Exams are brutal. All I can do at this point is express my extreme love for summer break. At least it was only seven weeks in between updates, right?

Alen Alyson: Your condolences are accepted with chocolate and gratitude; I am official brain-dead. DX Also, thanks! ^^ Sometimes I have to reign in my artistic spark because I often have the feeling that my descriptions are lengthening my sentences from run-on's to loquacious infinity-challengers. I'll be the next Dean Koontz with his verbose landscaping trend after taking classes to decorate the lawn of his new twenty-some THOUSAND square feet of household. o.e (Whistling innocently and kicking my feet at your last inquiry...)

Moka-girl: You have officially read my mind, and thus I bestow upon you my unadulterated gratification. C: I'm actually in the process of rewriting the first three chapters, as well as going back and editing everything else. As much as I love the tone in the beginning chapters, I did write them YEARS ago, so something more recent and fresh can't hurt, right?

I barely own the feeble remains of my mind after exams, so Death Note is a bit of a stretch.

L
(or)
How NOT to Impress Your Local Genius

July 1st (still)

I remember a time when I was younger—quite the little devil-child I was back in my day, too—when I had been fascinated by justice. Such a controversial topic, justice. Some believed in avenging angels, others in their own sort of karma, a few who acted upon their own morals rather than let others pass judgment before them—the world was full of contradictions, and its inhabitants were no better off. 'Why play God?' some asked. Others deemed it their destiny to take matters into their own hands, to punish the wicked as they saw fit. In the end, I found myself repeatedly entranced by the controlled chaos in which we operate. Opposing sides, always clashing, always seeking to bring down others, even if the foe is unknown.

Sometimes, I wonder if the mass confusion back in my reality was what pushed me into the arms of the strange man who rescued me from the orphanage, and the stranger life he led. Was I simply standing on tiptoe at the window of the candy shop, now entering when the door was left open for too long? Or perhaps I was just over-thinking all over this.

Or I was stalling and letting my tea grow cold.

Rather than taking one final, cliché breath, I sipped my tea as I entered the room.

Pastel.

That was the first thing that came to mind once I got over the shock of how deathly pale the entire room appeared. White walls, white-tiled floor masked beneath an equally faint rug—the ceiling was white, the window curtains were white, the-

Okay, you get it. A crap-ton of white.

Surprisingly enough, the various pieces of furniture were not white, but some strange shade that resembled the color just enough to make one look twice. A couch, three chairs, a beanbag (huh?), with a chestnut coffee table positioned dead-center. The couch framed one side of the long wooden table, two chairs opposite it, the third chair at the head with the beanbag sitting at the other end. It was in the chair on the farther side of the room—and at the head, I noticed—that he sat. Well, I say 'sat' but it was more like a controlled crouch, like a panther poised to strike during a hunt. He wore a white long-sleeved shirt, fading blue jeans, and an arcane expression on his otherwise impassive countenance. Eyes as dark as his ebony hair bore into my own green with startling potency, unblinking—they trailed my every move without faltering. Dusky bags shadowed the hollows of his eye sockets, but his attentiveness was too sharp for that of a tired man. Under the unadulterated scrutiny of his gaze, I suddenly felt as though I were that young, reckless teenager again, too rambunctious for my own good and with an ignorance so vast that it covered hectares.

So this was the infamous L.

I offered a polite smile (mentally kicking myself that he had rendered me speechless without uttering a single word himself) and perched myself on the arm of one of the chairs. One foot tucked under me, the other bent at a slight angle, I took a long sip of tea and gathered my thoughts. Once I was positive that I wouldn't make too big a fool out of myself, I said, "Greetings and salutations, L. Or perhaps, as your officer allies would refer, Ryuzaki."

Owlish eyes never left my form as he drew a saucer into view, it having previously been hidden behind his knees which were curled up so close to him that he was almost in a fetal position, and plucked a cherry from its depths. With a slow, deliberate movement, he popped the fruit into his mouth.

