Thanks for all the reviews, follows and faves so far! I really love how this one is turning out. However, I also value any feedback that you can give me to keep making improvements.
Also, I need to add a disclaimer to this one about L's line ("I mean oh no, crime.") which is a Brooklyn 99 reference ^_^
Sus
"PROMISE ME YOU won't scream?" the strange figure spoke in a low, husky voice. Misa struggled to move her head from side to side in response. Somewhat satisfied, the being released its grip. Immediately, the corridor was filled with an ear-splitting wail. A white, long-fingered hand clapped down swiftly upon Misa's mouth once more. The model's terrified eyes rolled upwards in an effort to see the face of her captor. Beneath its grip, her whole body trembled.
"You cannot scream here. No one else can see me and you will only draw attention to yourself." Misa's legs were shaking so badly by now that she could no longer support her own weight; it was only the strangely long arms that were holding her up.
"Walk ahead to the bathroom opposite. I am going to release you now."
Misa fell, her knees smacking against the carpeted floor. She tried to catch her ragged breath; her hands splayed out before her. Then, still trembling uncontrollably, she slowly climbed to her feet.
"Don't turn around. Not yet."
Misa obeyed. She placed one foot in front of the other, wobbling with uncertainty towards the door on the opposite side of the corridor. Once inside, she continued in her haphazard manner towards the row of three sinks, where she leaned against the chilled tiles. Her body slumped forward as a powerful wave of nausea swept over her. Then, with heavy and certain dread, she lifted her head.
A tall, hunched figure stood behind her. Spindly, twisted and skeletal, its pink, fleshy skin was pulled tautly over its emaciated form. Deep set within its wasted face, two shadowed, yellow eyes stared back through the mirror's glass.
Misa screamed.
"Misa…!"
With a great shuddering gasp, the model's legs sank beneath her. She grabbed at the tiled sink top to keep herself from collapsing onto the bathroom floor.
"Ah, ah -! I - I c-could've sworn you were a fr-friend of mine for a second! B-but he's actually a lot paler than you."
The creature extended one of its long arms awkwardly towards her.
"Misa. I am your friend."
Misa opened her mouth to counter this, but then thought better of it. The back of her throat burned from the force of her cries, and there came a horrid, acidic taste. She slouched forward so that her elbows rested on either side of the sink, and gave a little groan into the basin.
"It's okay." The creature's voice, deep and unsettling as it was, carried a warmth which Misa found oddly reassuring. It was enough, at the very least, to distract her from screaming any more.
"Wh-when you say fr-friend…" Misa twisted herself round to stare up at the creature's face. "I mean...what are you?"
"You need to listen carefully because our time is short. I have three things I am bound to tell you." Misa, wide-eyed and gaping, nodded.
"Number one: shinigami are real. I am one, and they call me Rem."
"What the f-"
"Number two: Kira is in that boardroom. When we return, I will show you who he is."
"What the actual f-"
"Number three, because this is the most important." The creature named Rem, for the first time, appeared aggravated. She ground her strange, disfigured teeth and glowered at the bathroom's tiled floor. Then she began to recite in a flat voice, much like a waitress reading off a list of rehearsed specials for the hundredth time that evening.
"Light Yagami was, undisputedly, the world's greatest, most ingenious Kira. His brilliant plan and his… pure love…" Rem sniffed disdainfully. "...for you, cleverly saved you both from certain death sentences. He arranged it so that both of you would lose your killing powers, and all your memories associated with them. If you still love him, then you need to trust Light Yagami and do exactly as he says otherwise the romantic, fairytale future he has planned for you both won't come true. That is all." Rem twisted her lopsided mouth and narrowed her yellow eyes. "I mean, personally, I think he's a-"
"No way! So Light really was Kira?" Misa cried, pulling herself up so that she was standing before Rem. For the first time since their encounter she was smiling, despite the tears which were gathering in her eyes. "I was about to go and scream for help but everything you said… it's like you actually know him! That was so accurate."
