#the phantom of shinomori prefecture series

[thatforgottenbasilisk]

Crash and (Don't) Burn

Part 2 of The Phantom of Shinomori Prefecture Series

Words: 3732 (AO3)

Summary:

Fuyumi is reluctantly dragged out to a bar with a few of her coworkers one Friday night, and she expects it to be a noisy-and-somehow-boring evening. She expects it to be kind of a drag. She expects to be home before midnight.

She doesn't expect the sound of tires screeching outside, nor the clearly metal impact. She doesn't expect to hear the thump of someone hitting a hard surface after being sent flying.

She doesn't expect to glance outside in alarm at the sounds to see a car running over Natsuo's motorcycle.

For Whumptober 2023 Day 1, Prompt #3: "How many fingers am I holding up?"

Notes:

this is russian

"How many fingers am I holding up?"

She's crouched in front of him, one hand at the back of his neck and holding his head up, the other positioned in front of his face, with two fingers prominently held up in front of his eyes. His pupils jump around like excitable insects, flying around and bouncing from one spot to the next with no rhyme or reason to be had.

"I don't- I don't- "

Fuyumi sighs, and puts her hand down. She'd figured it was pointless, anyway. She took enough classes in psychology to know around where the vision part of the brain is, and it's right where her other hand is becoming more and more soaked with her brother's blood.

"Natsuo. I need you to calm down, try and match my breathing, okay? In and out, that's it, in and out..." He shakily tries to comply, slowing down his rapid breathing a little at a time. His eyes don't seem to be focusing on anything now that he's calming down, either, and it feels like that might not be fixed as easily as either of them hope it will. That's not to immediately say that all of this is permanent, of course, but this is definitely scaring her a bit. Not that she'll show it.

Fuyumi glances over at Natsuo's discarded helmet near the small pieces of metal and scrap that litter the sidewalk next to them, then at the skid marks in the street, and finally the wreckage of Natsuo's precious motorcycle, lying on its side in the middle of the road. She looks further down the street at where the joyriders- because that's undoubtedly what they are- speed off in their freshly scraped-up car.

She keeps putting pressure on the head wound while she fumbles with her purse with her one free hand, trying to blindly fish her phone out of it without taking her eyes off of Natsuo. When she finally grabs her phone, she nearly drops it on the ground, and she curses herself for the half-empty margarita she left in the bar a few minutes ago. It wasn't much, and she's nowhere near even being tipsy, but every bit of coordination counts right now and she's scared.

Fuck, she's scared.

"I was- I was just parked there for a minute, I was just gonna go- go g-get my takeout- "

"I know, Natsuo, I know, it's not- it's not your fault, you didn't do anything- "

"If I had just kept my helmet on for another minute, I'd be fine- "

"No, you wouldn't have, you'd have still been hit by a car, helmet or no. You're lucky, we're lucky I was here, my coworkers dragged me out tonight, I- we're so lucky. I have to- I have to call the ambulance, okay? Just, um- just keep breathing like you are, don't- don't start hyperventilating again, okay? You can do that for me, right?"

Natsuo tries to nod, she can feel the muscles in the back of his neck jerking before he aborts the attempt- it probably hurts like a bitch. "Yeah, yeah, I can do that. I'm just- I'm gonna close my eyes for a bit, maybe that'll help, not like I need 'em open now anyway... "

Fuyumi almost argues, then decides not to bother. She doubts that he'll fall asleep or anything right now, and closing his eyes would probably be good for the head injury anyway.

She looks at her phone just long enough to dial the emergency number, and then goes back to watching Natsuo. The operator asks her what the emergency is, and she tells them- she tells them where the both of them are, both of their names, and that they need an ambulance as soon as possible. She tells them that her brother was hit by a car and is still awake and talking only because most of the impact was taken by his motorcycle, clipped at a lucky angle. She doesn't say that if the car or the bike were an inch to either side of where they were, Natsuo would probably be dead. She thinks that all three of them know that without her having to voice it.

She tells the operator that Natsuo can still feel his legs, so she doesn't think there's any spinal damage. She doesn't know if he can move them, and she doesn't want him aggravating a potential injury in testing it out. She also tells the operator that he can't see a thing, though she stops talking to them long enough to ask, "Is it- is it super blurry or all dark?"

"All dark right now," Natsuo mumbles, with his eyes still closed.