"Hello, Jessica McGee."

I almost spewed tea all over myself and the coffee table. Luckily for me, I had swallowed a moment before, so all I did was blanch, and hopefully not too obviously.

How the hell did L find out about my alias?

Rather than flip shit (or the table), I lowered my cup a hair and replied smoothly, "How thoughtful of you to save me from a long and boring introduction. Your skills are not lacking." Here, I allowed one side of my mouth to twitch into a smirk. "Anything else would have been a disappointment."

Sure, my speech was a heck of a lot more formal than it had been in a while, but since I wasn't constantly trying to preserve my position as the underboss of the mafia whilst managing my "relationship" with Madam President Robinson, I had little use for it in this... reality. But because karma has to go and bite me in the ass, here we were. Still, old habits die hard: it was all I could do not to whip out my "borrowed" handcuffs and use them in a very creative fashion to get information out of the detective. Like his name. And the secrets of his trade. Maybe his mentor's home address and phone number.

Screw it.

I was psyched to meet the guy.

Here I was in some whacked-up universe where everything is topsy-turvy and I finally get to meet the detective who's been screwing with me since day one. Well, day eight... or nine... but the point still stands. He was sitting not five feet from me: this world's greatest detective.

Yep. I was getting excited. Sue me.

If L couldn't feel the waves of exhilaration emanating from me, the guy must have been brain dead. That, or he read my body language and decided not to let on. Either way, the man carried on as though we were talking about the weather, and weren't two intellectuals tensely sizing up one another. I had to admire the guy's self-control.

"I have never encountered one as persistent as you," he intoned, drawing another cherry from the depths of his cup. L eyed it, unblinking, as though examining it for any faults, before the fruit disappeared into his mouth, stem and all. "Most people who attempt to find me are blunt or decide to publicize their efforts; you carried on in secrecy, using the tricks of petty criminals and those less fortunate in life."

He paused, almost as if he were carefully pondering his next words—or was completely entranced by his newest cherry. I sat very still, trying to mimic his controlled persona. For whatever reason, there was something about the guy that made my guard fly sky-high. The way he worded things... he almost made me wonder how much he really knew and how much he was willing to let onto.

"You're a tricky man to locate, I'll give you that," I replied, sipping my tea. The irony of the ginger extract was not lost on me. Most commonly known for its healing attributes, ginger was a popular household remedy, as well as its universal reputation as an aphrodisiac. Lucifer always kept the stuff around in his creepy greenhouse when we moved to Virginia, but I never asked him why he grew so much of the stuff until I was older, at which point he explained that the root helped to ease pain as well as increase performance in the circulatory and nervous systems. Maybe I should be eating this stuff as much as I do sweets. "However, others who tried before me used similar methods. I prefer to think outside of the box."

"A lesser detective would assume that you were hinting at the visit you and Beyond Birthday payed to Amane Misa on the day she went to Aoyama," countered L, neither forcefully nor aggressively.

I forced my face to remain impassive, but I mentally swore to the high heavens. How the hell did he know that? Did L just have this superpower to know anything and everything about people? Externally, I raised an eyebrow and said, "If you like."

Rather than give a snappy comeback, the detective stuck out his tongue. I almost did a double take until I noticed the string of cherry stems on his tip, all tied together to form a sort of floral circlet. The man must have been eating cherries long before I arrived in order to make something that intricate in such crisp moves without inhibiting his speech. Ignoring my questioning look, L drew the masterpiece from his tongue, examined it with narrowed eyes, and pocketed the creation.

"You told me that you had lost your captive," said L without making eye contact; he was back to digging around in his cup of cherries, "so how is it that he managed to accompany you to Aoyama to meet Misa-san?"

Damn. He had me there. Not to mention that all of these timeskip things were screwing with my math. I had said a month, right? Two? Or maybe the drugs were still playing tricks with my mind. Surely I had "lost" Beyond by then.

I gave him a one-shoulder shrug and swirled my teacup with a coy smile.