"I'm not supposed to say any more." Rem flexed her long arms uncomfortably, her eyes darting down to the floor again. "But I still think you could do better."
"And what's that supposed to mean?" Misa, drying her eyes with the back of her hand, uttered a small hmph of protest. Quite forgetting that she was arguing with a supernatural entity that killed humans as an occupation, she placed her hands on her hips and stared Rem in the face. "Light has the brains, the body, the drive to kill for me…! All these other perverts just gibber like morons and stare at my butt. Light's not like that at all..."
Rem watched Misa sadly as the model clasped her hands to her chest in adoration.
"There's a fairly obvious reason for that."
"You know, Rem," Misa continued, not hearing her, "even though I don't remember you, I'm glad we were friends. I bet we used to sit up late gossiping - " Rem's mouth curled into a small smile, flashing her mangled, yellow teeth.
"We did. We talked about love -"
" - stalking hotties -"
" - deciding who to kill."
"Oh, I wish I could remember that!" Misa finished sadly. "Anyway, we'd better head back otherwise it'll look suspicious…" She began to walk to the door, Rem taking great, lumbering steps behind her.
"When can we hang out again?"
"I need to stay near this Kira…" Rem muttered resentfully. "He's such a mess. You'll see."
The corridor was still mostly quiet when the pair emerged from the bathroom. Two men in suits passed by; one glanced at the contents of Misa's handbag which had clattered out onto the floor. A woman in sports clothing stood gesturing angrily at one of the office managers. Her CPR mannequin was held aloft as she scratched the back of her head in imitation of the man she had met in Shimura's office.
The door to the boardroom opened. Misa approached her seat with a small wave to Matsuda. It seemed that the interview had come to an end as the detective was already standing to shake each of the panelists' hands.
Rem drifted through the table and paced behind the eight men, coming to rest behind the one who wielded the power of Kira. And that's when Misa saw who exactly Rem had been talking about.
x-x-x
Despite their shared sense of triumph, Misa and Matsuda received a cool reception from the other members of the task force upon their return to headquarters. Soirchiro, Aizawa and Mogi listened wearily as the pair recounted a blow-by-blow analysis of their covert operation, only for their jubilation to be swiftly extinguished by L.
"The next time the pair of you take it upon yourselves to try and derail this investigation, could you at least have the courtesy to text me first? At least then I can have Watari take you out."
"Out where?" asked Misa, her eyes widened in interest.
"Sorry, Ryuzaki!" Matsuda cried, his hand seeking the back of his head. "I did think about it…" His reassurances were futile, for L had his chair turned away from the other detectives; his back was arched stiffly as he glared down at his knees.
"Thinking was your first mistake."
Even when Misa produced a bag of Dumbo's Doughnuts, it did little to soften L's contempt. And yet, as she unfurled the paper packaging, the detective did not refuse them.
And so, it was before the large, wall-mounted monitor that the Task Force waited as Watari typed a continuous stream of complicated commands into his laptop. The view suddenly changed from one surveillance camera to the next. Wedy had worked tirelessly through the previous night to install cameras and wiretaps in all thirty of the specified Yotsuba offices and boardrooms. Soirchiro and Aizawa had spent the day surveying footage from Yotsuba's boardrooms, whilst Light and L had binged both a live stream marathon of the offices and an entire chocolate gateau. Light had accepted this offering from Watari under protest, for there seemed to be nothing else savoury or substantial at headquarters. By the time Matsuda and Misa had returned from their interview that afternoon, Light was picking reluctantly at his sixth helping, deep in the throes of a sugar crash.
"I told you just to push past it," L urged him, "it gets so much better."
Trying and failing to rally himself, Light slouched forward with his head cupped in his hand. Then, sensing an unwelcome presence behind him, he turned around. There stood Misa, clasping the plastic back of his chair with an inscrutable expression upon her face.
"...what?"
"Nothing," she assured him, suppressing a knowing smile.