Fuyumi bites back an exasperated sigh, and clarifies, "When your eyes were open, Natsu."

"It was, um. Don't know. It's real dark out here anyway, I could just be able to see if there was light- I'm not sure. I don't know."

She relays this to the operator as well as she can, and feels the need to clarify- "He's definitely concussed on top of this- "

"No 'm not," Natsuo interrupts, "If I was concussed then lights would hurt to look at. Can't be concussed if I can't see, right?" He cracks the smallest ghost of a smile at his attempted joke, and there's silence for a moment before Fuyumi bursts into abrupt, hysterical laughter. She laughs so hard that she overbalances and has to lean forward, pressing her forehead into Natsuo's chest, and it's not long before her laughter turns to desperate, terrified sobs. She chokes them down quick, though, because she can't scare Natsuo. Not now.

She can hear sirens in the distance, and curbs the impulse to hang up the phone. Instead, she just sets it on the ground, so the line remains open but she can go back to keeping Natsuo focused on the present moment.

"Hey. Hey, open your eyes, the ambulance is coming, they're going to need you to cooperate with them, okay? They're coming, I hear them, can you- can you hear the sirens?" It sounds like there's more than just the ambulance coming, judging by the noise, but maybe that's just her imagination.

Natsuo slowly opens his eyes, which seem no more focused than they were a few minutes ago. He stares listlessly ahead, and asks, quietly,

"Am I gonna die?"

Fuyumi inhales sharply, heart stuttering an even more panicked staccato, when he continues. "It- everything hurts, and I- I can't see, I smell a lot of iron and I can- I can feel the blood in my hair, Yumi. There's a lot of it, there's too much, I- I feel dizzy, I don't wanna pass out because I don't know if I'll ever wake up again- "

Natsuo cuts himself off as he nearly works himself into a panic attack, and Fuyumi puts her free hand over his heart as though to silently say, Calm down.

He takes a few unsteady breaths, and as the sirens grow ever louder, his voice is quiet enough that it's almost inaudible.

"I miss Touya, but not... not this much. I don't wanna see him yet. Is that- is that selfish?"

Fuyumi presses her hand slightly into Natsuo's chest for a moment, and responds, equally quietly, "No. It's not. You're not dying anytime soon, I promise. I promise." She doesn't correct him about Touya. Doesn't tell him about Dabi. Now isn't the time.

She sees red and blue lights reflecting off the windows of the storefronts nearby, most of them closed with the exception of a 24-hour takeout place and the bar that she vacated what feels like ages ago. Nobody's followed her out yet. Maybe they didn't see her.

Maybe they don't care.

She brushes the thought aside, and says to Natsuo, "The ambulance is almost here, I see the lights. You're going to be fine." He has to be fine. She doesn't know if she can handle it, if all her siblings were scarred, mutilated in some way. Shouto was too much. Touya was too much. Throwing in Natsuo would just be cruel.

The ambulance turns a corner, and the EMTs disembark with a stretcher. She stands on fawn's legs when they surround her brother, not wanting to crowd him or get in the way. She thinks she sees someone step on her half-forgotten phone, but she doesn't care.

Police cars trail behind the ambulance, and they park as Natsuo's loaded onto the stretcher. She doesn't recognize any of the officers that get out, but they seem to recognize her, because none of them hesitate to head straight in her direction. Maybe it's the fact that she's the only conscious civilian here, or maybe it's because her hands and arms are all spattered with drying blood.

Somebody walks up to her, a policeman who would be intimidating if it weren't for the fact that he's roughly the size and shape of Natsuo, who, while tall and muscular, doesn't hold a candle to their father. Endeavor is scarier than this man. Endeavor is scarier than anyone.

The officer doesn't say anything to her as he approaches, and maybe it's the shock of the whole thing, maybe it's because she's more distracted by the sight of the EMTs talking to her brother and strapping him to a stretcher, maybe it's both- but whatever the reason, she doesn't notice when, exactly, he handcuffs her.

She only realizes it when he tells her she's under arrest.

-----

"Miss, I suggest that you either sit down and cooperate, or we will have to restrain you further. We are authorized to use quirk suppressant handcuffs, and I do not believe that you want those instead of your current pair. Do I make myself clear?"

