A/N: Eleventh chapter, yay! ...Okay, after eleven chapters, I've run out of stuff to say with these author's notes. =_= Well, yeah, whatever. Hm...Oh, right! Remember that Mello/Matt one-shot I told y'all about? (Yes, I say "y'all"; I was born in the South, don't judge me). Well, as it turns out, I'm making it into a chapter thing. With random supernatural stuff, ghosts, etc. I'd love it if some of you could check it out!

Now, TO THE STORY! :D

Hiroko watched the camera carefully, lying stiffly on her cold bench. The little red light blinked once every second without failing, except for one minute at around one in the morning.

5

4

3

2

1

And it stopped. Immediately, Hiroko jumped up and darted to the opposite side of her cell. Hopping carefully up onto the top of the toilet, she took hold of her shirt and jerked hard, tearing off a thick strip at the bottom. When she reached up and over, she could just barely reach the camera and, more importantly, the colored wires behind it. She picked the insulation off from a few of them and held the exposed wiring together, draping the shirt material over the sparks.

"There we go," she muttered as the fabric caught fire. She leaped down, tore the pillowcase off the pillow that was in the corner, and tossed both of them as far down the hallway as she could. Once the fire had spread well enough, she hurriedly ripped her pant legs from the knees down and tossed it toward the fire. And in just a moment, the fire alarm began blaring, the lights dimming and tinting red.

That ought to distract them, at least for a little while, Hiroko thought. Not needing to be stealthy for the moment, she took the lid off the toilet tank and broke off the long metal rod. One end was jagged; perfect. Using it like a knife, Hiroko cut the wires off as close to the camera as she could, and the camera fell to the ground with a crack.

She glanced up at the small window, which, if she stood on her tiptoes, she could barely get a grip on the ledge. Knowing that at any moment, people would be there to extinguish the fire, she hurled the camera at the window as hard as she could. It bounced off and to the ground, and while the lens shattered instantly, the window cracked. Swearing to herself, Hiroko picked it back up and chucked it over and over at the window until it broke completely.

When she jumped up, Hiroko managed to get purchase on the ledge. She knocked out the rest of the glass with the camera and, tossing it over her shoulder, she pulled herself up and through the window. She wasn't as far up as she had feared; she was still on the first floor. As she hit the ground, she let herself fall to the grass and roll, trying not to completely kill her knees.

As soon as she could, Hiroko scrambled up and started running as fast as she could away from the building.

She could just hear L's voice raising her Kira percentage in her head.

()()()

Hiroko skidded to a halt and darted behind a Dumpster. Breathing hard, she leaned her head back against the crumbling brick wall. She figured that she was far enough away from the Task Force building to rest for a minute. Ryuzaki probably already had her picture out all over the area, or he would very, very soon. And it wasn't like someone had conveniently left a fedora or her wallet just outside her cell, either, so disguising herself was out of the question. So was food, she figured. She'd have to find Koide quickly, before too many people knew about her to be able to say they'd seen her.

Ugh, it smelled like rotting garbage in that alley.

"Where would Koide be…?" Hiroko whispered to herself, tilting her head back to look up at the dark sky. It was too early in the morning for him to be at school…most stores were closed…but Koide once said that he walked around when he couldn't sleep, didn't he? And his house was just a few blocks away from…

The cemetery. Hiroko got up and stuck close to the filthy alley walls, looking carefully both ways down the street before walking swiftly up the sidewalk, glancing around to watch out for sketchy people.

The cemetery where his sister was buried. Hiroko could remember once afternoon, just a few months after she'd met Koide. The two were sitting on the university lawn, comparing Computer Tech homework and Hiroko was trying to make idle chitchat. When she asked Koide what he did in his spare time, he very seriously answered that he sometimes liked to go to the cemetery where his sister's grave was. He would sometimes place a flower on the grass, or wipe off the top of her headstone. Most of the time, though, he would just sit beside the headstone and talk to her.

Hiroko had asked Kaede once if that was normal; the girl had assured her that grieving friends and family often talked to their deceased loved ones, just to comfort themselves.

There were some creepy characters walking around, Hiroko noticed. Some of them were your typical alcoholic hobos, and others were drugged-out obese men who yelled at trashcans. And while Hiroko was moderately certain that she could take care of herself, she still kept her head down and eyes staring at the ground, one hand in her pocket as if she had a knife or something. If anything happened, though, she'd probably just have to point at them with a literal hand-gun. Yeah, hopefully it wouldn't come to that.

When she arrived at the graveyard, it was easy to hop the short stone fence that separated the sidewalk and road from the grassy hills, spotted with gravestones. Hiroko tried not to get freaked out from every little noise, but graveyards were just creepy. And at night, they were even creepier. And when you were looking for your friend who may or may not be one of the most deadly serial killers of all time, well, that just about topped the list of creepiness.

Rubbing her arms to warm up – damn, it was cold, especially in a t-shirt that she'd ripped half the bottom off of – Hiroko attempted to recall where Yimaru was buried. Maybe five headstones across, seven rows up? Hiroko wondered. Sure, it was worth a shot, at the very least.

