The blonde girl dressed in leather underwear gave the burly man with biceps like boulders another uppercut to the neck, and then a triple hit combo that had him on the floor bleeding from the head, and Mello biting viciously into his chocolate. The words 'Game Over' flashed in red and some ridiculous song played in the background. Matt cracked his knuckles and grinned.

"Mello. You suck." He laughed under his breath. Mello growled.

"You suck my cock, so shut up."

"You wish." Hormones made that kind of awkward when it came out, so he pretended he hadn't said it. "Best out of five?"

Mello grabbed the controller, smearing melted chocolate on the joystick and hello innuendo. Matt blinked and tried to focus on the game, though muscle memory worked better than thought half the time anyway. Roger walked into the room, closing the door behind him, and coughed in order to get attention. Mello's character delivered a spinning kick, which shouldn't be physically possible at that speed with that body, but Matt knew games didn't really care about physics and shit like that. Matt liked that games didn't really care about physics and shit like that. Mello should take a cue from his games. Roger coughed, and Matt figured he should take his cue too.

"What." Mello had his blonde bimbo with breasts in a chokehold, and Matt figured that maybe muscle memory wasn't better than thought after all. Damn, Mello learned fast.

"You're going to L. In Japan. Pack your bags in an hour."

'Game Over' flashed on the screen, and the door closed behind Roger.

"Fuck yeah." Mello muttered, and bit into his chocolate.

Inu had a girl in the back of his truck, her words suffocated by duct tape, and limbs bound by black plastic ties. She was slightly chubby, in the way that her stomach bunched over in her clothes and made her thighs spread. Black hair and this stupid sob that wouldn't go away, too, and Inu wasn't too keen on this one.

"Oi. Shuttup." He shouted in Japanese, before pulling into his mother's house. She'd left three years ago, but it was still his mother's home. He'd never changed the wallpaper, the cutlery, the plates and cups. Not even the sheets on her bed, which his mates told him was fucking creepy, but fuck that. His mother was the only woman he could trust. And now he was going to have to trust some fat slut in the back of his truck because of stupid customs at airports.

Her arm felt like soft dough when he grabbed her and pulled her into his house, arm quickly moving around her waist and pulling her close so no one could see the tape and the binding. Or maybe they could. Whatever. They wouldn't do anything – Kira had made people apathetic as well as zealous. No one reported crimes anymore because Kira was God, and God saw everything. They murmured Kira while fingering their rosary beads, and forgot that 'Kira' was just an adaptation of the English word 'killer'. Stupid fuckers, praying to a glorified murderer. It's not like anyone prayed for him anymore. So why does some fucktard with a notebook get all the joy?

She whimpered, and he realised with disgust that her fat tears had been soaking into his top. Shit. The door opened under his fingers, and he pulled her along to the thin wooden door to the basement. Cliché, but whatever. He had to get them out of the way and fucking think because how was he supposed to get five prepubescent girls out of the country after Hershey's TV announcement yesterday? She stumbled as she walked down the stairs, but he figured if she fell, she'd be cushioned enough anyway. He locked the door and held his head in his hands at the kitchen counter. The floral pattern of the curtains was one his mother had spent hours picking out of a catalogue and saving up for. Fucking floral.

His mobile flashed with 'incoming call; Zack' and he snatched it up. "Yo." It was one of the only English words he knew, so it was a good thing Zack knew Japanese.

"Yo yourself. Listen, I can get you some fake passports that aren't really fake, if you get what I mean, and I know this great makeup artist who can make you seem like another person, hell, even another nationality. We'll be there in an hour or so, okay?"

"Okay." The countertop had a new chip in, and small fractures ricocheted throughout the whole black mock-marble top. It made him cringe.

"Good. Chin up. This is gonna work." Inu nodded, and put the phone down. This was gonna work. He wiped at the damp spot on his shirt. Fat slut.

L picked the strawberry off of the icing and popped it into his mouth. He had been backtracking through his system, trying to find where the hacker had entered from. He had known straight away that the only way anyone outside of the group could know about the Notes was by hacking into his files, simply through process of elimination. No one outside of the group knew, because no one outside of the group would believe it. Yet. They were too caught up in the rapture of a God-like presence, too much in fear and awe of 'God'. And no one in the group had told anyone, because, well – L had them bugged. Trust wasn't something that came easy, and privacy wasn't really that important to L. Well, not in relation to everyone else. In relation to him, well, that was a different story.

