Chapter 10

The festival was set on a large, grassy expanse with trees scattered in little oasis of shrubs and small ponds, a few of which were occupied by fat golden fish. Wooden stalls, organised in rays that spread out from the centre rock formation were decorated with the products they sold and lit with strings of paper lanterns that went from one to another overhead.

Standing apart from the traditional feel of a Japanese festival was the large metal sign at the entrance, bearing what were once white painted characters, now peeling with age and rusting at the corners. In front of the sign was a ticket booth manned by a giant rabbit.

Or, as Harry realised, rubbing his wand in his sleeve, not a giant rabbit but a man in a rabbit costume. It wasn't even that realistic – the fur was in thick clumps and the eyes were entirely too large to be anatomically correct. Not to mention the rabbit had five fingers and a mesh over its giant grinning mouth. It was all of those details that made it half resemble something out of a dark arts manual, or something that would feature in an article detailing why exactly it was a bad idea to use animal hair in polyjuice.

Light lead him to the counter and handed the rabbit – oh wait, it was meant to be a hare – some money. The table was laden with plastic casts of stylised hares, each painted different ways, some with curls and stripes, others decorated with peaches and pink flowering branches.

"Two passes please. Now, since I brought you here, Harry, this'll be my treat," the boy said as he took the badges.

"I hope you enjoy the March of the Hares," the hare said in a female voice.

Harry spared a thought for the poor woman stuck underneath that costume. It wasn't too hot with the sun on its way down but the job mustn't be a very engaging one. Not that he'd put paperwork any higher… all of a sudden it didn't look that bad.

"Would you like some special masks? These are a little more expensive but should fit you two just fine."

Harry looked over the ones she offered – a pair showing a still pond with matching crane and turtle, drawn so it matched the hare's features, offset with bright blue leaves in the background as its fur. It was an impressing bit of art for sure and Harry was mildly awed by its design.

"Uhh. No thank you," Light said with an odd expression. "It's not like that. We'll have the regular ones, please."

The regular ones were a good deal less detailed, only being a cartoonish depiction of a regular hare.

"Wait, why not? Those ones look very nice," Harry said, disappointed. "In fact, give me one of those. My friend here can wear a boring hare mask if he wants to."

With a sigh, Light agreed and they each took their masks. Actually wearing them, however, was an act of endurance as the plastic things sat uncomfortably over Harry's face, making his glasses dig into the bridge his nose. The eye holes were too small and too narrowly placed and the fog of his breath made the insides clammy and smelling faintly like the fried octopus balls they had for lunch.

He couldn't see too well with the mask on, but he could make out the clothes of the people around him. Some, like them, were dressed in modern day clothes but others wore long elaborately stitched robes, blocky elevated shoes and had their hair pinned up with jewelled metal rods.

Light was dressed impeccably in his cream slacks and dress shirt, looking years older than his… he mustn't be older than seventeen or eighteen. Harry himself, today dressed in an outfit he'd seen the business men of the city wear, looking more professional than he'd been in a long time, diluted only by the grin on his face and his unabashed excitement. He still had his invisibility cloak around his neck but he shouldn't have been too out of place in the crowd. However, Harry thought he got more stares than he deserved, especially seeing as he wasn't Harry Potter or the Master of Death to these people.

He tugged his mask off after he bumped into someone for the second time and settled for wearing it above his head as a hat. It was a pity since the art was good enough to show off for a while longer. He glanced at Light, who hadn't even bothered putting his mask on and shrugged.

They passed a group of traditionally dressed men and women with cloth masks that seemed to mould to their faces and Harry wondered if he knew a spell to make his own a bit more comfortable. There probably was, but Light pulled them into a small food stall and the variety of food in their individual little boxes demanded Harry's full attention.

"Two pork buns and a sticky rice pudding please," Light ordered.

They got their food and Light gestured for Harry to eat. He took a bite of the buns and they were alright. Steamed outside with the filling a saucy meat mixture that tasted of soy sauce. Not quite as good as the sandwiches Harry'd gotten enamoured of but not bad at all.

Light handed over the other bun and a small bowl of what looked to be porridge that Harry assumed to be the rice pudding. There was a liberal amount of sugar on top. Juggling the two, Harry looked up and glanced, puzzled at Light.

"Don't you want some?" Harry asked.

"I'm not hungry. Try taking a bite of the rice pudding and then the bun. You'll get more flavour out of them that way."

Harry tried as his guide suggested but the mixture of sweet and salty was a bit off putting and stuck to his throat as he swallowed. He didn't mention it for the sake of politeness – whatever tastes these people had, Harry wouldn't begrudge himself a pumpkin pie or some butterbeer if he had them instead.

