DS
Disclaimer: Emma owns Light Cola and the RFI industry. I'm her self-dubbed vice-president.
Me: This program is brought to you by…
Chibi Misa: Light Cola! New, from RFI Inc! Only one calorie and it's going straight to your heart, giving you a cardiac arrest.
Chibi Raito: Now with fifty percent more JUSTICE!
Chibi L: Warning: this product may turn you into a psychotic serial killer with a god complex. RFI Inc. claims no responsibility for ridiculous and ultimately futile attempts at ridding the world of evil, nor do we claim responsibility for any heart-related diseases and/or deaths. Blame Kira.
Chibi Misa: Before you vanquish evil, vanquish your thirst with Light Cola! Light Cola, for the mental megalomaniac in you!
D S 14
Well, wasn't this rotten.
He'd gotten a call last week from a psycho, calling him 'Kira' and for a while, he threw a fit about that. In an assault of anxiety, he called the bastard back twenty times, but with no result at all. The idiot didn't even have an answering machine. He was probably calling from a public phone.
Raito then located his sanity, which had been hiding in a corner at the back of his mind, and thought to himself that there were only so many reasons the man called him 'Kira.' First off, the call could have been a trick by A and W to assess his reaction. Secondly, the call could have purely been a prank. Thirdly, the person in question could have had much more knowledge than Raito allowed the world to know.
Raito decided on the third. The call wasn't a prank or a trick by his enemies because, firstly, the caller kept insisting that he could not be heard. Secondly, he called Raito a human. Thirdly, without any evidence as to his identity, the man ruled Raito as Kira.
All in all, the situation sounded frighteningly familiar.
He'd been contacted by another Ryuzaki.
Another cakeivorous, obsessive, floating love-freak.
And Raito was not looking forward to meeting him.
So there he was, counting the ripples in the plastered ceiling of Halle's office, wondering whether or not they were sharp enough to impale someone with, and Halle wanted him to talk about his feelings.
His feelings.
Raito had no feelings left.
"I have no feelings left."
"I'm certain you have feelings, Raito-kun. Tell me how you feel about your father."
"No."
"And why not?"
Raito would not allow Halle the satisfaction of an answer, be it productive to her cause or not. He wished, quite sincerely, that he was roaming downtown again, killing customers at fast-food restaurants. The way Kira saw it, they were dying of unusually slow cardiac arrest anyhow. Yesterday, he had Ryuzaki give him the names of five individuals, all of whom were currently committing dastardly crimes and paying the price.
Raito's new method of killing was proving quite efficient. Thirty deaths, which could not possibly be traced to him without a massive amount of tedious research and observation, had currently been achieved by Kira. If things continued to flow this smoothly, he wouldn't have to kill Raye Penber.
Of course, since he was Kira, it might've been amusing to kill Raye Penber anyway.
Halle's thick veil of eyelashes fell and her impeccably straight hair seemed to deflate like a pricked water balloon. "Yagami-kun, please stop being difficult. For your sake."
"For my sake?" he yawned without much enthusiasm at all.
"Yes," confirmed Halle, "I want to help you. That's the reason I'm here, you know."
"No," corrected Raito, "it's the reason I'm here. Rather, it's the reason I was sent here against my will. You're here because you have a doctorate in psychology and a paycheck coming every month."
"Oh my," murmured an unimpressed voice from the ceiling, "quite vengeful today aren't we, Kira?"
Raito ignored Ryuzaki.
He focused his attention just over Halle's shoulder. The blonde woman's chest heaved in a frustrated sigh, but she handled the situation the way she was paid to. Raito's insults rolled from her shoulders like rain on an umbrella and she continued berating him for another half hour.
The brunette, however, refused to participate in such a cruel and unusual act of punishment and therefore occupied the remainder of his stay keeping track of how many hairdos he saw through the window. He noticed with distaste that most of them were covered with hats. It was supposed to rain today, after all.
Under the guise of boredom, Raito shifted his focus to the ceiling in the interest of locating his faithful mini-death partner. Ryuzaki currently swung from the fluorescent ceiling lamp, dangling his arms in the direction of centrifugal force and making it well known to Raito just how unexciting the situation was. "You really should start acting like a model citizen," he grumbled, "because I refuse to endure another hour of this trivial 'psychology' nonsense."
Certainly.
And while he was at it, he would sprout a tail and do cartwheels from one corner to the other in a pair of red stilettos and an Armani suit.
Acting the God of Japanese Knowledge and Poise was far beyond Raito's ever-narrowing circle. Even normalcy, bland as it was, was out of the question. The brunette had made his choice. Raito was now a lunatic. For the most part, he had to stay that way.
On the bright and blindingly optimistic side of the issue lay the fact that lunacy was Raito's free ride in life. If Raito reverted to a cultured, quiet boy, chances were, he would not be counted so innocent were he to screw up again. If, for instance, he had cleared Halle's watchful eye with civility and silence, only to nose-dive later with an accidental whisper to Ryuzaki, not only would he be counted doubly insane, but also incredibly suspicious due to his ability to fool his audience. A and W would have their respective 'A-ha!' moments and the word 'KIRA' would be plastered on his back like a neon 'kick me' sign.
He would be tried, likely found guilty, and be either incarcerated or executed on the spot.
Were Raito to screw up again in the presence of a world which knew him as an eccentric, he would be blessed with more favorable circumstances. He could place any blame on his insanity. He could legally plead insanity.
Perfect cover.
That's what it was.
Raito wasn't about to toss it aside just because Ryuzaki wanted him to.
…
By the end of Raito's appointment, he prided himself in refusing to take part in any of Halle's discussions. Soichiro showed up along with Mogi since neither of them trusted Raito's judgment anymore. His father and the NPA had lost confidence in his self control and thus insisted that he could no longer go anywhere on his own.
The only reason he'd glimpsed the heart of Tokyo that week was because Matsuda insisted on taking him on therapeutic outings to the outside world. Soichiro and his cast of cackling cohorts similarly agreed on the medicinal nature of fresh air, but never allowed him out of their sights. Purely as an experiment, Raito once feinted in the opposite direction at a traffic stop and Mogi barreled toward him with no intent of letting him escape. Though there were only a maximum of two agents accompanying him at once to avoid conspicuity, Raito calculated his chances of escape to be nearly impossible. Mogi was almost always one of the two, and he was surprisingly fast for his stocky body type.
The encroaching supervision failed to daunt Kira's cause. He and Ryuzaki had developed a mutual sign language in which Raito had only to glare at the person he wanted to kill and Ryuzaki would none too happily inform him of his victim's name. The brunette would then conjure his imagination and seal his victim's fate with a pocketed snap of the fingers.
