” one of them, a woman with clipped hair, says in a low voice, “the manager is such a bitch! Always piling work on me like I’m his slave or something, and he’s never even there!”
Another woman, with dark cropped hair, nods vigorously, “The gall of that man to arrive fifteen minutes late everyday and then complain about not meeting deadlines!” she exclaims. “You might not see it yet since you’re new, Noboru, but that man– he’s the devil itself!”
“Oh, I see it alright.” Noboru, a short man with a severely mashed up face– like a pug’s, and dropping dog-ears mutters in a squeaky voice, “He’s been treating me like crap since I got here. On my first day, there was a problem with the ventilation, it smelled bad, and I mean really bad– and he just assumed it was my fault. Why, just blame the guy with the dog mutation, why don’t you! ”
“Quirkist bastard.” the dark-haired woman hisses, folding her arms. “I’ve got a friend in management, she told me he made a remark like this to someone with a mutation quirk, like, some guy who has long hair all over. Apparently, when he submitted his report, the manager asked him if he had help, and wouldn’t believe he had done it himself.” She clicks her tongue, and then sharply looks at the ceiling. Neji freezes.
“It’s the quotas, man, the quotas.” the man huffs, rubbing his nose. “They enroll a few mutated people in so they can take shots of them for the website and then, at the end of the day, pat themselves on the back for being so open-minded.”
“Guys, we should probably get going before we get caught slacking off.”
“Don’t worry,” the first woman checks her watch with a smile on her lips, “only… seven minutes ‘til he gets here.” they snicker.
“By the way, do you guys hear this?” they pause. Neji stops breathing for a moment, his pulse quickening like a rabbit’s. “In the ceiling? I feel like I’m hearing something.”
“Uh.” the woman with the clips looks at the ceiling, then glances at his colleague questioningly, who shakes his head. “My bad, it’s probably nothing.” the other deflects, though she still sounds unsure.
The pug man turns away. “Alright, well, I’ll get to my post before the manager arrives. See y’all at lunch break.” they respond with a chorus of ‘See you.’
“I forgot something.” the dark-haired woman says to her colleague as she leaves. “Don’t wait for me, see you at lunch.”
They’re alone in the room. The lady, squinting dubiously at the ceiling, and Neji, hiding in said ceiling. He waits a few minutes before twisting his hands together and appearing inside of the room, raising his palm to strike– and the woman turns around with a wild look, throwing herself to the side to avoid the blow, and tripping over her feet in the process. To say Neji is surprised would be an understatement.
“Who the hell are you?! I knew I’d heard something!” she climbs to her feet unsteadily and backs away a few steps. If Neji were to bet on a quirk, he’d say enhanced hearing– she must have heard the displacement of air behind her.
“That’s good.” Neji says, “I’m glad I got to you first.”
“What–” Neji flashes forward and hits her in the lower back, making her plummet to the ground with a pained gasp, hands flying to her back.
“Shut up.” the woman, smartly, clicks her mouth shut, and just exhales sharply from the pain. “I was wondering if you can open that door that leads to the first floor? You can talk now.”
Promptly, as if straight from the heart: “Fuck you.”
He sighs. “Is your job really worth it?” Without another word, Neji picks her up by the elbow so that her knees are barely grazing the ground. “I have my doubts about that. You know, I could probably just,” he presses his other hand to her elbow tightly, too, so that he’s bracketing it between his palms, chakra buzzing, “... like chopsticks.”
The woman has turned an odd shade of green, “I don’t, I don’t even–” tears start to gather in her eyes. “Look, I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I’ve got nothing to do with it. I- I have a brother–”
“The door.” Neji cuts in.
“I don’t– I don’t even have the clearance, I work at the attendance. Please. I swear, fuck, I can’t open that door!”
“Then who can? Open the door, that is.”
“Uh. The– the manager has clearance, I guess, but.” she sobs. “I don’t wanna get fired. Please, I can’t lose this job.” It was actually kind of impressive how she could still look up at him to argue just after he’d used the gentle fist on her lower back, of all things.
He fixes her with a bland look. “Are you telling me that because you don’t like him?”
“... You were listening.” her face contorts oddly. “Well, doesn't matter. I– I’m just saying that because…” she sniffs loudly, and rambles, “Okay, maybe it’s because I don’t like him, but he really can open that door, but. But I don’t wanna get fired! If he finds out–”
Neji rolls his eyes. “He won’t know, and you won’t get fired. What’s his name?”
She wipes her tears away, makeup dripping from her eyes. “Shit. Uh, Okamura. We actually don’t know his first name…”
Neji nods, satisfied. “Alright. Now turn around.” then slams his palm in the small of her back again, getting the flow of what meager chakra she has back in place. This would ensure a swift recovery.
