OMG! I am SO sorry it took me so long to update! Over two months… You guys are all very patient! Thankyou so much for bearing with me, and also for all your reviews! :)

Mello and Matt cameos went down well – Misa not so well, it seems. Nonetheless, I'm afraid you'll have to suffer through her this chapter, because she comes as a bearer of… well, important news.

Besides, I like her, so nyah.

Thankyou to: FacelessIdol, Deus3xMachina, sayuri2023, Gabi Howard, Narroch, PikaNecoMico, zoningout, Synonymous Brian, Bligy, Black-Dranzer-1119, angellovedark, deathnoteno1fan-codegeasslover, Star Jinin, ahoythere, ddz008, berkie88, SakuraCa, Red Angel-Blue Angel, redfoxmoon, SeraphChronoMage, bookenworum, Vera-Sama, Scripta Lexicona, Tamouri, ?, Skyhe, ZoneRobotnik, Guardian of Courage, badwolf5, Bleu vie, Failing Mentality and Dahlia Franks!

One issue to clear up before we begin: There seemed to be some confusion last time with something that I referred to as "braces". I meant what I believe you guys in the USA (if you're in the USA) call "suspenders". They are called braces here in Britain – or they were, at least, last time I heard.

Either way, I meant those old-fashioned things that hold your trousers up. They were "in fashion" again a few months ago, so places like Claire's Accessories, Blue Banana (the British Hot Topic) and Hot Topic (the American Blue Banana) were selling them in weird fluorescent colours and with skulls on.

I never saw anyone wearing them. O.o

Dick Tracy

"Can I… can I get you anything, Ms Amane?" Light asked, finding himself slightly flustered, as he watched the young actress sit down at the kitchen table. "Tea? Coffee?"

Misa Amane shook her head, blonde bunches swinging like liquescent pendulums.

"No thankyou," she replied politely. "I'm fine."

She began to fix her skirt as Light leaned awkwardly against the sideboard, unsure of what to do with himself; out of the corner of his eye, he was aware of L lounging in the kitchen doorway, his arms lazily folded.

There was a very long, terse moment of awkward silence – which neither Light nor Misa seemed to want to break, and which L idly observed.

Finally Misa turned her attention towards L, tilting her head a little.

"Are you another actor?" she asked him, taking note of his out-of-time attire. "For the Death Note movie? I haven't been given a complete cast-list since production has been halted, so—"

"No, Amane-san," L interrupted calmly, shaking his head. "I'm not an actor. I'm a detective." He glanced down at himself briefly. "A real one."

She blinked her carefully-made-up eyes at him in surprise.

"…Do detectives really dress like that?" she asked.

L shrugged, returning his gaze to her.

"We dress however we want."

Misa looked at him a while longer, then returned her gaze to Light.

"You must know about the murders," she said. "There's no way you couldn't know. I-I'm aware that you only just got out of hospital, but it's been all over the news and the movie's been put on hold, it might even be cancelled, and I know the second printing of your books was retracted…"

Light nodded.

"Yes, I know," he replied quietly. He nodded towards L. "That's why he's here."

"As the author of what I will only vaguely refer to as the "inspiration" for the murders," L said, addressing Misa, "Light-kun is helping me with my investigation."

"Is that why you're here, Ms Amane?" Light added, also speaking directly to the young actress. "The murders?"

She gave a nod, twisting her fingers together.

"I wanted to know your standing on them," she said.

"I completely condemn them," Light replied immediately.

"And what about the repercussions they've had on your books and the movie?" she pressed.

"Well, by the sounds of it, Mikami's been trying his best to whip the whole thing into some kind of media circus that will benefit the sales, but, personally, I couldn't care less about how much damage the murders do to them," Light said flatly. "In fact, I'm glad that they want to retract the books and stop the movie – if they're going to make people behave like that—"

"Light-kun," L cut in boredly, "we had this discussion, remember? Your books aren't responsible for turning anyone into a serial killer – our murderer was already of a mind-set disposed to such actions, I completely assure you. Death Note is merely a model for his or her agenda."

"At this point, does that make any difference?" Light bit out in reply, turning his hot amber gaze on the detective. "Six people are dead."

More silence. L shifted his weight a little, looking at Light with grim amusement.

"I expect your agent told you about my involvement in the campaign to get the movie production back on track," Misa said finally. "That's… why I came, really. I wanted to know… if you approve."

Light looked at her tiredly.