Play it cool, KC. Just don't fuck up.

"Was that what she told you when you arrested her under the guise of drug possession?" I said calmly, my mind racing to remember what I knew about her arrest. "Surely the public couldn't know that you really suspected her of being the Second Kira. That is, of course, why you arrested Light Yagami as well."

And Soichiro.

I almost blew tea out my nose. Beyond?!

Hell, no. I told that asshole to piss off.

Trey? I asked cautiously.

Bingo, sister! Now, down to business. You little friend here arrested the two Kiras, but neither of them seems to remember whodunit. Apparently, Mr. Yagami decided that he couldn't handle his son being accused, so he asked Ryuzaki to lock him up in case he tried to do something stupid.

I was still reeling in the fact that a boring monotone was no longer speaking, but the nifty AI loctopus who had been vacant from my mind for far too long. How do you know all that? I asked, trying not to sound too amazed.

Here, Trey shot me the image of two thumbs up. Your apprentice kicks ass. Broke into the police station, grabbed some offhanded files and let me scan them before she landed herself in the hospital. Well, she didn't know that I was tagging along, but I kinda had to ditch her and run back to the garage 'cause your little psychopath was about to do something stupid.

I shot L a glance, only to see that the detective was watching me with a keen eye, silent. I would have to play my cards and not give too much away.

We'll have to play catch-up later. Major details now.

Okie dokie. Autumn figured she'd find where L was keeping your locked away, so she infiltrated this police station, see, and grabbed two random files. One was useless, but the other was quite interesting. Had some funky stuff about this random building being built under a big name in Japan. I looked it up—dead end—so I thought 'Why not L?' Yup. Same building and everything. Well, turns out that belt of theirs not only allows them to contact L. You just so happened to mess around my Matsuda's belt, no? While you were figuring out how the thing worked that one time you disassembled it, I implanted one of my cams in it—sends the same signals and everything—and I just so happened to get the most marvelous recordings of the police's interactions with L.

Why didn't Beyond tell me about this?

I didn't tell him, sniffed Trey. Thought about telling Autumn, but I didn't want her to listen in when she was too busy being freaking awesome. Seriously wanna know who taught that kid.

Join the club. I returned L's unwavering stare with a passive one, but not submissive. Anything else I need to know?

We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

I took another sip of tea and waited for L to speak again. Defense was the best offense, and I wasn't about to overextend myself and risk slipping up.

Oh, what the hell?

"How are you treating the police chief? Surely his confinement didn't end so soon." I watched L closely for any signs that might give him away, but none presented themselves.

Hold on. If Soichiro requested to be locked away, the how the heck did he pull me from jail and bring me here? He didn't have a twin, did he?

Your psychopath might be onto something when he was rambling about God-knows-what and all that Doctor Who crap. My guess is that the two sides of the paper were never meant to bleed through: we don't belong, and now our very existence is screwing up the whole world.

Jeez. Talk about a drama queen.

First of all, Beyond is not my anything; the guy pretty much does whatever the hell he pleases. Secondly, any way we could cut the chase? I'm kind of a sitting duck right now. Third, can you get into the front camera again? I was told that in your time, you're watching my future through cameras planting at the front of L's crib; if our existence in the world really is messing everything up, we need to be ready for anything ASAP. If there are two Soichiros waltzing around, I need to know whether or not they're from their individual worlds or just multiplying in order to keep up with recent events. Finally—ignore the fact that I sound like I'm high, drunk, both, or just plain crazy.

Trey snickered. How's all that supernatural stuff going for you, anyways?

Bugger off, jerk.

It occurred to me right then and there that I was running very low on personal space.

And then I looked up.

L had one hand planted on the top of the coffee table, the cup of cherries in his other, and was cambered over the edge of the wooden surface in a stable arc. Though a good foot or two from me, he was much closer than before and the depths of his ebony gaze was a bottomless pit defined by no distance or conceivable measures. Just looking at him made my heart give an uneasy shudder—and knowing that he managed to take me by surprise worried me far more than the fact that I might have two angry Japanese police chiefs running amuck.

