Undercover(s)

SPURRED ON BY the thrill of their covert agenda, Misa and Matsuda returned to headquarters under the common understanding that they would not breathe a word of their newly-laid plans to the other detectives. Misa, in particular, struggled to contain her excitement to such a degree that she thought it best to retire to bed earlier than usual. After extending an impulsive invitation for Light to join her, she shrugged off his horrified refusal quite cheerfully, and then dashed up the stairs to her apartment.

Light, by comparison, had seemingly fewer reasons to remain optimistic. Following yet another restless night, the next morning he found himself staring dully at an intimidating pile of papers left for him by Mogi. Despite a combination of strong coffee and willpower, the pattern his mind was attempting to knit together kept fraying at the ends…

"Mogi…" he croaked, before clearing his throat and sweeping his fringe from his eyes. "This list… can I ask you something about it?" The police detective approached and leaned on the desk between Light and L's chairs. Light was privately grateful for the intrusion; the sight of L pouring lukewarm coffee into his cup of sugar cubes each morning tended to turn his stomach.

"I noticed that the criminals who have died all had their names and faces shown in the media. Just like before," Light began, "did anything else come up in your analysis?" Mogi scratched at his broad chin.

"Other than the cause of death being heart attacks, no. We concluded that it was the work of Kira based on those two patterns." Light's mouth twisted; the words forming themselves even as he wrestled with the notion of suppressing them.

"It's not like last time at all is it? These criminals…" He cast out a proclamatory hand. "...the majority haven't even committed violent crimes. Some of them acted in self-defense, others have been openly repentant… it's like this Kira just isn't as good as the original." On the other side of Mogi, L sat up a little straighter.

"Isn't as… good?" Mogi took the first sheet from the top of the pile, his eyes flicking down the page. "Now you mention it, we did talk about there being a broader range of crimes this time but, I mean, it's Kira, so…"

"I don't mean good like that, Mogi, I mean efficient." Light sighed, his head resting against his hand. "It's like, if you did have a power like that, and you were going to use it for the common good, you'd only get rid of the very worst people, right?"

"Er… Light…" Mogi took his hand away from the desk and stood to his full height. Behind him L was perfectly still; a forgotten sugar cube melting in between outstretched fingers.

"I'm not saying I would use a power like that. I'm not some crazed murderer!" Light laughed and sank back in his office chair. "But, I mean, come on… everyone thinks it from time to time, don't they? It's only human nature. It's not like I'd actually do it! That would be kind of crazy, and I'm not crazy."

Mogi had formed a sympathetic half-smile and was nodding along slowly. L looked as though, before his very eyes, Light had suddenly and inexplicably been transformed into a giant, glazed doughnut.

"Why are you staring at me like that…? Wait, not this again..."

Being forced to live with L had been a thoroughly unpleasant experience for Light all round, but some of the lowest points had occurred during his waking moments. That morning, entangled in some strange nightmare about a grinning creature which walked on its hands, Light had tossed and turned, groaning incoherently to himself. Suddenly, he had been awoken by a mysterious clicking sound, followed by a piercing brightness.

"What?" Light had scrambled up into a sitting position, his t-shirt clinging to his hot skin. He blinked hard to banish the sunspots which blazed before his eyelids. Through the strange gloom, L materialised beside him; a torch in his hand.

"You just said 'get rid of it!'" the detective told him triumphantly. When Light failed to respond, other than by gaping back at him furiously, L continued. "Light, I've been here the whole time. These are not the dreams of an innocent person…"

"You… the whole time?" Light swatted the torch away aggressively. L dropped it onto the bedclothes, throwing the scene almost into darkness.

"You know what? I was dreaming about you." Light's smile, half-lit by a slither of torchlight, was quite alarming. "We were handcuffed, just like this. There I was, standing on the edge of a cliff, dangling you over a great canyon…" He climbed out of bed, taking care to kick L as well as the covers away from him.

"And I wanted to get rid of it."

