I own nothing except for E and the story. Sorry for the wait, but it's been hot up here and so I haven't really done anything . but, here it is!
Days passed, three of them. Much time was spent between Matt and Mello's room and D's. They knew there was something important they were missing, but couldn't think of it, and had no way to find anything new because L had taken adamant control of everything. E's empty room gave way to no clues, and no amount of searching led them to find the rest of E's furniture and belongings. Frustrated on the third afternoon, they grouped in D's room and lounged around, trying to think in the heavy silence.
B, lying on the floor, stared up at D's overhanging foot, but really into space. He had stopped trying to ooze L-ness, since he was exhausted and it hadn't been helping, so was neither in an L sitting position nor a hunched standing position, but a B sprawled-on-floor position, long legs in danger of being tripped over, white shirt hiked up a bit to reveal a rough patch of hair trailing up to his belly button, a stark contrast to both the shirt and the milky skin beneath it. One hand tangled in his drooping, greasy hair, both scratching lazily at his itching scalp and breaking the failing spikes. The other hand was resting on his stomach.
Connected to D's foot was D's leg, which was mostly covered by pink skirt, which extended up to be an entire pink dress. Under that dress was D herself. D was sitting on her bed, propped up by pillows against the wall. She was playing with Mello's hair a little, watching herself do so without really seeing.
Matt was lounging in the desk chair, spinning slightly and erratically whilst trying not to kick any part of the B at his feet, which would be a highly hazardous move. He was also immersed in a game on his Gameboy, but it was the same game he had played and beaten many times already, which told that he was actually thinking about other subjects; in this case, he was focused on the case, like the others were.
And so, there was nothing. They had no leads, clues, crime scenes, suspects, or anything else that could lead to solving the case. All they had was a victim and a mode of suicide, as well as hints to some sort of common idea spreading through the First Generation like-
"A pattern. There is a pattern," Matt piped up suddenly. Of course, new life seeped into the room as attentions were caught and space was ignored.
"What pattern?" wondered B, almost but not quite getting it (and probably also not wanting to).
Matt wasn't sure he felt safe in explaining, but did so anyways. "The First Generation is like a failed experiment, right?"
"Now, I wouldn't quite say-" began D.
"Yes," interrupted B with utmost conviction. There it was.
"And you see, like that. You al realized the nature of the experiment, what went wrong, what was done, all of that because you're all geniuses, and after the experiment moved to new subjects, you could see it all clearly, yes?" Matt gained momentum, excited at his new path of logic.
"You're saying that the message given through E's suicide is that we're all a failed experiment?" asked B calmly, too calmly. "But everyone already knows that."
"Yeah, but there's a common sense in you all, even D in some odd way, because when you were all failed, you were pretty much cast off, so… Well, maybe I'm not really adding anything helpful to the-"
"Stop," interrupted B, who was fully sitting up now, eyes wide as new thought swam wildly in his mind like crack-packed fish in a fishbowl. "You are onto something." He paused. "…Bye." And then he ran out before anyone could speak further. In the hall, however, he yelled back, "D!"
"Oh my, I think he's had an epiphany. Excuse me. And good work, Matt, whatever it did…" D, thoroughly confused, slipped off the bed to catch up with her…B.
"I hope this means he's solved it," said Mello as D disappeared out the door. "So, what lesson would someone want to give by showing E a projection that looked like a ghost of A? To remind him of the failure?"
"It seems so, but why? To have him kill himself, but set up another message to be given by someone- Wait, maybe it was A!" Matt was on a roll.
"What?"
"What if A made a projection of himself and set it to turn on at a certain time in E's room?"
"That doesn't sound like A. He'd never want anyone to kill themselves. He was…like the opposite of B, nice and quiet. It's impossible that he would egg anyone on to killing oneself."
"Though, that would explain how someone was able to make a projection of him in the first place," Matt reminded him.
"No…actually…I remember now, that was one of the lessons they did with the First Generation, that some criminals use projectors to create 'ghosts' that distract their victims, scare people, etcetera. I never actually saw any of them, but the students made a few of their own to see what it's like. So, anyone would be able to have access to one A made. Heck, I bet there's even one of E as-" Even Mello was starting to have revelations mid-word.
"What is it?" Matt moved over to the end of the bed in order to talk with Mello better.
"E would have recognized the projection as the one A had made."
"…Oh…"
They both sat in stunned silence, trying to piece everything together. B had probably thought of all of this within the few seconds he'd spent still in the room, since he thought at an astounding speed and had recognized A's projection the moment he'd seen it, not that he'd given any of that information to Matt or Mello, assuming Mello already knew and would tell him about it; but, like Mello said, he wouldn't have recognized it as an old class project because he'd never seen any of them up to then. D never said anything because she was pretty much useless when it came to actual cases.