He had found the entrance, the 'hole' surrounded by so many codes and traps and triggers that L knew it would take days to untangle and correct. And he had too much to do and not enough computer-savvy people on his team. He picked a piece of white icing and placed it on the tip of his tongue. First he had to form a counter-attack to CU. Obviously, Kira would not be able to respond because Kira was here, with L. Perhaps the second Kira would, but he doubted it. Despite the second Kira's bold attempts to contact the original Kira, he/she seemed to act in deference to the original Kira, which only strengthened the argument of the Raito and Misa alliance; the Japanese patriarchal society, and the way that Misa unconditionally supported Raito.

Also, he couldn't be seen supporting violence such as this, even as a method to bring Kira down. It was cowardly, and although with some intelligent merit, it did not take into account Kira's killing of Lind L. Tailor; Kira no longer only killed the guilty, he killed annoyances too. Plus, people were primarily going to suspect L, and accuse him of being underhanded in his methods of catching Kira. After all, he had long been known as Kira's adversary, and this had provided him with a lot of media backlash from the zealots and the scared. Already there had been reports on the news stations that it was L who had orchestrated the whole thing. His international reputation, as battered by the Kira ordeal as it was, could not withstand the accusations and suspicions of being known as a kidnapper.

He played with the fork, twanging the metal teeth with his bitten fingers and gazing at the .html code on his screen. At least Matt would soon be here. The genius hacker had been able to get into L's files since forever, and since L had seen no harm as long as he didn't touch anything, he hadn't repaired the holes in the walls. Matt had done a better job than the other hacker of covering his tracks anyway, and with his insider knowledge of L's system, hopefully would be able to trace the I.P. address in order to give an identity.

CU were just criminals after all, and L had dealt with a lot of criminals. He knew that they tripped up. It was just a matter of time. A short time too, since he had persuaded British Airways to loan their last Concorde out in order to get the three orphans here as quickly as possible. He really only needed Matt, but the intelligence of Near and Mello could be integral. Truthfully, he didn't want to expose any of his potential successors to Raito or Misa, especially not with his new knowledge of the Note's rules, but yesterday on the rooftop he had realised his mortality and how hard it would be for them to pick up the pieces of his fragmented and closely guarded investigation. The majority of it was stored in his head, and although intelligent and astute young men, it would be near enough impossible, especially as their first major case, to segue smoothly into the role of L. Perhaps being introduced to the case earlier than was previously planned would enable them to not only help L with his investigation, but learn some valuable hands-on experience that couldn't be garnered from reading his stolen case studies.

"So, I think that a televised response would be best, Ryuuzaki." L turned blank eyes to the boy sitting in the swivel chair next to him. Rem hovered in the background near the glass top table, and L let his gaze slide from Raito's face to the Shinigami's form.

There was beauty in her. He found that fitting. Death shouldn't only be ugly.

"Mm. Raito knows best." He murmured, and noted a flash in those dark hazel eyes that warmed him. It was welcomed. He felt like a ghost, silvery and unsubstantial, the ring of bells echoing in his voice. He shouldn't be here. Cold fingers (was he in shock?) pushed the '/' key and he nodded. "I do not see any other way to contact them. A televised response would be ideal. Do we have all the information on all of the girls yet?"

Matsuda shifted and blushed. "A-Almost." L nodded, and returned to his screen. "Uh. Uh, Ryuuzaki? How do they know about the Death Note?" Matsuda sounded alone in his question, the silence afterwards embarrassed, but when L swivelled in his chair he could see the other members listening too. Ah. He had forgotten to tell them.

"It is my fault. They somehow entered into the mainframe of my computer and read my files. I do not know how they managed to, but I assume it is a criminal exercising his criminal tendencies in the only way he can these days. Or perhaps he was a Kira supporter and attempted to sabotage me, but then discovered that his 'God' was in fact only borrowing power and was very much human, and felt disillusioned. I do not know. But he obtained the information from me."

He didn't apologise. He didn't need to. It was a mistake that could be rectified, and therefore he did not need to apologise.

But for some reason, he had this guilt weighing on his shoulders. Whether it was because he hadn't died or because he had been the cause of 40 girls being kidnapped, he did not know. He disliked psychoanalysing himself. It always turned up too many dark corners, and cobwebbed skeletons. He was Justice. Justice was supposed to be infallible.

But even that was only as a theory.

L rather liked the thought of embodying a theory, though. It fit with the bell-echoes and mercury-blood feeling of today. He placed a forkful of cake in his mouth and turned to Raito. "Would you like to prepare the response? You always have had a, ah, flair for the dramatic."

