Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note or anything related to Death Note, except Emily.

Man I get tired of doing that! Anyhoo, chapter 8! So exciting! The Task Force will be coming soon! Yeah! More exciting-ness to add to my story! Thanks you to all of you out there who put my story on your story alert list and favorite story list(StrawberryAddict, Airie797, BrknFire, watergoddesskasey, iHeartLawliet, 8yume, Naomirannah, Starlightthedark, HaleyJo, Lawliet-is-Kira, and methegirl). I have thanked all my fans in the last chapters and I felt like you deserved some credit too! Now this pre-chapter is getting too long. Onto the story!


L clicked on the once again beeping screen. The Task Force headquarters appeared on the screen. Cheif Yagami was at the front of the room.

"We now know that Kira doesn't just target criminals. He'll kill anyone who opposes him. It's quite possible that we may all be killed by Kira. Think of your own lives, your families, and all the others you'd be leaving behind." Emily walked into the room. She sat down beside L, mimicking how he sits. She wondered why he sat like that, and made a mental note to ask him later.

"If anyone wants to leave this investigation, now is the time. You won't be demoted if you choose not to stay, you have my word." Cheif Yagami looked really stressed out. She guessed he hadn't slept well since this case started, and she felt really bad for him.

Cheif Yagami's eyes narrowed, and he became extremely serious, "But if you're not absolutely sure, then we don't need you. You have to be willing to fight against him, even if that means making the ultimate sacrifice. That is all."

The investigators began talking amongst themselves. One of them got up and left, then the rest followed suit. Emily turned to L. "Ultimate sacrifice? He better not be talking about dying!" She angrily whispered at him, her eyes narrowing and giving him a death glare.

"I'm afraid to say he is." L turned away, trying not to make eye contact.

"If any of them die, I swear to you Ryizaki I will-" She was cut off by L's hand coming over her mouth. She thought it was because he didn't want to hear what she was about to say, but in reality, Cheif Yagami had walked back into the room.

He was followed by a young man, probably in his twenties. He was smiling, and he seemed excited, weird considering the possibility that he might die. A few minutes later two other men walked in. One had the coolest afro she had ever seen. She immediately liked him. The other had an afro too, but his wasn't awesome like the other mans.

Two more men arrived. One she remembered from one of the meetings, his name was Mogi. The other man she didn't recognize.

The men waited for about 10 more minutes, but no one else walked in.

"5 men huh? Well 6, including myself. Still, I'm grateful to see that there are as many as 5 of you willing to risk your lives to face evil." Cheif Yagami was definitely on her 'like' list.

L moved over to the computer, and spoke, "The fact that you've chosen to stay means you have a strong sense of justice. I trust all of you."

"Huh?! H...Hold on a second! L just said that he's decided to trust us now. But honestly, what reason do WE have to trust HIM?" She suddenly remembered his name, Aizawa. She definitely liked him, he was smart. Maybe a little more on the cautious side, but still smart.

"Look L, all of us have agreed to put our lives at risk to bring Kira to justice, so I hope you understand what this means. We're really sticking our necks out here. But YOU never have to show YOUR face do you? You just give the orders!" Said the police officer whose name she forgets. Him, she didn't like so much. L WAS risking his life! Everyday he was here his life was at risk, just as much as they were risking theirs.. How could that selfish man not realize that?

''I don't see how you can expect us to work along side you under those conditions." Aizawa stood up.

"L, if all of us are going to work together on this investigation, and if you truly meant what you said about trusting the 6 of us, could you come here so we can all meet in person?" Emily tensed up. If he said yes, he had another thing coming.

"The thought had already crossed my mind, after all I did say that I trusted all of you." She shot him a warning glance. "There is no way he's going over there."

He began typing. Afterwards he spoke again.

"I'm staying in a suite at the Tako hotel at the moment. But I will be switching hotels every few days from this point on." Emily's head whipped around, giving her whip lash. "Thanks soo much for telling me so far in advance L."

"I want you to think of these hotel rooms as the defacto headquarters of this investigation. If this arrangement is acceptable to all of you, then split into two groups and stagger your arrival so you come 30 minutes apart. Please arrange it so your all here at midnight." He turned the speaker off. She jumped up.

"Thanks for the heads up about the whole switching-hotels-thing." She took a deep breath and calmed herself down. "And they're coming here? Tonight? Why don't you tell me these things Ryuzaki? This information is important!"

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you." He shoved his hands deep in his pockets, and stared at her, he did that a lot.

"You better be." She sighed and scratched the back of her head, then wrapped her arms around him in a sudden hug, " Just promise me that you'll tell me everything from now on, kay?"

