Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures

Matt snatched a dark blue hoodie of someone's balcony railing, which they had left there to dry. He started to walk off, but then, feeling a twinge of guilt, he dug in his pocket, turned and threw a fistful of paper money over the railings. "That'll more than cover it," he reflected, "And, anyway, I've got a feeling I need this more than they do."

It was true. With his stripy shirt torn and dirty with blood and grit, his new, vampire-ish smile, and his trademark goggles, slightly askew after his recent tumble, Matt wasn't exactly inconspicuous. In fact, he stuck out like an orang-utan at a business meeting. He rarely had lapses in common sense, but dressing like this on a day when nothing was more important than not being noticed, had not been his finest moment.

Matt pulled the hood over his cut head, and winced at the twinge in his aching ribs; he stashed his goggles in his pocket and squinted around for inspiration. A sign over to his left informed him that there was a car park on his left. "Perfect," he decided, looking on the bright side, "I'll swipe a car and get back to the apartment before midnight. Then we can see how bad the damage is. Mello knows about medical stuff…kind of," he had absolute faith in his lifelong friend. "He'll know what to do." However, he couldn't suppress the knowledge, that the blood coming up, out of his thoat with every cough was an indicator of bad damage internally, and medical attention was one thing he couldn't get, while keeping a low profile. The police were probably already putting out alerts for him in nearby hospitals.

The car park was deserted when Matt entered, only a handful of cars. Before he could decide which one would be most fun to break into and hotwire, he heard soft footsteps approaching him from behind. The person stopped about two feet away and alarm bells went off in his heed. Is it a cop? Why have they stopped? Am I doing anything suspicious?

"Excuse me?" a quiet female voice interrupted Matt's thoughts, "Can I get by?" His eyes widened and he breathed out a sigh of relief. This was no cop. He was blocking the entrance to the car park.

"Of course, I'm sorry" He stood to the side to let her by and she looked up into his face to show him a grateful smile, which he immediately returned with his crooked grin. Her expression quickly turned worried.

"You're face is covered in blood! Are you all right? Here, let me have a look," She reached up to touch his face and Matt quickly side stepped her protesting. "Oh, don't worry, I'm a nurse." Matt was on the verge of saying no again, when he realised that this was a perfect opportunity to get a little medical help without getting any hospitals involved. It would only take a few minutes, tops.

"Okay," Matt agreed, "but I think it looks worse than it is."

It was a challenge to stop himself sighing in relief when Matt felt cool fingers probing his inflamed skin. He sank down on the brick wall behind him.

"Ouch." she sympathised, "those cuts are going to need cleaning. I think I have some wipes in my car. It'll be easier if you take off your hoodie. Do you mind..." After a quick glance around, he decided to risk it and tugged the jacket over his head, while she retrieved a first-aid kit from a nearby blue car. She tugged it open and pulled out some medical wipes. When she leaned over to start cleaning the dirt out of the cuts on his face, Matt suddenly found he was staring down the front of her shirt. He sat, frozen in place for a couple of seconds, before tearing his eyes away, not wanting to offend this girl, who was helping him. She seemed to realise the problem, and hitched her top up, blushing. "My name's Shiori Tendo." She introduced herself, suddenly.

"I'm Matt." He replied, giving her his alias, judging her to be low risk enough that it wouldn't matter.

Matt felt his eyes stray back to Shiori. Not many people would stop to help a complete stranger on a dark night, and he was curious. His scrutinizing mind began to break down what he knew about her, to learn about her, without asking any intrusive questions. He could tell she was very young; probably only eighteen or nineteen. This meant she must be exceptionally clever to be working as a nurse at that age. She was obviously a sweet girl, after all, you'd have to be to stop and help a complete stranger. "She's cute, too," his subconscious butted in to his thoughts. And he found it was true. Maybe, she wasn't stunningly beautiful, probably not the first girl he'd be drawn to if he'd met her in a busy club or a party, but she had certain qualities, which made him stop and look again. Her, straight, dark hair had a slight red sheen to it and her eyes were big and dark, with curly lashes, stood out against her pale, white skin. Also, she had a dimple in the corner of her mouth, which he noticed when she grinned up at him.

