Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

It was everywhere.

On TV screens across the country. 

In every newspaper you’d come across at your local kiosque. 

On the air each time you’d turn on the radio. 

All over the internet. 

And on every breathing lips.

It actually felt like, no matter where you came from, no matter where you went, you just couldn’t escape it, its name following you even to the most intimate places, sticking to your skin like the smell of cigarettes or cheap whiskey.

Except that, for Uzumaki Naruto, this wasn’t just a feeling.

That was his job.

On this frisky Sunday morning of September 21st, 2008, the news was traveling from one citizen to another almost faster than the speed of light, fear mixing with excitement as they would mouth his name like he was some kind of boogeyman who would come for them in their sleep if they dared to pronounce it louder.

He was back.

Naruto forced his way through the crowd of vultures massed together at the entrance of the apartment building, fighting for a picture or any new piece of information that they could get their claw-like hands on to bring back to the rag that employed them, and flashed his badge to the Police officer that dutifully guarded the double door, repelling any trespassers. 

The officer gave him a nod of the head and let Naruto in, the thick glass door closing behind him in a deep cling as the din of the outside scavengers faded in the background. 

He let out a breath of relief. Their astonishing sound was giving him a headache.

He blinked a couple of times, his eyes getting used to the semi-darkness of the lobby. He set off again, passing by a couple of colleagues on his way to the elevator in front of which another officer was helping people dress up in white coveralls. A mandatory outfit for anyone wanting to access the crime scene. He patiently waited for his turn and, once almost every inch of his body had been covered up to make sure he wouldn’t compromise the place, he headed to the fifth floor. The metal doors of the elevator shaft jolted as they lazily opened, the busy corridor sucking Naruto into its swarming guts. 

An ocean of Police personnel surrounded him, men and women in white overalls yapping at each other, taking pictures with obnoxious flashes for their reports, measuring every surface, sweeping the entire place for a fingerprint, a hair, a drop of blood. Anything organic that did not belong to this upper-class block, really.

Once again, he navigated through the bodies, pushing everyone around carefully as he went for apartment 501 and its open door. He squeezed himself in, passing Nara Shikamaru and Yamanaka Ino, the two lab techs he grabbed the occasional beer with, and discreetly waved at his colleague and teammate Haruno Sakura, located a few meters away from him passed the entrance, down the flat’s hallway. Her eyes slid to him as she listened to a tall and exhausted-looking man repositioning his mask’s elastics on his ears.

“Took you long enough.”

Naruto turned towards the voice and discovered Uchiha Sasuke right behind him, awaiting his turn to step inside the apartment. Dark-haired and broody, sardonic but good-looking, the Assistant Inspector was the mascot of their squad and he’d never let slip an occasion to remind Naruto that he was his superior -either in age or in rank. He extended a hand covered by a thick latex glove towards Naruto and the blond, suddenly remembering why his teammate had sent him to the nearest konbini in the first place, handed him a pack of SevenStars. Sasuke grabbed them swiftly, humming a cold “Thank you” before stuffing them in the pocket of his coveralls and focusing on their boss. Down the hall, Hatake Kakashi had finished repositioning and mask and had turned around, acknowledging his team's presence. 

“Ah, there you are, Uchiha-kun, Uzumaki-kun. We can start, now. Haruno-kun, if you could do us the honors”, announced the leader, the shape of a yawn visible through the tissue pressing on his lower face.

Sakura gave him a nod and cleared her throat, before starting her report of the situation at hand.

“The victims are Katō Dan and Senju Tsunade, both 53 years old. The bodies were discovered around 4 a.m. this morning by a Police officer sent over after a neighbor had signaled some suspicious activity coming from their place. The coroner estimates the times of death between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. for now.”

She quickly beckoned at all three men to follow her and they carefully exited the genkan, crossing the soberly decorated hallway to enter the living room, where the body of a man laid on a darkened carpet, his face facing down. Naruto twitched at his sight. He wasn’t used to seeing dead people yet. Trying not to interrupt the tech crew busy with taking pictures and collecting evidence, Sakura kept on going.

“The first victim was found in the living room, where the killer let him drown in his own blood after seemingly stabbing him multiple times. It doesn’t look like the body was moved otherwise. This way, please.”

She then took them through another hallway, into a bedroom. Naruto’s fists clenched at the thought of the scene he knew they were going to find.

The couple’s bedroom was big, bigger than Naruto’s own living area, and delicately decorated. Frames picturing the life of the happy couple ornated an expensive-looking wooden drawer, and the bed was tightly made, with navy blue silk sheets and more throw pillows than Naruto had ever seen in his life before. Unfortunately, this nice scenery was not what his three colleagues were focusing on right now.

“That damn bastard. That’s nasty”, commented their boss under his mask.

Next to the bed, leaning against the wall, a blonde woman in her fifties awaited, still. She had probably just taken her shower, Naruto thought, judging by the thick, expensive white bathrobe she wore, and it was a shame to see how he had dirtied her up. He gave a quick side glance at Sasuke, who looked as stoic as always, his hawk-like stare locked on the lower part of the victim’s body.

Naruto closed his eyes, unwilling to see it again. Once for today was enough.

Kakashi let out a deep sight and his head rose to examine the large, bloody symbol that had been drawn above the victim’s body on the white wall behind her.

Naruto had seen it many times before. On television. On the internet. In some of his Police Academy textbooks. On tagged walls in the shady parts of town, even. He had never suspected that he would ever see it in person.

Huge, disturbing, hypnotic, an eye with concentric circles covering the eyeball scrutinize them, haughty. Naruto felt shivers running down his spine. 

“The second victim was found in the bedroom, disemboweled, under his symbol. She was probably still alive when it happened” explained Sakura, her voice fading into a whisper.

Kakashi nodded.

“No doubt, that’s him.”

He remained silent a moment longer, lost in the contemplation of the macabre staging, before finally turning around to face his team, gravitas seizing his eyes. 

“You all know what that means then”, and his team stiffened at the implications of his unusually harsher tone. “The Rinnegan killer’s back in town.”

*

Some people liked doing crossword puzzles. Some enjoyed their Sunday sudoku. Others favored origami. As for Hinata, she was into the “oldy but goody” knitting needles and balls of yarn. 

There was something in making stitches that she found oddly satisfying. Nerve-soothing. It waved off the clouds in her brain, making the sun shine on the answers she was so desperately looking for. It was her ultimate go-to, and it had never failed her once at school, or in life.

The nice bonus was that it also filled her drawers with pretty unique pieces of clothing. 

Inuzuka Kiba tutted her when he noticed what she was doing, but she didn’t pay attention to him. She was used to it. He liked to make fun of her and of her “grandma’s hobby” as he called it, even though she knew deep down he understood and respected it. Let him have his fun and her, her groundbreaking revelation. 

Next to them, behind his computer screen, Aburame Shino repressed a yawn, his sunglasses slightly falling from his nose.

“Are you ok, Shino-kun?” Asked Hinata with a hint of worry in her voice, her work dropping on her knees as she slightly leaned in his direction. Shino stretched on his chair, apathetic, and gave her a slow nod of the head.

“You should take a break", she pressed, using the motherly and overly affectionate tone she seemed to have only for him, "We’ve been locked in this room for too long. This isn’t good for you”

Although he was only a couple of months younger than Kiba and her, Shino was still a doctoral candidate and ergo, a student. He may be coming from the IT department of the country’s most prestigious university, but he was still a student nonetheless, and their benjamin on top of it. It was their duty to take care of him.

At the word “break”, Kiba jumped out of his seat. “Excellent idea, Hinata”, he agreed loudly, excited, as his teammates turned around and stared at his tired features, his ungroomed three-day stubble betraying how much time had passed since he last took a decent shower. Expertly grabbing his jacket from the coat rack and putting it on in one incredibly fluid movement, he quickly threw Hinata her own, the cold leather burning like fire for a split second against the unguarded skin of her hands. Seeing his master readying himself to leave, Akamaru, the large Great Pyrenees dog that was resting at the foot of Kiba’s chair, got up, his wagging tail betraying his eagerness to get out.

Hinata smiled and with a move of the head, silently approved Kiba’s initiative before putting away her “thinking gear” in a drawer of her desk and getting up as well, Shino mimicking her straight away.

The four of them exited their shared office -a tiny room with only a small window and not much light, but a room all to themselves nonetheless- and silently agreed to head to the nearest konbini to grab some breakfast.

“Hey, if this isn’t the Minority Report team! How's it hanging, Inuzuka?”

They all stopped in the middle of the Police Station’s lobby to take a look in the direction of the voice that had hailed them and saw Assistant Inspector Sarutobi Konohamaru energetically waving at them from the other side of the hall. Kiba grinned back at him, his hands cupping his mouth to help his voice reach the man.

“Better than you, Sarutobi! At least, I’m working on the front line of crime-fighting, unlike someone else I know!” 

The ghost of a smile passed on Hinata’s lips as she witnessed the two inspectors’ playful quarrel, patiently waiting by Shino’s side for Kiba to be done so they could go eat, Akamaru already at the door.

Around their precinct, they were known as “Minority Report”, and although many officers obviously considered them a joke and a waste of time and money, when you thought about it, they were indeed working on the front line of crime-fighting in Japan -though Hinata personally would have never described it in those exact terms. Predictive policing seemed more appropriate to her, but she had to concede that Kiba’s description had a certain ring to it.

The late November sun kissed them good morning as they stepped out of the station and filled their lungs with the deliciously cold and polluted air of the big city, ice water running down their lungs and leaving them short-breathed. 

The konbini was only a short distance away from the precinct and it didn’t take long to their disparate quartet to reach the small shop. They must have offered a curious sight to every passerby, for Kiba wasn’t ashamed to show the world his comfy hobo wardrobe: long and unkempt hair pushed back, an old patched hooded fur-lined coat, worn-out grey sweatpants and plastic slippers were his go-to clothing. Next to him, wearing an outfit that made him look like some cheap J-drama grotesque representation of what regular people thought a hacker would look like, Shino was hiding behind the double shield of a fashionable high, upturned collar sweatshirt, completed by a long coat with a hood covering most of his higher face and sunglasses resting on his nose, just to make sure than no human emotion could be effectively translated by his face. The tiny-framed Hinata completed their group, disheveled green hair following the curved of her body, hugged by a tightly-fitting leather jacket, slim black jeans and military-style boots.