Ryuzaki once asked him how his conscience allowed him to kill innocent people without batting an eye. Once he was alone, he simply whispered that there was life beyond death anyway, so there wasn't much for him to lose sleep over.
And then Ryuzaki said, 'That's not the point.'
Raito only smiled.
Though he enjoyed being insane and he loved convincing himself that his actions were justified, Raito couldn't squelch an annoying feeling. His craziness was great, yes, but he couldn't talk to Ryuzaki anymore. He always had to find quiet, secluded places which were becoming less and less available. He wasn't afraid of his escorts, but he found them increasingly annoying.
But Raito hadn't made the wrong decision.
That was impossible.
Raito never made bad decisions.
----
His fellow classmates whispered that he was a psycho.
One curvy matron of campus society had been on her way to confessing her undying love for the dashing schizophrenic when she was yanked from her locomotive railway by her doting girlfriends and told that the object of her adoration was a head case. Events of this likeness occurred too often for L's taste, yet left him with the satisfaction that none of Raito's potential suitors survived the gauntlet of gossip.
Granted, high school would have been worse. To-Oh's students were remarkably polite and considerate of each others' space and would accept a crazy Raito Yagami into a pressing conversation. However, rumors spread from one corner of the campus to the other and Raito Yagami, renowned athlete and celebrity of intelligence, was like a good ghost story. People only whispered about him from miles away and shrank back in respectful terror whenever he blew through the room.
In whatever environment or class he found himself in, he became the choice relic of intrigue.
L never got used to it.
He'd been quite happy being the third planet from Raito's Sun (behind killing and pride, of course). He got the benefits of occasional warmth and a stable atmosphere while 'killing' received frequent attacks by Raito's ferocity and 'pride' was mainly a ball of hot, noxious gas. Despite his previous happiness, he now found his universe quite crowded when other people began gravitating around Raito's mysterious private life. To L's delight though, he gave all of them the cold shoulder and they were forced to orbit in an isolated, lonely manner.
So there L was, sitting in Raito's psychology class, marveling at the irony of it all.
"You're not doing this to spite anyone, are you, Raito-kun?" L asked purely out of curiosity.
"No," mumbled Raito under his breath.
It was no secret to L that Raito's reasons for attending the university had changed drastically. He'd gone from promising, law-biting citizen to posing juvenile delinquent who took a bite out of the law. He dragged himself to the university each day in order to keep his father sane and bide his time. He no longer studied as much as he used to and L noticed in alarm that his grades were infinitesimally declining. A decimal grade slump was a mountain in relation to Raito's spotless track record.
On the upside, with as much supervision as he got, Raito had nothing to do but hit the books. L just had a feeling that when Raito flipped through the text, he wasn't seeing anything. His eyes were out of focus and his mind was in a likewise state of disarray. Now, L hadn't forgotten that this was Raito Yagami he was talking about, but even Tokyo's rising star got tired of shining once in a while.
His brain was focused on his job.
He was a killer by profession.
Kira's heart no longer fit inside his education.
But the change was too small an issue to bother him with.
Once Raito was safely out of what L considered to be more of an auditorium than a classroom, the brunette turned to L and asked plainly, "Do you want anything?"
"World peace," replied L snidely, "with a side of cake, if you please."
"I can handle the cake," growled Raito, "it's the 'world peace' I'm working on."
"Cake then," offered the panda-eyed psychopomp.
"Cake it is," sighed the brunette.
Luckily for both of them, there were more accommodations on campus than a starchy cafeteria. The university had its own quaint café and bookstore tucked within its boundaries. Raito had adopted the strange habit lately of buying sweets for L, which, if L recalled, was an act of kindness and therefore completely outside of the brunette's nature.
Raito was getting smarter, more carefree, more devious, and above all, he was getting nicer.
…
No.
L was thinking too much. Far be it from Kira to buy cake for the mini-death with his own time and money. The sneaky little bastard must've been trying to bribe him into something.
L, however, accepted bribes.
Raito chose the most inconspicuous corner he could and alighted at the table there. He made a play on picking at his cake while the coon-eyed vulture inhaled it for him. Raito would turn his head away from the center of the room and bemusedly stab at the plate with his plastic fork while bits and pieces of cake would mysteriously disappear whenever the fork touched down.
L thanked him for his acting with a gratified belch.
Raito wrinkled his nose at him before drearily dragging the paper plate away.
And then it struck the mini-death as odd that Kira would drag a paper plate. By all means, he should have tossed it like a Frisbee made of gold.
L then had the shocking revelation that Kira may have been depressed.
About what?
Depression could only be brought about through his own foolish deeds, L had no doubt, but said foolish deeds had never bothered him before. So, once Raito had wandered aimlessly in the direction of a bench outside, L decided to tip him off.
"You don't seem as enthusiastic as usual, Raito-kun," he stated factually.
An annoyed sigh was his response. Raito pulled his phone out of his pocket in order to appear normal and flipped the screen up. "Ryuzaki," he grumbled as he brought the phone to his ear, "I've just been thinking more than usual."
"Oh dear," clicked L sadly, "That is a tragedy."
Raito glared flatly. "I just don't have that much else to do."
"And what would Kira prefer to silence?" the mini-death inquired with arms crossed and lips pursed.
"Nothing."
"It seems I've hit the nail on the head."
"Look," Raito sighed, "I'll admit it. I… enjoy our conversations sometimes."
L was so elated, his ego nearly exploded.
The brunette continued with a reluctant sigh and a scratch at the nape of his neck. "If I'm not at the university, I'm being watched. There's absolutely no way for me to talk to you anymore. I really hadn't considered this a problem before, but…" here, he trailed off in thoughtful, resentful frustration, "but I realize that I don't have anything else to do anymore. I never realized how much time in a day I spent talking to you."
"And since you no longer can, you miss speaking with me on a regular basis?" L mused sagely.
"It, well… yeah. Yes. I suppose," Raito drew out.
"Flattered," announced L. To anyone unfamiliar with the mini-death's mannerisms, he could have been considered snide. However, the true explanation for L's terse answer was something entirely different. He was, quite honestly, thrilled beyond further conversation.
Luckily for L, Raito was well-versed in the mini-death's body language and rolled his golden eyes as if this reaction was the sole purpose for his avoiding the confrontation in the first place. Despite this, words continued to roll from Raito's tongue.
"I just… miss not having time to myself anymore. I hate it," the brunette continued to blaze. "I hate being monitored all the time. I want to talk to you. I want to complain to you about everything." He then slumped somewhat and pulled at the corner of one eye with the pad of his index finger in an annoyed fashion.
Dear Raito-kun exhibited none of the juvenile characteristics of a brooding, prepubescent tween.
Definitely not.