"I cannot promise that." He wrapped his arms around her waist, returning the hug.

"Then not everything, just the important things. Please Ryuzaki, stop leaving me in the dark." She pulled away, pleading him with her eyes.

He looked at her for a minute, before giving up, "Yes, I suppose that's agreeable."

"Yeah!" She hugged him tighter, "Thank you Ryuzaki, thank you!"

"Since I am telling you the important things, I might as well tell you that you must use a different name." He said into her hair.

"Ok, umm....how about.....no.....oooh! I got it! How about Kiyoko?" She liked that name. She didn't know what it meant, but it sounded very pretty to her.

"Kiyoko? That is a Japanese name." He pointed out to her.

"Yeah, I got that. But so what?" She was going to use that name whether he liked it or not.

"You are not Japanese." Emily rolled her eyes.

"No?" she asked in the most sarcastic voice she could muster, "I'm very well aware of that fact." She pulled away and went into the kitchen. She expected L to follow, but he went over to the window. He stared out at the bright lights of Kantou, completely lost in his thoughts. Emily watched him for a while, before going over to him.

"What are you thinking about?" L made a small noise, then looked over at her.

"Kira." he continued to stare at the world below. Emily put her hand into his.

"You worry too much Ryuzaki. We'll cacth him." She put her head on his shoulder. L turned them so they were once again embracing.

He tilted her chin up to him, and bent down towards her. He gave her a soft kiss before pulling away. "I know." He leaned in to kiss her again, but they were interrupted by a knock at the door.

He let go of her hand and walked towards the door. He unlocked it, and Emily ran into the kitchen.

"It's unlocked, please, let yourselves in." L told them politely.

The door handle turned, and then opened......


The Task Force gasped. They probably were expecting something very different.

L scratched the back of his leg with his foot, while the Task Force continued to gape at him like fish out of water.

"I am L." he told them bluntly. She could practically hear what they were thinking, "This is him?"

L scratched the back of his head, and she saw them exchange surprised looks.

Cheif Yagami snapped out of it first, "I'm Yagami of the N.P.A" The rest of his men followed. Stupid move.

"Uh, Matsuda." the young man said.

"I'm Aizawa." Emily almost squealed at his hair, and fought the desire to run over and hug him.

"Mogi." He was a lot more impressive in real life, and a lot bigger too.

"Ukita." That was the man with the smaller afro. His hair was pretty cool in real life too.

L looked at them strangely.

"I'm very sorry we're late, currently the five of us are-" Cheif Yagami was cut off by L.

He put up his hand, holding it like it were a gun, and pretended to shoot them, "Bang!" Emily nearly laughed, but controlled herself.

"What the hell was that?" Aizawa demanded.

L ignored him, "If I were Kira you'd be dead Mr. Soichuro Yagami cheif of the N.P.A."

They finally got it.

"Kira needs a face and a name in order to commit murder. But I'm sure you've already figured that much out haven't you? Please do not give out your name so carelessly. Instead, let's value our lives." That was some pretty good advice that Emily sincerely hoped they would take to heart.

"I knew that he needed a face to kill someone, but I don't remember any evidence that showed that he needed a name too." Matsuda was cute, in a little brother-type way.

"There's no way to verify if this is related, but criminals whose name were never released publicly, or whose names were spelled incorrectly in the media have not been targeted. We briefly went over it at one of our meetings." Briefly? That is a BIG factor right there.

"That's enough small talk, come this way." L walked into the living room, and stood next to Emily.

The Task Force gasped again when they saw her. She blushed slightly, but didn't faint. Good sign.

"Task Force, this is Kiyoko, Watari's assistant." Ok, apparently she was Watari's assistant.

She bowed politely, "It's a pleasure to meet you all."

The men nodded, saying things like, "Yeah, or it's nice to meet you or, I didn't know there was another person here."

L continued, "Please turn off all your cellphones, hand-helds and any other communication devices and leave them on the table right there."

"What, do you think we're gonna be using our cellphones during this meeting to leak information?" She moved over to the couch and, just to mess with the cops a little, sat exactly the same way L usually sat.

"It's alright, just do as he says." Cheif Yagami said as he took his cellphone out and set it on the table. Everyone else did the same.

"I realize he's been cautious from the very beginning, but I still can't tell if he trusts us or not." Matsuda said to Cheif Yagami.