Oddly fixated, Light didn't look away as Harry chewed.

"It's alright," Harry said but Light mustn't have been pleased since his lips turned down and the boy tugged them over to another stall.

The looked over the carved wooden figurines for a little while with Harry developing a liking to one particular little hare with a small wizards hat and potions belt around its stomach. He tried looking for another wizardly one but found only hares with flower baskets on their arms or ones wearing those conical grass hats and lounging with their fishing rods.

Discouraged, they made for a small, off to the side park, each armed with skewers of rice balls. Harry ate as he walked, but he noticed that Light hadn't yet touched his. If the boy tried to stuff him with food again, Harry was going to-

"How did you make the Death Notes?" Light asked.

Harry raised his eyebrows, swallowed and grinned. So it begins.

"Does it matter?" he shot back. "But I see where you're going with this. You want me to change some of the restrictions on the book."

Light stayed silent and Harry knew he'd been correct with his assumption.

"Well, that's bad luck for you. I'm only responsible for providing the magic to get the thing going. Each world makes its own rules considering the collection of souls and honestly, I wouldn't give Merlin's balls what they do as long as they get the job done. Only the shinigami over here have been slacking off and dying on me."

Harry sighed. If Ryuk was here he'd get the talking to of his lifetime. It wasn't like the shinigami king had done anything to fix the bloody mess this dimension was in. Yes, Ryuk would get more than talk for spurring on this interest with the human realm. They should've been satisfied with the job up above, not gallivanting around here like they're on… on a holiday.

Harry sighed again for a different reason and refused to let himself feel guilty for taking a break.

"But you do have the power to make new shinigami?"

"Sure, but that's troublesome. Making a self-aware entity like that takes more out of me than simply imbuing a bit of my energy into a book. By that stage, they're basically alive. I'd have created something new and different, unlike the Death Notes which are pretty basic. All I have to do with the books is just zap something intending to kill it and that's that."

Harry cut himself off before he went into the whole story of how he had struggled as Master of Death before his lucky discovery of how to create his own minions. Merlin he didn't even want to think of that time – if his spotty memory had done one thing good it was to spare him from reliving the drudgery of his early years.

He finished off another skewer, chewing absentmindedly when out of nowhere a man dressed in jeans, a white sweatshirt and one of those custom masks dropped down from the branches to land in a crouch in front of them. Light jerked in surprise and Harry's sharp inhalation tugged his delicious rice ball right into the back of his throat.

"I am-"

Whatever the stranger was going to say was interrupted by Harry's panicked violent coughing fit as he tried to get the soft dessert out of his throat.

But it was stuck – stuck like accident-proof potion stoppers, stuck like treacle in a straw, stuck like candied gumrocks on the roof of his mouth. And Harry was coughing like never before, losing air and feeling the rice ball slip further down the wrong pipe.

He reached for his wand but before he could, Light and the stranger leapt forwards as one and delivered a joint, thunderous smack on Harry's back.

With a plop, the saliva covered, half chewed bit of mush popped out with a final cough and Harry heaved in breaths of air. It was as close to death as he could go and his heart was still racing and his arms shook with exertion. Dying would have to be one of the things he didn't like about being human.

The stranger squatted down to Harry's level and peered into his face, much too close for comfort. Close up, the man's mask was finely smooth, more minimalistic than even the regular hare masks Light wore. It was no more than a series of lines that did more to hint at the features of a hare than outline.

He looked to Harry's head – not the level of his scar, but higher, and remarked, "You're missing half of your couples mask."

"What?" Harry asked, still recovering from his coughs. He rubbed his throat and scooted back to get some room between him and the man. Light rubbed his forehead, exasperated and Harry looked to the boy for answer.

"The mask you're wearing is one usually reserved for those with amorous intentions towards each other."

"Oh. Oh!" Harry said with dawning realisation. "So that's why you didn't want one but I still don't see what the big deal is. It's not as if the opinions of strangers matter at all."

"Well said, Harry, except for a few select circumstances. As it were, both your and Light's opinions are very valuable for me."

Harry narrowed his eyes at the unkempt stranger at the casual way he mentioned both their names. Light stood and Harry moved to follow. Then, towering over the still squatting stranger,

"Have we met?" Light asked. "It's not exactly polite to be masked in friendly company. If you would remove it, then I can call you by name and we'll all be civilised adults."

"I apologise." He stood as well, although he slouched horrendously and ended up quite a bit shorter than Harry and Light.

He pulled off his mask and Harry couldn't help but grin in surprise at how similar the round circles around the man's eyes resembled his assistant Panda's. That earned him curious looks from both Light and the Panda-look-a-like but Harry refrained from explaining and the newly unmasked stranger continued.