"Not really," he said in reply. "I mean, I already said—"

"I know," Misa interrupted quickly, "but the thing is…" She gave a sudden little sigh, seeming to become frustrated. "Light," she said, renewing her tone, leaning determinedly across the kitchen table. "I think you need to know what you've created."

Light blinked at her bewilderment.

"What I've… created…?" he repeated.

Misa gave a nod, then fished for her bag and pulled it up into her lap, opening it up. She pulled out a few envelopes, already slitted open, and with her name and an address on the front of them all; she put them across the table from her, as near to Light as she could manage from where she was sitting. After a moment's hesitation, Light stepped towards the kitchen table and took up the top envelope, winching out the folded letter inside it.

L finally took his weight off the doorframe, coming towards the table too, as Misa fidgeted slightly; Light became immersed in the letter, reading it with a mixture of bewilderment, horror and anger.

When he was done reading, he looked up at Misa, who met his gaze, her eyes huge and conflicted. He could say nothing, though – not even protesting when L rather forcefully snatched the letter from his hand to read it himself.

"You were still in a coma at the time," Misa said finally, "but when I started fronting the campaign, I gave a press conference explaining what I was doing, even in the face of the murders, and gave my reasoning for why I support Death Note."

"Because it would look nice and shiny on your filmography?" Light asked waspishly.

"No." Misa shook her head. "Look, your books… Well, Death Note, anyway… it really spoke to me, Light. You see, my father was a politician, quite low down at first, but he was a good man and cared about laws and motions that benefited everyday people. He got promotion upon promotion and raised in ranks and several other politicians got jealous and thought his ever-increasing position would oust them from theirs, or that he might expose their crooked schemes, so they set him up and had him arrested on false tax fraud charges. He was sentenced to fifteen years in prison, even though he was innocent – but then, in the second year of his imprisonment, he was stabbed by another inmate and died from the wound." Her voice had grown smaller and was beginning to waver. "My father was murdered in prison – and he was innocent! He shouldn't even have been in there! It was just the jealousy and greed of other politicians that sent him to his death. And then, my mother… three years ago, the pain became too much for her, and she hung herself. As for the politicians, they got away with lying about the crimes they said my father had committed. It made me so angry, but then… your book, Death Note, came out. When I read it, it made me happy, because I felt as though someone – you – understood my pain and had written a revenge for me. That's why I expressed such interest in the lead female role in the movie, FBI agent Naomi Misora. I wanted to be a part of it. And then, the murders…" Misa gave a little sigh. "I don't know if it was simply chance, but the second politician to be murdered was Noriaki Asahina – one of the men who had had my father put in prison." She shook her head hopelessly. "A-and I know it's wrong, but… but I couldn't help but be glad, glad that he was dead, glad that your book had started coming true—"

"My book is not coming true!" Light exploded. "Ms Amane, do you have any idea what you're saying?! Condoning these murders—"

"I know it's wrong!" Misa cried, standing up abruptly, "but I can't help it! He was part of the reason that I lost both of my parents in less than four years! And I did some research on the other murder victims, and they've all been in the news at one point or another because of some scandal or scam – the murderer isn't killing good politicians. He's only killing corrupt ones, just like the murderer in the book!"

"That doesn't make it alright!" Light gestured furiously to the letter, which L was holding limply. "And when did you start getting letters like these?"

"After I gave that press conference." Misa's demeanour had become rather defensive.

"You mean," L said blandly, "after you as good as admitted that you supported the murders."

Misa looked at him.

"I didn't say that."

"You implied it, no doubt – just as you have to us. You may have your reasons for doing so, Amane-san, but it's obvious that you do support the murders—"

"And she's not the only one," Light finished icily, picking up another of the letters. "You've become a front for this… belief, it seems, Ms Amane."

"I agree that this particular letter is a cause for concern," L concurred flatly, holding up the one in his hand. "Here we have a message which clearly articulates that the individual who wrote this believes that all people who are considered to be corrupt and of a less-than-benevolent disposition – shall we say – should be killed for the sake of "bettering the world". I'm going to assume, since you brought more than one letter, that more than one person has sent you such a correspondence detailing exactly the same notions. And you, Amane-san, appear to have become, as Light-kun so kindly pointed out, a front or spokesperson for this campaign."

"I didn't incite that belief," Misa said coldly, "if that's what you're attempting to insinuate."

L shook his head.

