I do not own Death Note.
"Gucci boots? That's so last year! Pick up an Eighteen! for once in your life!" Two contact-covered eyes scanned the room for a response.
Dark brown orbs widened, but the man quickly recovered. He picked up a martini from the bar, and pretended to accidently spill the drink onto the front of the red haired girl's dress that was standing in front of him.
"Sorry! I just—I didn't mean to do that! Do—do you want a napkin or something?" He bent over to hastily pick up the glass shards from the drink, while staring at the black haired woman a few feet away who was talking to the man in front of her while swaying slightly.
The black haired woman turned, just as was expected, toward the bar to get a drink. "Are you staring at that freak over there, when I'm sitting right in front of you?" The red head accused, pointing a painted finger nail at him with one hand while pushed some of her red hair behind her ear with the other. "Who wears sunglasses inside, anyways?"
"I don't know," Matsuda told her, shrugging as he handed her a napkin sitting on the bar. "Maybe she hasn't had the time to take them off—or wait, she looks like she's American. Maybe that's all the rage there?"
The black haired woman heard the key words easily, and stepped over to the two. "Do you have a problem with my sunglasses? Because they cost more than three times the amount of money than your dress did. Come on, everybody knows that thing is just another scrap of fabric from Deb. You're really broke, aren't you? You know my Prada's are better than your "a.n.a.", also known as 'A New Approach' dress."
"How the heck would you know what type of dress this is?" The woman demanded.
She snorted. "Only because I'm the designer of The New Era fashion collection representing Hatsuke Maori."
Matsuda could feel the excitement in his chest. 'That's A's alias! Damn it Matsuda, you're the guy!' He coughed, making his face seem awkward. "Um, I have to go to the restroom, ladies; maybe I'll see you later this night."
"But, just one moment. This girl is wearing a red dress with red hair. Don't you think that red curls and green silk go better together?"
Matsuda smiled, but shook his head. "I don't know much about fashion, so I can't answer that question as well as another woman could."
Shrugging, the woman turned away and walked into the crowd as Matsuda headed into the bathroom. 'She understood the code!' He began to sing mentally.
/
The detective hustled into the stall, unbuttoning the black jacket she'd been wearing and hanging it up on the hook on the back of the door. Silently, she stepped out of the black round-toe heels she'd been wearing and tugged down the black pencil skirt to reveal a pink silk dress that had looked like a blouse before. Swapping the dark nylons she'd worn before for a lighter pair, she pulled the dress over her head and reversed it to expose a dark green silk. Yanking it over her head again, she shoved the black shoes in her silver purse and grabbed a pair of pointed silver sling-backs to jerk onto her feet.
After shoving the skirt into another section of her large purse, she reversed the jacket and put it on, the denim material hugging her waist slightly. She rolled up the sleeves, swapped her short black wig for a long scarlet one with numerous curls, changed her brown contacts out for green ones, and stepped out of stall with a make-up bag from her Louis Vuitton purse in hand.
She grabbed the black watch and put it on her wrist, making sure to set the time an hour earlier than it actually was. Then, grabbing a hand towel and running it under hot water, she wiped the make-up off of her face, and grabbed the brown mascara instead of the black she'd been wearing.
'A' applied two coats of light pink lip gloss, put nearly a mountain of brown eye liner and sparkly green eye shadow on after shoving her sunglasses onto the top of her head, dabbed paler blush than usual onto her cheeks, and put her sunglasses back on before exiting the restroom and moving back onto the dance floor.
/
Matsuda sat next to a brown haired girl, keeping his eyes peeled for his real target. Aizawa had taken his seat on the other side of the bar long ago, and every once and a while he would check his watch, or tap his foot impatiently. 'What did he expect?' Matsuda wondered. 'L told us that we couldn't make contact with her for at least an hour after we saw her the first time!'
"Wha'd ya' want?" When Matsuda heard the bartender speaking next to him, he spun around; surprised to see a completely different girl from the one he'd seen before taking a seat next to him. She was pretty, but it was odd—she seemed just like every other girl, like you could see her a thousand times and never remember her features well. She had a green dress on, though—and some damn vibrant red hair. 'You may as well just wait and see—,'
"Martini, dry—no ice," she replied, turning away from the bartender toward Matsuda.
"Would you, by any chance, know what time it is?" The man could hear a hint of a Yankee accent to her speech. 'This is it—there's the first sentence for phase two.'
Matsuda checked his watch, even though he already knew what time it was. "Eleven-seventeen. Do you have a curfew?"
She laughed slightly. It was musical, like bells. "No. I just think my watch is wrong, is all. It was an hour off. See?"
And indeed, the smaller, stalkier hand on the face of the black watch was just past the twelve, just as Matsuda expected. He smiled at the girl, and she pushed a strand of scarlet hair behind her ear.
He was the one to speak first. "So, if you don't have anything to do, did you want to come back to my apartment…?" Matsuda raised his left eyebrow for effect.
"Uhm…" Her smile dropped slightly, hesitation plain on her face. "I don't know how well my sister will be—my phone's dead, y'know?"
Matsuda whipped out his own, showing her the light blue face. "Use mine. I'll wait here—I shouldn't be snooping in on your conversation."
"My name's Jennifer, by the way. Jennifer Hayes." Her lips turned up further. "And thanks."
"Taro, Matsui." He handed her the phone. "Here—I'll wait right here."
A half an hour later.
"You're good at acting," she commented bluntly, adjusting her sunglasses.
Matsuda was shocked at the way she had changed personalities so quickly. In the club, she'd been so sweet. And now—she wasn't. He stared at her blank face while she pulled off the wig—he was shocked to find out that all that red hair had been fake—to reveal a ridiculous amount of black hair, not with a bluish tint like before, but a dark color with an almost silver sheen to it. She'd changed miraculously in the back of the Mercedes Benz to a black suit with silver pin striping, and she'd pulled her long tresses into a medium-heigth pony-tail. But only one thing was still the same: the black pair of sunglasses, covering her eyes.
"You're good too." He paused. "But you've been doing this for Kami knows how many years, so, I guess it's expected that you're way better than me."
She didn't reply for the longest time, before she finally said, "L is acting weird—he's never used a code language before. He's either become tired or lazy, or he's trying to fool me with mood swings."
"What do you think is going on with him?" Matsuda asked, wondering how she managed a tone that blunt and monotone.
A pregnant pause. "I just think he's depressed." The cold aura slithered up Matsuda's spine.
Aizawa scoffed from the back of the Mercedes. "That would explain a lot of his behavior."