Hershey logged in.

Kat67 logged in.

Kat67 requested a private conversation with Hershey.

Hershey: Did Zack contact you?

Kat67: Yeah, Inu's bloody well gone and fucked it up, the twit. Customs caught him or something, I don't know, but he's on his way now to Inu's mother's house with some passports. He'll be taking two of the girls with him to pass as his sisters, thank fuck he's Asian or that wouldn't have passed, ha.

Hershey: Where will he be going?

Kat67: Didn't say. The boy's got more trust issues than me and you put together, brother.

Hershey: Ha. Did you see my big debut?

Kat67: Reckon you've got a flair for it, bro. Next stop, Broadway. See you soon.

Hershey: K. Oh, if you could send me all your details for KL, that would be great. He's gone AWOL. Bye.

Conversation closed.

Hershey logged out.

Kat67 logged out.

Raito breathed in. Breathed out. Aerobic respiration, he knew how it went. It was hard though, with a ghost sitting next to him performing exactly the same scientific process. A ghost who yesterday talked of bells and had quicksilver eyes. A ghost with a past that Raito knew nothing about, and at least everyone else he had killed, he had known their name and their immediate past. But Raito couldn't even be sure about that with L.

L was a mystery. He had been in Japan for a while now, chasing after Kira, chasing after him (and the little voice that was all Kira chuckled in the back of his mind), but even that wasn't certain. He could be jetting off every night when they all go home, work on the case on the airplane, and solve cases that even Raito hadn't been able to prevent. He could go to a family that lived around the corner, could have a secret love affair with Watari, could have a child in England or America or whatever that faint accent was. Raito almost longed for the chains again, almost longed for the familiar feel of the cuff because in that way, at least he was linked to L. In that way, at least he had some reassurance of his existence, his presence, his activities.

But he sat across from Raito, a waif with too big eyes and too pale skin, who existed on sugar and no sleep, and nothing in Raito's brain could explain the medical miracle.

The trouble was, Raito knew, his father. His father and the morals, the ideal of honour that had somehow escaped Raito's mind until yesterday, with the dancing rain and those damn – those damn – well, either way. He couldn't let L go.

There was too much unknown about him. Too much to be discovered.

His name, for instance. He couldn't kill him without even knowing his name.

"Watari." Monotone, and it was irritating. Yesterday, there had been a lilt of emotion, a tilt in his tone towards something other than nothing. "Did you do as I asked?" There was a short pause. "Both." A longer pause. "Yes." An even longer pause. "You do not need my permission." A shorter pause, and Raito counted fifteen seconds this time before the phone was replaced in the cradle and L returned to the computer.

"See something you like, Yagami-kun?" The tone was absent-minded, but it was better than monotone, and Raito almost replied 'yes'.

"I know code." He said instead, a way of offering his services.

L turned to him with black eyes and bit his thumb. "I'm good." Raito was sure there was an insult in there somewhere, or a secret, or something he wasn't understanding, and that frustrated him. Perhaps that was the problem. Perhaps L was nothing more than some mathematical equation that Raito needed to figure out. He had never gotten frustrated and given up. He had always worked to solve the problems.

But how do you solve a person?

The Concorde was sleek, white and clinical, and Near liked it. He didn't like the noise it made as it shot through so many sound barriers though, and had to hold his hands over his ears as he huddled on the plane seat. Mello had laughed at him, but Near had cared more when his teddy was knocked over than when Mello had called him a child. He was a child. That was fact. And insults were relative.

When they touched down at the airport, they were ushered into an inconspicuous make of car and driven around for an hour in a manner Near knew was to throw off any followers. The sound of the garage door opening made him pause in the play-pretend with the Gundam and tin solders that Watari had gotten him for Christmas one year, and when the door opened, he was already twirling his hair with his teddy bear tucked under his arm. He was not about to waste time in getting to L by fiddling with his toys longer than necessary. The Gundam would have won anyway – it was better equipped.

The floors were shiny and reflected the lighting above, and they were cold on his feet. He had to stop himself from curling his toes, and contemplated slippers for a moment. They were in Japan, after all. You weren't supposed to wear shoes inside in Japan. You wore slippers. He knew that.

He also knew that L had lost weight from the last time he had seen him, and that he needed his hair cut, and he needed to sleep. His hunch was more pronounced and Near wondered if that was what old age was. But L was only 25. Apparently. Near didn't know if that was fact.

"Hello." L said, and he smiled, and Near smiled back and twirled his hair. "You've grown." And Near clutched his teddy bear tighter.