"I made no such insinuation, Amane-san – but it cannot be denied that these people have looked to you to impress their own personal beliefs upon." The detective glanced at Light. "Frankly, I'm surprised that you haven't received similar letters, Light-kun."

Light threw down the letter he'd been reading in disgust.

"I'd glad that I haven't," he said icily; he glared at L. "And you said that my books weren't inspiring people to—"

"They aren't," L interrupted wearily. "These people, venting their frustrations to an actress, are on a completely different page to our killer." He looked again at Misa. "Amane-san, how many of these letters have you been sent?"

"Maybe… somewhere between thirty and forty, I think," Misa replied after a moment's thought.

"Do you still have them all?"

"My manager does." She gestured to the ones on the table. "I took those five without him knowing."

"Do you have a contact address or number for your manager?"

Misa delved back into her bag and hunted around in it, finally pulling out a little white card from an interior pocket of it and passing it across the table to Light, who glanced at it briefly before handing it to L. It was a typical contact card, stating simply Touta Matsuda, Acting Agent and Manager, with a phone number and office address underneath.

Misa turned her attention back to Light as L examined the card.

"So… would you rather I stopped the campaign?" she asked quietly. "I would never want to do anything against your wishes."

Light gave a weary nod.

"Yes, I would," he replied. "Whether you intended for other people to share your personal view of the murders or not, I presume you only came here to ask me my opinion because the situation has escalated into… well, this."

He gestured towards the letters again to further exemplify his point. She gave a little nod and looked down at the surface of the kitchen table.

"Well, you're in luck, Amane-san," L said cheerily, breaking into the awkward silence. "I'm not going to arrest you – not today, anyway."

Misa's head shot up as she looked at him in surprise.

"You… you can't think that I'm the murderer!" she said sharply, clearly shocked.

L merely shrugged.

"You have a motive, if nothing else," he said. "Please don't be offended – I hardly mean it as a reflection of my impression of you as a person. I am merely examining the situation logically."

The young actress seemed rather offended nonetheless and, after another long moment, rose.

"Well, I think I have intruded on you long enough," she said somewhat stiffly, looking fixedly at Light. "Thankyou for listening to me."

"Oh, I…" Light hesitated, then cut in front of her as she made her way around the table. "Please, let me show you out."

"That's very kind of you." She followed Light across the kitchen; but paused in the doorway, glancing back at L. "The vintage look went out of fashion six months ago," she said icily, making him look up at her lazily. "You should accessorize a little, or at least go for a different colour – yellow, maybe."

L smiled sourly at her.

"Why, thankyou, Amane-san."

She gave a little snort and flounced away after Light.

"You are really good at pissing people off," Light barbed on his return to the kitchen.

"Well, I did implore her not to be offended," L sighed in reply, sinking into a seat at the kitchen table. "Frankly, I didn't dislike her, really. I'm impressed that she seems to know who Dick Tracy is. And she knew some rather big words."

"Don't be a jerk," Light said, his tone brittle; he sat opposite the detective at the kitchen table and buried his face in his hands, falling silent.

"Light-kun, please don't concern yourself with the content of those letters," L said at length.

"But it is my concern," Light groaned quietly. "It's my book that cultivated the belief that we should adopt some Draconian system that punishes any and all wrongdoers with death. I don't want "Kira" to be hailed as some of kind of Old Testament God—"

"It's not quite at that stage yet."

"Those books… I wish I'd never written them. I know I don't even remember doing it, but I wish that I'd never had the inspiration or the ability to write…"

"Please don't behave like this, Light-kun," L said impatiently. "Don't be afraid of books that you wrote. Don't blame them. Don't damn them. They're just stories – nothing more."

"That's alright for you to say!" Light snapped, raising his face to look balefully at L. "You're a detective! You're used to stuff like this! I'm not, and, on top of that… no matter what you say, I am partly to blame for this. I know I am."

"That's rather an overestimation of your own importance, don't you think?"

"L—"

"Oh, Light-kun, please." L started to go through the pockets of his trenchcoat. "After all, far be it from me to take all this anything but seriously, but frankly, I don't think you're handling all this the right way. Maybe it's just because you don't possess the "detective mindset", but you are both intelligent and logically-minded. I firmly believe that you are letting this whole thing bowl you over because it's easier for you to deal with it that way." He pulled out a packet of cigarettes, put them down on the table and went back into his pockets in search of a lighter. "Let me tell you a little something about the "detective mindset", then – though you should know all about it, being a detective writer. I believe that it was Poe who, in writing of Dupin via his nameless narrator, referred to the detective's deductive ability as a result of a "diseased intelligence", but even if that has basis – which it may do, morbid as it sounds – the truth is that detective fiction is, as we have discussed, formulaic. And the detective mindset – even of a real detective – is formulaic, too. It's a logical process, pure and simple. Additionally, I am of the belief that the great detective and the great criminal are, in fact, two sides of the same coin. Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty were, in some respects, mirror images of one another."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Light spat.