"Did you not hear me, Ishi-san?" prompted the man. I swear those soul-sucking eyes of his sparked up at me when he added, "Should I repeat myself?" but the dramatic sigh Trey gave me told me that my hormones were only playing tricks in the detective's favor.

Stupid idols. Stupid hormones making me obsess over stupid idols.

For the nth time that day, I absentmindedly wondered whether or not I should be keeping a tally of how many times L has made me mentally lose my composure, saying as calmly as I could, "We wouldn't mind all that much." I tapped my head for emphasis.

L's gaze remained unblinking. "I inquired about the methods by which you learned of the chief's quandary."

What the schist. Here I go throwing a bone to the poor guy and he completely ignores it? Most detectives would leap at the opportunity to tag me as some screwed up psychopath with Dissociative Identity Disorder or schizophrenia (and since L had already stashed Beyond away for the latter's "crime"...), but L would have none of it. Either he's extremely dense or freakishly perceptive enough not to take the bait. Frankly, I wouldn't put it past the guy to know it all and just be going through the motions to screw with my head.

Goddammit, KC, stop being so easily impressed! It's suppose to be the other way around!

Women... Trey sighed.

Go trap yourself under a Solo cup.

The loctopus sent me a censored image of President Robinson flipping off the Secret Service (long story...) and intoned, Fine. Let's see how well you do with this guy if I abandon you. Maybe I'll be nice enough to record your fangirl-ing and not give it to Beyond as blackmail.

Bogan.

Redirecting my lacking attention to the detective at my twelve, I casually—and without toil—sipped my tea and replied, "What would any respecting parent do upon discovery that his or her child is suspected of horrendous crimes against humanity, especially if he is capable of preventing the offspring's arrest?"

L made no move to draw back as he continued to balance on three limbs without so much as a twitch. His muscles indicated no strain as he remained, his dark eyes not searching my face, but instead locking onto it with unequivocal paramount.

"By expressing your hypothesis with 'he,' would you be suggesting that Yagami-san's wife is less poignant?" he inquired apathetically, but I could sense the underlying dominion.

This was L's game, and he knew it. Better yet, he had long since had the rules memorized—they were in constant flux in accordance to his preferences. He made the game. He changed the game. All others were mere players, pawns, to his impulses. First calling me in as though to discuss the terms of my... cooperation? Questioning? But in the end, it all boiled down to asserting his dominance. Rather than outright ask my intentions and demand answers, L was throwing me for a loop—or two, or five—but I was developing the strangest sense that this was his strategy of interrogation. Abstract, indirect. Learning how to read the person before their native tongue. Throwing them off with haphazard actions and sayings, monitoring their every reaction and cataloging it in the back of his mind for later recollection.

It was all I could do not to openly gape at the man. If I thought Beyond was intelligent, L made him look like a kid playing dress up. This man was both knowledgeable and wise, and better yet: he knew it.

And I couldn't help but feel all previous aggravation formerly aimed at the detective slowly slipping away the longer I gazed into those obsidian depths.

Schist.

August 10th

Autumn had snagged a newspaper from a stand on her way back to the garage. The girl was positive that she had given the slip to anyone who might have been following her; she had taken so many turns and side-roads that she had had to sneak off with a map in order to relocate herself in the world. At this point, she had taken so many turns that the doodles of lines and Japanese only told her the name of the city, which was printed at the top in more understandable letter than the fashionable chicken scratch. There should be no way for someone to follow her... unless they were tracking her by satellite.

Groaning heavily, the girl slumped on the edge of the sidewalk on a less noisy street. It was a good mile or so from the main road, but it was still within city limits. Skyscrapers towered over her head, easily reaching thirty levels, and shadowing the narrow lanes for its five-hundred-foot length.

