[Author's Note: This chapter ended up being 3000 words, decided to split it in half...
Anyways, thanks for reading! ]
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The room fell into silence, most people in the room couldn't keep their eyes from landing on the heroes present, their ties into this case were only discovered recently, so their involvement was put into question if not for Takeshi pushing the matter. Takeshi took note of All Might's smile faltering.
[This should be the correct decision]
Kenji maintained the silence for an entire minute out of respect and to let the heroes gather their thought before continuing.
"On the night of June 8th, the year 2371, at around 22:15 and 01:30 hours, The Shimura residence suffered a structural collapse along with most of the terrain surrounding it" He explained, Hamada had reports on the whole incident and eyeing them with his quirk while an officer showed photos of the residence via a protector that was previously set up.
The images depicted a completely destroyed building that seemed to have crumbled into dust, most notably, a crater with spider cracks that spread from the garden to the surroundings. Besides it, there was a picture of what the house looked used to look like, the stark difference between the two was difficult to swallow, and the surrounding wildlife was just... dead, the scenery looked like old photos of no man's land just placed in the middle of the building.
"The damage seemed to be done rather quickly since almost no sound disturbance occurred, not even neighbors could hear the scene of destruction as it happened late at night in a rather discrete neighborhood. Evidence and analysis of the 'dust' revealed that it was most likely the result of an unknown quirk"
"Are you sure of it? it seems like quite a bit of thing could cause this much damage, even if it should be silent" Nighteye asked, uncharacteristically impatient because of just how All Might eyes were almost crying in pain.
"We are sure of it, mostly because of this..." The protector changed images.
"A statue?" All Might asked as Kenji showed a picture of what looked to be a statue of a dog, it was mostly fragmented but the forensic team had arranged them so they could be photographed together.
"Neighbors had recounts of the Shimura family owning a dog, that along with these pictures of what remained of the Shimura family is what led us to this conclusion..."
6 Piles of stones were seen, and each one was labeled with a name and age. All MIght gritted his teeth once he understood that he was seeing the remains of the Shimura family.
Everyone in the room grimaced at the pictures, especially the one of Hana, having her face just complete enough to discern the fear in her eyes was too much for the heroes. All Might state was making the room temperature go down by a bit while Sir Nighteye was gripping his seat rather strongly.
"Although most of the remanents are almost unrecognizable, we managed to identify them thanks to a recovered photograph in the debris and the help of Hamada Hirata's quirk who's been on the case with Takeshi for the last 5years" He quickly signaled Hamada to continue with the explanation.
"We found 6... corpses of in the surroundings, these correspond to members of the Shimura, with the exception of 2, that being Tenko Shimura and Kotaro Shimura... we most likely scenario is that both of these people are deceased" Hamada said as he sighed with a troubled face.
"From what we can deduce, the villain was probably targeting the family itself as they did not steal nor kidnap anyone, there was no evidence of their quirk, presence, or identity..." He paused, he was actually baffled by what he was saying "It just seemed as if the family disintegrated, there was no trace leading anywhere that we could find in 5 years, except for this photo"
A folded picture of Nana Shimura, the previous holder of One for All, was shown with a half-broken letter.
"Teacher..." All Might muttered just loud enough for everyone to hear, All might knew who could do it, but decided to shut up, he didn't know if all the people here understood what his quirk was. Hamada got a bit nervous about the tension building up in the room and decided to wrap up his part before something happened.
"We have not discarded the possibility of Tenko being alive due to two factors, one being that blood with his DNA was found on the scene and that a 'Lost child' was seen the following morning of the incident" Hamada finished as he sat down.
"Lost child?" All Might said, with a bit of hope in his eyes, he was in a storm of emotions since the beginning of this meeting, especially since he was blind to all of this, he was grasping at straws at this point.
"Officer Takeshi's 'hunch' is that said child was Tenko Shimura, evidence for this is only the alleged mental and unkempt state of the child along with him conveniently appearing just after the tragedy, not that far from the incident" Kenji explains as eyes landed on Takeshi from all sides, he got up from his seat and started talking.