Back in the present, Light was watching L wearily.

"You can't honestly still think that I'm Kira?" he tried weakly, "just because I'm a little judgmental sometimes? Or because I get mad when you decide to shine a torch in my face at three in the morning…?"

"I do," L answered him calmly, his gaze levelled with Light's own. "I've always thought so…"

Mogi looked between the two young men with uncertainty. Then Light leapt up; his chair rolled backwards and crashed violently into the wall behind.

"You're lucky I'm not Kira! I would have killed you by now!"

L returned to quietly stacking his sugar cubes, his mouth curled into a thin, satisfied smile.

x-x-x

The main foyer of Yotsuba's Tokyo office was almost deserted when Matsuda and Misa arrived. The pair had concocted an elaborate story to excuse themselves from headquarters for the morning, but had quickly discovered that the team held very little interest in their whereabouts. Comparatively, Aizawa and Soichiro were immersed in the live streamed footage from Yotsuba's boardrooms, whilst Mogi was almost hauled in to referee a second brawl between Light and L. Even Watari seemed more engrossed in old repeats of Fawlty Towers and his packet of Hobnobs than where the pair were heading off to.

Misa took out her phone and flipped it open as Matsuda lifted a magazine from the table in the waiting area to rifle its pages nervously.

"I hope Light's okay…" the model sighed, signing off her sixth text message to him. "He was so upset earlier. All he did was make one little death threat, now Ryuzaki's calling him Kira again…"

"That's cute..." Matsuda replied absently, seeing but not absorbing the words printed on the glossy page in front of him. Then, just as Misa turned to admonish him, he broke down. "Oh Misa Misa…!" The young detective swung round to her, scratching furiously at the back of his head. "Are we making a huge mistake coming here?"

"Relax," she replied, stretching out her legs luxuriously, "let's go over the plan one more time okay?" Matsuda closed his eyes with the concentration of a child reciting at a spelling bee.

"You go into the meeting and tell them that I'm in the bathroom. Then you keep the panel busy…" Matsuda heaved a breath as his eyes flew open. "I'll find Shimura's Office!"

"Right. Then you break in and check his desk, computer, whatever for anything you can find that links him to Kira!" Misa gave an enthusiastic nod. "And don't you worry about me keeping them busy… I can talk all day about-" She bit her lip, her pale brow creased in thought.

"Hey, Matsu… what do Yotsuba do? They're like a bank, right?" Matsuda had stopped scratching but his hand remained glued to his hair.

"I feel like I should know that…" Matsuda started vaguely, "I don't know though… don't they have an entertainment department? And I'm pretty sure they have something to do with property? Yeah, Yotsuba Properties Inc?"

"I thought it was -" Misa turned to him dramatically, "Yotsuba VT Enterprises!" Her voice sounded as husky and frantic as that of a commercial voiceover. The two of them glanced over at the reception desk, a sense of creeping doubt gripping them both.

"I can't believe you don't know what they do," Misa giggled, "that's so tragic."

"It's not like it matters!" Matsuda replied hastily, "we just know they're the bad guys."

"Mr Matsui? Miss Amane?" The pair jumped and looked back at the reception area once more. A kindly, dark-haired woman was on her feet, extending a hand down towards the brightly-lit corridor. "If you'd like to head straight down and take the elevator up to the nineteenth floor, you'll find the boardroom on your right."

With one slow, final nod of determination, a quick fix up of hair and some hastily-applied lip gloss, Matsuda and Misa strode on.

Nineteen floors up, the elevator doors opened with a ping and the cool, calm pronouncement of "Nineteenth Floor: Personnel." Chancing a look up and down the quiet corridor, Misa's hand rummaged around in her bag. Then, after a woman in a black suit had passed them, she withdrew a card and pushed it into Matsuda's palm.

"If you need to break in, this credit card should do the trick. Otherwise I've got this," she heaved a suction cup from the bag and passed it to the police detective. Matsuda stared wordlessly at her.