"Well, it all becomes the same thing. No matter how detective fiction changes, it runs by the same formula – crime, investigation, reveal. Detective and criminal effectively spar with mindsets that, pertaining to the crime in question, are opposite but mirrored. Balanced, if you will." L finally located his lighter and put it on the table, too. "Dupin or Dick Tracy… Justice wins over in the end. And I suppose… what I'm trying to say is that your book alone could never have created that mindset in someone. Detective fiction doesn't make detectives, Light-kun – nor does it make murderers."

"That's nice." Light reached over the table and snatched away the packet of cigarettes before L could grasp it. "Don't smoke in my apartment!"

"Oh, I apologise," L said morosely. "I suppose I should have asked if you had a problem with it."

"You know I have a problem with it! In fact…" Light crushed the box, cigarettes and all, in his fist. "Don't smoke at all. It's bad for your health."

"Light-kun, you should have been a doctor."

"I mean it, L." Light leaned over and tossed both the cigarettes and the box into the bin. "Stop smoking."

"Some women find it sexy," L said idly, looking at the ceiling.

"Tch, yeah – they did in the forties." Light gave a snort. "Besides, even if they didn't realise that it gave you cancer, it wasn't "sexy" back then either. How the hell would kissing someone who's just inhaled a whole load of smoke be in any way "sexy"?"

"So Light-kun would only kiss me if I didn't smoke," L deduced mockingly, smirking at him.

Light's face flushed red.

"Th-that's not what I meant—"

"Oh, you're not much of a Tess Trueheart, anyway," L interrupted lazily, getting up. "Right, well, I'm going to leave you to your reading, then, Light-kun."

Light blinked at him, rising himself.

"Where are you going?"

"To see Amane-san's manager. I want those letters."

Light folded his arms.

"I thought you might be thinking what I was thinking," he replied levelly.

"And that is…?" L prompted, looking at him curiously.

"That there might be a letter from the murderer themselves."

L nodded, smiling grimly.

"See, you do know about the detective mindset, Light-kun," he said airily. He swanned out of the kitchen, Light following him. "I won't bother you again today unless I find anything significant in the letters – otherwise I'll be back tomorrow morning, and I'll bring them all with me so that you can have a look at them yourself."

"Alright." Light opened the front door for him, leaning against it as L stepped out into the corridor. "Oh, and, by the way, L…"

L glanced at him, his expression curious once again.

"If you do turn up here tomorrow wearing yellow," Light said with a faint grin, "there's no way I'll be seen dead with you."

"Oh, I don't think that's likely."

"What isn't? You wearing yellow or me not being seen dead with you?"

"Well, both, but as much as I dislike yellow…" L tilted his head at him, fedora tipping slightly. "…You aren't a politician, Light-kun."

He may not have remembered being a writer, but he knew exactly what "pathetic fallacy" was – and this was exactly the kind of situation he'd have applied it to:

The rain outside was torrential. It had been raining for a while and showed no sign of stopping, lashing against the glass of the kitchen windows with a harsh, brittle, ongoing sound. Light sat at the kitchen table, cooling cup of coffee next to him and with his chin resting on the palm of his left hand, turning the pages of his handwritten manuscript with the right. It was somewhere between half past eight and nine at night, and he was done with Poison Pen and almost a third of the way through Death Note. His tired mind tripped on words that were familiar – too familiar – and he felt a growing sense of frustration welling within him with every paragraph. He couldn't see how Misa Amane had drawn comfort from these pages – the banality of the murder mystery formula robbed him of too much of his patience for him to be anything other than irritated by Ryuk's investigation.

Maybe it was just because he'd already read Death Note twice since losing his memory, or maybe it was because he knew, subconsciously, that he had written the book, but he was under the impression that wading through the words for a third time was doing nothing but blunting his ability to draw any deeper meaning from the text itself.

So his misery made pathetic fallacy out of the rain.