"5 years ago I had declared my resignation from the mantle of Chief of police due to personal circumstances" The HPSC representatives smiled at this while Takeshi ignored them
"During that day, I encountered a 5-year old child with light blue hair, he seemed to be scared, dazed, and somewhat lifeless, but he was still a bit responsive, I was in a hurry at the moment with the birth of my own child, so I only handed him some money to buy food and said that he could wait for the heroes that were patroling that morning" His neutral face faltered a bit before ending.
"... We have never heard of that child again" Takeshi said, his tone dripping with regret
"It is Takeshi's theory that this and Tenko are the same person... but we don't have leads as to where any of the two are or even if they're the same person " Kenji finished and Takeshi sat back down in silence.
"It is a law that after 5 years of a missing person report the victim will be declared presumed dead, and unless we get any more trails that haven't run cold we will be classifying this case as closed" Kenji ended before stepping down from the podium and sitting beside the operator of the projector.
"Any questions we will answer to the present heroes since I believe they had the most questions" He stated as he prepared to take a sip of water.
"Any hints as to who did it" All Might be asked immediately, any previous personality that he holstered was gone, only replaced with determination to catch whoever did that to her mentor's family, before Gran Torino reprimanded him Kenji answered.
"Apart from the speculation of the quirk used, nothing, there's no trace of any unusual activity before or even after the tragedy, no witnesses, no trails, no video footage, nothing" After thinking for a bit and looking at the people present Kenji continued "You probably suspect the same person we do, but he shouldn't know that they were related to Nana" Kenji ended.
After a bit of thinking, Gran Torino turned to Hamada "You said that you identified all the remains with your quirk?"
"Ah! yes, I had a license and an appropriate quirk for identification, but we used a second opinion since no traces of DNA were found on the remains except for Tenko's blood" Hamada answered as best he could. It was normal to doubt quirks on identification since they were not all-knowing, but this case was investigated for an entire half-decade, these options were already exhausted.
After Takeshi noted the looks of the heroes and the HPSC he decided to answer the question they were dying to know "Hamada's quirk is [Flawless], he can pinpoint any type of 'Flaw' out of anything just by looking at it for 10 seconds, that works on people, buildings and paperwork" Takeshi said as he received looks for disclosing his friend quirk.
It was common knowledge that asking for quirks was seen as impolite and unprofessional, Hamada only nodded in approval of Takeshi's decision before he explained the nuances of his quirk.
"My quirk works on abstract concepts like theories, arguments, and even people's personalities" He paused before spreading down a bunch of documents on his desk, he used his quirk on the documents making his eyes flash blue while analyzing them before his eyes switched to blue indicating that he was done.
"We cross-referenced all the information we got about the family members, the nature of the assailant quirks, and the theories about possible villains from a wide database, we have simply run out of clues, we only got some speculations about the fate of Tenko"
"What about Kotaro's whereabouts? he isn't in the-" A government agent said, gulping at the next words "...Picture of the remains" Hamada winced at that before coughing,
"On early investigations and use of said quirk, I noticed that it flagged the entire area of the incident as 'having Kotaro's remains', most likely scenario is that his corpse completely crumbled into dust, making it impossible to recover" Hamada remained silent for a moment before composing himself for a moment.
"Your quirk can't be used to identify the culprit?" The HPSC representative asked, Hamada simply sighed in defeat as he explained.
"When I use my quirk, the more 'complex' a flaw is the more mental strain I receive, the last time I tried to find a flaw of something so broad as 'the culprit of a case' I ended in the hospital for a month" Hamada explained as he remembered how he tried to find the flaw of a scientific theory, he shook his head and then proceeded.
"I already checked most assumptions, evidence, and suspects to pinpoint which is the most likely scenario, like Takeshi's proposal" Hadama said as he shuffled for some papers, taking in all the flawless data on them.
"We don't need a quirk to tell me that, the color of Tenko's hair and that child are completely different" The government official said, prompting the HPSC agents to nod.
Takeshi didn't need to rebuke them, it was mostly a hunch of his and he was aware that he probably was just guilty of not helping that kid, but he remembered his face. Since he became a father, he could not stand seeing children suffer, he imagined his own daughter in their place and somehow it made his heart ache for them. As he imagined his daughter he remembered something odd about her and decided to point it out.
"Hair color could be a sign of Quirk manifestation..."