Author's Note: I am sooooooo sorry this took so long to get out. School has been hell. I had some people ask some questions about the pairing. This is be an L story, but my friend who reads everything before I publish it wants some Light in here. But this is an L story.
Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note. I just own Artemis and the story line......but I think you already knew that....
A Tale of Two Detectives [L Lawliet]
Chapter 2: Main Suspect
Artemis and L stared at each other in silence, both waiting for the other to make the first move. She slowly raised her hand to point at the man standing in front of her.
"Panda."
The famous detective blinked slowly. "Excuse me?"
A huge grin spread across the only female's face. "You look like a Panda bear!!" she said, her eyes twinkling.
"Right…" L turned and sat in front of his computer. The way he sat intrigued Artemis. He sat on the balls of his toes with his knees pulled up to his chest. His hands placed lightly on his knees.
"I would like your help on this case, but my only condition is that no one knows." He said, not taking his eyes off the screen.
"Alright. I can be sneaky." Artemis sat beside him. "So, what do you need me to do, Panda-chan?"
"I need you to gather information on all high school students that have any connection to the Japanese Police Force here in the Kanto region."
The female stared at him. "What? Why? What do kids have to do with this?"
L's eyes went back to his computer. "The times of all the deaths occurred after school hours and on weekends. Logic says that it is a student."
The teen glared at his back. "It could also be a working adult and it could be a very intelligent middle school student."
"Yes, it could be, but think about it for a moment. A middle school student or younger would be afraid of the power to kill and most likely would not use it. An adult would not be playing God to make a better world. They would use it for personal gain. Only high school students have the mind set to want to save the world from evil."
Artemis was ready to blow at this point, but she was doing a very good job keeping her anger in check. "Alright, L-sama. Whatever you say." She turned away and began walking towards the door.
"Ms. Kudo?"
She stopped with her hand clutching the doorknob, her brownish-red eyes ablaze with fury. "Yes?" she asked through gritted teeth.
"I just wanted you to know that since you have a lot of connections within the police and you are the age of a high school student, you are my number 1 suspect."
Her mind went blank for a moment. Her brain simply could not process his reasoning. The grip on the doorknob loosened.
L watched her reaction, hoping for anything he might be able to use against her if it turned out she was Kira.
A second later, Artemis realized what he had accused her of. She was beyond furious. She threw open the door and was out of the hotel in record time. She didn't look back and ran into the park. She slowed down when she heard the noise of children playing and laughing. She opened her eyes and took a deep breath. She ran a hand through her long brown hair.
'I need to calm down. L couldn't really mean what he said. I am a respected detective almost as well known as him! He was just trying to get a reaction.'
During Arty's deep breathing exercises, something hit her foot. When she looked down, she saw a soccer ball that had rolled over to her.
"Hey! Can you throw that ball back over here?"
She looked up to see a group of kids standing in the center of a soccer field. She smiled, picked up the ball, and walked over to the group. "I noticed your teams are uneven. Mind if I join you? I need a little fun."
The children nodded. She gave them a big smile before dropping the ball and kicking the ball into the goal.
They played together for about an hour. After about the third goal, her mind began to wonder back to the strange detective and the accusation against her.
'How can I prove to him that I am not Kira?' She thought to herself. She was so deep in thought that she didn't notice that one of the kids had kicked the soccer ball to hard and that it was going to smack in her in the head.
She moved her head just in time and caught the ball with her hands. The kids looked on in awe as Artemis dropped the ball and began to kick to ball up into the air to bounce it on her knees. One of the young girls in the group walked around to see her face.
The girl gaped at what she saw. "She has her eyes closed," she exclaimed.
Thought flew through the teen detective's head at the speed of light. One after the other, ideas were shot down. Nothing she thought of could have possibly prove to L that she was not Kira. The ball's speed slowly began to decrease as she opened her eyes and started muttering under her breath.
The soccer ball was finally bounced to high and smacked Artemis in the noggin. She blinked a few times before pounding her fist in her open palm. "That's it!" she shouted happily. She turned away from the group and began to run. She stopped at the entrance to the park and turned back to the kids. "Thanks for letting me play with you!" she yelled back at them with a big smile. Spinning back around, she sprinted towards the local library.
'I can't believe I didn't think of it earlier! This has to work!'
She ran through the door and over to the computers. She sat down and immediately began her research. She pulled up a site that had all the names of the criminals Kira murdered. As she scanned the list, she became more excited. Once she reached the end, she knew she had cleared her name. She then went to the Okinawa Police website, logging in to her case files.
After the files had printed and she had cleared all evidence of the files had been wiped from the hard-drive, Artemis headed back to the genius detective L.
'This will make him eat his words.'
Thanks for reading!! :] Please review/favorite! Have a Happy Thanksgiving!!!