Sweat beaded on Autumn's scalp and forehead, which she wiped at with the hem of her gown. She didn't have a clue why no one bothered to stop her on the streets—heaven knows she wasn't dressed like a casual stroller—but she was grateful for the obscurity. The girl had grown to loathe staring ever since her parents passed away. After the day the news arrived, people stopped wanting to play with her. No one laughed and joshed, not one smiling face could be seen in a crowd of those who knew her. It was almost as if they were afraid to be happy around her, to remind her of the good times she could never have with her parents. All anyone ever did was look down on her with pity and apologize for something out of their control. "It'll be okay." She had come to hate those words.

However, as she now sat on the curb of the small, isolated road, Autumn couldn't help but to feel more alone than she had since that day.

Her parents dead. KC captured.

And her, Autumn, lost.

The map and newspaper layed in her lap, lifeless, like the inanimate objects they were. They did not taunt her subconsciously, nor could she make out any maliciousness in their existence. No resistentialism, no spitefulness. They were not out to get her.

She just couldn't read them.

The Japanese symbols sat on the limp papers, and that was all they did: sit. Kanji, KC had called them, but knowing its title did no good in the translations. No matter how hard Autumn squinted at them, nothing could be drawn from the swoops and jagged lines crisscrossing one another. It was a language, a foreign language, and now Autumn had to accept her fate.

Autumn had to accept that she was lost.

A quiet sob escaped her lips before she stop it, and her will vanished almost instantly afterwords. She didn't know where the tears were coming from, first in small trickles down her cheeks but miniature torrents seconds later. Silence instilled itself around her, for there were no cars, and the only sound audible was the occasional gasp for breath. Autumn form trembled, her arms hugging around her skinny body, imagining a much larger, warmer, more welcoming embrace. She was all alone, lost in a strange city where she knew no one and everyone spoke a funny, choppy dialect. No one bothered the weeping girl who kept her cries hushed. No one knew. No one cared.

Why did this always happen to her? Why did she always end up in places she never meant to be?

Why did everyone abandon her in the end?

It had been far too long, but he could feel it coming back to him. In a way, it was almost like riding a bike: you never really forgot. It was all muscle memory, the slight of hand, the graceful jolt that transferred energy from hand to blade. One fluid motion and the shimmering diamond hilt was all that was visible of the knife sticking out of the wall. So easy to fling, so swift, soundless.

Fatal.

Beyond dropped his outstretched arm and took a steadying breath. Across the garage, a good fifty feet from where he stood, KC's dagger stuck out of the metal siding at a perfect ninety degree angle from the wall. There was a mark six or seven inches below the knife where his first throw had been crooked; the blade had hit the sheet at a slight gradient and sunk sideways into the thin aluminium siding.

It took the man a few strides to reach this second appraisal, which he drew from the internal sheeting with an easy tug. This throw was far more accurate than the previous—the dagger had struck the center of a fold in the metal where it had been bent at some point. Not bad for a man in and out of prison/bedlam. Considering that the last time he had worked with deadly projectiles was when he had first taught Autumn to throw, and the fact that it had been so long ago that it had almost slipped his mind, he considered himself acceptably shabby. It was a shame that Naomi Misora never got to see that particular skill of his.

Raising the knife, he watched the light refract through the transparent patches amongst the translucent gray. The dagger wasn't made from unalloyed carbon—the chromatic impurities were a dead giveaway—but there was something about the intricate carvings along the hilt and the flat of the blade that made the varying materials seem to flow flawlessly from one substances into another. Though still diamond, he knew the silver to possess hints of nitrogen, but when the light flowing in through the dusty windows hit the gray foibles just right, Beyond could faintly see a trace of blue, possibly caused by boron. However, it was the darkest gray masked deep within the impurities that drew Beyond's eye. Bordering on black, his mind lingered on the idea of Carbonado, the strongest, naturally-occurring diamond—that also lined the drills that built the Panama Canal.

