AN: I am so sorry! It's been... ages since I've updated! However, the most time-consuming demon of the modern teenager's life has come into play: high school. More specifically, it's my A.P. Language class and Fiddler on the Roof orchestra pit rehearsals that has taken up so much of my time, but you get the idea. I mean, on the FIRST day back (a Thursday), in FIRST hour, I got an atrocious load of homework in AP Lang- and it was on PLATO. PLATO! But, I digress. It did take me the entire weekend to finish it though. Anywho, I am very grateful that there were still people reviewing and favouriting and following during my brief haitus, it makes me happy! Sorry if you have to reread the last chapter before this one! :'( I love you all!
Chapter 11
Tamaki lay on his bed in Suoh mansion #2, reading Le Fantôme de l'Opéra, in its original French text. He had just gotten to the part where Raoul meets the Persian when he suddenly realised something.
Haruhi had known who Nekozawa was. He frowned dramatically as he began mumbling to himself.
"There is absolutely no way I would let my poor daughter Haruhi meet that creep! I would have known! He would have corrupted her poor, innocent little mind with his dark trickery and voodoo-ness! He would have turned her to the dark side! THE DARK SIDE!"
He yelled that last part at such a volume that the overseer, Shima, entered his room rather unceremoniously, a look of slight annoyance on her old features.
"Master Tamaki, why are you yelling? I am fairly sure I had one of the maids confiscate all of the Star Wars DVDs you had, with your incessant babbling about them."
Tamaki pouted. "You had someone take away my movies!? I can't believe you didn't tell me!" He proceeded to 'shun' her by turning away and facing the wall indignantly, wondering if he could grow long-distance fungi.
Shima sighed. "Why are you talking to yourself?" she asked, dropping the Star Wars subject, not wanting him to give her the cold shoulder, however brief.
Tamaki immediately turned back to her, a comically morose expression on his face. "I am so confused! My dear daughter, Haruhi, who is a lovely commoner, has been dabbling with Nekozawa! Oh, how could I be so ignorant?!"
The servant raised an eyebrow. "Does it matter?"
Tamaki paused in his self-loathing to stare at her with an expression that scared her a wee bit. "Does it matter? OF COURSE IT MATTERS!" He began to sob dramatically. "Nekozawa's been out to get me ever since I stepped on his creepy cat voodoo doll and he's using Haruhi to get to me!"
"How do you even know that Haruhi has been speaking with him?" Shima got the impression that she wouldn't be able to leave until she humoured him, so she decided she would get it over with.
"She was all: 'Nice to meet you, Nekozawa-san!'"
"Wouldn't that imply that she was meeting him for the first time, then?"
Tamaki blinked. "But he didn't say his name!"
"People have reputations, and even Haruhi, whose life doesn't depend on her peers and their social standing, might have heard of him by chance."
"He's two grade levels higher than her!"
"Didn't your host club visit his manor once? She may have seen him there."
"But—aw, I give up." Tamaki looked down, upset that Shima was so good at arguing. She should be a lawyer... a really, really old lawyer. Ah no! Haruhi wanted to be a lawyer! Tamaki cursed himself for reminding himself of his 'daughter'.
"I'm going now," Shima straightened herself up to leave. Tamaki merely stared down at his book, trying to find a hole in Shima's argument that would prove her wrong and him right.
Shima shrugged and left the room without another word, leaving Tamaki alone to his thoughts.
"Thanks for inviting us, Kyo-chan!" Honey exclaimed excitedly, bouncing up and down on the couch. The host club (plus Nekozawa) were at Kyoya's house in the Kanto region of Japan, enjoying a day off from school and helping at the police station. Kyoya personally didn't want the others to come and bother him as he tried to find out what he could about L, but Tamaki had personally went to his house and bothered him until Kyoya promised that they could accompany him.
The television was on, kept at a medium volume level, and Kyoya would glance up at it every once in a while.
"Still looking for stuff on that L dude?" Hikaru asked. "I think you should give up. There is no way you're going to find out who he is. He's too careful."
Kyoya sighed, pushing up his glasses. "True, but L is human, not a machine, and humans make mistakes. I am looking for a blow in his cover."
"Even if he does make a mistake, Kyoya-kun, I doubt that it will be noticeable. Somebody like him is not likely to leave a large gap in his cover," Nekozawa pointed out.
Kyoya sighed once again, impatient at his peers' disinterest in L's identity. He didn't respond, continuing to stare at the television for longer intervals of time now, watching the news with an almost desperate fervor.
"I agree with Hikaru," Tamaki said, jumping to sit next to Kyoya on the extremely expensive couch. "You are obsessing over the mysterious L too much. It's unhealthy."