"No, I just find them distracting. I can't stand it when peoples cellphones are ringing while I'm trying to talk." L sat down in the unusual manner that he sits in, and continued speaking, "Let me start by saying no one takes notes on anything that's said in these meetings. That means that when we leave headquarters, any information we need is committed to memory. Please make yourselves comfortable." the Task Force cam and sat down in the various chairs throughout the room. Matsuda sat by Emily, and Cheif Yagami sat next to him. Mogi and Aizawa sat in chairs on either side of the table, while Ukita sat at the head of the table across from L. L watched them intently as they sat down.

L poured himself some of the tea Emily had put out for him. He took a sip, then put the cup back down after deciding it tastes bad. He reached over and put two sugar cubes in, 4, 6......

"Excuse me, L-" Matsuda began.

"Mmm...and from now on I'll have to ask you to stop calling me L, it's Ryuzaki now, just to be safe." L was finally drinking the tea, after putting 8 or 9 sugar cubes in it.

"Uh, ok Ruzaki. If we know that he needs a name and a face to kill, couldn't we cut down the number of victims by keeping criminals' names' from the news?" She smiled at his naivety. That wouldn't go smoothly.

"If we do that, we'll only be putting the general public at risk." L set his cup down, and began chewing his thumb nail.

"The general public?" Ukita asked.

"Why?" She didn't catch who said it, she was too busy trying not to laugh at Ryuzaki's wiggling toes. It didn't work, but she covered it up as a cough.

"Kira is childish and he hates losing." L stated simply.

"But how do you-" Poor Matsuda, everyone was cutting him off.

"Just what do you mean?" Cheif Yagami inquired in the middle of Masuda's sentence.

"Well, I am also childish and I hate to lose, that's how I know." He sent a look toward Emily, and she smiled happily at him. "At least he could admit it!"

Cheif Yagami was obviously not pleased with that answer. "Ryuzaki, would you mind being a little more specific for us?"

"Early on in the investigation, I tried to provoke Kira with that broadcast." Emily flinched at the mention of that, "Up until then we thought that Kira would only go after criminals. But, as we all witnessed, he didn't hesitate to kill my stand-in. Also, as soon as I said we knew he was in the Kantou region, in defiance he made sure his next victims came from within Japan. As if to say 'And what are you gonna do about it?' "

L took a sip of his tea, "He's met each of my challenges head-on and he's never missed an opportunity to return the favor. Now, what do you think would happen if we tried to use media restrictions to hide criminals from someone like that?"

Matsuda tried to speak again, "I guess-" but, of course, L cut him off.

"'If you choose to withhold the names of your worst criminals I'll kill petty criminals or the innocent.' 'I'm holding the whole world hostage, so whose it gonna be?' 'I'm not the evil one here, but all those who oppose me by hiding criminals, you are truly evil' " L sighed deeply, and this time Emily contained her giggle when he wiggled his toes.

"That's exactly how Kira thinks. At any case, let's look at another way we can use the media to draw him out." Emily rested her head on her knees, this was getting boring.

"But how?" Aizawa asked, he was asking a lot of questions.

Emily decided to speak up, "How about something like this? Death of F.B.I agents infuriates the U.S, latest killings anger the International Policing communities, nations agree to send 1500 investigators to Japan?" She knew L would like that one, she had thought a lot about it, and it was a good idea.

L looked over at her and gave her a small smile, and then continued on with her idea, "For Kira this will be way beyond what he faced with the F.B.I. He'll see everyone as a potential threat. Psychologically he'll start to feel cornered and that will cause him to take some kind of drastic action."

"That's....that's interesting!" Ukita nodded at Emily, and smiled.

"So he'll think there are 1500, when there are really only 7 of us. And since none of these investigators exist, Kira won't be able to kill them." He also smiled at her. She looked over at Matsuda, and he gave her a thumbs up.

"It just might work!" Ukita looked like he was about to do a touchdown dance. She knew that if he decided to do one, she would probably join him. She loved doing touchdown dances!

Luckily L spoke up before the dancing could begin, "Well, before we celebrate, I'll tell you the rest of my thoughts on the Kira case."

Emily watched the Task Force nod their heads.

"Kira works alone." L began to chew on his thumb nail thoughtfully, "He had access to all our classified information."

"What evidence do you have that he's working alone?" Wow, Aizawa just couldn't be quiet for a minute. She didn't mind people who asked a lot of questions, but if he kept this up, they might never leave!

"Hold on Aizawa, let's listen to his entire theory before asking question." Cheif Yagami told him, apparently he was getting annoyed with him too.

"We know he needs a name and a face to kill, and to some extent he can control a victim's time of death and their actions before dying. We already know that much, please keep that in mind. And listen carefully to what I have to say next." L picked up a marker and began drawing on the coffee table.