Such detailed knowledge he acquired at the Wammy House, and so little of it useful in the real world. When would he ever need to know the exact chemical makeup of diamonds or their various uses? They were training children to become the world's best detective, immortalized. What use had they of a jeweler's proficiency?

Regardless, BB couldn't help but to wonder how KC came by such exquisite pieces. The twin daggers were obviously meant for business, but the ornate decorum made him question their exact usage. The man also had an inkling about their previous owner, Lucifer Strange. If KC procured the knives from her old mentor, was it because she needed them or because Lucifer Strange did not?

The block in the woman's mind, the obvious dislike she held for the man despite her dreams telling Beyond otherwise, the unadulterated fury with which Trey protected her...

There was something about KC he had yet to learn. He had already discovered that KC's inspiration for creating the graphire was malign and he had a feeling that his ignorance followed in that particular wake, but there was something else... something he couldn't quite put his finger on...

During this rather spontaneous thought process, Beyond Birthday had returned to his previous point, standing at an angle, feet spread moderately apart, shoulders relaxed, fifty feet from the wall. It came to him naturally this time, no corrective action necessary, and he blinked slowly in time with his deep breathing.

The dagger clung to the wall with a steely grip, and Beyond's raised arm was the only inclination to the split-second movement prior. The mark from his first throw stood out like a sore thumb six to seven inches below the knife, but there was no such blemish from the second toss because the blade had sunk into the exact same spot; Beyond had struck the selfsame position as his previous throw, the two being judgmentally identical. Two impeccable throws back to back.

As Beyond lowered his arm, it was then that he realized something about himself in that very instant.

However badgering Trey or his hallucinated version of Alternate might be, without Autumn or KC around, the ex-serial killer felt rather... bored. There was no one to keep him entertained with asinine notions or spontaneous schemes. No crack-of-dawn giggle sprees, no mid-morning curses about lacking sugar, no one to follow and chastise halfheartedly whilst smirking, no intricate developments. Without the women, his life outside of confinement seemed to pale in comparison. For the first time in a long while, Beyond Birthday was honestly enervated.

A frown tugged on the man's lips as he went to retrieve the blade for a third time. While it was true that this was the most action he had seen in years, the first slow period of it all couldn't really be all that boring, right? Yet here he was, finally admitting that life was a little more bland without someone else. Not even A's phantom could keep up.

As much as it pained him to admit it, Beyond needed someone else around. He retreated into the back of his mind far too often, back into the darker areas and remembrances of his past, without someone to keep his attention. KC and Autumn had done just that, and now neither were here. BB didn't want to recess back into the madman he once was; he had been down that road already and had no desire to see it again. Though not much of a people-person, the schizophrenic felt a little more sane with those two around—probably because they were the only relatable people he had ever encountered. The detective/mafia underboss and her sniper/technician apprentice. Who would have thought?

Beyond plucked the dagger from the metal sheet and wondered when he had ever become so dependent on another being. Regardless, he felt his lips quirk into a smirk that felt all too natural on his face. How bored he was now, but his entire situation proved almost too comical for words. Not only had he been broken free of L's infuriating grasp, but he was getting a second chance to show him up in front of his new arch-nemesis and the world.

If L wanted to play with fire, it was indeed his turn to get burned.

The first half of this killed my brain. I had a Stephen Moffat moment [fear of putting two "I'm the smartest in the room" people under the same roof] when writing the first half of this and I rewrote the thing only FIVE TIMES before I was ever happy with it. L is a hard nut to crack, but I really do picture KC completely losing her composure around him, if she still remembers the meaning of the word after this. XD

I'm also beginning to notice a peculiar trend in my writing. I don't know how many puns/allusions I've made in the past few chapters, and I just realized that nobody got the joke behind the title of chapter twenty-one, Strange and Stranger, but I'm not saying a word; it's funnier if it comes to you. :3 On a side note, anyone remember the scene where KC pulled out the diamond lighter and made a remark about L playing with fire? Tada! We now have Beyond's reprise, with his own diamond artillery! Two down, one t—coughcough.