"These aren't mine! They belong to my friend and she hardly ever uses them anyway," Misa laughed, swinging her bag back and forth, "they're only for when the guy she likes isn't home."

"So, you never used these to break into Light's house…?"

"I'd better go!" Misa shouted over him, "good luck!" She turned on her heel and walked buoyantly down towards the boardroom. Matsuda placed the items in the pocket of his suit jacket, before walking hurriedly and purposefully in the opposite direction.

Shimura's office was surprisingly easy to locate and enter. The room itself was small, cramped and predominantly filled with desk; so much so, that Matsuda could barely close the door behind him. The desktop was relatively clear; there sat a computer, office phone and several large books stacked in alphabetical order. Arranged at perfect right angles to one another, there also sat a prickly-looking plant and a Newton's Cradle. Resisting the temptation to touch this shiny object, Matsuda began sifting through the files on the desk. As often with his investigative methods, he could never be sure what he was looking for until he found it. Or, more commonly, until another detective found it and then explained to him what exactly they had been looking for in the first place.

It was as he unearthed a leather-bound planner that the phone began to bleep; one of its tiny red lights flashing at him in alarm. Matsuda continued leafing through the planner's heavily-annotated pages until a silhouette emerged at the narrow rectangle of window, accompanied by a knock upon the office door.

"Mr Shimura…?"

"Not now, I'm on a call!" Matsuda lifted the receiver and waved his unwanted visitor away. "Yes? This is… Shimura?" He winced at his own brashness.

"Mr Shimura? I'm calling to make a formal complaint."

Matsuda nodded along, still flicking through the pages of the planner. "Okay, was that about any particular… part of your Yotsuba experience?"

"I'm Tori from the Fine Foods Department, if you remember? Can I come talk to you in person please?" Matsuda, who was already on the pages for August, ran his index finger down the spine of the book.

"Ah, yeah, those fine foods… lobster and… other fish? Well, I'm pretty busy. Swamped actually. I've got that… Caviar Report to approve...? This week is no good for me and I've got every Friday afternoon blocked out-"

There came another knock upon the office door, causing Matsuda to jump and almost slam the planner shut.

"Let us adjourn and reassess… next quarter?" Matsuda cringed at himself and his loose business vernacular, before hanging up the phone.

"Mr Shimura!" came the voice from outside the door once more, followed by another knock. "Your visitor is here."

"Ah, great… send him in!" Matsuda winced again as the door opened to a kindly woman dressed in sports clothes, carrying a bald mannequin without any arms.

"Good morning," she greeted him pleasantly, "where should I set up?" Matsuda blinked back at her.

"For the Corporate First Aid Training? I thought we'd do a little on the science behind heart attacks first, and then everyone can practise their CPR on Betsy here?"

"Yeah… I think that's probably a good thing, considering… heh…" Before he could utter another word, the phone began to bleep again next to him. "That's for me! Why don't you and Betsy go along to... conference room A?" Sweating rather profusely by now, Matsuda lifted the phone to his ear.

"Sh-shimura?"

"Is it? Oh good. I wanted to report one of your staff who has been seen behaving oddly. Breaking into offices, answering other people's phone calls, that sort of thing." Matsuda wiped a bead of moisture from the back of his neck.

"I… ah…"

"It's me, Matsuda," the voice spoke more firmly. "You idiot."

"Ryuzaki?" Matsuda quailed under the tone of disappointment. "H-how did you know I was here?"

"I'm watching you right now. Light and I had a wager as to how long it would be before we got an emergency signal from your belt."

"I gave you half an hour!" echoed Light's voice in the background. Matsuda shifted his weight uneasily, scowling under his breath.

"I gave you five minutes," quipped L savagely.

x-x-x

The boardroom sweltered under the oppressive glare of overhead lights. Against the far wall stood a long, mahogany table, behind which were seated eight impeccably-dressed individuals. Two chairs had been set out for the interview, one of which was now occupied by Misa who was sitting rather stiffly with her hands upon her knees. An onlooker might have thought she was being interrogated by a board of disgruntled professors for beginning a food fight in the campus cafeteria.