On december 14th, 12 F.B.I investigators entered Japan. Here we are on December 19th. Using prison inmates, Kira conducts experiments manipulating his victims actions before they die. In other words in this window of only 5 days, Kira became aware of the F.B.I's presence and obviously felt threatened. Because he didn't know any of their names or faces, he was at a disadvantage." He continued to draw on the table while Emily tried to space out. She knew about the death of the agents, but she didn't like to think about it. When she did, she would either feel sick or start crying. It was bad either way.

"He needed to know how much control he had over his victims before he could use it against the 12 agents. And as we all know on December 27th, Kira got a hold of a file containing all the names and faces of the F.B.I investigators in Japan, and succeeded in killing all of them." She pulled her knees in tighter, and focused on taking deep breaths.

"During this period, to the best of our knowledge, at least 23 individuals died of heart attacks. But these victims were different from Kira's previous targets. They were all alleged criminals, ex-convicts, or suspects in on-going investigations. So, legally speaking, they were innocent." L looked over at Emily, noticing her discomfort. He gave her an apologetic look, and she smiled at him.

"That's true." Cheif Yagami nodded his head in agreement.

What this indicates, is that Kira had to manipulate these lesser criminals in order to kill those F.B.I agnets. He killed that many people so we'd be unable to tell the decoys from those who were actually used. In truth, he probably only needed a few. He waited 8 days, so the F.B.I could investigate other suspects, which meant there'd be no time line linking him to their deaths. I suspect Kira had to be one of the people being investigated by the F.B.I between the 14th and the 19th of December. In fact I have no doubt." Emily regained control over her emotions and stopped digging her nails into her leg. The Task Force gasped. She looked over at them, then realized it was in response to what L had said.

L lifted up a stack of papers and set them down onto the table he had just drawn on, "These are files provided by the F.B.I, and they contain additional information you might find useful. For obvious reasons you're not permitted to take these out of this room but-"

This time, it was Matsuda who was doing the cutting off, "Amazing! There might only be 5 of us, but with this much information we should be able to cover a lot of ground!" He lifted up a stack of paper, and began reading through it happily.

"We'll split into two teams. One team traces the F.B.I agents, the other looks at the heart attack victims." Emily hoped she wasn't included in the 'we'. She didn't mind doing work, she just didn't want to be on the heart-attack-victims team.

"There weren't that many people who had access to information from headquarters, and of those the F.B.I only investigated a small group in the first 5 days." Matsuda read it off of the paper. He lowered it a little and looked around.

"Yeah, yeah!" Aizawa agreed.

"So, does anyone have any questions?" L asked blatantly. He looked like kind of bored, well more than usual.

"Actually, Ryuzaki, I do have one question for you. And it pertains to what you said to us earlier, about how you hate to lose. Does the fact that you've shown us your face, mean you've lost? By just being here, are you admitting defeat to Kira?" Emily's eyes widened and looked over to L. "What a good question." she thought.

"That's right. By showing my face to you know and by sacrificing the lives of 12 F.B.I agents, I have lost the battle." L narrowed his eyes and looked at them intently, "But I'm not gonna lose the war. This is the first time I've ever put my life on the line, I want to show Kira that we're all willing to risk our lives if that's what it takes."

L smiled, one of his rare REAL smiles. "Hmm...and that justice will prevail no matter what."

Emily smiled softly at him, and wishe she could run over and hug him. But she couldn't, no matter how much she wanted to.

There were shouts of agreement from the Task Force, from everyone except Yagami, but he didn't seem like the type to yell 'We can do this!'. He seemed more of the quietly appreciative type.

"Before we go any further, I have to be absolutely sure that none of you are Kira. So I'll need to speak with each one of you individually before you leave today." Emily was happy he said that. As nice and trustworthy as these gentlemen seemed, she could never be 100 percent sure.

"What's the deal, he still doesn't trust us?" Aizawa asked, disdain clear in his voice.

"No, I think it's a fair request. Try to see it from his persepective. Kira's been getting information from our headquarters from the very beginning. So there's a good chance that he's one of us." Cheif Yagami tols them, as L and Emily stood up. They walked to the window, once they were behind the couch, Emily took L's hand in hers, to the officers, they looked like they were just standing side-by-side.

"Cheif's right, working this case has given us a chance to see him in person." Matsuda added, he seemed very sweet.

"He's risking his life to be here." Aizawa said in amazement. She sighed and looked at L. He was thinking very hard about something, so she decided not to bother him. She thought about the Kira case, thinking about Kira himself.

"All we need is a single clue, a single decisive factor. Just one thing, one oversight, and it's all over."


Long chapter huh? Well, I don't want to make it any longer so.....bye!

Rachie-girl~