At the bottom of page one-hundred-and-twenty-two, Light sighed and sank to the table, resting his forehead on the hard surface and closing his eyes – and when he did so, all he saw against the dark canvas of his eyelids were words, floating, flashing in odd, muted colours, barely legible…

But words nonetheless.

He leaned back again and opened his eyes, looking upwards at the ceiling of the kitchen. Though, as before, he didn't remember writing his books, he was inclined to believe that he had, and so wondered what had made him decide to write them at all.

When he'd been younger, he'd wanted to be in the police. His father had been Chief of the NPA. Maybe it had simply been a case of childish parental loyalty, but he'd wanted to follow in his father's footsteps and be a police detective just like him.

So why write detective stories instead?

Was it because it was easier? Because laying pen to paper and writing a clean-cut fantasy world in which evil was so much more effortlessly vanquished than in reality was less painful? Was it because, in being a detective writer, there was a greater sense of power over the events of the story, over the components that made up the case? After all, he wasn't trying to solve the mystery – he was crafting it. It was omnipotence over everything. He decided who would be murdered next, and how, and when they'd be found. He decided what clue the detective would find – a torn fragment of a tie or a bloody fingerprint or a bullet. He decided the murderer's methods and reasons and eventual fatal mistake. A puzzle to everyone else – his characters and his readers – but not to him, for it was he who had scattered all the pieces out of place.

He wasn't a part of the story. He was beyond it. In that sense, he was God.

So was that it? Was it that he hadn't wanted to be a part of detective fiction, and instead be the one who controlled every element of it?

(And, knowing that he couldn't write reality, had this simply been the next best thing…?)

Light rose from the table and left the kitchen, papers and coffee exactly as they had been; he stepped silently through the apartment to his bedroom, flipping on the bedside lamp to illuminate the darkness a little.

L had called Dupin, creation of Edgar Allan Poe, a "prototypical" figure of the detective fiction genre. He meant that every other fictional detective had, in some way, been modelled on Dupin – or, at least, modelled on detectives who had been modelled on Dupin and so forth.

It was true that, despite not remembering having created Ryuk, on rereading both Poison Pen and Death Note, Light could see similarities with and traits from other fictional detectives – the ones which he'd read about as a child.

The box was still there on top of the wardrobe. He stood on the bed to reach it, clutching it to his chest as he stepped down onto the floor. The top layer of books and comics was dusty, making him cough a little as he set the cardboard box down on the carpet and knelt next to it, resting the small of his back against the bed.

He'd gotten rid of a lot of his detective fiction collection when he was about fifteen or so, since it had taken up a lot of space, but he'd kept his favourite books and comics, and realised now that these had probably provided a lot of the source material for his own detective stories.

Most were Japanese language reprints, but some were imported from both America and Britain and were thus in their original language of English; he had an English-language copy of The Big Sleep, one of the Philip Marlowe books by Raymond Chandler, printed sometime in the 1960s, pages yellowed and cover battered. He took it out of the box, looked at it briefly, then put it on the floor before removing a stack of detective-themed manga comics to dig further into the box. He found an Agatha Christie book, a copy of Ian Fleming's Casino Royale and two or three Batman graphic novels, all translated into Japanese, before uncovering an omnibus of 1940s Dick Tracy comic strips, reprinted in the 1990s but in their original English.

Dick Tracy himself was on the cover, gun blazing, firing at a 1940s-style hooded car making a speedy getaway from him down some narrow, dank little sidestreet. Light wiped away the film of dust on the glossy book cover, taking note of the immense similarities between Tracy's typical 40s PI garb and the outfit L wore. Despite the fact that L's was predominantly grey and black, the old-fashioned buttoning on the trenchcoat, the style of the stitching and even the way the fedora sat on Tracy's head reminded Light of L.

There was something rather unsettling about L, the way he looked and dressed, standing out in modern society like an OTT caricature of a detective exactly like Dick Tracy – and Light felt it even more now as he looked down at the omnibus cover, then flicked through the book. It was as L had stepped right out of these pages. There was no other way of putting it. Even Misa had noticed it, making that snide little comment suggesting that he should switch to yellow.

He stopped at a page depicting a full-body rendition of one of Dick Tracy's most infamous villains – The Blank.

The Blank wore conventional 1940s clothing – trenchcoat, fedora, the works. The name came from the fact that The Blank had no face. It had come out, during the original Chester Gould run of Dick Tracy, that it had been a mask, but Tracy had battled with The Blank for years, often coming close to finding out his true identity but always, ultimately, one step behind.