As they stood on the threshold of the small store, Kiba took out of one of his pockets a leash and crouched down to Akamaru’s height, gently petting the dog as he tied him to a nearby pole.

“I’m sorry buddy”, he apologized to him, “I’ll be right back with some good food, I promise.”

As if he understood, Akamaru emitted a small bark and sat down, obediently, and the team dived into the narrow but heated space, on the lookout for their breakfast, their weary but joyful chatter waking up the business.

Unlike most Assistant Inspectors, Inuzuka Kiba did not work in the field anymore: collecting information and physical evidence, talking to witnesses and informants or solving crimes were a thing of the past for him, now. Not long after being promoted, he had witness the brutal murder of one his teammates, leaving him scarred for life and deemed “unfit” for active duty. Though he never addressed his trauma, Akamaru, his service dog, never left his side and Hinata always kept a close eye on him each time Kiba had to be separated from his furry companion, as if she was fearing an outbreak of some sort.

While waiting for the cashier to pour her oden from behind the counter, her thoughts escaped out of her control for a short while and she wondered what it must feel like to be an actual Police officer -the kind that did confront crime face-to-face on a daily basis. 

A long, long time ago, she had wanted to become one herself, but her family had actively discouraged her from it. A waste of talent, a poorly paid job and the lack of social recognition were not enough to impress them, as it had appeared back then . Had she no ambition, had harshly asked her her father when she had dared to voice her project to him? No, no, this was unacceptable, she had to go to college and become someone, do something with her life. So Hinata, being nothing but a good, devoted daughter, had been to university, only to earn herself a Master’s degree in Criminal Justice Research, before getting certified as a Crime analyst and eventually joining the ranks of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department personnel -much to her father’s dismay. 

The cashier handed her a large and burning cup of dashi with floating pieces of ganmodoki, kabocha, daikon and konjac, and she bowed to them while accepting it, before pulling her wallet out and tilting her head towards her colleagues who were waiting in line behind her to pay.

“They’re all on me”, she told the cashier with the most relaxed smile she had, ignoring their grunts of protest as she handed the old grandmother who was serving them enough notes to cover twice the amount of food they had grabbed.

“Keep the change”, she added with a polite smile before pushing her colleagues towards the door of the shop.

“You don’t have to pay for the food every single time we go out”, mumbled Kiba as he untied Akamaru, the dog jumping around, overjoyed. “We make our own money, too.”

Hinata blushed slightly but dismissed his statement with a shrug. She had always thought that her father would cut her off as soon as he would have learned where she was going to work but, to her surprise, all he had done was sigh and proclaim that even the angriest storm could not force the mountain to bend. He had allowed her to maintain the comfortable life she had always been accustomed to, despite her civil servant salary, and the sole thought of her luxurious apartment, bought for her as graduation gift and way too big for a single person, was enough for her to feel ashamed.

“Thank you, Hinata-san”, politely said Shino behind his sunglasses. Hinata smiled at him and the group hurried back to the office, the cold morning pressing them inside the warm embrace of their room, bursts of light small talks punctuating their break.

They hadn’t finished eating their breakfast yet that Yūhi Kurenai, the Inspector and leader of their unit, was already walking in, calmly greeting them all as she dropped her bag on her desk.

“Enjoy your food, team! We have a long day ahead of us, so recharge!” She told them enthusiastically, before taking off her coat and turning on her computer.

“Yeah, like yesterday, and the day before, and the week, and the month…” sniggered Kiba while giving the rest of his nato maki to Akamaru, ignoring Kurenai's disapproving smile.

Just like Kiba, it was no coincidence that Kurenai, of all the Inspectors of the precinct, had been the one chosen to lead their team. She had given birth right before the creation of their unit and their hierarchy, deeming her unwillingness to retire and raise her daughter inappropriate, had pushed her into the background with the “Minority Report” pariahs. Hinata knew for a fact that this decision had been hard on the woman, for the two of them had covered the subject at length during late night breaks at the coffee machine or in the women’s locker room. Eventually, she had come to make peace with it, her initial feeling of injustice having been replaced with a deeply rooted rage to prove everyone that their project was more than just a joke or a daydream.

Who had established said project in the first and why was a mystery to them four, but little over a year ago, as Hinata was finally getting settled in her job at the Central office, her then-manager had told her that she had been assigned on a new project that -if it came to an end- could possibly revolutionize modern policing and that she was leaving for this precinct. At first incredibly excited by the opportunity, she had quickly become disillusioned. 

The idea was for them to develop an algorithm that -with the help of mathematics, predictive analytics and other analytical techniques in law enforcement- would help investigating teams solve cold cases, bring new suggestions and leads, and even predict crimes, offenders, perpetrators identities and victims. Simply put, the precinct commissioner wanted them to come up with a program that would do the job of ten Police officers -and why not serve coffee, while at it. Nonsensical.

The general public usually imagined predictive policing as a revolutionary technology capable of stopping crime before it started, pretty much like in the aforementioned movie starring Tom Cruise. However, innovation in real life had its limits and there was only so much an artificial intelligence could do. Depending on the method used, they actually could identify people and locations with increased risk of crime based on the data of the times, locations and nature of past crimes in the city, but that was it. The algorithm could only provide them with insight on where and when Police officers should patrol or maintain a presence, not pinpoint the exact time and place a crime would happen.

And still. No matter how stupid Hinata thought their hierarchy was, they worked on their baby, trying to raise it with all their love and genius and make it the best disadvantaged child in its class, thriving for it to exceed the limitations money, time and a lack of personnel were putting on it.

After a little more than a year focused on the “predictive” part, the team had presented a first tool that they had baptized SUNA -which stood for something Hinata actually did not remember- and was currently being tested by actual real cops, something the four of them considered “sick”, to quote Kiba.

Their easy chatter accompanied them for the rest of their breakfast break, the room lightning up with laughs and rising rays of sun shining through their small window. Kurenai even put on their favorite “angry people music” and, for the rest of the morning, the happy mood contained in the little cocoon their dysfunctional group had created wrapped them in a blissful blur of warmth and love, making them momentarily forget about the vicissitudes and tribulations of the outside world. She thought again for a brief moment about her old dream of become an official Police officer, and realized that now, she wouldn't trade her team for any other one in the world.

And really, wasn’t that the most important? 

*

The mood wasn’t as jolly near Hatake Kakashi. The thirty-something man had been an Inspector for quite some time now, having successfully passed the Keibu promotion tests in his late twenties and become the youngest member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police at the time to achieve such a feat. This came at a cost though, as his hair had prematurely turned grey in the process, but he didn’t care: he had actually found it to suit him better, making him look older and thus, earning him instinctively more devotion and respect from the people around him.

As an elite unit supervisor in the Criminal Investigations Division 1 -or so they said in high places-, Assistant Inspectors and Sergeants had succeeded one another under his guidance over the years, like day succeeded night and spring winter, and the word at the coffee machine was that he was seriously foreseen as the next Director of the Division.

However, Kakashi was not exactly the type that played politics at work or listened to corridor gossip and even though he couldn’t care less about an eventual promotion, he wasn’t an idiot either. He knew how determinant their new case was going to be for his team’s careers and anxiety was slowly but surely starting to get to him. It wasn’t just their reputation that they were playing right now, but the one of the entire Tokyo Metropolitan Police, as well as their potential entire future within it. 

But then… Why did this case have to fall upon him the one year he was leading Team Useless?

“Uzumaki-kun, do you really believe that now’s the time to eat noodles???”

“Hum, Haruno-san, you spilled your coffee all over my freshly printed report.”

“And you, stop smoking inside! That’s a disgusting habit! If you wanna die, fine, but do it on your own outside! No need to drag us into the grave with you!”

“I’m using my pen to stir my noodles; could someone lend me one in the meantime?”

Behind the mask he had been wearing continuously for over a week now -courtesy of a persistent cold- Kakashi let out a deeply plaintive sigh of despair. Time was running against them, but right now, as he gazed powerless at his team fighting each other over their shared desk in the open space, all eyes on them, it felt like he was the only one aware of it. No wonder his hair had turned grey.

“Guys, please”, he begged them half-heartedly for form, his voice barely audible over the sound of their bickering, “Everyone is watching us…”

Across the room, his eyes crossed with fellow Inspector Asuma’s and he gave him a smiley waving of the hand, met with obvious irritation. Yup, he thought to himself, I’m sure that if all the bigshots from Central Office saw this, they would think twice about nominating for the Director position…

Naruto voraciously slurped the last bit of ramen and soup left at the bottom of his cup before licking his pen and sliding it back in his shirt pocket before an horrified Sakura. He then dropped the empty cup in the garbage can next to him and, a satisfied grin on his face, reported to his team that he was ready for their update meeting, Sasuke nonchalantly crushed his cigarette butt on the latest edition of the Police Magazine that was laying on their desk, the faint smell of burned plastic travelling to their noses as they all lazily got up and reached for an empty conference room. 

“Okay,” started Kakashi as his team sat down around the oval wooden table of the tiny room while he pulled a mobile white board in front of them, “Let’s begin by recapitulating everything we already know about our guy.”

“We know that the first occurrence of his symbol goes back to March 21, 1986, with the double homicide of Namikaze Minato and his wife Kushina, followed a week later, on the 28th, by the death of Umino Kohari”, he enunciated as he wrote down the key informations for everyone to see. “Both women had been disembowelled and found under the infamous Rinnegan symbol and, according to the unit working the case at the time, they hadn’t found any physical evidence nor serious leads that could have oriented them toward the killer. A hunting knife was estimated to be the crime weapon but never found, probably safe to assume the murderer left with it each time. ”

“What about the sons of the victims?” Interrupted Sakura and she frantically searched through her notes, a triumphant finger rubbing over some highlighted  information. “I read that they actually both had interactions with our target. What about that?”

Kakashi shook his head, dismissing her suggestion.

“Umino Kohari’ son was four years old and the Namikaze kid, three. Not only were their testimony extremely light and unreliable but they probably hardly remember a thing about the murders now. Both kids mentioned seeing a ‘Mister’ in their house, but we cannot be sure about it.” Sakura sank in her chair, disappointed. On her right, Naruto’s guts tightened and his throat clenched, but he maintained his seemingly relaxed demeanor on the outside.