Then, Neji applies pressure to the back of her neck and waits for her to faint (which doesn’t take too long.) He hides her unconscious body in the vents, hoping they’d be able to find her once he’s done, but not really caring. They must have at least one quirk useful for locating people in the police force, right?
It’s another couple of minutes before Neji spies a man entering the building, walking rather leisurely to the staff only area. He doesn’t need any more confirmation than his nametag to go meet the man at an altercation.
“Hello.” Neji says simply. Something must be showing on his face (whether it is his impatience to get this over with, or simply his empty eyes, he doesn’t know) because the man just starts backing away, shaking his head quickly.
“This can’t be happening to me again.” the manager says, paling. Neji senses an interesting track record.
“It is.” he almost wants to apologize, for the look that passes through his next victim’s face can only be described as haunted. Still, Neji incapacitates the man’s legs, catching him by the shoulders as he falls down with a yelp, and teleports them back in front of the door. He lets the guy fall down, disoriented.
“What’s the code?” Neji asks, staring at the shaking man at his feet. “What’s the code?” he repeats, and grabs him by the hair to shove his face in front of the door. He gives him a good shake, “Go on.”
“You’re– fucking crazy, you know that? Where’s security?! Who even–”
“Not here.” Neji cuts, toneless, and brings his arm back so they’re eye to eye, all bulging veins and active byakugan involved. “Not coming either. Hurry, I’ve no more patience left.”
The man gulps audibly, cries out when Neji forces him in front of the door again, but otherwise remains silent. He enters the four digits with shaking fingers, two, six, four, seven, Neji memorizes. The face ID is next, due to the proximity at which Neji is holding him, almost pressed up to the whole thing. He would say the poor man’s having a rather intimate moment with the door, and Neji has absolutely no problem sharing his soulmate with him.
“Lend me a hand, will you?” Neji then snatches the man’s wrist and forcefully pries his fingers off his palm to press it against the scanner. The manager scratches at Neji’s arm, eyes wide in fear. “Get your hands off me, you freak!” a satisfying beep sounds out, and the door opens with a series of metallic clicks.
“Nuh huh, not so loud, please.” Neji scolds, like a tired schoolteacher, and bashes the guy across the head. He slumps to the ground, and Neji debates for a whole three seconds if he should hide the body, or leave it as it is. In the end, he makes the smart decision to carry the man in a corner of the corridor (where no one risks tripping over him) and hides him under a weak illusion. He’s by no means an expert in the art, but his handiwork still leaves a satisfied quirk on his lips as he pushes the door open and closes it behind him without a sound.
Neji takes the stairs (just thinking about getting stuck in the elevator makes his stomach coil in uncomfortable ways) and he’s finally on the first floor. From there on, getting through the next two floors is a piece of cake– he simply molds his chakra over himself to copy the manager’s appearance, nods curtly to people greeting him in the hallways, and bypasses the next two doors the same way he did the first. Okada might not be the pinnacle of virtue, but neither was Neji, though there was something remarkable that could be said about his security (mainly that it was shit.)
Things get a little more complicated once he’s on his way to the fourth floor of Okada industry. Apparently, Okamura, the man he is impersonating, doesn’t have clearance to go any higher, and his presence on the fourth floor already starts raising eyebrows. Okada’s floor, which Neji is looking for, is the last floor of the tower, the fortieth one. Neji hadn’t taken into account that it would take him so long to go through the floors one by one, so instead of searching for a way to open the door to the next staircase, he looks for an opening to the outside to actually scale the building and get to the highest floor. Not for the first time, he is not grateful at all for his long hair as it whips back in his face on his way to the top, feet glued to the side of the building and chakra masking him from outsiders’ eyes.
Neji is freezing by the time he gets to the last floor (just a few hundreds feet above ground) and presses his body to the cold glass, directing his chakra onward with quick hand signs to poof back into the building. Compared to the first floors, there aren’t many people here– there’s a woman with neat appearance frowning at a computer screen in a closed room (Okada’s secretary, perhaps), a janitor currently having a battle with the toilets, and a tall man pacing behind the wall in front of Neji. He places another trusty cameleon technique on himself and heads straight to the corridor the man is pacing in, steps silent as a cat's.
The man– or guard, because he’s wearing a bulky vest, like armor, places a finger on his temple, frowning in his direction. Neji’s steps stutter to a stop, unsure, and he quickly bends his knees in preparation when he realizes he can somehow see him. The guard startles back at the same time, the veins in his neck pulsing in alarm.
