Fhira: Okay, so Neko's chapter again... forgive the lateness; it required an edit that required approval and input from Neko, who has been extremely busy. And I was too busy to call and ask about it, too. Four drawings due the same day... and no, it's not easy to do. Anyway, the normal hilarity of the Neko, references to Trio vs. Duo, more connections, and the plotlines begin to merge. Enjoy!


I'll bet that heaven is a lot like a hotel. Someone else to do the cleaning, and the cooking, and no pets allowed. Luckily the rules in a hotel are much easier to get around, so Turuturu-sama is here with me.

That's really a frightful good thing too, because other than Ryosho-san, whom from here shall be known as Ryuuzaki-san (unless he decides to change his name again), I don't know anyone here. Yet again, like heaven the hotel: everyone I know is going to hell. (It's quite strange that I'm actually thinking about this, since I don't really follow a religion.) If heaven is the hotel, then is hell the cleaning crew? Because honestly, that sounds more fun. Can you say "laundry fight"? With a straight face? I thought not.

So, where was I? Oh right. Turuturu-sama was not made very welcome by my dearie Ryuuzaki-san. Apparently the lad has never had a pet. Oh, how could he stand the mundanity of beautiful hair with no one to tell about it? Not that Turuturu-sama is particularly talkative, but we've discovered that he does occasionally bite. I don't think Ryuuzaki-san gets hurt very often, because he seemed a little strange at the sight of his own blood. We must remember this tidbit of information.

Incidentally, did you know that you must repeat something fourteen times to commit it to memory permanently?

Incidentally, did I mention that I'm staying with Ryuuzaki-san at a hotel? That sounds terrible…. I don't think he has an ounce of sexuality in him, though. He just looked at me strangely when I called him sexy (more specifically his voice, but his face too…). So did the rest of the room. (AHH the walls have eyes!! Almost literally—security cameras are EVERYWHERE.)

Ah well.

I've called my sister again. Turns out she's sort of mediating a war over in wherever she is: she just mentioned a few names that were really just words and something about a computer code. It's like she's stopped caring about Kira-san(s), which is odd to me because I can't get the cast and crew of this ship to shut up about the killer. (Except Matsu-chan, he's a good guy. Could get him to talk about turnips if I wished. Did, actually. That was a good day.)

At any rate, there's been a minor/major metaphorical explosion, not unlike the non-metaphorical explosion the other day (not caused by me! So very win). The full story is confusing, so I guess I'll give it to you all at once.

The War (for which Tori-chan is playing referee and, apparently, traitor) is a boyish competition between the Duo: Matt and Mellow (who is so unlike his name that it's hardly funny) and the Trio: whose names escape me…. They're fighting over who is the better crimefighter, I think….

Ow! I won't lie, being shocked by both an oven and a light switch within five minutes is a little disconcerting.

So, in the course of the War, Tori-chan the psychologist decided it would be fun to run interference and set up some security worthy of the soldiers and thus created an entirely new and extremely hack-resistant password getup for the London police website. It worked wonderfully to her liking (and apparently very little to Mellow's—again, what's with the name??), but went a little wonky and has been spread to the police sites almost worldwide, including Japan. Everyone here was a little confused by where it came from until Tori-chan called me:

(Normal security measures here)

"Neko-chan, are you still with the police?"

"Yep yep! How's the War going?"

"That's what I called about. Remember the password program I told you about?"

"The thing set up to confuse Mellow the so very non-mellow?"

At this point Ryuuzaki-san turned around in his swivel chair (those things are FUN!) and stared at me curiously. "Did you just say Mello?"

"I don't know. Tori-Kora-chan, did I just say Mellow?"

"You're my ssister; get my name right. And yes, you did."

I turned to Ryuuzaki-san. "Yes I did, apparently. Do you know him?"

Ryuuzaki-san grabbed my phone for the second time in as many weeks. (Cad!!) "Who is this?"

Tori-chan answered him, I'm assuming, with another question. He lied seamlessly, as always. It's so tiring to work with psychologists all the time…. So, while they continued their conversation that was presumably all questions and no answers and possibly a few veiled threats, I talked to Matsu-chan.

"Who was that? Who's Mello?" Matsu-chan the ever-curious asked.

"My sister, and who knows," I replied sullenly. (Well, as sullen as I get. I'm not terribly good at it….)

"Huh," he stated, sounding for a moment very confused (which he probably was). "Seemed to mean something to Ryuuzaki, anyway."

"Yup."

It was right then that Ryuuzaki-san hung up my telephone and turned to me. He handed back my phone and looked me square in the eye. (Interesting habit of his, looking people in the eye. Rather refreshing, actually.)

"I think it's time you know that I am L."

"Brilliant!"

"..." (That "..." is from the entire room again, not just from Ryuuzaki-san. L-san.)

L-san: "Are you taking this seriously?"

"Yes…. So is Turuturu-sama, obviously." Turuturu-sama, meanwhile, munched peacefully on his lettuce, unawares of the turmoil of YET ANOTHER GODDAMN NAME CHANGE. "So should I still call you Ryuuzaki-san?"

He paused, "Yes, that would be best. You are to tell no one else of this, you understand?"

"Yes sir." I saluted, while keeping eye contact, to show my very true sincerity. "So do you somehow know my sister?"

"No. But she is the cause of this new computer code. She has told me how it works, so I'll tell everyone this once."

He then went on to explain Tori-chan's unexplainable computer savvyness. It was more psychology than computers, actually, and I suspect that the computer part was designed by Ryan-kun, not Tori-chan. I didn't tell Ryuuzaki-san that, though, because I suspected that he and Ryan-kun would only have a similar conversation to the one he had with my sister, only coded in computer instead of questions.

Sadly, though Kira-san(s) was waylayed for a day or so, they must have figured out her computer-savvyness as well, because after that hiatus they were back, and still obviously with police information. A week later, I was talking to Matsu-chan about new strains of drug-resistant bacteria, which led to viruses, which led to computer viruses, which led me to let him do all the talking because I know nothing about computers…. After he realized that what he was saying was going straight over my head (rather like a butterfly... Turuturu-sama apparently likes to eat butterflies, too. Who knew?) we were silent a while. Then he suddenly started talking about the case (AGAIN).

I sighed and stated: "It's like a game of tag, but no one knows who's 'it'…."

L-san (if I don't call him L-san I'll start calling him Ryuu-chan, and I think he'd kill me so I'll just call him L-san in my head…) spun in his chair and spoke to Matsu-chan and I.

"We need a tag."

"... Yes, Ryuu-chan-i-san…." Whoops. "Ryuuzaki-san."

Matsu-chan got a look in his eyes that said very clearly 'I am stylish, HEAR ME ROAR' and said with his voice, "I've heard of viruses being used like that…. Only as pranks, but they've been able to trace computer access to the computer using viruses…. Would something like that work here?"

Screw it. Ryuu-chan grinned. "It would. I'll leave you to design it, Matsuda." He turned to me. "Give Matsuda any of the numbers he needs."

Annoying nit. Ryuu-chan (haha revenge!) turned back to his computer.

I've never seen Matsu-chan smile so brightly.

Roughly three hours later, we had a lock on a computer. Now we've only got to find it in order to find Kira-san(s).