“Then”, kept going the Inspector, “The guy disappears and resurfaces eleven years later. This time, he kills Uchiha Fugaku and Mikoto on June 21, 1997-”

“Relatives of yours?” Sneered behind her teeth Sakura for Sasuke, this later calmly giving her the finger without laying his eyes off Kakashi, who cleared his voice to regain the attention of his audience, obviously displeased with the unwelcome interruption. Naruto often watched his partners tease one another and bicker like an old married couple, but never took part in what Kakashi called their “mating ritual”; after all, both of them were older and higher in the hierarchy, so it wasn’t his place to intervene. Plus, he had barely joined their team and his lack of experience made him feel extremely bashful, the fear of being looked down by the rest of them preventing him from speaking his mind most of the time during serious occasions like this meeting. 

“And again a third person, Yakushi Nonō, on the 28th, with both women disemboweled under the symbol. And just like with the previous killing spree, no physical evidence or witnesses. Which leads us to…”

Kakashi adjusted the height of the board to keep writing comfortably.

“...to last Sunday, with the murder of Katō Dan and Senju Tsunade, on September 21, 2008.”

He scratched the mask covering his face and turned to his team with an expecting look. “So, where do we start from here?”

On the opposite side of the table from Naruto, Sasuke’s face twisted into a scold.

“Eleven years, that’s an awfully long time for a dormant stretch, don’t you think?”

“But not unheard of”, pinpointed in-between Sakura.

“The real questions are why two couples and a single woman each time? And why gutting the women and leaving this drawing?” 

“Could be a stand-in for sexual intercourse in his mind, who knows.”

“Based on the previous cycles, he’s gonna claim another victim next Sunday then, ya know.” 

Naruto’s voice came out louder than expected, as he had gathered all his courage to expel those words, his eyes fixated on the white board, unable to take them away from the first names of the list. His colleagues all turned to him, everyone holding their breath for a short second. “And probably a woman, like the previous isolated victims.”

“Exactly, Uzumaki-kun, which means...” Kakashi wrote down the days of the week, circling the 21 and the 28, “that we have exactly five days to try to catch this bastard and save a life.”

Five days. That was an awfully short time to stop the most famous Japanese serial killer of the last two decades. Even though they benefited from the special privilege of having any case-related evidence treated by CSI being given absolute priority, Naruto didn’t know if they could make it. Hell, he knew for sure he couldn’t. After all, he only was a young, inexperienced rookie Sargeant; how could he make a difference in the case of a guy that had managed to kill over the span of 22 years without ever getting caught? 

Rage and despair clashed in his stomach, causing bile to rise to his lips. He wanted to do more, he needed to do more, he had to do more for this case, but he didn’t know how. He had sacrificed too much to get where he was now and couldn’t let the chance of life time slip through his fingers. He had to get his shit together, he had to…

The doors of the elevator opened on the nothing of the second basement, reeks of death powerfully hitting his senses and taking over his brain. A flash of Senju Tsunade’s wet guts leaking outside of her on her delicate robe and the immaculate carpet of her bedroom crossed his mind and, for a second, he felt like he was going to faint. A metallic smell invaded his nose and, disoriented, he stumbled outside the cabin, across the darkened hall and straight into the nearest wall, his shoulder hitting it heavily, his open mouth gasping for air, the drawing of a circle pupil imprinted on his retinas. 

No no no no no, he panicked, closing his eyelids as tight as possible as he slipped into a wake nightmare. 

As a child and a teenager, Naruto had been no stranger to crippling panic attacks and night terrors. Over the years, they had slowly faded, both in occurrence and intensity, and it had actually been years since he last experienced one of those.

In his chest, his breath accelerated, sending cold and putrid flushes of stale air into his lungs and blood as a distorted voice asked him deep down in a corner of his mind if milk was okay. Behind his lids, curls of darkness swarmed together to form a towering silhouette, ready to overtake him and devour him whole. No, he didn’t want to think about this again, not now-

“Uzumaki-san, what a pleasure to see such a lively presence down there.”

Naruto abruptly opened his eyes and gasped as much air as he could, the feeling of coming out of the water after swimming really long under the surface hitting him with the violence of a truck. He blinked, realizing with embarrassment that he was laying on the linoleum floor against a wall, and registered the hand that was next to his face.

“Is everything alright?” Asked the stranger, oversweet honey disgustingly dripping from every single one of his intonations. Still livid from his dizzy spell, gulping his saliva with difficulty, he grunted an answer and feebly grabbed the hand, uneasily getting up. His eyes met the face of his savior and a shiver of discomfort ran through his body as the thin coroner’s lips stretched widely while the rest of his facial features didn’t move an inch, giving his smile an incredibly creepy vibe. No wonder why no one from his team wanted to come talk to this guy and pick up his report.

“Sorry for the fuss, Kabuto-san, I must be overworked. You surely know how important this case is.”

Kabuto slowly nodded and a strange light passed through the snake-like cracks he had for eyes, before inviting Naruto into his office, a couple of meters down the hall.

“I’m so glad you dropped by, Uzumaki-kun”, simpered the coroner between his teeth as he took a new pair of disposable gloves from his desk, Naruto still standing in the frame of the door, trying his best to disregard the strong smell of formalin that reign in the room and the cool temperature. “I suppose you’re here to see them?” He then asked his blond guest, his pale and greyish skin strangely reflecting the yellow electrical light of the ceiling.” They’ve been ready all afternoon, come with me.”

Naruto would have far preferred to just listen to the autopsy’s conclusion in the office and grab the report to leave this god forsaken place as fast as possible, but his rank couldn’t afford him to come across as rude or disrespectful, even to someone from a different Division, so his feet automatically marched into Kabuto’ steps, driving him into the adjacent room.

Tears started to form at the corners of his eyes as formalin saturated the atmosphere even more, and cold sweat slowly slid all along his spinal column when his eyes met the brightly lighted autopsy table standing in the middle of the morgue, occupied. Kabuto stopped right next to it and, a morbid smile on his face, extended Naruto a hand to invite him closer. 

“Don’t be shy” he told him, his high-pitched voice but a whisper, as if he was afraid to wake its patient. “Look how peaceful she is now.”

Naruto took a deep breath, and finally walked the distance separating him from the table, Kabuto’s eyes on him.

She did look peaceful, asleep almost. Her fair, bloodless face diffused a diaphanous aura under the projector and her blonde hair had been carefully brushed under her gentle skull. Her lips were still surprisingly red and, considering she was well into her fifties, her face barely worn any traces of the ravages of time. Cosmetic surgery? Probably.

A sheet modestly covered her body, which Naruto was thankful for. No need to pollute his mind with more gory images of the unfortunate victim.

“Did you find anything?” He asked Kabuto, his eyes lingering a bit longer on her serene features. He was glad that the horror that had precipitated her tragic demise hadn’t followed her in death. He knew some bodies could retain their last expression, giving away to the people handling them in the afterlife how much they had suffered before meeting their end.

Soundlessly, Kabuto moved across the table, facing Naruto from the other side, and delicately pressed a hand against the body’s cheek, lovingly caressing it. Naruto’s breathing intensified. He was feeling more and more ill at ease and a subtle nausea was starting to dig its claws around his stomach. No, not here, not now, he commanded himself.

“She was beautiful, wasn’t she?” Asked Kabuto, rhetorically. His bony fingers finally left her poor face alone and his posture switched to a more professional one as he started turning around to reach the other side of the room, where the wall of frozen compartments containing the bodies currently under the responsibility of the precinct stood. He opened one of them and, with a visible effort, pulled its heavy drawer out, revealing the body of Katō Dan, Senju Tsunade’s life partner.

“The man died fast, that’s one sure thing”, started Kabuto as he signaled Naruto to get closer, showing him different lacerations on the throat and chest of the man. “The killer knew exactly where to hit and he sliced his carotid artery with great precision -the poor thing didn’t stand a chance. He died from blood loss in probably less than two minutes and with his sustained injuries, he was clearly unable to defend himself, which is corroborated by the absence of defensive wounds.”

Leaving the drawer opened, he walked back to the table, Naruto following suit. “For her however, that’s another story…”

Naruto instinctively took a step back when Kabuto abruptly removed the sheet covering Tsunade, revealing a gaping hole where her torso should have been. Her skin had been peeled and pushed to the sides of the chest like for a banana and her thoracic cage emptied, leaving her frail carcass hollowed. South, Kabuto had already consciously folded her guts back inside of her, letting them idly drool inside the empty cavity. Naruto thought he was going to puke.

“He manifestly choked her”, indicated Kabuto as he pinpointed Naruto the discolored skin of her throat, “Not enough to kill her but still sufficient to overpower her. Then, he sliced open her lower abdomen while she was still alive, and abandoned her to die.” Kabuto turned his head to look at Naruto behind him, still frozen, his eyes widely opened as he contemplated the body with an expression of utter horror. The coroner chuckled.

“Don’t you worry, I’ll make sure to get her decent again before handing her back to the family”, he casually mentioned, a sick smirk on his face. The world around Naruto started to wobble and as gravity changed its center, he felt his legs giving up. Kabuto swiftly caught him before his knees met the ground, his light laughter hurting Naruto’s ears like a jackhammer.

“Hang in there, buddy” hissed the coroner as he helped Naruto get back on his feet. 

“Could we wrap this up, please?” Croaked Naruto, too shaken to even be ashamed of the situation. He needed to get out of this place. And fast. Bile was burning his esophagus and he didn’t want his stomach to discharge its ramen inside the hollowed chest cavity of Tsunade. Kabuto nodded his head, his hideous laugh filling the silence of the room once more.

“Sure, buddy, sure”, he said as he carefully covered up Tsunade’s body again. “I estimate Dan Katō’s time of death around 1:25 a.m., and hers about an hour later. With her collapsed windpipe and her abdominal injury, she couldn’t do much more than await for Death to come and greet her. Also, both their drug tests came back negative, and every wound was done by the same kind of sharp tool. A knife, by all means.”

Naruto’s head felt way too heavy for him, but he still managed to weakly nod at Kabuto.

“Everything is in the report, I’ll send in to your team straight after”, imparted the man as he walked back to Dan’s drawer, ready to put the body away. Naruto mumbled a quick “thank you” and hurriedly made a u-turn, aiming for the door as he frantically rubbed his eyes, relieved at the thought that this nightmare would be over soon. In a couple of minutes, he would be in the elevator, safe again.

