Never Trust Your Rinnegan (Tales of Sasuke's Travels)

Chapter 13

A bit of a break from Sasuke's POV.

"Aoyama Yuuga?" Shouta says tiredly. Patrol had gone on longer than he thought it would last night, so he's more tired than usual, which is a feat.

"Here!" Aoyama says with too much sparkle for 8:45 in the morning.

"Ashido Mina?"

"Present!" She beams up at him, but Shouta notices that she's tired too.

"Asui Tsuyu?"

"Here, ribbit." Asui raises her hand and waves slightly. Shouta tilts his head slightly in acknowledgement.

Attendance goes similarly until he gets to Hatake Kakashi. Shouta had noticed he wasn't here, but there hadn't been an email from his guardians or Hatake himself, so Shouta figured he was just late.

Shouta clicks his tongue and marks him absent.

The rest of the morning is relatively relaxed, though a bit tense. They're still recovering from the USJ from 2 days prior. Shouta considers himself lucky that he got off with the injuries he got, even if he's still a bit disoriented from the whole thing.

He's just dismissed his class for lunch when he gets a text from Nezu asking him to come to the teachers' office as soon as he can. Nezu doesn't elaborate, but Shouta never really expects that from him.

When he gets to the teachers' office, he finds a few familiar faces there. Police officers. Shouta inhales deeply and prepares himself for a long meeting.

"Sawamura-san, Adachi-san. Not that it's not fantastic to see you all here, but, well." Shouta shrugs.

"Believe me, Eraserhead-san. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't necessary." Adachi grumbles. "But unfortunately, it pertains to one of your students. You have a Hatake Kakashi in your class, right?"

Shouta sits down and motions for Sawamura and Adachi to do the same.

"Yes..." He says carefully, "why?"

Sawamura grimaces. "His guardians were found dead in a warehouse a few hours ago. It took us a while to identify them since...."

"'Since?'" Shouta prompts.

"The rats got to them."

"Oh." That's a very unpleasant mental image.

"Would you mind calling him here?" Adachi wonders.

"Right, about that. He didn't show up for any of his classes this morning. A lot of students didn't because of what happened in the USJ, but all of them informed the school beforehand. He didn't."

"I see. Well it makes sense that his parents wouldn't have emailed you." Sawamura sighs. "If he didn't come to school today, then that creates a lot of problems for the case and for him."

"Ah, that's true." Adachi agrees and elaborates, "This case is being ruled as a Quirked homicide. We're trying to identify people with similar Quirks, but it's been difficult. I'd tell you more about the case, but I don't want to do it here. I'll send you some of the information from it when I'm back at my desk. I think this one's gonna be pretty big, unfortunately."

"Shit." Shouta massages his forehead and tries not to think of worst case scenarios.

"You're telling me." Sawamura huffs. "The kid's been completely ruled out as a suspect given the nature of his guardians' death, but if he didn't show up today then there's a good chance he already knows or the villains got him too."

"Yeah." Shouta nods. "Why'd you come to me first, though? Isn't the procedure for these things to pull the student out of class."

"Yeah, usually, but the school just got on lunch break. We're trying to keep this from the media as long as possible, and accosting the kid in the cafeteria didn't seem like the best way to do that." Sawamura chuckles humourlessly.