"I have gotten used to the guise of anonymity. If I have caused offence, it was unintentional."

Even without the mask, the man's face was blank and his voice monotonous but none of that took away from the fact that they still didn't know how the man knew their names. Harry glanced at Light to see if the boy knew the stranger but purposefully calm, Light seemed equally as uninformed.

So that ruled out the possibility that Light had dropped his name in conversation.

"I must warn you," Light started, "my father is the Chief of the NPA and unless you can explain your presence here and your familiarity with me and my companion,

"There will be no need for that, Light Yagami. I am well aware of who your father is. In fact I have been working closely with him on an interesting case. You must know of it."

"You are on the Kira team?"

Harry looked at the still nameless man with new eyes. Someone like this was in the group working to find Light? Then he shrugged internally. Why not. If someone like Light could be Kira, why shouldn't someone like this be working against him? Unkempt and… shoeless as he was, perhaps there was a core of brilliance underlying the eccentricity. Hadn't he learned as such from his lovely wife?

"In any case, I mean neither of you any ill will. Unless you prove my suspicions correct. You understand what I'm implying."

For the first time that night, Harry was sorry he'd sent Ryuk away. If the shinigami was here he'd be going crazy. It was really too bad he had to miss this. No doubt the others up above would be heavy with anticipation – Light finally getting the overt attentions of his enemies was bound to cause a stir and Harry readied himself for a good show on the front lines.

"Those are heavy accusations," Light said. He drew out the words so they had the weight necessary to convey his disbelief. "Who are you, to throw those around?"

"I think you know, Light."

"You would have me believe you're L."

"I am L."

Harry, who had been following the back and forth with great interest, blinked. "What? No you're not."

The was a beat of silence as the Panda-man turned to Harry, the first glimmers of expression on his face. Whatever Harry expected the man to say, that was not it.

"I am L."

"No you're not," Harry said again, adamant. Sure, he hadn't exactly expected the truth, but he wasn't a fool and being treated like one was galling enough for the average person and especially so for the Master of Death.

"I realise my appearance might be… discontinuous with the public perception of L but as Light should exemplify, age is no barrier to ability."

"You can't be serious. Everyone knows L is a computer."

Dead silence.

Harry grinned at the shock on the other man's face and stared hard, daring 'L' to say otherwise. He didn't know why Light wasn't backing him up – if the boy was so thrown by such a blatant lie, then he'd have more trouble than Harry thought at being a successful mass murderer.

"What?" Light demanded.

Harry took a closer look at the boy, saw the barely disguised panic of someone who believed the other man's words and remained secure that whatever game the man was playing, it was sure to come unravelled sooner or later.

"Unless you're actually some kind of machine poorly disguised as a human," Harry said, "you're not L."

The man rubbed the back of his neck, and grimaced. "I… That is very circuitous reasoning, Harry. You don't appear to be joking so let us assume that L is actually an artificial intelligence as you believe. Let us also assume that robotics has advanced adequately enough that one could pass for human."

Harry pursed his lips. So he was going to keep trying, was he?

"Now your previous statement suggests that the likelihood of my being L increases if I am poorly disguised. It is only reasonable, working off your preconceptions that L, even as an artificial intelligence, would be practically undifferentiable from a human. Therefore, everyone is suspect of being L, which brings you back to where you began – my preposition that I am L, and I am not a computer."

What? That was… a bit too quick for Harry to catch everything. He thought back through what the other had said and couldn't exactly wrap his head around it. It sounded like a reasonable line of argument but maybe it had just been semi-intelligent blabber. Harry had written enough essays and answered enough cryptic interview questions to consider himself a little bit of an expert in the latter field.

Seeing him undecided, the other man continued.

"Was that insufficient to convince you? In that case, feel free to examine my body. However, before you intend to act with violence towards me, know that this location is being filmed from sixteen different angles and I have left instructions to my assistants to immediately detain and arrest the two of you if anything were to happen to me."

The man-who-said-he-was-L lifted up his shirt, revealing a pale, lightly muscled stomach and Harry blanched.

"Go on. See if I'm flesh."

Light groaned and covered his face with his hand. Harry backed away with hands raised in front of him.

"No, that's okay. That's fine. In fact, I have a better idea."

With the cameras in mind, Harry cast a quick non-verbal mirror of the same charm he'd used to protect Light from the cameras and then followed it up by a confounding on the other man. A machine, however easily disguised, would have fizzled out at the proximity to his magic and if the man was purely lying, Harry had an opportunity to get the truth from him if he was confounded.