“Oh, also, one last thing before you go…”

Kabuto’s unpleasantly sweet voice reached his ears and brought him to a halt, fear seizing his body at the idea of spending one moment more in the morgue. “Katō Dan’s back is covered with lacerations, inflicted post-mortem. They must have been in quite a rage, to be honest.”

Back inside the safe metal shaft of the elevator, Naruto took a long moment to regain composure. He knew that what he had just seen would fuel his night terrors for the months to come, but he had sacrificed too much to let the sight of a body get the best of his mind. He really needed to stay sharp if he wanted to have a shot at this case. Never, even in his wildest dreams, could have he hoped working on such a crime. He couldn’t fail them, he simply could not.

He finally managed to walk back to his office and told his colleagues about the information gathered by the forensic team but, behind the smiley and casual attitude he displayed, the awful sensation that had seized him downstairs in the morgue stayed with him that day, long into the night. Maybe that was the reason why when, around 11 p.m., when he took the elevator once again to finally leave the precinct and head home for a short nap and a shower, he didn’t notice the woman with the long dip-dyed green hair that briefly got in with him for a couple of floors, texting on a phone that had yet to be invented. 

*

Now that the Minority Report unit had delivered SUNA -and as they waited for people like Sarutobi Konohamaru and his squad to give them feedbacks for an hypothetical update and implementation on a municipality level-, they had decided to tackle the other side of the coin: providing Inspectors with a technology that could see and make better connections between a case’s elements, crosscheck a humongous amount of data of various nature and eventually, bring them the key to their mystery on a silver plate. Something that, if they succeeded, would make crime analysts like Hinata pretty much outdated. 

On second thoughts, it was probably better not to think too hard about it.

Engrossed in the cold case report she was reading, Hinata had yet to notice that the sun had vanished, heavy darkness imbued with silence wrapping Kiba and her as they had kept working long after Kurenai and Shino’s departure.

For Kiba’s friend had been so helpful with the creation and launch of SUNA, the team had decided to name their new pet project after him and Kiba, Kurenai and herself had spent the entire past week going through old, unsolved cases to elect the best-suited one to feed KONOHA, so that machine learning could work its magic.

As a Crime analyst, navigating large quantities of data to provide strategic, statistical and investigative support to police forces was Hinata’s bread and butter, and the idea of picking up a cold case to dissect for Shino’s latest newborn thrilled her to the highest degree, which explained why she had naturally decided to keep on working her way through the gargantuan amount of report boxes that piled up behind their superior’s desk.

When going through a massive amount of files and cases, Kiba and Hinata had their system; they would draw their chairs closer and sit back to back to feel the soothing warmth of one another, giving the other one a head bump from time to time when they thought they had stumbled across something interesting, Akamaru patiently laying under their chairs, his tail or nose gently brushing across a leg once in a while.

No matter how tedious this kind of task could prove to be, Hinata cherished such moments for they made her feel part of a family more than a team. All they were currently missing was Shino’s characteristic typing sounds, and it would be perfect. 

Black lines came one after the other before her eyes as her brain scanned and “guessed” more than read the words written on the thin sheet of paper, sending to her conscious mind only the most relevant pieces of information. 

“The lease on the house had been terminated”.
“All bank accounts had been closed”. 
“The children's school received a final payment settlement”. 
“Tomoko’s employer was informed that she was suffering from gastroenteritis and then that she was moving to South Korea”. 
“A message was placed on their letter box: ‘Please return all correspondence to the sender. Thank you’”. 

“The house had been completely emptied”. “Rifle bullets were purchased on March 12”. “Shinjiro, the oldest child, leaves the high school where he was studying and does not turn up at the shop where he worked and was due to go to pick up his monthly wages. His boss is surprised by this, stating that Shinjiro always came to collect his wages on the first day of the month”. “The father was seen ‘shoving large, shapeless and heavy dark bags in the trunk of the family car”.

“Mei and Seiji do not turn up at their school, ‘due to illness’”. “Mei and Seiji’s friends become concerned when they are unable to reach them”. “During the week, neighbors heard the family dogs howling for two consecutive nights and then never heard them again”. 

“Investigators believe that Ito Satoshi murdered his wife and three of his children on the night of 3 to 4 April, then murdered his son Shinjiro on the evening of 5 April”. “Mei and Seiji’'s school receives a letter signed by Satoshi, stating that Mei and Seiji will be leaving the school and the family will be moving to South Korea due to ‘urgent professional changes’". “The headmaster is unable to reach the family by telephone”. 

“Satoshi withdraws ¥4,000 from an ATM in Kitakami”.

“Satoshi sleeps at a budget hotel in Aomori, where he is captured on film by a surveillance camera – the last known sighting of him”.
“Satoshi checks out of the hotel, abandoning his car there”.

Hinata was used to reading a ton of squalid details about the worst humans were capable of, but for some reason, tonight, this file... It was too much for her to handle. The father, Satoshi, had set off, leaving behind a house with the corpses of both the family dogs and his youngest twins buried in the backyard, as well as a car filled with three other family members in the trunk of his car in the parking lot of a shady hotel. Someone had shot them all in the head with a rifle, the pellets tearing to shreds flesh and bone alike. She turned to the next page and a close-up of a rotting crushed skull, brains trickling down, made her drop the report, feeling sick to her core. She let out a deep sigh and started to massage her temples, a light dizziness gaining her.

“Hey, what’s wrong behind?” She heard Kiba inquire as she closed her eyes and tried to erase the mental image that was forming in her head. She didn’t answer and that must have alarmed him, as he quickly got up and kneeled by her side, his hand gently stroking her arm up and down.

“Hey there, are you okay?”, he wondered, worried. Hinata opened her eyes again and weakly smiled at him.

“Yes, I just may have overdone it lately, that’s it.”

Kiba smirked back at her. He got up and pulled her arm to make her leave her chair, before wrapping her with his warmth. Taken aback by this unexpected demonstration of affection, Hinata stiffen a second, before chuckling lightly and hugging her partner back.

Kiba smelt like the comfort of a comfy couch and an oversized blanket on a winter’s day, and she shamelessly indulged in their hug. Unlike him who had a girlfriend, or Kurenai who had a daughter, she lived by herself and avoided her family as much as possible. Most of the friends she had made in college were now strangers to her and before that, she used to be timid to such an extreme that she didn’t really have anyone, so moments of shared contact with another human being had been cruelly rare lately.

Maybe it was the emptiness of her life, or just the tiredness, but without a warning, Hinata suddenly broke down into a sobbing less against Kiba’s chest

“I’m-I’m so sorry”, she stammered with a voice choked by emotions, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I was just reading about this case and…”

“Yo, Hinata, it’s fine, don’t apologize”, ordered her Kiba while squeezing her even harder. Akamaru, trained for this exact kind of scenario, had gotten on his two bottom legs and was seemingly hugging her as well, his head pressing against her bottoms. They remained like that for a moment, until the crying had dried out, Hinata feeling exhausted and washed out.

“I’m so sorry for this”, she croaked again, blush coloring her cheeks. Kiba snickered slightly before separating from her, a severe eye examining Hinata’s reddened face.

“You don’t have to feel bad about it”, he comforted her as he assessed her current mental state, “You can’t even imagine how many breakdowns I used to have, even after getting Akamaru. It’s alright.” 

Hinata looked at her feet sheepishly, unable to face her colleague out of shame, and slowly nodded her head. A shiver shook her body, and Kiba’s tutted her before taking off his sweater and passing it around her bare shoulders. Surprised, Hinata squeaked. Kiba grinned largely at her, and zipped the clothing up, literally restraining Hinata’s arms as she hadn’t passed on the sleeves. 

“What about I take Akamaru for a little walk around the block and get us something to eat at the supermarket?” He suggested as he patted her shoulders, their eyes locked together. Beyond mortified and embarrassed by the situation, Hinata agreed, eager to get some alone time to calm herself down. 

“What about your sweater?” She asked as he gathered his stuff, Akamaru immediately picking on where his master was taking him.

“I’m sure Tamaki would be okay with me lending it to you for twenty minutes” he sneered, before putting on his worn out jacket. “Come on, Akamaru!” And with an enthusiastic bark, the pair exited the room, leaving Hinata floating by herself in a dirty sweater way too big for her frame.

She managed to get her arms in the sleeves and then dropped into her seat again, letting herself melt into a pool of goo, shoulders relaxed, arms dangling and head hanging back, her heartbeat finally stabilizing. She filled her lungs with the comforting, masculine scent of Kiba, and tried to release the tension built up in her muscles, in vain.

It was completely dark outside. She gave a quick look at her phone. 10:43 p.m..

She probably just needed a break. They had been working non-stop lately, barely ever going home, and the seedy cases they were reviewing for KONOHA had surely gotten to her head. All she needed was some good rest. 

And probably some good old action, to be honest.

She sighed and looked around her purposeless, unable to convince herself to resume her reading. Kiba would be back soon with some food anyway, so starting a new task now was futile. She grabbed the report and slammed it inside one of her drawers -out of sight, out of mind. Deciding that she needed to visit the restroom, at least to wash up the sticky layer of dry sweat and tears on her face, she then adventured herself in the empty corridor of the sixth floor, abandoned at such an ungodly hour by most of its daytime occupants. She stopped level in front of the bathroom as she noticed the cleaning cart at the door and, feeling tired and defeated, rerouted herself towards the third floor one, the ones before being always too dirty to her liking.

As she got out of the toilets, she walked to the sink to wash her hands, her pasty reflection scrutinizing her in the mirror. She washed her hands and examined herself in the tainted glass closer.

As a teenager, her long, thick, silky blue hair had been her most prideful and priced physical attribute. For the longest time, her father had refused to let her grow it, pretexting how difficult it was to maintain, and had insisted on keeping it short. Then, when she had gotten into middle school and had been deemed old enough to take care of her own body herself, she had finally been granted the privilege to choose her haircut herself. 