He seemed generally perplexed, vexed, and angry at himself. L had no doubt that he was reflecting on his past acts of recklessness with a woeful eye and wondering how on earth he could have allowed himself to become so narrow-minded. Now, L understood that saying so would probably make Raito furious, but he ventured a hypothesis on the young man's past behavior.
"You were quite reckless," the mini-death stated.
As expected, Raito gave him a dirty look. Unexpected, however, was the brunette's lack of vehement verbal response. Even more surprising was his agreement.
"Perhaps," Raito barked in a clipped manner, "I crossed the line."
"Indeed," concurred L sadly. "Perhaps acting like a normal human child would be to your benefit."
"Beautiful," Raito not-complimented.
"I agree," L muttered to counter Raito's enthusiasm.
The brunette glared wearily at the mini-death, amber eyes flickering side to side in a peculiarly unfocused way. "You think I should try acting normal again?" he sighed.
"Yes," replied L.
Raito rocked toward the pavement once and fell back against the bench, melting miserably into the woodwork and groaning painfully. "I want the cameras gone, Ryuzaki. I want them gone."
"Perhaps you will have them gone," nodded L. Once Raito reverted to his normal, diligent, non-crazy, pre-Kira behavior, the mini-death was certain that his supervision would diminish. It was only logical, after all.
Raito eyed L suspiciously. The mini-death blinked at him with the most transparently good-natured look he could muster. This staring contest wound down at thirty seconds before Raito's golden eyes broke away and listlessly bored their way into something else.
He caught L's drift.
"Fine," grumbled Kira, "I'll give up." He then leered distastefully from the corner of his eye and spat, "But I won't like it."
This was good enough for L. "You'll like it well enough," the mini-death remarked in optimism. "The sooner you get it over with, the sooner you can return to your life of quiet desperation."
----
Raito sat in his room, dressed in the grim countenance of a pissy college student. For once, he wasn't acting.
The brunette was miserably angry at the world for hurling circumstances at him. He hated the situation he found himself in. Before then, he hadn't counted nonexistent personal freedom as a downside. He reasoned that constant supervision would only keep him out of danger.
No.
Forget A and W. Raito was going to pull the trigger himself.
This was just a spell, he knew, and he'd wear his anger out in an hour or so, but currently Kira wanted nothing more than to go on a relaxing, therapeutic, homicidal rampage.
But he couldn't kill people, he couldn't run off anymore, and he couldn't talk to Ryuzaki. Speaking of whom, the mini-death had attached himself to the ceiling and set about glaring into the lenses of one of A and W's cameras. Raito was certain that the panda-eyed man didn't find the silence as distasteful as he did. Ryuzaki, more likely, rejoiced in the cameras' existence. He praised A and W's judgment because now, since Raito couldn't talk to him, he wanted to.
In that sense, life sucked.
What a weakling Raito was shaping up to be. His plans for lessening suspicion hadn't earned him a wink in surveillance and he was involuntarily warming up to Ryuzaki.
Seriously.
Raito had been completely unaware of it until that afternoon. Not only did he tolerate Ryuzaki's company, but he liked it.
Loved it.
He, Raito Yagami, Kira and Lord of Mortality, loved Ryuzaki's company.
The mini-death's constant monologue was always interesting, but he missed talking with him. He wanted to have a two-sided conversation instead of whipping his cellular phone out on campus whenever he felt the need to spill his guts.
Ryuzaki was like a pillow to punch and sleep on, depending on Raito's mood, and, strangely, the brunette felt comfort in the fact that the mini-death would always fight back. Ryuzaki loved Raito beyond adolescent attraction, but should Raito pick a fight with him, he always found the guts to deal a deck of karma straight into the brunette's face. Also, Ryuzaki didn't sugarcoat much. If he disliked something Raito did or said, the Deck of Karma was soon at hand. When Raito was consciously being a snot, the mini-death shot him down. The only time Ryuzaki glazed his words was when Raito was in an extraordinarily bad mood.
This was the other thing Raito loved about Ryuzaki.
He knew how to drive Raito to the edge, but not over it. When Kira preoccupied himself with gloom and darkness, the mini-death was there to point out the silver lining on his thunderhead. This was convenient, considering Kira didn't work as well under pressure.
"Hm," hummed Ryuzaki sadly from the top of the wall, "I wonder when their batteries run out."
Raito rolled his eyes in a glum sort of way. The batteries had been changed, of course. That is, unless their size said nothing about their duration.
Much like watch batteries.
Raito sincerely doubted the ability of such low-voltage batteries to power cameras like that, but perhaps the cameras, being just as small in nature, were of a lower grade than usual. Considering their diminutive size, they were probably monochromatic and pixilated.
Plus, it didn't seem to Raito like anyone had violated his personal space since the cameras had been installed a long, long time ago.
Very long.
…
Wait.
Even cameras that small couldn't have survived so long without a battery change. The bugs would have been dead too.
A sudden jolt of optimism surged through Raito's gut and he sat bolt upright in his bed. Ryuzaki's coal-black eyes snapped over peculiarly. "What is the matter, Raito-kun?" he inquired.
The brunette calmly rolled toward the edge of his bed and fished around on the floor for his discarded cell phone. Once he had it between his fingers, he hefted himself back into the center of his bed and flipped it up. The happy little pixels on his screen greeted him with an enthusiastically blinding display of joy. Raito then drew the phone close to his body and pretended to punch in a number. Ryuzaki watched in amusement from the ceiling as Raito boredly shouldered the phone and twiddled his toes. After a moment of silence, he droned, "Hello? Yeah, hi. This is Raito. Can you do something for me really quick?"
Instantly, the mini-death's eyes lit up and he replied, "Gladly."
"Can you check your webcam for me and see if it's still working?"
Ryuzaki lunged for the camera he'd been making faces at and seized it. Raito watched tensely as the mini-death looked it over. He couldn't see it from his vantage point, which only served to make him more anxious.
After what seemed like an hour, the mini-death backed into view with the most perplexed look on his face. Raito pleaded with his eyes.
"Well," remarked the mini-death strangely, "I don't know why I hadn't thought of it."
"Hadn't thought of what?" the brunette grouched.
"Now that I consider, though, it makes much more sense," the mini-death mused. He tilted his head at Raito and blinked with two raccoon-black eyes. "It's dead."
Raito's heart leapt into his throat and he hoped fervently that his elation was invisible. In a level voice, he addressed the phone. "Well, do you have another one you could use?"
Ryuzaki went about the perimeter of the room, checking anywhere and everywhere, seeming to catch the same result. It took him a while, and for a long time, Raito had to wing his own conversation to cover the silence. "Is the lens broken? Is it unplugged? How do you know it's dead?" the brunette inquired rapid-fire, eager to learn Ryuzaki's thoughts.