Fuyumi finally sits at the chair in the interrogation room, and stares up at the officer in the room with her. She hasn't met him before, and does not recognize him from anywhere before tonight.

"Am I going to get any updates about my brother, officer? I am very worried about him, considering the last time I talked to him was over two hours ago and he was convinced that he was going to die. You'll have to forgive me for being a little out of sorts."

Her breath comes out in little puffs of condensation, because the temperature around her has been steadily dropping without any conscious input on her part. She knows it's her quirk acting up, and so does the officer, most likely, considering the threat of quirk suppressant cuffs instead of anything else they could've threatened her with, such as calling her father.

The officer, for his part, sighs in a kind of exhaustion that she doesn't really believe. "You will learn about his health when we are done here. It will not take that long, so you can stop with the melodramatics and answer the questions that I ask you. Got it?"

It's a little bit funny, she thinks, if it had been Endeavor telling her to quit being "dramatic" she'd have been cowed immediately, but this man saying it just makes her want to hit him. She doesn't, that would be a terrible idea, but it still stokes the impulse in her. Instead, she nods silently, and does not acknowledge the frost that's forming on the surface of the table- only places her handcuffed wrists over the area in hopes that nobody notices before she can thaw it.

"Good. State your name for the record."

She hesitates a moment, glancing at the camera in the corner of the room. Has it been recording this whole time? She hopes that her father won't see it. He won't be happy if he sees that she was disrespectful to the police.

"Todoroki Fuyumi."

The officer nods, and says, "Miss Todoroki, you've been placed under arrest as a precautionary measure, considering that you have a precedent of driving dangerously at late hours of the night. We suspect- "

"You think I did this?" She whispers it, barely a breath, but packed full of a cold rage that even Endeavor would hesitate to provoke further.

The officer has no such self-preservation skills. "Until we get camera footage from the scene of the crime, we are not ruling it out as a possibility."

Anything else he says sounds like it's coming from underwater, drowned out by a sudden ringing in her ears. Do they really think that she would do this? Do they think she's an idiot, or worse, negligent with the safety of her own family? She would never endanger Natsuo like that. Never.

Unless, says a little voice in the back of her head, one that sounds suspiciously like Touya does now, they're using it as an excuse.

They could be. They might want to arrest her for other reasons, maybe they suspect her of something else. She remembers the interrogation not too long ago, about the Lamborghini, it wouldn't be hard for the police to put two and two together and connect that incident to who they've named the Phantom of Shinomori. It wouldn't be hard for them to connect her to their wanted man.

It wouldn't be hard for them to connect her to Touya, either, just one picture taken at the wrong moment, on the wrong night, and she's done for. They both are.

"I want my phone call," she blurts out, interrupting the officer in whatever he's saying now. She wasn't paying attention.

He stops talking and looks like he's about to start getting angry again, so she continues, "I'm under arrest. I get a phone call. I am exercising my right to a phone call." She says it firmly, without leaving room for argument, and waits for a response from the officer.

The man crosses his arms and stands in silence for a moment, before grunting, "Follow me." He seems like he's mad about it. Fine by her.

He leads her into a room with an old phone attached to the wall, the kind where she has to physically push buttons to dial a number instead of tapping at a screen. She figures that her call is probably going to be traced and recorded, no matter who she's calling. That's the question, isn't it? Who she's calling?

She doesn't like the interrogation, so she's glad that she went with her impulse to ask for her phone call, but now she doesn't know who. The way she sees it, there are only two real options, two numbers that she has memorized for emergencies like this one.

Her father's personal cell phone, the number that Natsuo, Shouto, herself and even Touya all have memorized, willingly or not, because it was one of the few things that Endeavor made sure to drill into all of them as children; or, one that was memorized much more recently, out of necessity- Touya's emergency burner phone.

The officer doesn't unlock her handcuffs. She didn't expect him to, but it's an inconvenience nonetheless. At least it gives her an excuse to hesitate, to think, before the man starts getting angry again. She's pretty sure that he doesn't know who her father is, considering the way that tonight has gone, and some snide little part of her thinks that it would be quite funny if the Number One Hero himself showed up to knock the attitude straight out of him.