Right now however, her once luxurious mane looked dull to her, flat even, as the slightly creasy mass was tied down against her neck into a low ponytail that disappeared into Kiba’s sweater after the collar. The only remembrance of its original color was the dark blue roots that shyly reared their head before fading into a washed-up green coloration she had done herself a couple of months ago. Her brows furrowed. The first time she had dyed them, it was in the bathroom sink of a gas station, after a particular bad night of binge-drinking and disgusting alley sex with some stranger, which had made her feel sick to her core. The guy had gripped her hair hard the whole encounter while quite forcefully stuffing himself in her mouth, pressing himself deeply, her scalp almost hurting from his harsh grasp, commenting over and over what nice locks she got there. Later, after he had left, spent, she had cleaned herself up, the fog clouding her mind altering her better judgment, and had started to meander the empty streets of Shibuya. The image of her in a lightless window shop, shit-faced, dishevelled, smeared mascara and lipstick, had her stop in shock. Behind her, his glare had crossed paths with her emptied one, the disapproving look she had tried so hard to escape from the entire night growing harder as he detailed her current state.

Look at you Hime… What is wrong with you?

She had suddenly felt like someone had plunged their hand in her chest to tear off her heart, making her generously spread the content of her stomach onto the cold glass, the sidewalk and her boots, the acidic puke burning her throat and leaving an awful after-taste on her tongue. 

As she then frantically went through the capillary product section of the first konbini she had rushed in, she first considered cutting her hair altogether. She could still feel the pull, and it sickened her. Beautiful hair. Instead, she had grabbed bleach and dye and, fifteen minutes later, she was laying on the dirty floor of a sordid restroom, product all over her head, on the brink of passing out, the putrid smell of ammonia going to her head.

Hinata breathed out slowly in front of the precinct mirror, her hands squeezing the whitish porcelain of the sink. Behind her, his judging eyes burnt like lasers.

You’re tired. You should go home. You should take care of your body.

She looked at him for a second, before hastily opening the tap and splashing water all over the glass in front of her to make him go away. He wasn’t even alive anymore, it was all in her head. All in your head, she repeated to herself, as if she was trying to convince someone. She contemplated a drop slowly slid down the smooth surface, racing its doppelganger on the other side of the mirror, before crashing onto the hard surface of the sink. Inside her skull, a sudden buzzing vibration started, like a group of bees growing bigger and bigger. She grabbed her head with both hands, the sensation unnerving her. It felt insufferable.

“Leave me alone!” She yelled at the mirror before escaping the oppressing space, bursting into the corridor, seeking for the elevator.

She wasn’t feeling good. She wasn’t feeling good at all. Behind her, his imaginary steps echoed in the hallway. She wouldn’t make it to the elevator before him, she knew it. The buzz in her head accentuated and the long hall distorted before her eyes, walls slowly drawing closer then backing away again like a breathing, living being. The lines and perspective stretched, moving slowly in front of her as a loud ringing hit her ears, driving her into the wall.

“Leave me in peace!” She screamed again, her arm defensively swinging in the air, trying to push aside an invisible assailant. It took her all of her strength to limp toward the elevator and press the call button, the unbearable tinnitus in her ears making her lose all sense of balance and stability. She felt tears of fear forming at the corners of her eyes as she saw the silhouette from the mirror getting closer to her, swells of milling darknesses giving it consistency. She collapsed against the metal doors, trapped, and whined as the boneless figure extended a hand toward her face.

You look so pretty with those long blue hair, do you know it?

The eerie shadow fingers almost touched her skin and she shut her eyes close, tensing up at the imminent contact, when the doors behind her finally opened. She felt on the hard, dusty floor, her mouth and eyes wide open as she resurfaced in the real world.

“Wow, are you ok??”

To add to her misery, the lift was already occupied  and she stupidly looked around her, disoriented by her sudden change of scenery and position.

“Let me help you”, said the stranger as they kneeled by her side, dropping a box of evidence and grabbing her like a toddler under the armpits to put her back on her feet. Dumbfounded by the bold move, Hinata stuttered as she turned around to meet them, her face looking positively dreadful.

 “Hum, sorry, I… I think I’m just tired, I need to rest, really, that’s-”

And it felt like her mind short-circuited itself.

He must have been younger than her. He had to. He was tall, really tall, almost towering above her, forcing her to raise her face to glance at his facial features. She swallowed with difficulty.

His ocean eyes examined her with a hint of concern and anxiety, as if he was afraid she would faint or something, and Hinata blushed hard at the thought of her less than engaging appearance.

“Where are you going?” He asked with authority, acting like he was older than her. “Let me walk you back there.”

Her head ducked between her shoulders and she bit her lower lips, too bashful to hold his burning stare.

“Sixth floor, but really, there is no need to, I’m fine”, she tried to protest, but her voice sounded weak and hollow, even to her.

He moved to pick up his box from the floor and while balancing it, pressed with his elbow on the “6” button. Hinata caught a glimpse of the personnel badge he wore around his neck.
Uzumaki Naruto.

The shaft shivered a little as she felt them moving up and her shoulders stooped, her eyes focused on her shoes. The last thing she wanted was some cute intern to see her be prey to imaginary nightmares. 

The characteristic “ding” of the elevator resonated in the cabin and when she saw him begin to move to escort her, she rushed outside with a “No need to accompany me!” before meeting the cold, hard surface of the wooden door of a nearby office, relieved to notice the boy had not followed her. She closed her eyes and pressed her back neck against it, the chilling sensation soothing her nerves as she internally fulminated, scolding herself for being so weak.

“Hinata, are you feeling alright? Your face is really red! Did something happen to you?”

Kiba and Akamaru were back from their late stroll, the former holding a plastic bag from which curls of steam rose in the air, suspicion and concern mixing on his face. Hinata feebly nodded her head, desperate puppy eyes meeting with Kiba’s as he approached her and put his arm under her armpits to pull her closer and help her walk back to their office.

“It’s nothing, really”, she frailly let out as she basically let her poor colleague carry her to her chair.

“You’re really overworking yourself”, he commented behind his teeth, which made Hinata feel even more guilty than she already did.

“I”m going to call Tamaki and we’re driving you home, ok? And I don’t even want to hear a single protest” notified Kiba as he carefully dropped her. Hinata remained silent. The last hour had been just too much for her to even try to.

“Thank you, Kiba”, she managed to whisper as Akamaru slipped his head on her knees to comfort her, his master unboxing their dinner. He turned around and lovingly stroked her head, a sad smile on his lips.

“Anything for a friend”, he murmured, and Hinata rested her head against his belly, her hand petting Akamaru, the smell of their food slowly invading the safe space of their office, their energy protecting her from his relentless shadow.

*

“Okay, let me take you to your offi…” 

Naruto dropped dead in the middle of his sentence and looked around him, his jaw hanging wide open.

He was alone in the empty corridor and a quick eye-check of the elevator shaft taught him that she wasn’t in there either. He blinked, astonished, and frantically turned around, trying to catch any clue that could indicate where she had gone. After all, she hadn’t vanished, right?

The elevator signaled that it was going to close its doors again and he rushed back inside, pressing for the first basement, still unsure about what had just happened.

Meh, not every life mystery had to be solved.

By the time he had reached the artificially lighted corridors of the CSI division, expertly navigating to the office of Nara Shikamaru and Yamanaka Ino, Naruto had already forgotten about this bizarre encounter.

“Hey guys!” He grinned widely as he entered the tiny room, barely big enough to contain both technicians’ desks, chairs and their filing cabinets. “What’s up?”

“Why so loud” complained Shikamaru as he lazily covered his mouth to hide a sigh, Naruto unceremoniously dropping his bottoms on the goateed man’s desk. Shikamaru tutted as he playfully tried to oust the invader with a hit of a rolled-up report. 

“You seem in quite a good mood for someone basically waiting for a third murder to happen”, noticed Ino with a playful smile from the other side of the office. Naruto shrugged and dropped his evidence box on a pile of duty reports next to him. At the mention of the current state of his investigation, he had abruptly lost his smile, promptly turning it into a preoccupied pout.

Six days had passed since they had found the latest victims of the Rinnegan killer, and they were still as close to catching him as they were on their first day. They had interviewed the entire block, reviewed countless hours of any security camera recording they could get their hands on, screened the unfathomable number of so-called tips received by the emergency hotline specially set up for them -in vain. The man was a ghost, a shadow that walked the night and vanished with the dawn of day, his misdid accomplished.

Ino must have felt like she had pushed his buttons a bit too hard, for she gave him a sorry look before suddenly leaning over her desk, a malicious fire burning in her eyes.

“Uzumaki-chan, what if I told you I had some good news for you?” She innocently teased him, her lips repressing a smirk. Naruto stopped pouting immediately and straightened on Shikamaru’s desk, intrigued.

“What if I told you”, she repeated, her hand grabbing a file on her desk and waving it at him, “that the DNA results are just in, and that I have something for you and your team?” 

“No way!” Naruto stood up eagerly, his childish excitement causing both the technicians to smile. “Did you find something?” Ino nodded her head with a sly grin. “And? What does it say?” Pressed Naruto as he rushed over to her desk, both hands on the hard wood supporting his weight, his face only centimeters away from Ino’s. She pushed the report into Naruto’s face for him to back off and cleared her throat.

“We collected a lot of DNA on the crime scene, almost exclusively belonging to the victims or their housekeeper, but…” She fished a page out of the folder and spread it on the table in front of Naruto. The overexposed close-up picture of a short body hair laying on what looked like a bloody carpet took most of the sheet, with some scientific gibberish under it. “We did find a hair right next to the female victim, and its DNA doesn’t match anyone’s.”

Naruto blinked, disappointed. He was expecting something a little more case-shattering. “So, it’s his?” Ino nodded again.

“That’s almost certain. The only thing is that the DNA wasn’t in any of our databases, so there is no way to know who it belongs to. But, if you manage to identify a suspect, you can cross their DNA with this one, and that’s already something.” 

He hardly could believe it. His frown disappeared and he profusely thanked Ino for the news, perked up. Sure, they hadn’t identified him yet, but this was definitely something, an advantage no team before them had managed to get. Now, it was time for them to step into action and make good use of the ace they had been dealt. 

“How come you didn’t find any fingerprints when she got us a freaking hair, hum?” He teased Shikamaru as he stood back up, pulling away from his blonde and perky colleague. The other guy grunted back at him, arguing that the killer was wearing leather gloves.

“However, I heard Choji confirming earlier on that the blood used by the killer to draw the symbol on the wall was Senju’s one.”