“How did you get past the quirk sensors?!” He cries out, and pulls out something Neji’s grown familiar with– a black shiny phone. Neji isn’t quick enough, the knife sailing from his fingers impacting only after the man presses the button on the side twice. The cracked device falls to the ground, the kunai sticking out of it.
“Warning. Security breach property security breach–” A robotic voice rings out, making him flinch violently. “intruder, please identify yourself.”
(In another city, Okada sits up abruptly from his seat in the VIP room, phone buzzing in his pocket. Down in the arena, a series of deafening explosions rock the stadium as a boy recklessly slams a piece of robot down on the obstacle race’s minefield.)
The guard gets hold of something black– like the weapon at the robbery, Neji realizes, and remembers the harsh sound of fireworks, the sparks, the holes in the ceiling. He ducks when the gun is pointed in his direction, a familiar fear of the unknown prickling his skin, and he sees the exact moment the guard’s pointer finger pulls the trigger. There’s a slight flare, a loud bang, and a small cylindrical projectile zips just past Neji’s ear. Shock and adrenaline whirl in his chest as he throws himself forward, knocks the gun out of the guy’s hand and kicks it away.
The man stares at him, paralyzed by fear. Neji slips back into old habits easily, and without realizing it, his dominant hand pushes through the air, two fingers pointing up and palm slamming right over the man’s heart. The guard wheezes, eyes widening in one last moment, before collapsing and not getting back up.
Neji shakily steps back, hesitantly touching his ringing ear, then grimacing in pain when he actually acknowledges his head splitting apart. The blaring alarms certainly don’t help.
“... All visitors are requested to remain calm and proceed through the security measures until the heroes arrive. I repeat–” Neji curses, fisting his hands in his hair. He should’ve expected at least one person to have some sort of detection quirk– what an idiot. With his byakugan, he can see security trying to calm down the panicking crowd on the first floor, and people blocking doors and hiding under desks in all the building. Other security guards are rushing to his floor. Does that mean heroes are coming , too? Crap.
Neji breathes through his nose, calmly, then forces the irritating robot voice in the background of his mind to concentrate. Okada’s floor is just above his head, and the time for subtlety has passed. He picks up the discarded gun (for future studying), places it in his storage seal, and sends an explosive tag to the ceiling.
He sends his chakra oneward to teleport onto the last floor and, ignoring the chaos he’s caused, dashes to the direction of Okada’s personal stuff (there’s an impressive oak desk, shelves upon shelves of documents, what looks like a very expensive computer, and an obnoxious looking red carpet.) Though theoretically plausible, he couldn’t efficiently examine all the files in Okada’s office with his byakugan– his brain just wouldn’t be able to process all the information. So Neji goes for the shelves and digs in hungrily. If he isn’t able to find at least one proof of Okada’s involvement with Giran– well, that wouldn’t be too bad, because the major point of the mission was to intimidate the businessman into submission with blunt violence in Giran’s name. Still, Neji isn’t one to half-ass things...
After twenty minutes of anxious rummaging and checking over the progression of the guards below (conveniently enough, the rubble from the collapsed ceiling is giving them trouble– Neji will pretend this was intentional) he stumbles, completely out of luck, onto a half-crumpled piece of paper in the very back of a shelve. It's a series of names and places– Giran's clients, written in rushed handwriting. Why would Okada keep something like this, he doesn't know.
“Looks discriminating enough.” Neji mutters, stuffing it in his storage seal. Then, because Giran had spoken of making a statement to Okada (and he clearly doesn’t have time for that, let alone that the man himself isn’t even here) he sticks a flimsy paper bomb to the underside of the desk chair. It should go off when pressure is applied– hopefully the man won’t die trying to sit on it, that would wreck the whole point of the mission. But it should spook him just enough, along with his main building being infiltrated single-handedly, of course.
Neji sniffs, and palms a knife for one final touch. The guards are nearly here, apparently having bypassed the ruins of the broken ceiling. He carves a capital ‘G’ right on top of the desk– and it makes an awful sound, like the thing is crying out its distress. As chips of wood come loose in the trail of Neji’s massacre, he thinks that maybe this would be the kind of desk sitting, proudly, in the Hokage’s office before Tsunade took the hat. Neji dusts his hands, already turning on his heel to find a way to leave–
And then he sees it, just outside of the glass wall.
Time seems to slow to a stop as crimson knives fall from the sky, perhaps sent straight to earth by some sort of higher-being. As the feathers seem to hover mockingly just in front of him, blocked by one wall of glass, Neji wonders with a weird feeling of dread, are the Gods laughing at his expense?