"Well," the mini-death began as he searched another camera, "I'm quite attuned to circuitry. Unlike you, I can hear static when I listen for it. I hear nothing from these cameras. Also, I've tested the wiring in each one and so far, I feel no electrical current." He then perched upon the crest of Raito's office chair and chewed on one thumbnail. "Their batteries have run dry. Judging by their size, they have not been functional for a while."
Raito may have leapt for joy, but he retained his pride and Ryuzaki hadn't conducted a full sweep yet. He kept his end of the imaginary phone conversation while praising his own insight and Ryuzaki's efforts. He was brilliant. They were brilliant. Kira and his partner in crime were unstoppable! If Ryuzaki discovered every camera to be dead, then all he had to do was check the bugs. Raito was confident that the mini-death had memorized the positions of each device in the room. He would find them all and then Raito would be free!
Free!
"They're all dead," mused the mini-death. "Quite dead."
"Well, do you have a microphone you can use?"
"No," announced Ryuzaki, "All of the devices in your room have shut down. Though I did notice one or two outside in the hall." And with that, the mini-death drifted briefly through the wall.
When he returned, he stated, "The bugs in the hall have been removed. However, the ones installed in your room remain. None of the remaining bugs or cameras continue to function."
Raito deflated in the most relaxed sigh he had ever accomplished.
No more cameras.
No more bugs.
Big Brother was no longer watching and Raito was about to throw himself a party.
"Though I do wonder why they left the broken devices in your room," the mini-death mused from the foot of the bed.
Yes. Now there was a disconcerting thought to bring Kira plummeting back to reality. Why, indeed, had A and W left the cameras in his room? Since the ones in the hall had been removed, his nemeses must've left the cameras there on purpose. Perhaps… they expected him to find the cameras and throw a fit. Why, though? What could they gain from that?
Unless…
"Uh, do you think you could go out and buy another webcam?" Raito questioned the phone.
And silently, Ryuzaki had gone.
Relentlessly, the mini-death flowed through the furniture. He oozed through Raito's desk, slithered into the closet, filtered through each fiber of Raito's folded clothing, combed the floor, scoured the bookshelf…
It took the mini-death an hour to complete and Raito had long since given up his fake conversation. He retired to a board-stiff position on his bed, impatient for Ryuzaki's verdict. The mini-death wafted noiselessly into the hall. Raito tensely abandoned his bed and went for the computer. Just in case he was still being monitored, he kept himself busy on the internet. He stuck to shopping websites where he could distractedly compare digital cameras without attracting the suspicion he got from surfing online essays and news documents.
Night fell and Raito was called down for dinner before he'd seen any sign of the mini-death. He frosted his attitude with fatigue in order to conform to his earlier medication symptoms. He stopped taking his pills, but needed to act as if he were still zombieing around in a drug-induced stupor. This was not far from the truth, as his anxiety was taking its toll on his energy, so the part was easy to act.
Raito truthfully lacked an appetite that night, so he picked at his food and scanned the floor for Ryuzaki.
A familiar voice interrupted him.
"Raito," Soichiro boomed, "You haven't eaten."
"No," the brunette admitted, "I'm not hungry."
Sachiko was strangely silent during this exchange, but Raito was no longer surprised. Since he'd acted up, she'd taken to withdrawing from conversation as often as she could. She was a whole lot quieter than she used to be, and Raito wasn't sure he liked it. He left her alone, though.
Unlike her mother, Sayu was talkative as she'd ever been.
"Raito, you need to eat something," she grouched with her lower lip pursed disapprovingly, "or you're gonna' get really pale and skinny."
"I thought you didn't want me to get fat," Raito goaded.
"Yeah, well being too skinny isn't good for you either, and it's just as ugly," she retorted with a bounce of her pigtails.
Raito aimed an eye at his father, who agreed with Sayu. He generally kept his glance to the floor, though, but he never once saw his vanishing mini-death. So, feeling somewhat trapped, Raito sighed, "I'm not trying to starve myself, I'm just not hungry. That's all. Besides, I had a snack earlier." The last bit was a lie, but he wanted to go back to his room.
Soichiro didn't take the bait. "Eat something, Raito. Do it for your mother."
The brunette ventured a sidelong leer at Sachiko, who, in turn, was glaring at Soichiro for bringing her into the argument. Raito pitied her anxiety. Even though his own unease was drawing the confines of his stomach to a central point, he found room for a bite or two. When Soichiro was satisfied, Raito dismissed himself from the table and headed back to his room.
"Raito," Soichiro's voice rumbled when the brunette was halfway up the stairs, "Why don't you stay downstairs with us?"
"No thanks," Raito declined cautiously, "I'm tired. I think I'm going to bed early."
"Suit yourself," muttered Soichiro in a disheartened manner.
Raito lingered there for a moment. He felt obligated to spend time with his family, but he was Ryuzaki-less. Raito was anxious. Maybe when the mini-death showed his face again, he'd feel better.
The brunette continued his eerily quiet trek up the stairs and padded over to his door. Prepared for another hour of waiting and nail-chewing, he bumped the door open.
And there was Ryuzaki.
Raito nearly tripped, fell over, and died.
As a matter of fact, he accomplished the second on his list once he closed the door behind him. Raito slumped tiredly against the doorframe as the butterflies in his gut pulled miserably on his heart. Gravity dragged him slowly to the floor and as he fell, he doe-eyed Ryuzaki into a response.
The mini-death was perched thoughtfully at Raito's footboard, gnawing on a nail and looking genuinely pleased with himself. His ringed eyes flickered and snapped over to the slipping Kira. Ryuzaki smiled. "Well, aren't you going to ask me how my search went?"
Raito huffed and puffed. Where had he been? What did he fi… wait. If he was waiting for Raito to address him formally on the matter, then…
"Ryuzaki," hissed the floored brunette, "Where the hell have you been?"
----
The question would have held more monotonous pizzazz if Raito had said 'Where the hell have you been all my life,' but L secretly knew that the brunette was incapable of that degree of inner sentimentality and that the answer to his question would have been 'at my computer,' which was just plain condescending. The answer to 'where the hell have you been' wasn't much better.
"I took the liberty of surveying your house," L announced blandly. It appeared that both he and Raito were running on fumes. They had worn their energy to the bone.
Raito's reserves of fiery wrath, however, never failed to impress.
"You searched the entire house?" he blazed.
"Yes," said L, "and the exterior of your house as well."
The brunette's infernal flame died suddenly and he was left in the ashes of a mental breakdown. Raito slid completely to the floor and sat there, head pressed back into the doorframe and feet flopping lazily to the sides. "The entire house," he sighed, "Why in hell…"
"Because I will not endanger you any further," stated L factually. "If you want to talk to me so badly, I'll be gladly to accommodate, but not until I have made absolutely sure that no one else will listen. Raito-kun's safety is my priority. Therefore, I have searched this house to the foundations. I have found nothing."