“That sick bastard”, snorted Naruto, feeling the anger steam up inside of him. The memory of Tsunade’s empty body invited itself in his mind and he cringed internally, shaking his head in an effort to get rid of the uncomfortable vision.

When Naruto finally took his leave from them, he was feeling slightly reinvigorated by the news and had almost forgotten that the third murder was suppose to happen in the upcoming hours. “I’ll email you the report!” Yelled at him Ino from her office as he walked away, raising his box in the air to signal her his agreement before taking the direction of the archives to give it back on his way to his team’s office, five floors upstairs.

“Uzumaki-kun!” Welcomed him Sakura to their shared desk, her tired features stretching into a smile, “CSI just sent us a report, they have found…”

“I know already, I was with them”, smiled back Naruto as he sat down across the table from her and next to a smoking Sasuke who was sporting a sullen look on his face. The raven-haired Assistant Inspector had been looking unusually preoccupied by something lately, which probably was the reason why Sakura hadn’t complained about his cigarette yet.

Naruto exchanged a brief stare with his female coworker, and she decided to speak out, hesitant.

“Sasuke-san?” She asked, her voice trembling in the semi-darkness of the open space. No reaction. “Sasuke-san? Is everything alright?”

The dark man stood still a moment longer, the ashes of his cigarette slowly crumbling onto his white shirt, but he didn’t seem to care.

“It does not make sense”, he finally grunted, his eyes still lost in the beyond. Naruto and Sakura both raised an eyebrow, and Sasuke finally grabbed his butt to crush it on the same old Police Magazine, now covered with five days of disgusting habits. His elbow on the table, his face resting on his clenched fist, he finally looked at them.

“The first time around, he murders the parents of a family with a child as well a mother whose husband was momentarily away on a business trip”, he started to dissect, his teammates unsure of what was going on in this unfathomable brain of his. “Then, during the second wave, he kills a childless married couple, and a childless married woman who happened to be alone at home that night. Question number one: why switch from people with children to childless ones?”

Hum.

Naruto’s eyebrows furrowed as he tried to formulate a logical hypothesis to his colleague’s relevant interrogation. Sakura stared at the ceiling a minute, her eyes drawing the cracks in the paint, before diving back down at Sasuke.

“Maybe he had become a father in between? After all, a lot can happen in eleven years, so it wouldn’t be that improbable to theorize that he had had a child of his own. Maybe that changed him?”

“Or maybe he lost a parent himself, and couldn’t bear to make an orphan of someone else?” Suggested Naruto, stimulated by Sakura’s train of thought.

Sasuke shook his head, unconvinced.

“But then, why Dan and Tsunade? They weren’t even legally married. Also,” and he dropped back against the back of his work chair, sinking deep in it, sourer than ever, “Why such an age difference between the victims? The Namikaze were in their early thirties, like Kohari. Then, the Uchihas and Nonō were in their forties, and now the last couple is in their fifties. That doesn’t make any sense.”

Sakura breathed out loudly. “Maybe he’s aging with his victims? Maybe he was in his thirties when he began and now, he’s in his fifties, who knows?”

“Nay, he’s younger than that”, butted in Naruto with an aplomb that stunned both his teammates.

“And how would you know?” Inquired Sasuke, his suspicious glare piercing through the young Sargeant. Naruto’s ears reddened immediately and his eyes ran away from the attention to artificially fix the edge of his desk, an abashed expression on his face. 

“Just an intuition”, he grumbled as he grabbed a random report that was laying there and pretended to start reading it in hopes of discouraging them to push the matter further. 

“He could be an omnivore”, offered to his relief Sakura, effectively switching subjects. Sasuke rolled her eyes at her. 

The Rinnegan killer’s pattern had bothered Naruto countless times before already, however, he had never shared any of his theories with his partners. Each cycle, the Rinnegan killer killed in a different ward of Tokyo, always a couple followed by a single woman, but other than that, there were little similarities between the waves. Then never took place at the same time of the year, but did always start on the 21st; the victims’ profiles differed in terms of physical characteristics, but he always murdered one man and two women. It was like everything that wasn’t his core, precise plan, was unimportant, and Naruto wondered the kind of man the killer saw every morning in the mirror. 

They had gotten back to work and had been all very studious for a while when, after she had taken out of her pocket her phone to check on something, Sakura informed them with a weirdly hollowed voice of the time: “It’s 2:43 a.m..”

The air in the room stood still, heavy, thick, dry around them, full of implicit implications. The third murder had probably already happened, they all thought as they focused back on their work again, their guts contracting painfully.

Just like Sasuke, Naruto did not concur with Sakura’s theory of an omnivore killer. To him, the murders were executed with too much precision and finesse to be the result of an unplanned action; he had to be selecting his victim beforehand to achieve such a perfect coup each time around. But why change age, body types or even socioeconomic class? Could it be a different killer altogether every cycle, with the previous one training the newest member, like for some kind of sick satanic ritual? Never had he voiced this theory aloud and besides, he knew that the evidence pointed to the same person, but still. To his young and inexperienced brain, this looked like the most plausible scenario. 

He wasn’t exactly sure how he had gotten there, but all of sudden, Naruto found himself back in Kabuto’s morgue, alone. To his relief, the smell of formalin had left the air but the place retained its creepiness nonetheless and he anxiously inspected his surroundings, on the lookout for the door. Stupor made way for terror as he realized that all four walls around him were devoid of doors and windows, effectively trapping him inside the seedy laboratory. His eyes scanned the room: apart from the wall of cold drawers and nude metal cabinets everywhere, probably there to stock the autopsy material, there was nothing that could prove of any help. Desperate, he turned to the center of the room, where the autopsy table awaited. Occupied.

Immobile, the crude and violent light above her making her skin look even paler, Tsunade was laying down, her face turned towards him, her empty orbits observing his every move.

Naruto started panting and instinctively took a step back, until his back painfully hit the wall. On the table, Tsunade cast the sheet that covered her dissected body away and slowly, uneasily, sat down, the sides of her open chest skin sagging as she wheezed. Much to Naruto’s horror, she let her body slide from the table and heavily fell on her feet, her guts starting to spill out from her opened torso. With one hand, she tried to tuck them back inside as much as she could, unsuccessfully. Distraught by her failure, her dead eyes desperately turned to him for help, her other hand reaching in the air for him.

“Help...me…” Wailed the woman as she took a step in his direction, her large intestine escaping her grip and falling on the floor with a viscous “pop”. Naruto pressed his back even further against the wall.

“Help me…” She repeated, taking a second step. More guts fell, hanging between her legs, leaving behind her a slimy and bloody trail. Naruto’s breathing was so erratic that he thought he was going to pass out from hyperventilation.

“Help me!” Finally shrieked the woman, letting all of her guts hit the floor as she suddenly rushed towards a terrified Naruto, his back pushing against the wall so much it was hurting.

Hum, what about milk? Would milk be okay?

He brutally emerged from the darkness and raised his head back up in one go, the sheet of paper he had fallen asleep on briefly sticking to his cheek before falling back on the table. Sakura, whose hand was laying on his shoulder, jerked back, startled by his violent reaction. Glassy eyes glanced around the empty office, the first rays of the timidly rising sun shining through the window.

“Uzumaki-kun”, she murmured, “They found another body.”

Still quite disoriented, Naruto nodded his head and got up, his mind readying itself for the next tragedy that awaited their team.

Uchiha Sasuke was furious. The young Assistant Inspector was boiling on the inside, feelings of rage, inadequacy and powerlessness mixing tumultuously in his heart. 

He refused to believe Sakura’ suggestion of an omnivore killer that had no specific pattern in his victimology, no matter how hard the evidence at hand were trying to back it up. He intimately believed that the pattern was only extremely difficult to discern. Up to him to find it, now.

The cigarette craving had him frantically scratching his left upper arm as he looked away from the corpse, too upset by their crime scene. It didn’t make any sense to him. Frustrated, he left his crouching position and walked around the room, not paying attention to what Kakashi was saying -not that he cared. Three victims -one man, two women- in 1986 in Taitō ward, in their thirties. Three victims -one man, two women- in 1997 in Chiyoda ward, in their forties. And now, three victims in 2008 in Chūō-ku. Except this time, the third one was a man. Oh, and also, they were not in the same age group.

It was like the Rinnegan killer was doing it on purpose, taunting the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, challenging them, challenging him personally to come and find him. The murder had happened in the small living area of this upscale one-bedroom apartment. What the victim was doing before, Sasuke wasn’t too sure, but he was still fully dressed up in everyday clothes, so he was probably still up when Death had knocked on his door. The place was spotless -apart from the mess produced by the killing, obviously-, everything being where it should be, except in two places. 

In the kitchen sink, four glasses were waiting to be washed, one of which had what appeared like woman’s lipstick on it. Two other glasses, one half empty and the other full with a transparent liquid that must have been water, were sitting on the kotatsu near the couch in one corner of the room. Either their victim liked to change glasses a lot or he had had company before ending like this.

Sweating under his full white overalls, Sasuke took the direction of the small bedroom. The room was nothing special: a desk with its studying material rigorously displayed on, a built-in closet impeccably organized, a drawer and some cupboards sporting some meticulously positioned framed and knick-knacks. Sasuke took a minute to examine the pictures that Ōtsutsuki Neji had chosen to surround himself with: on one, the victim was posing in its school uniform next to a younger school girl, shyly avoiding the camera. Next to it, the same duo was smiling at one another outside under a tree, a third girl next to them. On the drawer, they were both on a tennis court, sweating and red after a game but laughing. His girlfriend? His sister? On the nightstand, a portrait of the girl, posing at a piano, a pink blush coloring her cheeks as she stared at someone behind the camera, was laying there. 

His eyes traveled to the bed next to it, and they lingered on the creased duvet and the untapped pillows still molding somebody’s head, wrestling a frown from the Assistant Inspector. 

The entire apartment was precisely organized in a way all too familiar to Sasuke, the way that every child coming from money had been used to. Discipline, care, method: that was the image Ōtsutsuki Neji’ student flat reflected, and this carelessly made bed stood out in this asepticized environment. 

He turned to the two lab technicians that were busying themselves behind him in the room collecting evidence and hailed them.