She can't make her decision based on pettiness, though. She needs to put thought into this, decide if the arrest is legitimately just a precautionary measure that she's being paranoid about, or it really is a cover for questioning her about certain other offenses of hers- namely, association with a member of the League of Villains. Not that she's done anything, really, just drive and talk, but the way she's driven and the things she's talked about, well. They could come back to bite her in a way that Endeavor might not be able to save her from.

She doesn't recognize any of the officers that she's seen tonight. That lends credence to the idea that maybe it really is a precaution, maybe they just don't know her, maybe they haven't connected her to their Phantom at all. In that case, she can call her father and get this all taken care of relatively quickly, provided that he's not with Natsuo already. He might not be, considering that Natsuo had told her that he'd changed his emergency contact to be her instead of Endeavor, so he might not even know about the accident. She should call him, then, and tell him.

She'll call Touya later, then, talk to him one night when driving at speeds that Touya says would make Mom proud, tell him about this whole thing after it's all blown over. He won't take it well, considering that it was Natsu, and if they end up driving around looking for a car with scratches and damage that are consistent with what she saw tonight, then that's what they may do. She can't tell what the future holds. Calling him now would be a bad idea, anyway, too extreme for a possibility that's probably fueled more by her anxiety than anything else. If he came to pick her up, her life as she knows it would be over; no more acting like Shouto's guardian for UA, probably no way of seeing Natsuo or Mom again, not to mention her job would rinse its hands of her quicker than she could say "wait." Driving around like she does is enough of a risk, one that she's only willing to take because of the stress relief it provides, breaking out of jail would not be a good decision if she doesn't want to go scorched-earth with everything that she's made of herself so far.

Fuyumi takes one more glance around, and catches a glimpse out the slightly open door behind the officer who led her in here- passing by, looking like he's trying to sneak a glance inside, is Detective Tamakawa. He's easily recognizable due to his quirk, and the fact that his eyes widen when she accidentally makes eye contact with him.

He recognizes her. This isn't the same precinct that she saw him in last time, when she was interviewed by Detective Tsukauchi, which was the same precinct that Tamakawa had questioned her in about a month beforehand. This isn't Tamakawa's precinct, so he has no reason that she knows of to be here, especially considering the time- it's definitely after midnight by now, judging by how long she's been here and what time it was when she was at the scene of the crash with Natsuo.

She hasn't heard much noise, either. She doubts that anyone else has been booked here in the past few hours, nobody other than her.

This is either the world's greatest coincidence, or the reasoning they gave for the arrest really was just an excuse.

She's not betting her life on coincidences, so she's screwed either way. Fuyumi looks away from the officer in the doorway, and types in the number for Touya's burner phone.

It rings twice before he picks up. He doesn't bother with a greeting, just a simple "Any reason the police station is calling this number?"

Right. He wouldn't know that it's her, he wouldn't know anything about the situation, and she can't risk anybody catching onto who she's talking to until after she's made her escape. She makes an educated guess that nobody nearby speaks much Russian, and thanks her lucky stars that of Endeavor's "successful" children, only Shouto was kept isolated enough from Mom and everybody else that he couldn't pick up Mom's mother tongue.

She's tried to teach him some recently, and he seemed eager to learn, but Natsuo's going to have to pick up the slack from now on.

"Touya. I need transportation out as fast as possible. I think they know I'm in contact with you, and they probably suspect worse."

She hears a sharp intake of breath from the officer nearby when she starts speaking Russian, and his eyes dart to the big black box next to the phone- probably where the recordings are stored. They'll be able to listen to this back and translate it, so she can't be too specific, even in the relative safety of words that aren't Japanese or English.

Touya, her favorite twin brother, catches on immediately. "Give me thirty seconds. We need to get your location. Quirk suppressant cuffs?"

"No."

"Good. That makes this much easier." He hangs up, and Fuyumi numbly puts the phone back on the hook. This is it, then. The end of her life as she knows it, though really, that ended a few hours ago- the moment that car hit Natsuo's bike while he was still on it, everything was over already. She just didn't know it yet.

She sees that Tamakawa is standing still outside the doorframe, and she accidentally makes eye contact with him again. He must see something in her face that the other officer doesn't, because one moment, everything is still, and the next, he's lunging inside. He pushes past the officer by the door, and she backs up a step or two before she has to stop- something disgusting is crawling up her throat and out her mouth, some dark fluid- ah.

Touya works faster than she'd hoped.