…That was a recurring theme in detective fiction too, wasn't it? The detective finding an arch-nemesis in someone, usually the most enigmatic and capable criminal they had ever come across, and pitting themselves against them in an ongoing battle of wits…?

Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty. Batman and The Joker. Dick Tracy and The Blank.

But L… Okay, so maybe he was going too far again, to attempt to line up reality with the rules of detective fiction, but while L seemed exactly like the kind of cookie-cutter detective figure who would find himself an enigmatic arch-nemesis whom he could never quite catch to pit himself against, Light was also reminded, somehow, of L when he looked at The Blank:

In many ways, the mask of 'L' was just as unrevealing. Light could profess to know no more about L than Tracy knew about The Blank on these pages. He'd already puzzled it over, but L seemed as much a prototype as Dupin – or, at least, modelled on detectives who had been modelled on Dupin and so forth.

Light picked up a Japanese-language copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles and held it side-by-side with the Dick Tracy book.

L fit somewhere between these.

Light gave another frustrated sigh and dropped both books to the floor. This wasn't getting him anywhere – and what difference did it make, at the end of the day?

He'd said it himself: Six people were still dead.

It didn't make any difference if L was some freaky physical embodiment of detective fiction, or if Misa Amane believed that the murderer was right, or if Light remembered writing those books or not.

Six people were dead, and still they'd gotten nowhere.

There was a knock at the door. In the silence of the apartment, punctuated only by the rainfall, it made Light jump. Heart hammering, he paused, then slowly rose; shaking his head, inwardly telling himself to get a grip, he left the room and went to the front door.

He hesitated, hand pausing on the latch for another long moment, before he took a breath and opened the door quickly—

It was L.

"I…" Light stared at him in surprise. "Wh-what are you…? I mean… How are you not wet?"

L shrugged.

"Waterproof?" he answered nonchalantly around the white thing sticking out of his mouth.

Light's amber eyes narrowed.

"Is that—?" he started.

"A cigarette?" L finished boredly; he took hold of it and removed it from his mouth, holding it up for Light to see. "No, it's a lollipop. Strawberry." He put it back in his mouth. "Is this the part where you tell me that I shouldn't eat sugar because it's bad for my teeth?"

"I…" Light shook his head in disbelief. "Look, never mind that. What are you doing here? Did you find something of significance in the letters?"

L shook his head and stepped into the apartment without an invitation.

"L!" Light snapped, shutting the door behind him and leaning against it. "Why are you—?"

He was interrupted by the telephone ringing. Light looked sharply at it, shrilly demanding his attention from its place on the table in the hall – then looked at L.

L nodded at it.

"I think you'd better get that," he said quietly.

Light blinked at him, then slowly went to the telephone and picked up the receiver, bringing it to his ear.

"Hello?"

"Yagami?" came a brittle voice on the other end of the line. "This is Mello. We met this morning."

"Oh." Light was a little taken aback, glancing over his shoulder at L, who simply shrugged. "…Yes, I remember. What can I do for you?"

"Well, don't mistake this for a token of friendship or anything," Mello snapped, "but there's something Matt and I would really like you to see."

Light felt his heart sinking.

"…What is it?" he asked softly.

Mello gave an impatient snort.

"Another body, of course. This is a murder case."

Light silently took down the address Mello gave him and hung up; he couldn't bring himself to look at L, who was standing behind him in equal hush.

"You knew," Light said stiffly, fidgeting with the little piece of paper in his hand. "You knew that there'd been another murder. That's why you're here."

"I also knew that Mello would call you. There was no point in me saying anything."

"How did you know that Mello would call?" Light demanded, finally whirling on him. "Tell me, L."

"Because," L replied calmly, taking the lollipop out of his mouth again to examine it, "let's just say… that the murderer has finally gotten bored."

All who complained about L smoking in place of eating sweets, complain no more! Light has managed to break his habit!

On the downside, the weirdness just gets weirder – and the storyline crosses over more and more with the real Death Note.

And now there's been another murder.

Oh noes!

Code Geass voice-actor naming ahoy: "Noriaki Asahina" comes from Noriaki Sugiyama, voice-actor of Rivalz Cardemonde, and actual Code Geass character Shōgo Asahina (though I guess you could argue that he also shares his name with long-suffering Mikuru Asahina from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya).

Okay, so… um, I hope you enjoyed the chapter, I hope that the next update doesn't take as long!

RR

xXx