“Make sure to examine the bed thoroughly”, he ordered them, his breath fogging the inside of his protection glasses, “That’s where the action happened.”

They both hummed their understanding and Sasuke found his way back to the living room, where his team was still discussing the crime and the corpse. He passed them, indifferent, and on his way out, he noticed another picture frame hanging in the genkan, this time of the victim with two other young people, a boy with a bowl cup and a girl with two side buns, all smiling to the camera.

The fresh late September air greeted him outside, cooling the layers of sweat that covered his face and neck. Policemen were trying to keep at a distance the army of journalists that had already found out about the crime and awaited a new piece of juicy gossip, so he walked down a dozen of meters down the street to avoid the crowd, noticing not far ahead a familiar face.

Her skin red, her eyes puffed from the profusely sobbing, he recognized the young girl from the pictures, dressed in a pretty plain pleated skirt and modest top way too big for her petite frame, a silk scarf wrapped around her neck. He decided to head for her, flashing his badge to the woman in uniform that guarded her. The girl, too busy crying, didn’t even acknowledge his presence. Without a word, Sasuke took out of his back pocket a squashed packet of SevenStars and a lighter, and offered one to the girl, earning himself shocked looks from both women.

“She’s only seventeen!” Hissed the Police woman, scandalized by his attitude. Sasuke rebuffed her with a shrug. 

“I was younger than her when I started”, he casually answered, offering the girl a cigarette again. A proud and fierce expression seized her features and she shook her head, silent tears continuously running down her cheeks as she ostensibly turned away from him to resume her crying.

Sasuke smirked and lighted a cigarette, purposefully blowing his smoke in the direction of the child.

“Who’s that?” He quizzed the Police woman, ignoring her disapproving glare.

“Ōtsutsuki Hinata” she explained, reluctantly. “Ōtsutsuki Neji’s cousin. She found the body.”

Sasuke nodded. “And what are you two doing on the sidewalk like two street workers?”

Both women were now openly giving him hateful looks, but fortunately for him, he was still higher in the hierarchy, so the other one forced herself to give him an answer.

“Waiting for her legal guardian to join us before taking her to the precinct for interrogation.”

Sasuke took another deep puff.

“And why aren’t you ladies waiting inside the secured hall of the building?”

The Ōtsutsuki girl gave him a haughty sniff. “Because that’s where his body is.” She paused, emotion invading her throat, and she started sobbing again. “That’s where his body is”, she repeated, tears shaking her body and the Police woman wrapped a sympathetic arm around her shoulders.

Sasuke squinted and kept an eye on the girl, his sixth sense tingling him. Would he have been anyone else than himself, he could have ruled this as meaningless paranoia induced by a lack of sleep… If not for the crying high schooler to instinctively raise her hand to her neck, hidden by the piece of fabric. 

“Nice scarf”, he commented, exhaling the very last puff of his cigarette. The woman gave him a hostile look, and he deemed it wiser to leave it like this for now, unless he wanted to be torn to pieces by some hysterical female subaltern. Imperturbable, he vaguely bid them farewell before expertly throwing his butt on the young girl, the darkened filter ricocheting on her arm. She shrieked of surprise and he turned around, satisfied. He didn’t feel furious anymore.

It was already well past noon when Naruto and his team had finally gotten back to the precinct after half a day in the small student apartment of Ōtsutsuki Neji, the newest victim of the Rinnegan killer. Just like Katō Dan and every male victim before him, he had been stabbed multiple times and left to die in a pool of his own blood under the threatening symbol of his attacker, Kabuto having estimated his time of death between midnight and 2 a.m.. No one in their team could comprehend why the killer had suddenly chosen to deviate from what they had thought was his pre-established pattern, and Naruto could practically feel Sasuke’s brain stirring for an answer from the other side of the conference room where the team had gathered for a quick battle plan.

“Unlike with the last murders, the victim’s cousin as well as a good friend of his had dropped by his place last night, and again in the morning”, notified them Kakashi as he reread his preliminary notes, his eyes exhausted. “The girl that found the body, Ōtsutsuki Hinata, is already here with both her father and a lawyer, so we’re going to proceed with her interview straight away. We requested the other girl’s presence as well, and she promised to arrive as soon as possible, so we should be expecting her any minute now.” He then detached his glare from his tiny notebook and pointed at Naruto with his chin.

“Uzumaki-kun, I want you to lead Ōtsutsuki Hinata’s interrogation”, he announced casually. “Uchiha-kun, you’ll second him from the control room. Haruno-kun, we’ll get ready together for the friend’s questioning and you’ll take the lead once she’ll be there. All clear?”

Naruto felt like his jaw had unhooked. Lead an interrogation, him? Despite having practiced it at the Police Academy with his classmates, despite having assisted both Sasuke and Sakura numerous times before and no later than this very week, Naruto had never led an actual interrogation in his life.

Leading an interrogation was a big thing, a delicate exercise of balance and power during which the officer had to prove himself capable of instantly grasping his interlocutor’s psyche and read every micro sign capable of helping him interprete the other's motivations: if they were lying, hiding something, afraid… As well as constantly readapting his posture, speech, and way to tackle the interviewee to determine the most efficient path to the truth.

A titanic mental game of go or chess that Naruto had never played under real conditions.

“Ha… Hatake-keibu!” Protested Naruto, stammering, “Are you sure about your decision? I’m only a Sergeant, wouldn’t it be wiser to let Uchiha-san lead the interview? I mean-”

Kakashi repositioned his mask which had slipped under his nose during his previous tirade. 

“Uzumaki-kun”, he interrupted Naruto with a kind smile in his eyes, “I’m sure you’ll do just fine, don’t worry. Moreover, the girl is very young and seems quite shy and impressionable, so I’m afraid that someone less… engaging like Uchiha-kun -no offense, by the way-”

“None taken” answered Sasuke, unshakable.

“-would intimidate her. Nevertheless, the one I really want the interview of is that other friend anyway; she’s allegedly the last one to have seen Ōtsutsuki Neji alive, she may have seen something that could lead us to the killer. The Hinata girl discovered the corpse and called the cops straight away, I hardly believe that her testimony will be helpful.” 

Kakashi then slammed his notebook close and set his team into motion. Stress immediately overwhelmed Naruto. He was about to lead his first interview, in a murder case -the Rinnegan killer one, none the less. He really could not afford to screw this up. 

Bile built in his mouth.

“You’ll be just fine.”

The voice startled Naruto as he was contemplating the interrogation room from the adjacent control room, separated only by a big tinted window. His broody colleague, his eyebrows still deeply furrowed, stepped by his side, his hard stare locked on the room before them.

“You’re young and communicative, your first task will be to make her feel at ease to win her trust. Once she’ll be more relaxed, knock her down and the match will be over.”

Naruto raised a brow, sceptic. He wasn’t exactly sure about the “knocking her down” part, but to hear such a sentence coming from Sasuke almost felt like a praise or a piece of advice, making him twice as nervous to nail this interrogation now. Determined not to let his colleague down -nor to lose face in front of his most odious teammate-, he vigorously nodded his head, a renewed fire burning inside of him. Assertive, he turned around and took the direction of the interrogation room when again, the Uchiha hailed him.

“Uzumaki-kun”, he monotonously delivered, “Ask her about her neckerchief and her neck. I have an intuition about it.”

Naruto turned around and stared at his colleague, frowning. What did he mean by that?

“Just do it”, repeated the other man.

Naruto closed the door behind him, his mind trying to make sense of Sasuke’s command. Had he seen the witness before? If not, how did he know she was wearing a neckerchief? And what was wrong with her neck?

All these questions were churning around as he settled at the interrogation table, on the other side of the tainted mirror. Soon after, two Policemen escorted two middle-aged men inside, followed by a small and frail female figure.

“Please, take a seat”, invited Naruto with a voice he meant to be as engaging as possible, as Ōtsutsuki Hinata, her father and her lawyer sat down, the young girl facing directly Naruto. She hadn’t once raised her head or looked away from her shoes since crossing the threshold of the interrogation room. It was going to be hard.

Taking a deep breath, he relaxed his shoulders and jaw and entered the ring, ready for the fight.

“Thank you so much for agreeing to meeting with us, Ōtsutsuki-san”, he greeted her with a comforting tone. “I know today must have been incredibly grueling for you and… Well, I cannot even imagine how you must feel right now. So, thank you for taking the time and finding the strength to talk with me, ya know?”

The young girl, whose head was dropped in a submissive manner, vaguely hummed at him, her face still mostly hidden by a thick curtain of healthy indigo hair. Naruto quickly assessed the two men by her side: one especially, a severe expression on his face, long brown hair tied up into a low ponytail, was sporting a suit and a sports watch that together must have cost more than a life of his salary. The lawyer also looked well-dressed, though in a less ostensible manner than Hinata’s father, making it harder for Naruto to estimate his outfit’s price. 

As a matter of fact, once he considered her more carefully,, he noticed that her outfit -though quite unremarkable- was made out of pretty nice fabrics, and that both her earrings, necklace and bracelet were likely not silver but platinum. She probably went to a private school. Studied hard with tutors to get into the university of her dreams. Took part in various clubs after class. Would have never suspected that the little cocoon her family wealth had provided her with could be teared apart by the dreadful horrors of a reality that seemed to reserve its calamities only for others.

She was hermetic to the world around her, encapsulated in her mind and body, her eyes solely fixing her hands under the table, and Naruto wasn’t sure if he could manage to crack her open.

“Ōtsutsuki-san?” He tried again as he leaned a little over the table to create a sense of proximity with his witness, “My name is Uzumaki Naruto and I’m a Sergeant here, okay? But, ya know what?” He added with a sly smile as she shyly raised her face, her timid and extraordinary lavender eyes finally meeting his, “You can call me Naruto. What about that?”  

Her head retreated between her shoulders but she nodded anyway, pinching her lips into a thin line, neither of them breaking their shared glance.

“You can call me Hinata too, Naruto-san”, she expelled in a whisper. Naruto approved with a move of the head. 

“Great”, he answered, followed by a playful wink that turned her into a blushing mess and earned Naruto a killer look from her father. Deciding to ignore the two men, he leaned even more towards her, his hands crossed before him, and started to work through the interrogation’ standard procedure.

“Hinata-san, I know you hurt right now, and you’re going to hurt even more after we do this, but I need you to be strong and tell me what happened, okay? Do you think you can do that for me? For your cousin?”