"You've really been in the wars, haven't you?" Shiori probed, trying to work out what had happened to this man. "Were you in a fight?"

"No." Matt rummaged through his mind for a believable excuse, before he decided to go with a version of the truth, "I was in a car accident."

Shiori made a face, showing that she didn't believe him, but didn't ask any more about it, "You're not from Japan, are you? Your face looks western" Shiori changed to a different subject, feeling her curiousity mounting.

"I was born in America. But I moved to England when I was really young." Matt mentally rebuffed himself for telling a girl he'd just met all about himself. It was just the kind of thing that would come back to bite him one day. "I came to Japan for my work."

"What do you do?"

"I'm in the computer buisness" he told her, honestly.

Matt nearly laughed when he realised that this was the closest he'd come to a date in nearly two years. Even if the circumstances of them meeting were slightly on the weird side, he was pleased to have a conversation with a girl. He'd dated before the Kira case but over the past few months, every hour he wasn't sleeping, he was working. Mello could be a real slave driver when he though Near knew something they didn't.

"Did you get hit in the mouth?" Shiori queried, bringing Matt out of his thoughts as she reached the source of the crimson liquid on his chin.

"No. I don't think so"

"That's a lot of blood coming out. Let me take you to the hospital, you could have internal injuries." Her voice rose, slightly, as though she was alarmed.

"Nah. Don't worry. My friend's a doctor." The lie rolled of Matt's tongue, "He'll sort me out me when I get home."

"Please, Matt. I wouldn't feel right just letting you wander off in your state. What if you went into shock? What if-," Shiori was cut off by a voice ringing out of the darkness, in the alley behind them.

"Freeze! Put your hands above your head!"

No. Matt felt the word ring round and round his head like a smoke detector. No. No. No! If he was arrested now, he knew it would only be a matter of time before Kira or his army of vigilantes got to him and made his heart stop beating. He was nineteen, just a kid! He had his whole life ahead of him. Had he really risked everything by jumping out of a speeding automobile and staggering to for miles, only to be dragged back? Failure wasn't an option. No. As fear made his mind shut of from his body, he remembered a conversation he'd had with the psychology teacher at Wammy's house just weeks before he left with Mello.

"Just stop and think, Matt. Life has continued to thrive on earth for millions of years. It carries on, no matter what, and not all humans were great geniuses. And do you know why? Survival instinct, Matt. Our bodies are programmed, like the computers you're so fond of, to know exactly what to do in the face of danger. After all, all our bodies really want to do is survive for as long as possible. It's why an antelope knows to run from a cheetah…When in doubt, let your survival instinct take over, it's got us this far and it might just save you."

So Matt turned over to his autopilot. "All right, survival instinct of a teenage super genius," he asked himself, "what do we do?" But what he did, surprised even him.

He felt himself leap off the wall with an unexpected burst of energy and speed, Then he reached out his bruised and bloodstained arm, grabbed Shiori's wrist. He yanked her in front of him, pulling her to his chest as she cried out in alarm and tried to shove him off.

"Let me go! What are you doing?" Shiori tried to drive her elbow into him and squirm away but adrenaline gave Matt a brief recess from the suffocating pain in his chest. He gripped her tighter and ignored her cries. Then he reached back into his collar and pulled out the deadly weapon he'd concealed in there earlier. Just in case. He stood so that one of his arms was wrapped tight around her waist, squeezing her against him, and stopping her in her tracks as she tried to jerk herself out of his immovable grip. The other clutched a firearm, which he pressed into the girl's temple, with a slight tremor in his hand.

Matt knew what he was doing was wrong. He knew that this was the kind of thing he spent his life trying to prevent, and yet he carried on. He didn't want to die.

A rasping, agitated voice, which sounded nothing like him, erupted from Matt's throat. "Let me go orI will kill her." He promised Mochizuki.

A/N –This was lopped of the end of Chapter 8 (The Risks We Take) and is a fairly long chapter by itself, so the original was really long. This chapter introduced Shiori, who is my final main OC, probably. Anyway, please review and give me your opinions on the whole thing.

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