Tamakawa reaches a hand out to grab her, maybe try to stop her from teleporting or else hitch a ride with her, but either way he's too late. His hand only grasps at empty air, and then everything's gone black.

It's only for a moment, then she sees her brother standing in front of her, a strange fleshy thing on the table next to him. Looking around, this appears to be some kind of lab, probably has something to do with those Noumus that Touya keeps talking about.

Touya, for his part, smiles in a way that pulls at his skin grafts, causing blood to bead his cheeks and slide towards his chin. He laughs, a little disbelievingly, and starts digging through his pockets.

"Let me find a lockpick and get those cuffs off you. Then you can tell me what happened."

Fuyumi doesn't say anything, just lets him enjoy his happiness while he has it. She doubts that he'll still be smiling when she finishes recounting her evening.

#mha #mha fic #my writing #the phantom of shinomori prefecture series #crash and (don't) burn #crash and (don't) burn fic

[thatforgottenbasilisk]

The Phantom of Shinomori Prefecture

Part 1 of The Phantom of Shinomori Prefecture Series

Words: 3407 (AO3)

Summary:

Officer Tamakawa Sansa is not a traffic cop. This should be noted before he starts complaining about the case he's been stuck on for the past month, which all started because he volunteered to temporarily act as a traffic cop to process holiday lawbreaking on the roads.

My nineteenth bad things happen bingo entry! Prompt: Worked Themselves to Exhaustion

Sansa is, in a word, exhausted.

He and Naomasa have been spending ages trying to investigate anything and everything to do with the League of Villains, even if he doesn't officially know anything about some of the stuff that's for Naomasa's eyes only. He's his best friend, they don't tend to keep secrets.

For security purposes, Naomasa's cases are his alone, as are Sansa's; in practice, however, two heads are better than one and sometimes they both need someone else's eye on something.

For instance, there's the case that was handed over by traffic police about a month ago, one that wouldn't normally be of much concern and wouldn't have been noted at all if it weren't a holiday weekend- Sansa hadn't been too busy, and he'd volunteered to help out in processing drunk drivers and monitoring traffic cameras. There had been one, just before three that morning, that had piqued his interest.

For starters, it was a bright red Lamborghini, one that he would bet most of his paycheck didn't have so much as a scratch on it. It was dark, so he didn't get a good look at the driver, but the hands on the wheel were thin and pale. It had been caught on a speed radar as going nearly twice the speed limit, but the officer on the scene didn't pursue because he'd caught sight of another driver who was clearly intoxicated, and booked him instead.

The first officer hadn't pursued, anyway; the second through fifth, however, did.

The way that they'd managed to escape the officers' attention, lose them so completely on such empty roads in such a bright car, was nothing short of beautiful. He'd seen the footage there was from the squad cars, and seen such a mastery of the vehicle that he'd had to respect it.

The driver got away, clearly, but since he'd been the one to alert the others to it running a red light a few moments before the first officer saw it barreling down the way, it was technically his case. Only technically, because the others suspected that they already knew who it was.

The Phantom of Shinomori Prefecture.

Always in a different car, always in the early hours of the morning, always going speeds that were well past what any sane driver would risk. The driver is known to be the same between the cases because of the sheer skill in handling these cars at such high speeds, a talent that few others hold; in addition, though no other physical details have been established, it is known that the hands of this driver are pale and thin, as noted by eyewitnesses and traffic cameras alike.

They know that they have some kind of puncture quirk or something similar, because one evening an officer got too close to the car that they were driving, and the Phantom reached out of their window and made a throwing motion- a few moments later, the officer had had to call for backup due to a flat tire. No evidence was found of what could have been used to puncture the tire, besides a small pool of cool water.

The only reason that Sansa's still stuck on the case is because he was unlucky enough to manage to catch a frame of footage where the license plate was readable enough to scan, and when it did, the results were anything but pretty.

He hadn't guessed that Endeavor, of all people, would drive a car as flashy as that, not least because he's never been seen in it, but sure enough- the car was, without a doubt, his. Considering that the hands of the driver were obviously not Endeavor's, the second he scanned that plate the case was forcibly jumped ahead in priority.

All of that was discovered a month ago. Since then, it's been nothing but chaos with regards to this damned case, his phone's ringing so much it may blow its own speakers out, and there's nothing that even leads to the idea that the car was stolen in the first place.