Five gravestones across and seven rows up, Hiroko was looking at the grave of someone named Yuudai, who had died in '87. Nope, not right. Crap, this wasn't good! She had to find Koide before the Task Force found her. Okay, was it…three headstones across and five rows up?

()()()

"I don't get it; why did she set a fire?" Matsuda asked. The Task Force was gathered around a large table. Stacked on the table were snapshots from street video cameras around the city, tapes of their videos, and numerous other things that were supposed to be used to find where their suspect went. L was glaring at them all in disappointment; Mello looked frustrated, and was in turn glaring at Near, who looked smug, if anything. Everyone appeared worried, crossing arms and shifting feet as they waited for someone else to say something first. And in the end, it was Matsuda who broke the silence.

"Probably to distract us," Light muttered back to him. "Gives her more time to get as far away from the building as possible."

"Mello, what did your mind tell you when I ordered you to watch her?" L asked scathingly.

"Hey! I watched it, as instructed!" Mello said loudly. "The camera stops giving feed for about a minute every day."

"And you thought that it was irrelevant?"

"I thought that she'd be sleeping, since it happens at one in the morning," Mello defended.

"And why does this happen? Don't we have cameras that don't go out for one minute every day?" L demanded.

"Uh, by doing that, it saves energy, which is good for the environment," Aizawa said, not meeting L's gaze. "The building was running up a huge electricity usage, so we switched to these cameras. By going out for a minute, at alternating intervals of course, we save—"

"We save energy, and lose our suspect," L reminded. "And there is a high probability now of her being Kira. So, to save electricity, we have essentially released someone who is more than likely the most horrendous serial killer of our time."

In truth, L couldn't be extremely angry with either of them, though they were idiots. Really, it was his fault as much as anyone's, he thought.

"Why wasn't I informed of this?"

"We didn't think that anyone would stay up until one in the morning to figure it out," Aizawa said.

"Ryuzaki, we get it, we all fucked up, especially Mello," Matt said. "What're we going to do about it now?"

"As of now, there is not much we can do; most of everyone is sleeping. And I doubt the few people actually on the street at one twenty-two in the morning are credible witnesses," L said. "However, as for now, we are able to do a few things. Light-kun, construct a simple profile of Hiroko-chan and forward it to all businesses within the area, and put alert all police stations and put out an announcement on television."

"Media, on it," Light said, and briskly swept out of the room. L turned to the rest of the Task Force. Most of them looked dead tired, yawning and propping their heads up. Matsuda's eyes were half-closed and he had his head down on his folded arms.

"Now that Hiroko-chan is out, we must be even more careful than ever. I want at least two guards at the entrances, and everyone is to wear hats when they venture outside. Oh, and there will be no using of your actual names until she is back in custody. Even within this building."

Eventually, everyone went back to their desks, but L stayed at the long table, looking over the mounds of grainy snapshots, taken out of street cameras that had a fair quantity of bird crap and hobo spit and general filth smeared on the lenses. Wonderful.

She wouldn't take her car; she knew that an APB on it will be one of the first things they would do. She most likely wouldn't go back to her apartment, but he decided to send some people just in case. What she would do, though, depended on whether she was telling the truth about Koide. If he does not exist, and she knew it, she would try to get out of the country as soon as possible. However, if he does exist, or if he doesn't but she believes he does, Hiroko would try to find him.

L sighed and stared at the piles of pictures. The way she held herself, the tone in her voice, the desperation to make them believe, all could point either to lying or truth. But the details, the ideas to catch the possibly-fake person, just her careful thought into the idea – careful, but not too detailed – seemed to say that whether Koide was real or not, Hiroko believed that he existed.

How do you catch a person who may not be real?

()()()

Turns out, five graves up and four across wasn't it, either. Neither was six graves up and two across. And neither were any of the other combinations Hiroko had thought of. And what was worse, now she was lost in a graveyard. At night. With a possible Kira in the same area. And the police might or might not be looking for her.

"Well, it actually might not be able to get much worse this time," Hiroko told herself. "Have I seen that gravestone before…? …Maybe."

Wandering through a graveyard at night actually wasn't as disturbing as television shows made it look. It was actually kind of soothing, and if a serial killer wasn't lurking about somewhere near her, Hiroko might actually have liked it. However, since Koide probably was nearby, she decided that she wanted to get out of there, or find him.

"Okay, I know I've seen that gravestone before; how many gravestones can there be featuring naked angel babies?" Hiroko asked herself softly. "That's kind of strange, really. I hope when I die, my gravestone doesn't have naked angels on it. That'd be strange…"

Not as strange as talking to yourself in a graveyard, but whatever. Koide's somewhere, and at least talking to yourself could alert him to where you are.

Hiroko was pretty sure that whatever happened to Koide, whatever it was that made him like that, he was definitely a psychopath.

"Nobody could be perfectly sane and kill that many people," Hiroko murmured to herself.

She whipped around as someone chuckled slowly behind her. "Oh, couldn't they?" Koide asked, the smile on his face not quite reaching his eyes. Just like it never did.

A/N: What did I ever have to say in these, either? Meh, whatever. Yeah, reviews would be nice, both on this and on my new random angst/ghost Mello/Matt story. ^^