For a while, the brunette was completely silent. He gathered his wits and muttered, "Well, no wonder why you were gone so long…"
L grinned lewdly at him. "You were worried about me."
"No," grumbled Raito, pushing against the doorframe and finding his footing once again. "We've gone through this. I hate it when you leave. I don't like being alone."
"Indeed, indeed," droned L. He eyed the peculiar mortal as he stumbled tiredly back toward his bed. L watched as Raito slumped halfway onto his mattress before ungracefully hauling the rest of his body into the center of the bed. Selfish little Raito splayed his arms and legs toward every corner of the mattress and lay there on his stomach, sighing louder than a freight train.
"You really don't like it when I leave," L observed.
"You're a genius, really," the mortal remarked snidely with his face in the quilts, "I never would have guessed."
"Hm," hummed L.
"I mean," ranted Raito, "I've only thrown a fit the other several times you've left me."
"Half of those were not my fault," L pointed out.
"Shut up, smartass," grumbled Kira.
The mini-death smiled and edged toward one of Raito's feet. He knew better than to fool with Raito's temper, but he also considered it to be one of the finer points in life. That in mind, he suggested quite politely, "Perhaps a nice hot shower would cheer you up."
"Not in a million years, Ryuzaki. Lay off."
"Oh, but I much prefer to lie on, if you don't mind," the mini-death announced wistfully as he drifted onto Raito's bed.
Raito punched him.
L felt he handled it pretty well. The pain started in dull, and then settled to something more oppressive. He rolled his abused shoulder once or twice before kneeing Raito in the side. The brunette seized up and took a sharp breath of air, but released it calmly. He eyed L up and down, sizing him up, and then determined that the two of them were equal and any further fighting on his part would be futile.
Either that or he was utterly exhausted and knew that he couldn't win.
Now, L was quite tired, but he couldn't resist the opportunity Raito's lazy fatigue gave him. In response to L's kick, the brunette had lay on his side with his back to L and his head resting on his wrists. The mini-death arranged himself in a similar manner, though he could say that he did it with considerably less grace than Raito.
The brunette lay there, still, with the exception of the occasional rise and fall of a sigh. His blankets had caught his clothes and his lower back peeked out from the folds of his shirt. L definitely would have taken the chance to molest Raito then and there, but Raito was grumpy and L was still a mass of something-more-than-arctic air.
So as enticing as it was, L left Raito's bare skin alone.
Instead, he reached out and trailed a finger around the curve of Raito's shoulder blade.
"You freak," Raito muttered irately and rolled his shoulder to escape L's touch.
L ignored him.
He traced the contours of Raito's spine to the bottom of his ribcage. The brunette grunted at him once and squirmed, but his fit ended quickly when he gave up the ghost and accepted his fate. With only the occasional flinch from Raito, L traced lazy circles into the brunette's back. As L ran his fingers along Raito's shirt, the brunette's shoulders gradually shrugged and slumped. His back rose and fell in a slow, deep, sleepy sigh.
L quite liked Raito when he wasn't tense.
They both lay there for a while and nothing was said. L fancied he could write secret code into the brunette's back and Raito would answer, but threw the notion away and settled for curly-cues and crop circles. He expected the wary mortal to remain wide-awake during such a blatant act of affection, but when he edged closer to Raito, he found the brunette's head lolled to the side and his dark eyelashes drawn over his eyes like black velvet curtains. L's first thought was that the day's events had worn Kira out. The brunette was incredibly tired, so he couldn't bring himself to stay alert.
But he was definitely awake.
The eye that L could see glimmered before revealing a ribbon of amber and white. Raito's eyebrows drew together as if he either disapproved of L's staring or disapproved of the fact that he was no longer being molested through his shirt.
L sincerely hoped for the latter.
In any case, Raito's lack of verbalization was a plus. He wasn't angry.
L flopped back down onto the mattress and continued to draw pictures in Raito's shirt, but he crept closer. His fingers wandered cautiously around the crest of Raito's waist. L watched for a sign, careful not to upset the human lying in front of him. Oddly enough, Raito did nothing. This was the encouragement L needed in order to pull Raito slowly into his chest.
Raito groaned at him, but L didn't care. The mini-death happily tugged a deadweight Raito Yagami snug against himself. L traced circles around the brunette's naval, but he didn't seem to care.
"Ryuzaki," Raito muttered tiredly.
"Hm?" L replied, feeling bubblier and sickeningly happier than he ever had.
"Why did they leave the cameras in my room?"
L set his jaw, quite disappointed. Was there something wrong with him? What was it about L that failed in creating a sufficiently romantic atmosphere?
"Well," L muttered once he forced his jaw to work, "Many of the cameras have been removed. I found ten cameras and two bugs. I remember considerably more, yet when I searched the house, I found no others. They have not been relocated, they have been removed."
"Hm…" sighed Raito, trying to maintain consciousness. "Wonder why they left those here…"
"Perhaps they expected you to find them," L grumbled bitterly to himself.
Why?
Why?
What was it? L knew for a fact that he wasn't the most attractive person in the world, as Raito made perfectly clear, but it hadn't bothered him lately. So what was it? Did he smell bad? Was he awkward? Did he just fail at romanticism?
"Something's bothering you," Raito pointed out.
"Yes," grumbled L. "It would seem that I am incapable of creating any sort of romantic atmosphere. Do you agree?"
"Ryuzaki," Raito deadpanned, "You're a freak."
"Is that it?" puzzled L, "Is that my problem?"
"Maybe," shrugged Raito.
"I am a freak," L rolled the syllables curiously across his tongue, "I am a freak. I ama freak…"
Raito coughed irately. "I was kidding. I was just curious. I don't want to fall asleep without fixing this problem first. I can't fall asleep without fixing it. I just thought I could use your opinion."
"I see," droned L. Perhaps it wasn't he who was incapable of romanticism. Raito had Kira-A.D.H.D. Assured that he wasn't the only one with problems, L supplied, "In that case, I suspect that these cameras were left here to gauge your reaction to them. Though I cannot understand why there are no cameras to record your behavior. I suppose your father could provide this information…"
"Hm," snorted Raito. "Wonder if I should yell at him."
L traced a lollypop swirl into Raito's belly button. Raito sighed at him and flexed one of his feet before falling limp once again.
"What kind of fit should I throw, do you think?" the brunette muttered as if nothing was happening.
L mused for a moment. "Rant, perhaps," he supplied. "Think about it. Consider the insecure, head-case sort of a young man you've become. How would someone in your state of drug-muddled mental instability handle this?"
"Yell," Raito brainstormed, "become reclusive and self-centered. Embarrassed, maybe?"