"Okay, so we're probably just about caught up to B," said Mello, who had figured everything above out. "So, where did he go?"
"As if I'd know."
"I mean, where could he go? It's not like there's any other way to gain infor-" This was not a revelation interrupting Mello this time. The desktop computer had suddenly turned on, even though it had been completely turned off a moment ago.
On the screen was a green scene of what looked to be a dark room, lit up by a night vision lens. The numbers on the bottom of the screen informed that the video had been taken on the afternoon before the projection was shown to E. The room was filled with countless boxes of all sizes and there was a view of the door, but that was all they could see in that dark room.
"B must be showing us that security feed from the control room," Mello decided as the two leaned in front of the screen to watch. "This will prove once and for all who showed E the hologram and used that as a message that he should kill himself."
Moments ticked by at the bottom of the security video, closer and closer to what was surely their deciding proof. Matt and Mello were in unison with their bated breath, wide eyes, and constricting chests from the apprehension. Closer, closer…yes?
No. Just as the click of a doorknob was heard from the sound byte, the screen went completely black. From a ways down the hall, a yell of pure fury resounded, followed closely by the sharp clacks of D's heels as she bolted from the security room and back toward Matt and Mello's room. She slammed into the door, forgetting that she'd closed it, and hurriedly yanked it open, swung inside, and slammed the door behind her.
"L's taken the video as well! We have nothing!" She was hyperventilating as she slid to the ground in front of the door and burst into frantic tears.
"D's having an anxiety attack," said Mello as if that wasn't anything new. "We need to find B before he does something irrational." Mello got D onto the bed and managed to get her on the path of calming down before he and Matt left her there to do as Mello said.
B wasn't in the security room. The door was wide open and a chair had been thrown against the wall hard enough to break it, but that was all that indicated B had even been there, other than the on-but-black-screened television. They immediately started continuing down the hall, since they hadn't heard him go toward the bedroom.
Just then, the sound of glass breaking. And then, the dull roar of something becoming ignited with flame.
Mello seemed to know where to go, so Matt followed his sprint with a run. Soon, they hit a hall that was thickly filled with smoke, but Mello kept going, arm slung over his mouth and nose to try to filter the air with his shirt. Matt pulled up the front of his collar to cover the bottom half of his face with his shirt as well, holding it there with his hand because he had no sleeve with which to cover. Very soon, they saw the tips of flame tongues poking out of the darkness of a room to attempt to lick at a figure who stood like a statue before them. Matt would later learn that this room was previously filled with every project, report, possible file on A, B, C, D, and E that had ever been. These files, stashed away in a dank, dusty room for the rest of eternity, put there for lack of further need of the information, now burned.
"B, you damn idiot!" yelled Mello as they approached him. He coughed, though, and so didn't say anything further. Instead, he boldly reached through the barrier of smoke to grab B by the arm and pull him away from the door and back the way they'd run. They moved more slowly, since B seemed to be following purely by lead and so their speed depended on Mello's ability to pull that amount of weight, but they managed to get away and back to the bedroom in good time. Far off, outside, the shriek of sirens sounded. They got B into the room and into the computer chair to let him catch his breath and cough away the trapped smoke in his lungs. Mello thumped him on the back, though not with spite. D, in her funny way, had fallen asleep while curled around Mello's pillow.
B, breathing normally, rubbed at his eyes as he leaned heavily forward. "L solved the case. He told me just after the screen went black." His voice was slightly rough from the dry smoke, but not too bad. "I was so close to figuring it out myself…so close…" This was B. This wasn't B being L, or even B trying to be above L. This was just raw, pure B, and he was distressed, though didn't cry.
"I'm sorry," said Mello, meaning it. He stood before B and looked down at him as an equal, sneer gone and replaced by masculine softness. "L never should have taken away your resources. It wasn't fair."
"Heh, of course not. It's all a matter of winning or losing, a contest, victory, and L doesn't care who he's competing against as long as he wins." B ran his hands up to his forehead to reveal that he was staring forward, down at Mello's knees, but not really. He took a deep, shaky breath and refused to cough again. "He told me the results of the case," he said, voice especially hoarse now.
"Really?"
He nodded. "E's the one who set up the projection. He's the one who set the scene to send a message. He wanted to tell us…everyone…that L is the destroyer of us and that L must be stopped."
B choppily quotes from page 159 of Another Note. See if you can find it! ;p If not, no big.
Aaah, this is probably the best one I've written since the first page! I'm so proud of it! ^^ And you're all lucky that I continued, since I was going to stop just after Mello's comment about B sending them the video feed, but I just HAD to keep going ;3 Woot!