Note: No I have not written anything that is not an essay in more than a month.

Summary: Just because Ginoza isn't a latent criminal, doesn't mean he can't tell when you're fibbing.

_fictitious

"So the men's room happened to lock itself."

"Yup!"

"With two people inside it."

"Seems like it!"

"With one of them being of the opposite gender."

"Uh-huh!"

"With the keycard mysteriously hiding itself in Kougami's files, when Kougami was obviously unable to return to his room."

"You already know that, Gino-san!"

Ginoza leveled an unimpressed look at the latent criminal standing in front of his desk. The aforementioned latent criminal looked completely relaxed, amused even, resting his hands behind his head and grinning as though he wasn't receiving a lecture at the moment. The Inspector turned to his right, where a harried-looking Tsunemori Akane was typing furiously on her tablet, ignorant of the fact that the back of her head resembled one of the leafier plants on his desk right then.

"Inspector Tsunemori, how much paperwork do you have due this week?"

The youngest person in the room gave a startled jerk and looked over. "Well, there's the report on replacement of stun batons, the report on case location trends, the application for use of training facilities next month, the report for renewal of Enforcers' permits, the application for…"

Ginoza turned to the other victim of Kagari's machinations. "What about you, Kougami?"

Contrary to Akane, the Enforcer just took a long drag on his cigarette before answering. "Just the report on last week's incident."

That sounded like an appropriate punishment. Ginoza went back to glaring at Kagari. "You will be completing the reports for them."

"Ehhhh? But Gino-san, you know I hate paperwork! And suck at it too." Kagari put on a pleading face that had a 40% tried-and-tested probability of success – meaning it only ever worked on two members of the unit. And even with these two members, the success rate wasn't 100%, so really, if you wanted to count properly, it was more like 20%.

Unfortunately for him, Ginoza was among the 60% who had never been persuaded and probably never would. "Since you like telling stories so much, you should work on improving your language abilities."

Kagari sulked and dragged his feet all the way back to his workstation. Masaoka winced in sympathy.

"Oh, Kagari? More than five errors and you'll have to redo them."

Damn it.

That wasn't his plan really.

Sure, he'd planned to lock someone up in the washroom today, but that was only because it seemed fun and besides, the custodian on the afternoon shift called in sick so it was an even better opportunity to lock someone in there and toss the keycard because no one in the ministry would know where the spare was. He never intended for two people to be in there.

But Gino-san's meeting was really, really, really boring. Amazingly, mind-numbingly boring. It had gotten to the point where Kagari was downing coffee by the mug, not just for the caffeine, but so that he'd have something to do while Gino-san was droning on and on (and on and on and on and on… you get the idea. And hah, droning. Like his precious drones.).

Three mugs of coffee and half a jar of jellybeans later, Gino-san finally called a break, which was the signal for a mass exodus as everyone took the chance to wake themselves up by taking a walk or splashing their face with water, whichever worked for them. Kagari was the first one out and had been planning to be the last one back in, because he refused to return to the hellhole until absolutely necessary. Which resulted in him loitering somewhat suspiciously outside the restrooms.

It was just too good to pass up. Akane-chan had come out of the ladies', chided him for hanging around as she passed by the door to the men's… and he knew Kou-chan was still inside, probably smoking. Things… happened, and the next thing he knew, he was locking the door and bolting like his life depended on it.

Of course, Gino-san was probably mad because he took a detour up to Kou-chan's room to ditch the keycard before reporting that Inspector Tsunemori and Enforcer Kougami were trapped in the washroom.

And in Kagari's opinion, he had no right to be. It's not like Akane-chan and Kou-chan suffered from being locked in together. And that opinion wasn't completely baseless, because there was no way simply being locked up could cause two people to emerge so ruffled when they didn't even try to break the door down.

(And, you know, it's not like Gino-san could be mad about calling for a drone to remove the door before Kunicchi had the good sense to check the surveillance cameras, or anything. He got to see his precious drones, and the door wasn't harmed in the end. No, that was absolutely no reason to give Kagari more paperwork.)

Kagari's pleading look wasn't completely ineffective, though. It had some effect. The only problem was, it was on the wrong target.

"Oi, Nobuchika, don't you think you're a bit harsh on him? He's just a kid after all."

The look that Ginoza leveled on his father could be accurately described as 'frightening', 'blood-chilling', and 'taking after his mother'. Yes yes, the boy most definitely took after his mother.

"If you want to be a father so badly, why don't you begin by teaching Kagari about appropriate workplace behavior?" Ginoza suggested acidly, maintaining eye contact for a few frosty seconds to make his point.

Ouch. Masaoka scratched the back of his head with his normal hand as he pondered his next statement. "He can handle himself fine."

"You call his behavior fine? He caused a substantial disruption during work hours!"

At his workstation, Kagari snickered, and added a line to the top of Kougami's report.

fyi gino-san, yuor dad helped me steal the keycard

End