"Yes. Considering your magazines and e-mails to Mikami-" that whore- "you should act as if you had something to hide and your father found it. Both you and your father have established that he already knew about your e-mails, but I believe a generous dose of humiliation is in order."
"I've doled my emotions out too generously already," the brunette muttered darkly.
"Precisely," continued L. "You have already established your attitude. This is a good way to end it. You can 'discuss' the matter with Halle, have a few family meetings, boring and tedious though they may be, calm down, and you've won."
Raito smiled. "Simple and easily remembered. I like it."
"Glad I could be of assistance," beamed L.
With that, the brunette rolled out of L's grip and shoved himself out of bed. In a flash, his eyes were bright as they always were, as if he'd been awake and ready all of his life. He scrubbed his scalp with the palms of his hands and then rubbed his eyelids with the knuckles of his thumbs. He appeared to have woken up from a nightmare, bedhead and all.
He stalked noisily over to the door, jerked it open, and yelled Soichiro's name at the top of his lungs.
----
"Then I saw something shining on my bookcase."
"And then?"
"I looked."
"And?"
"It was a camera. It was a fucking camera."
Raito was throwing the most fantastic fit of his life. Really, he had never felt better. There were no more cameras in his house. There were no more bugs in his house.
He was free.
Raito was free.
But he was not safe. A and W were sly, but Raito had sense enough to recognize that something was amiss. Since they hadn't caught him on camera, his nemeses were hoping that, in a fit of joy, Raito would parade his identity through the streets with reckless abandon, thus ruining himself. No such luck to A and W, though.
Raito would not be tricked.
He was surprised.
He was an innocently crazy teenager who had recently discovered a camera in his room. He was afraid of what was caught and possibly broadcast by this camera. He had been mistrustful of everyone ever since and his NPA surveillance had doubled in case he wanted to go crying to Mikami about his problems. He held an hour long conversation over the phone with his not-boyfriend discussing his parents' betrayal.
All in all, Raito conveyed to the world that he was angry.
Not that he was happy.
Kira would have been happy.
'No more cameras!' said Kira.
'Fucking cameras!' said Raito.
The brunette had a considerably sturdy façade to rest on.
"Oh my," whistled Halle, "You're sure they were working?"
Raito rolled his eyes theatrically. "Of course I'm sure!" he stammered, "Why the hell would anyone put dead cameras in my room?" Once he calmed down, Halle replied soothingly that everything would be fine and there must've been a reason that the cameras were there.
Raito disagreed with her. "A reason? Oh sure there was a reason," the brunette muttered darkly, "He wanted to spy on me. What if there are pictures of me all over the internet now? What if he sold videos of me undressing? Do you have ANY idea how sick that is? Do you have any idea how scared I am?"
Halle let him steam for a while and instead turned to Soichiro, who was sitting in the next chair. He appeared very calm. Raito instantly decided that, real or not, he would have a reason for his 'actions.'
"Is any of this true?" the blonde woman asked Soichiro.
"No," he denied, "I would never do such a thing to my son."
Raito sat gloomily in his spot, leering at his father. What reasons had he come up with? The brunette had a reaction to each one. If Soichiro announced that he was merely keeping an eye on him in case his schizophrenia acted up again, Raito would sulk and mutter about his family's complete lack of trust in him. If his father said that he wasn't the one who set the cameras up, Raito would rant, rave, and speculate about the culprit, express his extreme insecurity, hide from the world, and deliberately do a shoddy job on his homework.
Raito went through his list of scenarios, reciting each one as he passed it, and waited.
"Then what reason did you have for putting cameras in your son's room?" Halle quizzed.
Soichiro hesitated. He sighed and lost his impeccable posture. Running a hand through his graying hair, Soichiro turned to his son and said, "Raito…"
The brunette listened.
"…The NPA put the cameras in your room."
…What?
Countless though Raito's predictions were, he never expected his father to tell the truth. Raito curled his nails into the cushions, set his jaw, and his eyes drifted wider than they should have. His legs seized up and he froze in his seat.
Raito panicked.
What now?
Anything he said could be used against him. Raito knew there was recording equipment set up in the room. The brunette knew that somewhere, the footage was being reviewed with a critical eye. If Raito made one false move, he was damned.
So this was A and W's plan.
Trap Kira in a corner, tell him the truth, and observe his reaction.
Okay… Raito could work with this. He relaxed and the stress in his limbs dissolved. All he had to do was act astonished. He couldn't flounder too much and he couldn't let the revelation blow over his shoulder. Raito would feel surprised and betrayed.
"What?" the brunette stammered as his eyes flickered rapidly from Halle to Soichiro. "Why would they want cameras in my room?" Raito tensed and raised his voice, "What's going on?"
Soichiro beat Halle to the punch. "Raito, please understand. You've helped us solve a few tough cases in the past, so you must know how important evidence is to us."
"Evidence of what?" Raito interrupted brashly, "And why the hell were you looking for it in my room?"
"Raito," Soichiro sighed, "Please don't be angry. I was doing my job-"
"I don't care about your job," the brunette interrupted again, rising out of his seat, taking a defensive stance, and balling his hands into fists. "I want to know what you were looking for in my room! Were you… were you suspecting me of something? Am I a suspect? Am I a suspect?" Raito blazed incredulously.
"…Yes," Soichiro began slowly and sadly, "You are."
Raito dropped his shoulders first in shocked silence, then sent light tremors to his fists. He slid his eyes past Soichiro and glazed his vision over. "What…?"
Soichiro cleared his throat and began, "The NPA suspected… that you were Kira."
...Oh, you're kidding.
Soichiro wasn't just spilling A and W's beans, he was pitching them all over the place like a flower girl with a basket full of petals.
…Well, alright. Raito thought it was a horribly bad move on A and W's part, but they must've been desperate, and Raito quite enjoyed his enemies' desperation.
"You…" he shook and whispered slowly, "You thought… Why? I mean, how could I-"
"That's what we were trying to find out," Soichiro sighed, dragging the palm of one hand down his face in fatigue. "The NPA and I knew that you were intelligent, strong of will, and straightforward, and then… your Schizophrenia hit. I protested as much as I could, but… Raito, the only way I could allow the NPA to install those cameras was to convince myself that you weren't Kira. I know you aren't Kira, Raito. I believe in you, but that person in your head scares me. I knew you weren't Kira, but I thought that, maybe… Ryuzaki…"
Neither Soichiro nor Raito chose to finish that thought, as both of them understood what was left unsaid, and Raito quite liked the dramatic silence it provided.
Raito made a show of falling awkwardly back onto the couch. There, he took a minute's worth of deep breaths and thought about what a fine predicament he found himself in. He had specifically asked not to receive Ryuzaki's input on any pressing matter because he wanted to do the figuring himself and single-handedly dig himself out of the hole he'd fallen into. Raito thought alone.