Sansa drinks his black coffee, cursing his quirk the whole time. He can't taste sweet things, hasn't been able to since before his quirk fully manifested, and that makes coffee or any other kind of energy drink an absolute last resort.

Unfortunately, that last resort is necessary today.

He's got a ton of things on his plate, files and forms that he told Naomasa he'd take care of if he went home, because he's pretty sure the man had been here for three days straight, in addition to his own work that he's only somewhat behind on, and of course Endeavor calling him at all hours of the day over his car.

To be fair, it's not like he's too unjustified, since there were no signs of a break-in to the garage where the car is kept, which is attached to the house where he and his civilian daughter live. He'd be concerned about it too, if someone could get in and out of somewhere without a trace, especially if it were his kid on the line.

Sansa drains his cup and checks the time, seeing that it's nearly seven in the morning. He hadn't meant to stay here all night, but he had at least had the foresight to tell his wife not to wait up for him.

He groans as the clock ticks to the top of the hour, and Naomasa walks in at seven on the dot. He'd taken care of about half of the paperwork he'd politely stolen, in addition to some of the more pressing concerns of his own, so at least the night was productive, even if he's about to have stones thrown at him from Naomasa's glass house.

"Not a word, Naomasa."

His partner just sends him a smug little smirk over the top of his takeout cup. "So long as you don't make it a habit." He parrots Sansa's own words from last night back at him, eliciting a growl that's much more catlike than he'd intended it to be.

Just at that moment, his phone starts blaring again, no doubt Endeavor calling and asking for any kind of update, as though there's been a massive breakthrough in the twelve hours since the last time he called. His temper must show on his face, because Naomasa leans over the desk and grabs the phone for him, answering with a much more civil greeting than Sansa would have been willing to give.

There's the expected raging on the other end of the line, which is loud enough that he can immediately identify Endeavor as the caller, as suspected. Naomasa waits until he's worn himself out, before saying, "I'd like to call your daughter in for another interview, we believe we've got something that she may know about."

Naomasa rolls his eyes privately over at Sansa, who has no idea what he's trying to do. Make more work? Make Endeavor angrier? There's nothing productive that he can think of coming from this conversation.

The phone call ends in short order, and Naomasa immediately explains, "I never interviewed the daughter with my quirk, and there's something fishy about her story, anyway. The sooner we get this case dealt with, the sooner you can go back to being only somewhat overworked."

Sansa sighs, and says, "Yeah, you're right. Too much of my time is being taken up by Endeavor, of all people, and he's..."

"A dick?"

"I was going to say loud and obnoxious, but that's more fitting. When's that interview?"

"She'll be here in half an hour, he said. Didn't even ask her."

"Sounds typical. Let me file some of this stuff before she gets here..."

Naomasa nods and heads to his desk to drop his stuff off, while Sansa grabs some scattered paperwork and goes to file it. Todoroki Fuyumi's story about where she was on the night in question was a little fishy, now he thinks on it- she claims that she was awake and calling her brother in college, which would've been believable if she hadn't been asked about her whereabouts at three in the morning, specifically.

Twenty minutes later, Sansa walks back to his desk and glances out the window to see a little blue Kia that wasn't there before, with Todoroki herself climbing out of the driver's seat. She locks the car and starts toward the building, and Sansa raps twice on the corner of his desk closest to Naomasa's. He jerks to face Sansa, and then it obviously clicks from looking at his expression.

Naomasa stands and moves towards the low-security block of interrogation rooms, for suspects and individuals who seem like they will cooperate, have relatively weak quirks, or both. Sansa vaguely remembers Todoroki's quirk being something related to ice, but nothing more specific than that.

He greets her at the door, and leads her to the room where Naomasa is already waiting, already giving the necessary niceties to make sure she doesn't start acting rash like some witnesses do. She seems as nice and agreeable as she did last time they'd met, and she doesn't seem at all inconvenienced by being sent to the police station before eight in the morning on a Saturday.

She sits across from Naomasa, while Sansa stands behind the one-way mirror in the next room. He's got his laptop with him, pulled up to the files related to this car case, in addition to some of the footage of the Phantom.

Naomasa is giving Todoroki the rundown of the interview process, and she agrees to be questioned by Naomasa, even knowing his quirk. It's not long before he starts asking the important questions.

"Do you remember what you were doing at three in the morning on the night in question?"