"So, swimsuits and lingerie are okay. I don't do nudity, but in my most recent film I was shown blindfolded and handcuffed to a chair, and I was only wearing-"

"Well, these all look great…" interrupted one of the eight men, seated near the centre of the long table. His slick, red hair was gelled back from his thin face, and he had a disconcerting way of surveying the person he was speaking to over arched fingertips. With a sweep of his hand, he slid Misa's portfolio along to a sweaty, pale-haired man on his right.

"Yes... beautiful headshots..." a man with slightly steamed glasses offered from the red-haired man's left. "Do you... have a release date for that film?" Misa glanced down; beneath her chair her foot jogged restlessly against her handbag.

"Not yet. It took nearly two months to make and it was pretty intense…"

"Oh," returned the man with the glasses dully. "I think I speak on behalf of all of us when I say we'd really like to see it… " There was a general murmur of agreement from the entire table. Misa suppressed a shiver and lifted her head to smile around at the eight individuals before her.

"I'll ask the film producer…?" She stopped as something rumbled against the floor, and then the sound of Alumina's piano rift rang out for all to hear. "Itsuwari osore kyoshoku urei…!"

"My phone!" Misa stooped to retrieve her cell from her bag, jumped to her feet, and waved it at the panel as though in confirmation. "Sorry, can I take this outside? I promise I won't be long!"

"Go on. We've asked all of our questions, " returned a blonde, bearded man seated between the sweaty individual and a man with long, dark hair tucked behind elfin ears. The bearded gentleman nodded in Misa's direction and offered her a roguish wink.

Outside in the corridor, Misa had the phone halfway raised to her ear when she noticed Matsuda approaching.

"Oh, hey! You're done right? I'm almost out of things to talk about!" she huffed. Matsuda edged around her, dropping his voice to a low whisper as he passed.

"We need to head back. The others know we're here."

"Got it!" Misa glanced back over her shoulder at him. The leaves of an indoor fern plant shifted and settled back into place as Matsuda walked into the boardroom. No, that wasn't right, Misa thought as she watched him leave. The plant was too far away from where they were standing.

Misa took a few steps further down the corridor. The space was entirely quiet and empty now, possibly in the approach to lunchtime. Yes, Matsuda must have caught one of the plant's thin branches as he passed. Misa shook the thought from her mind and opened her phone.

"Hey Light!" she gasped, "sorry, I was just leaving the interview-"

"You both need to leave at the next, natural opportunity without arousing suspicion." The flutter which had been caught in Misa's chest flopped down lifelessly at the bottom of its cage.

"Give my boyfriend back his phone, you jerk!"

"I only took it because I knew you would answer it straight away," came L's reply, "now you're going to go back in there, answer their questions and thank them for their time. You will say this phone call was from a casting director that you were also waiting to hear back from. It'll give you a competitive edge."

"Right…" Feeling a slight brush of air against her skin, Misa scratched at her arm as she began to pace back to the boardroom. "I'll see you back at home then."

"Listen, if you're heading back along Meiji Avenue, could you... stop at Dumbo Doughnuts?"

With a clatter, Misa closed her phone. Partly because both L and complex carbohydrates were largely unwanted distractions in her life.

And partly, because it had been knocked from her hand. Misa's phone tumbled to the carpeted floor with a dull thud. There she stood, frozen, her mouth open in a silent scream. For anyone that was walking the corridor at that moment, they would have seen a young woman, wild-eyed, as though she had witnessed some invisible spectre. They might have asked her what was wrong. They would not have received an answer which made any earthly sense.

They would not have seen the towering figure behind her, clasping a pale hand to Misa's mouth, whilst the other abnormally long arm snaked tightly around her shoulders, holding her fast.