His father obviously thought that Ryuzaki was either Kira or a messenger of Kira, trying to convince Raito to do his bidding. This notion came first of all.
Second, Halle, who had been silently observing the conversation, was still looking on. Raito instantly inferred that she and his father were most definitely working together now, even if they hadn't been allied from the beginning of this fiasco. Had they not been allies, Soichiro never would have indulged that volume of classified information. He never would have explained the reason for the cameras. The NPA and its missions were now under strict confidentiality.
Interesting.
The NPA worked with Soichiro.
Soichiro had joined forces with Halle.
Halle relayed information to A and W.
Raito's own father had allied himself with the two agents his son hated most and therefore, Raito's father was Raito's enemy.
Very, very interesting.
"He… never told me to kill anyone. He never told me to do anything," Raito murmured softly, wringing his hands with eyes downcast. Raito then brought his palms up to his face, doubled over, rested his elbows on his thighs, dug the heels of his palms into his eyelids, and denied the very thing of which he tried to convince the world earlier: "I'm not crazy," Raito muttered, "I'm not crazy…"
Soichiro lost himself in silence and Halle leered on. "Your case is strange, Yagami-kun," she addressed the brunette formally, "You may behave irrationally sometimes, but Ryuzaki doesn't tell you to. This 'Ryuzaki' of yours is also considerably dynamic for a figment of the imagination. His moods and personality change, whereas normally he would be a static character." She mused for a moment before flipping her pen in her fingers and asking, "Is your medicine working?"
…Shit.
Just shit.
Raito sincerely hoped he was reading too deeply into Halle's schemes, but he recognized a trap set in her words. It wasn't so much a trap as a choice: Whether Raito wanted to tell the truth and leap into the unknown or to lie and risk screwing up again. If Raito told her that his pills weren't working and that he'd been pretending all this time, his suspicion would rise and God knew what A and W would have him do. If he lied and told her that his treatment worked, he risked screwing up again, which could raise his suspicion even more.
The second choice seemed the better, but if he lied, could she tell?
Could she discern through looks and tone of voice whether or not Raito was telling the truth?
Therein lay the trick.
Therein lay the bear trap Raito's foot was hovering over. Halle made a living out of interpreting behavior. The brunette prided himself with his lying skills, but he kept away from Halle's deductive reasoning. The brunette could easily lie when no questions were asked of him, but when asked to respond to a yes-no question, Raito began to doubt himself.
But Raito always kept an escape route close to his heart.
Kira always slipped straight through A and W's fingers.
The brunette kept silent. He stayed jackknifed into his knees as if contemplating his answer and its consequences. This should have been Soichiro and Halle's tip-off to worry.
"Raito," Soichiro growled with a stiff voice, urging him on.
The brunette made his decision, took a deep breath, and mumbled into his elbows.
"I h'vnm mem…" grumble, mutter, sigh.
"What was that?" Halle inquired.
Raito heaved his upper body off of his knees and fell miserably into the back of the couch. "I said I haven't been taking my pills."
----
L didn't mind letting Raito operate on his own. As a matter of fact, he enjoyed watching the way the mortal handled himself.
When he told Soichiro and Halle that he hadn't taken his pills, interrogation occurred. Halle demanded to know why Raito hadn't taken his medication. The brunette replied that it made him feel disgusting, he skipped one day and felt worlds better, and then he decided that he wouldn't take it at all. His father wondered why he hadn't heard Raito and L talking. L secretly knew that the brunette's father had seen his son's talkativeness on camera before his medication and after. Before, Raito sang like a bird. After, he said nothing. Having a good excuse for everything, Raito replied that he didn't want anyone to know because he could handle his 'disease' by himself and he hated his pills.
Then, Halle asked why he said anything.
'Did you want me to lie?' Raito spat back.
To this, Soichiro replied that he was lying anyway. Raito retorted, telling his audience that he felt guilty wasting his father's money that way. He planned on telling Halle privately in hopes of changing his prescription to a placebo, but he feared that she wouldn't accomplish his wishes and that she would tell his father anyway. He didn't want to disappoint his father any longer, but he'd been driven into a corner.
Then, he asked if there was an alternate treatment to the pills he was taking.
L suggested shock treatment, which no one heard.
But maybe Raito heard, because he'd seen A Beautiful Mind, read Hemmingway's biography, done some medical research, and determined shock therapy to be nothing but trouble.
That and, considering Kira's occupational hazards, he'd die of it.
Halle had announced that she needed more time to think up an alternative therapy for Raito and Soichiro had, in his blazing paternal rage, sent Raito to his room.
Raito did not complain.
He was quite happy in his camera-less sanctuary, and he made it well-known. "Two birds, one stone," the brunette remarked as he tossed his pillow up in the air and caught it.
"Mm," remarked L lazily, "poor birds."
Raito just smiled at him.
L noticed this. "You seem quite happy," he remarked. Raito caught his pillow in midair again and grinned idly in the mini-death's direction. "I am happy."
L sat awhile in thought. "Yes," he conceded, "considering the activities you get so excited about, I suppose being stuck in your room with no control over the consequences of your actions is only fitting to your tastes. You have the strangest sense of security."
"I've successfully avoided another one of their traps," Raito announced flippantly. "A and W tried to fool me again."
"Quite," L droned, "I suppose you planned on foiling them by taking the third way out, driving them to insanity by providing them false evidence or none at all, forcing them to make sudden decisions concerning your suspicion, and not lead them to abandon the case completely, but make them desperate enough to reveal their Achilles' Heel so you can strike it down with your mighty Fingers of Justice."
"In a run-on sentence, yes."
"It was not a run-on sentence."
"It was long enough."
"You digress."
"I do."
"I see. Am I correct in assuming that you hoped to achieve all of the above?"
"Yes," Raito replied.
"And you think you accomplished all that in the span of an hour?" L deadpanned, unimpressed.
"No," Raito shrugged and tossed his pillow again, "I'm working on it. That was just one step."
"One of many in a conglomeration of evil schemes," L surmised. The way the mini-death saw things, Raito was taking credit for the various, important events of circumstance which ended well for him. Over all, he had the same plan from the beginning: make A and W mess up. L gave him credit for that, but Raito didn't need to take every step forward as a leap to the moon.
The brunette scowled at L and crowned him with a pillow. L didn't mind. Instead, he chose to discuss with Raito a matter of utmost importance.
As Raito selfishly snatched his pillow back, L quizzed, "What are you expecting, now that your enemies know you're a good liar and you haven't taken your pills?"
"They don't know I'm a good liar," Raito stated factually, "Only that I'm self-conscious and self-sufficient."
"Indeed," grumbled L. "Now tell me how you plan to deal with this."