Todoroki nods, and replies, "I was talking with my brother Natsuo."

"You mentioned that he goes to university in Tokyo. Was he at his dorm for the holiday weekend, or had he come home?"

"He'd come home for the weekend, yes, but he left the next morning anyway. He and Dad got into a fight like they always do..."

Todoroki looks down at her hands that she's wringing together. She's fallen silent, and Naomasa has allowed her a moment before continuing.

"And you said that you were talking to him via phone call?"

"Oh, yes, I was. I'd gone out for some air. I don't like it when they fight, and sometimes Dad can get loud enough to wake me up, so I went out for a little while."

"Did you see anything suspicious while you were outside?"

"No. No, I didn't. I apologize, Detective Tsukauchi, but I was never exactly informed of why exactly I'm being questioned? I know something happened that night, but no one ever told me what..."

Sansa's breath hitches in surprise- he'd figured that Endeavor would have told her why she was being questioned and what had happened, and when he'd been questioning her the first time around he was more concerned with getting her out of there so that she could get out of the path of her terrifying and enraged father.

Naomasa's quirk must ping that as the truth, because he barely hesitates before explaining- "Your father's car was stolen and taken for a joyride that night by an unknown individual, and we want to know if you may know anything about it."

Todoroki gasps and puts her hands up to her mouth, before asking, "Which car? I didn't notice any missing last time I looked, but..."

"A red Lamborghini."

Todoroki now seems quietly confused. "That's still in the garage, though, I'm sure of it. I saw it this morning."

Naomasa sighs, reflecting only some of the exhaustion that Sansa feels. "That's exactly the issue. The criminal took it out of the garage and returned it to where it was exactly, with no signs of forced entry or anything at all."

Todoroki suddenly pales, and then immediately flushes, leaving her face a patchy mess of clear embarrassment. She stutters out a simple, "I- I think there might have been a misunderstanding..."

Naomasa leans forward, and though Sansa can't see the expression on his face, he would bet that it's intrigued. "Oh? How so?"

"I, um. When I was younger, my siblings and I were told that any of us who has a driver's license can drive any of Dad's cars, as long as we agree to pay the repair costs if we were irresponsible with them. A lot of those cars were given to him by brands looking for a sponsorship deal or something, I don't exactly know how Hero brand deals work, but a lot of car companies wanted to be associated with Endeavor, hence the full garage of luxury cars that he doesn't drive. I don't drive them often, either, just when he gets in a fight with somebody, usually Natsuo, after everybody's stopped arguing I take one for a drive out in Shinomori."

"... You took the Lamborghini that night, didn't you?"

Todoroki nods sheepishly, then cries out, "I'm so sorry for any inconvenience this has caused you! Oh, I'd been wondering when the ticket for the red light camera was going to show up..."

Naomasa sighs, and stands up. "I'm sure that Endeavor will be happy to hear that his home hadn't been broken into after all. You'll be glad he's not so on edge anymore, at least?"

Todoroki lets out a nervous laugh, and Naomasa leaves the room, heading over to Sansa's side.

"She's telling the truth. Seems like this is just one big embarrassment for Endeavor."

Sansa scoffs. "Serves him right. He's been hounding me all month, implying the whole department's full of lazy idiots. He deserves a little egg on his face, since he can't even seem to communicate with his own daughter."

"So the theories about her being the Phantom of Shinomori Prefecture..."

"Honestly, I'd believe it. Seeing that driving skill in the Lamborghini, there's no doubt it's the same person, especially since she's referred to there being other luxury cars that she's driven around."

Naomasa sips his coffee, and asks, "Are you going to say anything? It's your case, after all."

Sansa thinks on it, turns it over in his mind, and ultimately shakes his head. "No, I don't think I will. There's not enough evidence to arrest her for all of it, and she seems to be aware enough of what she's doing behind the wheel not to be as dangerous as the speeding teens she shares the road with. I'd give her a warning for this incident in particular, but I think this scared her enough."

Naomasa nods. "I'll let her know she's free to go."

Sansa nods too, and shuts his laptop. "Honestly, I kind of want to know who taught her to drive like that. Couldn't have been Endeavor, I know that."

"Doesn't he drive like an old woman?"

Sansa huffs out a laugh, and goes, "Yeah, he drives slower than he flies."