The small girl closed her eyes tightly, the spasm of a sob crisping her face, and she inhaled painfully before opening her mouth.

“I-I…” she only managed to get out, a harrowing cry making its way through her throat. Her stone-like father, apathetic, patted her on the back without even moving the rest of his body or looking at his daughter. Naruto grabbed a box of tissue that had been brought to the table beforehand and offered her one, patiently waiting for her to recover and keep going.

“I went to his place this morning, like every other Sunday. We… We always meet up over there before heading to the tennis club where our family holds a membership and play a game together, before going to… Oh my…” She broke down in tears again. Naruto thought his heart was about to break. She looked so young and powerless, and he didn’t know what to do to make her feel better. Worst, he knew there was nothing that could be done to make her feel better.

“You are doing great, Hinata-san”, he encouraged her softly, and she stared at him again, an expression of deep despair in the well of her pupils. Naruto started to breathe out loudly with her, helping Hinata regain control of her own lungs, the shakes of her chest lessening with every full exhalation, until she was able to go on again.

She told him how, like every Sunday ever since her cousin had left the family home to live on his own in order to focus on his studies and become more independent, she had been dropped by her chauffeur in front of his building and gotten without any trouble in his apartment as she held a key. She had taken her shoes off in the genkan and, surprised to see that the lights of the living room were on when the sun was rising up, had walked in there to find a corpse under a bloody symbol. Out of shock, she told him,  she had touched the body, shaking it slightly to wake him up, for he could not be dead. 

But Neji’s shoulder felt cold as ice, and it was only then that she had realized how much blood there was. The thick, coagulated sirup had stained her knees, her socks, her hands and she had instinctively backed away before breaking into a shriek, alerting a couple of neighbors that had helped her call the police, keeping her body company while waiting for them, her mind blacking out.

“And, what about last night?” Naruto then asked her as she took an umpteenth tissue to dry her red eyelids. “You told the first team that got there that you had seen him the night before and that he was alive, right?”

Sasuke was right. Something was wrong.

The young girl’s behaviour immediately changed. Her look hardened all of the sudden, her face turned off. Naruto could practically see the wall she was unexpectedly erecting between him and her, sending waves of panic through his entire body as he was losing her. Something was very wrong.

“Hinata-san?” He asked, perplexed, as she dropped her head again, hiding most of her features away from his burning sight. Next to her, her father gave her a side-glance, but didn’t say anything.

“I went to his place in the middle of the afternoon to study with him.” Her tone had drastically changed. It was harsh, cold, assertive, nothing like the one she had used for the last twenty minutes or so, and it chilled Naruto to his core. “Around  10 p.m., I felt tired and, not wanting to disturb our chauffeur, I called a friend of mine to come and pick me up so I could go home. I was there by 10:45 p.m., my family can concur.”

Naruto gave a glance at her father who silently approved of her timetable. He bit the interior of his cheek, uncertain. She wasn’t telling him the whole story.

“Okay”, he continued, deciding that he shouldn’t probably be too confrontational about it, “And what’s the name of the said friend?” 

“Her name is Tenten.” 

“Was it just Tenten that came to pick you up? We’ll double-check everything ya know, so don’t omit any detail.”

“She was with a friend, Lee, when I called, but she came to pick me up alone”, conceded Hinata, her dark aura deploying around her like a shield. Naruto felt defeated. There was nothing else he could get out of her, and although he didn’t know if any of this was directly linked to the Rinnegan killer, something was wrong. He needed to find out what.

Sasuke’s last advice crossed his mind again, and his eyes jumped to the thin scarf she arbored around her neck. That was his last chance.

“Hinata-san, why do you keep your scarf inside? It’s pretty warm inside the Police station, don’t you think?”

She raised her head again, her eyes bulging out of their orbits. She jerked back, hitting the back of her chair with a smothered sound, her hand instinctively pressing against the soft fabric wrapped around her neck. 

Naruto wasn’t the only one altered by her behavior. Her father, who had remained stoic the entire interview, finally moved on his chair, tp face his daughter. 

“Hinata-san”, repeated Naruto, this time with all the firmness he could put into words, “Could you please remove this scarf for me?”

Hinata looked nothing like a shy and passive high schooler anymore. Lips drawn back in a grimace, she looked like a wounded animal at bay, her hands tightening protectively around the piece of clothing. Something was wrong.

“Hinata.”

The sound of her father’s voice -commanding, imperious- startled Naruto, who had yet to hear him say something. “Hinata, take off your scarf”, he ordered her, his presence clearly signaling her that he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Resigned, his daughter slowly, incredibly slowly, unwrapped the scarf, unveiling her delicate marble neck. 

It must have happened recently, less than 24 hours ago, according to the still reddish complexion of the two large hand-shaped bruises that clasped her throat. Someone had tried to suffocate her, that was certain.

“Hinata!” Practically scream her father in horror, “What… who did that to you? What happened?” 

“It has nothing to do with Neji-niisan’s death”, she let out with an impressive husky voice, her body tensing up even more than before, a feat Naruto would have never thought possible.

“Hinata-san, if someone hurt you, you can tell us, we’re here to protect yo-”

“I have nothing left to say!” She shot with the aggressiveness of a corned deer, jumping from her chair on her two feet, scaring both her father and lawyer. “Otou-san, I desire to leave. Now!”

“Uzumaki-san, please forgive my daughter, she must be exhausted from the hardships of the day. With your permission, we’ll leave it as it is for the moment”, had taken over her father before Naruto had seen them off with a Policeman at the entrance of the building, the girl’s face being nothing but a mix of hatred and disgust. 

“Something big happened last night before Neji’s murder”, had commented Sasuke later on, once Naruto had joined him back in the control room, an undecipherable look on his face. “I’m not sure if it has anything to do with the murder, but something big and bad happened. The Tenten girl that Sakura-san and Hatake-keibu are interrogating right now is also sporting marks of assault.”

Naruto almost dislocated his neck by turning his face full force toward Sasuke, stunned.

“Tenten? The Tenten that Hinata called to pick up from her cousin’s place?”

Sasuke nodded, his eyes still glancing through the tinted window at the interrogation room.

“Apparently, after dropping Hinata at her place, she went back over there and left around a quarter to half an hour past midnight.” Naruto withheld his disbelief.

“Really, the Rinnegan Killer truly knows how to pick his victims”, he hissed between his teeth. 

Sasuke finally gave him a side stare and, out of nowhere, told him: “You did good for a first time today, Uzumaki-san. You did good”, before turning around and leaving the room, Naruto feeling even more emotionally confused than he was before.

From what Sakura and Kakashi had managed to get from Tenten, she had picked up Hinata and then decided to go hang out with Neji a bit; after all, they were living really close from one another and were childhood friends. She had stated that they had talked on his couch for about an hour, before leaving to go home to the flat she shared with a common friend of theirs, a certain Rock Lee, whom Hinata had also mentioned in her testimony. 

This meant that, with his incredible sense of timing, the Rinnegan killer had showed up probably less than an hour or two after Tenten had left, making him either the most adaptive and calculating man ever or the luckiest bastard in history for, as it turned out, Tenten was a renowned university Jiu-Jitsu practitioner and would have probably managed to knock him down within seconds. 

However, the most intriguing part of this subcase -other than why the Rinnegan Killer had decided to stray from his pattern- was the two girls’ marks of brutality on their skins, Hinata exhibiting the most shocking ones. Both young women had dismissed them, saying it had nothing to do with the murder, but Naruto couldn’t help but feel a nervous knot form in his stomach at the thought of the two shadow hands encircling Ōtsutsuki Hinata’s tiny neck. 

The team discussed it at great length before deciding that they needed a break and should go grab something to eat, sending Naruto on an errand for food and more cigarettes at the local konbini. As he pressed on the elevator’s call button, he checked the time on his phone. 11:05 p.m. What would he give to be able to go home, shower and sleep? The elevator opened and he got inside, humming an automatic “good evening” to the person already in there. His destination already pressed, he settled in the shaft, arms resting behind his neck in what he wanted to be a relaxed pose. His back was hurting from remaining seated for so long lately, and this pose helped him decompress his spin. Mechanically, eyes travelled to his neighbor, a woman engrossed in the reading of a report, and he recognized her long greenish hair, as well as her blue bangs.

“Hey, you’re the lady from last time!” He shouted out, spookying her out in the process. “You vanished before I had the chance to make sure you were o-”

The woman turned towards him questioning eyes and Naruto dropped dead in the middle of his sentence, too busy detailing her from top to bottom. She was looking different. Older, more tired maybe. Her discolored green hair gathered into a low ponytail that lazy hanged over her shoulder, her military boots, tight black jeans and flecked grey tank top under a leather jacket resembled nothing like her previous style, but she had guarded the same small stature, the marble skin and above all, those clear, pure lavender eyes.

She raised her brows, like she wondered if he wasn’t in the middle of having a stroke or something.

“Hum, Uzumaki-san?” She asked, unsure, after eyeing the badge that hung around his neck, “Are you feeling alright?”

Something was wrong. Naruto’s brain couldn’t comprehend it. Something was wrong. It couldn’t be, but at the same time, nothing else made sense. Something was wrong. He harshly pulled her over, ignoring her scream of surprise, followed by a grunt of indignation, as he swiftly grabbed her badge. Something was wrong. It couldn’t be. Something was wrong.

What is even a “crime analyst”? He thought to himself. He had never heard about such a position in Division 1. 

“Let go of me!” she defensively protested, freeing herself from his grasp. The elevator reached its destination, the cabin trembling for the sudden stop. Annoyed, she made a move to reach for the doors but Naruto was quicker. He pressed the “stop” button, effectively preventing the metal doors from opening and the petite woman gave him a glance full of hostility that looked exactly like the one he had received a couple of hours before.

“Open the door” she demanded with fire, “Open the door now or I’ll fill out a complaint to your supervisor.”

His brain couldn’t wrap itself around it. It seemed impossible, it was impossible -right? Her physical appearance, her age, damn it, even her name, all of it looked like a distorted version of the timid and savage girl he had questioned in the afternoon. It couldn’t be, and yet…

“Ōtsutsuki Hinata?” Formed his lips, his mind too incredulous to fully comprehend what was unfolding before his very own eyes.