"Gods, what did you do?" Light asked. Eyes wide, he reached out to grab Harry's arm, eyes crazed and furious. His grip was strong enough for Harry to wince but he ignored the boy for now as he closed the gap between them and the man.

This, if nothing else will settle things. "Tell me the truth. You can trust me. Are you L?"

Light's grip finally eased and he joined Harry waiting for the glassy-eyed man to respond. It took an exceptionally long time and Harry was sure he'd have to turn to less benign forms of control when he spoke.

"I am L."

The same three words that he'd said before, only this time Harry allowed himself to be reined in by truth. He gaped, unable to control his shock and allowed Light to pull him away. How could this be? He was L? L wasn't a computer? But… how had he even come to be so sure of that? This was too much… Harry would have to go over his memories later and make sure he saw exactly where he went wrong.

Light, having taken Harry's spot in front of the motionless L, stared deep into the man's eyes.

"What is your real name?"

L made to answer, but the suggestibility inducing effects of the spell wore out and L's eyes cleared. He glanced between Harry and Light, blinked then suddenly backed off, wariness evident in every line of his being.

Then it all smoothed out, L readjusted his shirt and looked back to Harry. "Then you'll take my word for it? I am sure Light's father would be willing to confirm my identity."

"There's no need," Light said. "Whether you are L or not, your point is made. I am under suspicion and you have come to watch me for yourself. If you aren't L, you'll surely pass everything you know to him."

Harry stayed silent, still reeling from his complete failure and embarrassed to have made a fool of himself. L, as he now knew the man to be, tilted his head and opened his eyes wide.

"That's an interesting turn of phrase, Light. I don't believe I'd ever singled you out as my sole suspect. For you to suggest it is so would be highly incriminating."

Light rolled his eyes. "Highly incriminating? Working off of evidence like that isn't going to get you very far in the court of law."

"Nevertheless, you now have a seven point eight three percent chance of being Kira."

Light frowned, but it wasn't due to the numbers. "Is the search really going that poorly? If I believe you, for L to risk being a victim and chasing after suspects himself, then either he's desperate or you're still lying. Kira needs a face to kill and you've just shown me yours."

"Yes. But like I said, you are currently seven point eight three. So far, I am actually confident that you are not, in fact Kira. But as for…"

The attention turned to Harry who grinned, thoroughly enjoying this battle of the minds. "Come now, I'm just a bystander. I'm not Kira."

"Hmm," was all L offered.

If Harry was honest with himself, the prospect of getting involved in this sounded more exciting than a simple holiday. But it would be a lie to say he was excited. There was interest, sure, a good helping of adventure and the tiniest bit of inadequacy. While Harry could solve whatever problem with his magic and his powers, this battle with its arbitrary rules and seeing underneath the underneath had never been his forte.

But what did he have to lose? Literally nothing. And so he grinned and threw himself on the ride.

Back at temporary headquarters used by the Japanese Task Force, Chief Yagami stumbled upon the live video feeds from the cameras in his own home and blood pounded in his head.

The many facets of his son's room, of his daughter's room, of the room he shared with his wife. They all glared back at him, blinding on the many monitors scattered through the room. There was movement in the corner of his eye and he pulled up the screen where Sayu lounged on her bed, talking to her phone and idly drawing a picture. His wife was out shopping as he knew and Light had taken Harry out to that festival.

But, these weren't the only images the cameras would have captured. Five days. They had been active for five days. L had been a voyeur to his family for five days, seeing who know what of his household.

What reason did he have to intrude in such a way, what gall! To do this and keep it from him – was he a suspect now too? If L had been so desperate to prove his son guilty, why keep this from him? Soichiro had believed him when he said he wanted to work together with the local police force, but the evidence was right here that L hadn't meant a word he said.

What should have been private was made real. This was an act of betrayal beyond sending Penber to spy on his son, a betrayal that called his role as father to action, and one that even his professional side would want to brush away.

The only need his family had for him – protector, provider, and he had failed. The reason was irrelevant, the fact that he couldn't have anticipated this was irrelevant. Everything was irrelevant except the undeniable truth of his failure.

He couldn't destroy the recordings, nor could he take the images from L's mind. As much as he wished otherwise, he couldn't right the wrong for his family and that realisation only made his loathing grow. No, he'd have to move to the future and act to restrain the detective whose urges had never been regulated.

He'd have to take drastic action but of that he did not question. L had gone too far and Soichiro Yagami would not forgive him.

AN: And so they meet. Figured it was about time =] Had a huge brainstorming session and got some rad ideas… actually have a pretty good plan on how to proceed now, and things are going to go waaay off from canon. Really excited. Reviews are super loved, please tell me what you think.

Until next time, 31st