ⁱˡᵒᵐⁱˡᵒ

ᵇᵘᵗ ᵐᵃʸᵇᵉ ⁱᵗ'ˢ ᵃ ˡⁱᵉ

Toshinori is cowed, eyeing the folder that had been slapped onto his lap. He reads the words inked onto the paper several times---very slowly, in fact---but they remain the same every single time. He's unsure of why he was expecting for them to miraculously rework themselves into something less grim. He supposes he just wanted things to be less complicated for the sake of the kid. A cynical thought crosses his mind---one that reminds him that his job is never that easy.

"And we're certain these results are correct?"

"As much as it fuckin' sucks, yeah, they're accurate. DNA doesn't lie." Chiyo sighs, cigarette poised between her fingers as she offers it to Yagi who politely declines. To say that it fucking sucks only trivializes how shitty the situation actually is. Moving forward from there is going to be difficult. With Katsuki as volatile and naive as he is, this entire thing could go right up in metaphorical flames.

Or literal ones, depending.

Yagi had requested that both Katsuki and Tomura's blood samples be tested---just to see if they could find their next of kin. Tomura was obviously unfit as a guardian and would surely need professional help upon regaining consciousness which meant that Katsuki would need to be in the custody of someone he was sure to be safe with.

But as it would turn out, Shigaraki Tomura shared no blood relation to Katsuki. They aren't brothers. Cousins. Not even a distant uncle.

"I want to say that there could be a much less macabre explanation for this but my gut is telling me otherwise."

"Your gut would be right." Chiyo says curtly, flicking the remainder of the cigarette onto the sidewalk and dragging it beneath the sole of her shoe. "I got a match on the kid. His name is Bakugou Katsuki, can you believe that?"

A cold feeling settles in the pit of Toshinori's stomach, clenching and tightening anxiously.

"You're not serious, are you?!"

"Does it look like I'm fucking with you?"

Of course she isn't; Chiyo has never been one to pull pranks or jokes or find humor in much of anything. She had a reputation for being what Toshinori would call a 'Debby Downer'. However, if what she is saying holds any truth at all then the stakes have just become that much higher...and in turn, made his job that much more arduous.

Bakugou Katsuki was a name that the folks in their town hadn't even whispered in the last seventeen years---that is, unless, you were trying to spook some of the local kids into behaving. He'd been the one case that the Sapporo Police Department couldn't solve; not even with the help of the FBI. Katsuki, you see, had been one of several victims of a serial kidnapping phenomenon that seemed to plague Hokkaido in the year of 2003. It lasted for several months, having begun in late August and dragging on until the very middle of January 2004. Among the eight children to be taken from Sapporo, Katsuki was the only one of them to never be found.

The investigation lasted seven years before he was declared legally dead.

Toshinori's spinning head begins to piece the facts together one by one, slowly coming to the sickening conclusion that this man, Tomura, was the one who'd quite literally snatched Katsuki from his crib all those years ago. He can't quite hold him accountable for the rest of those kids---for those murders---but it's one hell of a lead. The more he pieces together the evidence, the more nauseous he becomes.

They'd found him near death in a mess of his own blood, so much so that Katsuki had been stained in it from the waist down. Not to mention that Katsuki was only literal hours from death himself, suffering from starvation, fatigue and several other ailments that would go on to ruin him---those drugs have quite surely caused irreversible damage to his reproductive system.