Naomasa shakes his head in amusement, then goes back into the interrogation room with Todoroki. They make small talk on their way out, while Sansa dials Endeavor and tells him the good news.

About an hour later, Sansa's back at his desk doing other things for other cases, and Naomasa's just gone to the coffeepot to fill his thermos. When he comes back, he leans on the edge of Sansa's desk instead of sitting at his own.

"Apparently her brother taught her."

"... Her younger brother?"

"No, no, apparently she had a twin brother who'd been having problems as a kid. Their mother taught him to drive early, in an attempt to cheer him up. He later taught her."

"So the mother is the one that drives like that?"

"I'm told that she's a first-generation Russian immigrant."

Sansa thinks on that for a few minutes, and replies, "That makes more sense than you'd think it does."

Naomasa seems to think on it, too, before going, "Yeah, it really does."

Naomasa pushes himself off Sansa's desk and makes to leave, but before he does, Sansa asks, "So do we have any more Phantoms to worry about, or is it just her?"

Naomasa laughs, and replies, "She complained at length about her youngest brother, the one at UA, and how he doesn't want to learn how to drive at all. She claims she's slowly wearing him down about it, and that she'll win one day, but those both pinged as lies. She's also working on trying to get the brother in university to learn to drive a car, but he's only got a motorcycle license and refuses to give up his bike, so she's admitted to losing that particular battle."

"... Seems like you got a lot of Endeavor family gossip."

"Honestly, I'm more surprised that his only daughter is also the only gearhead. She apparently modified the engine of that Kia she drives."

"She didn't tell you how, though."

"She's not stupid, no."

Sansa offers a laugh of his own, and Naomasa finally starts the walk back to his desk. Sansa opens his laptop back up, needing to look up the details of a case he's working on, when he realizes he's still got footage of the Phantom up.

He starts closing out tabs, but then he sees one that's been flagged- apparently, there was camera footage of a passenger in the car, which had only happened once. There's very little light in the image, but he bets he could clean it up pretty easily, if he puts in the effort.

He thinks on it for a few minutes, and even though he's fairly sure it's her brother, the adult one, there's every chance that it's her teenaged brother- and if it is, then they'll have to keep an eye on her in the future, considering that this behavior toes the line of child endangerment.

It takes a few minutes to clean it up to a reasonable degree, though the image is still grainy and low-quality through the traffic camera it was taken from. The passenger seems on the smaller side, so not the brother in university, who Sansa had seen a picture of- physically, Todoroki Natsuo is his father in all but hair and coloring. It's also, interestingly enough, probably not the kid brother in UA, who's a bit stockier in build than the mysterious passenger.

Curious, now, Sansa tries to find another image taken the same night, or something else that shows the passenger in more detail. After half an hour, he finds it- still grainy, still low-quality, but with enough definition to immediately show the near-glowing greenish blue of the passenger's eyes, even without editing or cleanup.

There are also pinpricks of light within the passenger's face, as well as on the hand that's visible to the camera. There's something odd about the tone of their skin, with some parts registering as darker than others, but he's sure that it's a trick of the light that'll go away once he cleans and maybe colorizes the picture.

Another half hour later, after several attempts to clean the image and summarily discarding the results, he's forced to accept the truth: whoever the hell Todoroki Fuyumi is driving around, they bear too much of a resemblance to the villain Dabi for it not to be worthy of investigation.

He won't go so far as to say that it is Dabi, though- there are certain advantages to being the kid of the Number One Hero, one of which being that many won't believe that you're in association with the League of Villains, for a multitude of reasons, not least of which being that Endeavor must notice if something suspicious is happening right under his own nose.

He looks at the damning image, and decides that now's the time to bite the bullet. The note on the image in the file is already on display, "Phantom of Shinomori Prefecture with Unidentified Passenger" in big, bold letters across the top. He sighs, and calls Naomasa over to his desk while he stares at the picture.

In a few moments, he hears footsteps approaching, and feels a presence behind him. Naomasa leans down over his shoulder to look at what's on his computer screen, and then says the words that perfectly describe how Sansa himself is feeling on this far-too-stressful-for-a-Saturday morning.

"Oh, shit."

#mha #mha fic #my writing #the phantom of shinomori prefecture #the phantom of shinomori prefecture fic #the phantom of shinomori prefecture series