"I understand that, but I also do not like the way L is taking the investigative business away from Ohtori family. I already had that happen by two other previous detectives, and I'm certain that neither me or my father wish that to happen for a third time."
"Two other detectives? Who were they?" Kaoru asked curiously.
"Denuve and Eraldo Coil. Just a few years before L's debut, they too began siphoning the business from the elite Ohtori detectives. However, just a short time later, their business abruptly stopped, and now L is our main problem."
"You shouldn't be regarding L as a problem!" Tamaki gushed emphatically with a dramatic gesture. "He is for the good of this world! Think of all of the problems that have been solved through this electronically masked saviour!"
Ohtori rubbed his eyes, looking down at his clipboard and making a few idle notes as he tried to not think about L or anything else. This was supposed to be a vacation, and he intended to take advantage of it.
All of a sudden, a 'breaking news'-like announcement came from the television, and everybody looked at it in surprise as an image of a well-dressed middle-aged man appeared on the screen. He was seated behind a desk with a nameplate: Lind L. Tailor.
"Hello. My name is Lind L. Tailor. Though, perhaps, the public may better know me as the detective, L."
Kyoya felt his eyes widen. He knew L would slip up somewhere, but why would he make it so obvious? Why would he tell of his name now?
Hikaru frowned. "So that's what he looks like..."
"This broadcast is being shown across the globe, and it speaks to the murderer, Kira. Whoever you are, Kira, I know you are out there, and I know that what you think you are doing is in the name of justice. However, it is not. What you are doing is wrong. It has no just basis whatsoever, and it is, in a word, evil. I implore you to stop what you are doing and perhaps you can be pardoned, and avoid getting yourself into deeper adversity."
"Harsh. He must be showing his face to make his message pop out that much more," Kaoru reasoned. Kyoya nodded in agreement. L didn't say anything else for a few moments, until he began to spasm violently, clutching at his heart before falling to his desk, his head making a 'thump' sound. The FFJ, as Tamaki liked to call it, was in utter shock.
"He...he just died..." Honey said, all trace of happiness evaporating from his voice as several reporters began to drag L's body away.
Kyoya couldn't help but admit that he was glad that the L fiasco was all over, and that the Ohtoris could once more be at the pinnacle of the investigative field. However, his slight joy was short-lived when the familiar black Old English L insignia against a stark white background appeared on the television screen.
"What's happening?" Hikaru asked, his voice faltering at the end of the question as he realised what had just transpired before them.
"It was all a trick," Tamaki voiced Hikaru's thoughts in a quiet voice, listening intently as the modified voice began to speak.
"It is as I thought. You, Kira, can kill from afar. The television booth was guarded to its highest capacity... I do not know how you carried out this murder, especially in front of the public, but I will find out. However... this is intriguing, and impressive. Lind L. Tailor was a convict on death row. He was to be executed tomorrow. I allowed him to assume my guise and take the fall from me to prove that I have not been able to until now. Well, Kira? Are you going to kill me? Try to take a shot. I'm waiting."
The voice paused in its taunting for a minute, the tension in the air so palpable it could be sliced cleanly through with a knife. With every second of silence, the spectators in Kyoya's living-room feared (or hoped, in Kyoya's case) that L was dead for real this time.
A breath of relief from most of the FFJ members was heard as L began to speak again. "Interesting. It seems as if you cannot. Do you perhaps, as outrageous as it sounds, need a name or a face to kill? Or maybe both? I would like to confide in you one more piece of information, Kira. Right now, this program is being broadcast out to the public. However, it is not worldwide, as you believe. No, this is being broadcast out only to the Kanto region of Japan, where the first murder occurred. Thank you, Kira, for giving away your relative location." If a synthetic voice could be smug, this certainly was it.
Kyoya's eyes were wide, incredulous. The ability to think so far ahead from a few scrap pieces of evidence... he had to admit, not even his family could do so well.
L's symbol disappeared, leaving the news reporters with a somewhat dumbfounded look on their faces before they composed themselves and began talking about an uprising in a rural Hokkaido town.
"That... was so cool," said Hikaru, a grin slowly spreading across his face. Tamaki had an entirely different reaction.
"Kira is in Kanto?! He could practically be our neighbour!" Tamaki squealed, in a panic.
"Stop overreacting," Kyoya said, always the logical one. "We aren't criminals, so we have nothing to worry about."
Tamaki didn't seem to have heard Kyoya and was still a little jittery from the entire situation, even after he went home.
There was just something about the way that L talked and conducted things... It reminded him... of someone... but who?