"I plan to kill as many criminals as I did before we knew that the cameras were dead. I'll deal with my therapy as it comes. Above all, I plan to act only marginally on the eccentric side."
"Marginally?"
"As if my crazy spell was just a buildup of tension running its course."
"Hm," L thought with a thumb between his teeth, "Seems logical, but I don't think the transition should be drastic."
"It won't," Raito assured. "If Halle is a true head-shrink, she'll blame my recent attitude on the lack of communication between my father and me."
L could have made an argument on Raito's logic, but it would have been too small and detail-oriented to be of any significance. Raito's schemes were working themselves out. Even if his insane spell hadn't been the best idea, it probably cleared him of most suspicion. There were no clues to Raito's criminal activity during the more normal half of his escapade. There were no clues to Raito's criminal activity during the more eccentric half of his escapade. In all, Raito had exhibited no changes during his surveillance except his attitude. His criminal record was as white as snow.
L was quite proud of him.
And then, Raito's cell phone rang.
----
It was him.
The bastard finally called back.
Raito snaked over to the edge of the bed and fished around on the floor for his phone. He saw the caller ID. Sure enough, the caller was unidentified.
He flipped his phone up and barked a loud, "Who are you?" into the receiver.
"Won't say," the voice drawled in a digitized American accent.
Raito rolled his eyes. Yes, it was the same man who called him Kira, and he still intended to keep his identity a secret. The brunette growled, "What do you want?"
"Cigarettes," the man demanded. Then he added quickly, "And gasoline. Gas prices are hellishly high these days, and I should know."
"Really," mumbled Raito, unimpressed.
"Really," replied the voice, "Everything was cheaper in the eighties."
Raito didn't bother to ask how someone with such a young voice could know anything about the eighties.
"Why are you calling me again?" Raito sighed.
"What? You didn't want me to call you back after leaving you hanging?"
"Never mind," huffed Raito. Ryuzaki was giving the phone strange looks from his perch on the computer chair. The brunette ignored him. "Yesterday, you said something that confused me."
"You're Kira," stated the unknown caller.
"And you're an invisible snow demon that runs around stealing people's souls," retorted Raito in a way that anyone but a mini-death would find ridiculous.
A slow, dark, devious smile condensed in the speaker and oozed out of the phone. "Why yes," said the voice calmly, "how observant of you."
"Psycho," muttered Raito.
"Psychopomp," the voice grinned back.
And now, Raito could be absolutely sure what he was talking to. No one in the human realm other than Raito knew what a psychopomp was. He sneered smugly to himself and melted back into his bed. He droned, "So. Gasoline and cigarettes, huh?"
"No. Cigarettes, Solid Snake, Wild Turkey, Gasoline, sex, and world peace. In that order."
"You're a comedian," grumbled Raito wryly.
"Sometimes," admitted the voice with an audible shrug. "Other times I prefer to be bland and boring. You caught me on a good day."
"I see," Raito muttered. He wondered whether or not he could trust this thing. He knew that, sooner or later, he would have to befriend the mysterious voice. Should he make an enemy out of it, a psychopomp could manipulate pens, paper and whatnot, eventually dropping hints to the very agency Raito wanted to dispose of.
Raito decided instantly that he didn't want to get on the other mini-death's bad side.
"So," the voice drawled lazily, "Who've you got there with you?"
He obviously meant Ryuzaki. Raito cast a quizzical eye at the mini-death. Silently, he asked Ryuzaki for permission to give his name.
"Yes," nodded Ryuzaki, and then he froze for a second in thought. After his episode ended, the mini-death gnawed on his nail and said, "Tell him… it's L. See if he recognizes it."
'L?' Raito mouthed, forming the foreign letter on his tongue. He'd have to work on his phonetics.
But why 'L?' Did mini-deaths have some sort of alphabetical code? Whatever. Raito suspected from the moment he met Ryuzaki that 'Ryuzaki' wasn't his true name.
Maybe Ryuzaki didn't have a name.
"Uh," Raito paused and returned his attention to the phone, "It's L."
"L?" mused the voice, "L… Oh. Oh my. You got stuck with that old geezer? Boy, that's a laugh, that is."
Raito scoffed. "He is not old."
"Is too. Thinks too much and doesn't know how to have fun." The voice grinned, "Am I right or am I right?"
"I suppose he can be a bit boring sometimes-" and Ryuzaki leered angrily at him from the chair- "but he isn't loud and annoying like you. How do you know him?"
"Ouch, by the way," remarked the lackluster voice. "I heard about him through a friend who heard about him through a friend."
"Reliable," droned Raito. "Who is this friend's friend?" Ryuzaki may have been a mite boring, but Raito secretly suspected that he wouldn't be if he didn't worry so much about Raito's well-being. Raito was thankful for his dullness.
"Don't know his name. Never met him," the voice denied.
"Right. Who's your friend, then?" Raito quizzed.
"Oh, someone special. Much like you, actually, but minus the stick up the ass."
"Funny."
"Hm. Yes, I suppose he was a lot like you. Smart, serious, Kira…"
"Wait, what?" Raito interrupted.
"Kira. He and I happened to be in California at the same time. He wanted snipers, I could shoot, and we hit it off. Well, I suppose I was better at drive-bys, but-"
"Just shut up for a second," Raito demanded. "You met Kira?"
"Yep."
"Kira."
"Yep."
Elephants solidifying out of the excitement in his chest, Raito asked, "Just out of curiosity, who was this Kira?"
"Oh, blonde, dark eyes, funny Spanish gangster accent… Loved chocolate. Nobody knew his real name, but most people called him Mello."
----
Chibi Raito: Fantastic.
Chibi Misa: Another chapter ends in a phone call. By the same person. You're losing your edge, Swirly.
Me: Wrong! Cliffhangers are my edge. Quite literally.
Chibi L: Sorry for the wait, but believe it or not, out of the two fanfics Swirl writes, she has only time for one lately. This is the one she is more inspired to write.
Me: Yeah. College is stressing me out. SATs are stressing me out. So yeah. That, and I got my first 'C' ever on a semester report card. D: I r sad.
Chibi Raito: Sympathy. Please and thank you.
Chibi Misa: Bitte und danke.
Chibi L: Molim i hvala.
Me: I love you guys. Liek, srsly. Lol. Don't be surprised if this thing gets delayed even further. I r procrastinator and I r worried about my future. So I r worried about college, then I r worried about writing. Luffs.
Chibi Raito: Deliberate grammatical errors aside, become one with our happy reviewing community.
Chibi L: Or renew your membership with another review! We love you guys in the most non-romantic way possible, and we want you to feel loved in the most non-romantic way possible.
Chibi Misa: That's what we're all about, isn't it? Non-romance?
Me: Come be a part of our distant relationship. Loves on you all.
Chibi Misa: Review, review, review!