Soichiro and Mogi had sunk feebly into two of the spare office chairs; Matsuda strode importantly before the assembled detectives. L lifted a cylindrical doughnut and, with ease, pushed the entire cake lengthways to the back of his mouth. Light watched on, half disapproving, half curious.
"... this is Boardroom C?" Aizawa asked. The detective pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger tiredly. "Ryuzaki… you sure we're not wasting our time going through all of this?"
"I'm afraid we can't afford to skip any of this footage," L replied, sucking the sugar off his thumb like a child trapped in a gangly, teenage body, "but don't worry. Mr Matsuda has assured us that these Secret Friday Afternoon Meetings do exist." Behind his chair, Matsuda waved his phone enthusiastically at the assembly.
"I've got the photos here!" he announced, "this Shimura guy plans out literally every second of his life. Look here - his planner has notes on everything. Every conference call, what he's planning to pick up for lunch, how many calories… he even schedules his bowel movements-"
"Too much information Matsuda!" Soichiro snapped.
There came a rustle of activity from the monitor. All eyes moved to the wall-mounted screen, where seven men in dark suits were taking their seats around an octagonal table. An eighth, with long, immaculate hair, was standing next to a projector screen which had a PowerPoint presentation displayed upon it. Over by Mogi, Matsuda gasped.
"Shimura's at that table! I did it! Matsuda!"
"Would you stop being your own cheerleader and shut up so we can watch?" seethed Aizawa. "Watari… is there any more coffee…?" The old man nodded kindly and rose from his chair.
"...and this graph shows how sales for Yotsuba life insurance have soared," the businessman concluded, tucking a strand of long, black hair behind his ear. "The red line here shows the number of purchases made for additional anti-Kira protection too." He turned to his associates with a look of grim satisfaction. There came a collective murmur of approval from his colleagues.
"Anyway," Matsuda interrupted again, causing the other detectives to tear their eyes away from the screen, "on Fridays all Shimura had written was 'meeting' or those days just had lines through them. It totally seems sus when you put it with everything else!"
"Yes, Matsuda," L explained with the whimsical tone of a father reading a bedtime story, "that's what we call an anomaly."
Back on camera, the boardroom's projector screen was blank once more and the long-haired man had returned to the table. In his place, a thin, twitchy, black-haired man approached the front of the room. He had something of a ferrety quality about him.
"Thank you, Namikawa. Now, we've had twelve personnel changes over the past month, including our own promotions," the man spoke in a quavering voice, his hand fidgeting against his leg. "As you know, I've had to recruit temporary staff from local agencies to cover all the vacant positions…
Aizawa yawned into his closed fist. He looked up hopefully as Watari walked back into the room bearing a steaming coffee point. The old man busied himself at the far end of the desk, produced a single cup and then sat down with a satisfied sigh. Aizawa glowered at him.
"On the back of that, I had scheduled a whole staff First Aid Training session for this morning, as there have now been three heart attacks on the premises." The rodent-like individual wriggled his nose distastefully. "Apparently an unauthorised person gave incorrect instructions to our volunteer trainer. Either way, I was forced to fire Hana from reception."
Matsuda hung his head sadly. L, still chewing on his doughnut, heaved a great, disappointed sigh. Next to him, Light had the uncomfortable sensation that he was still being watched. He turned around in his seat to find Misa staring directly at him.
"Seriously, what?"
"...nothing."
"Okay, Shimura, thank you." A bald man whose face was half-obscured by sunglasses acknowledged his colleague with a nod. "The next item is about who is going to die this week."
There was a collective, sharp intake of breath from the Task Force. Aizawa glared around the room, as though daring someone to speak so that he could shush them.
"There are quite a few suitable candidates," Shimura, who was now back in his seat shuffling papers, began to pass them around the table. "I ran these off in case you didn't have a chance to read their files."
"How can they talk about murder so calmly?!" Soirchiro gaped up at the screen in horror, "they're making it as mundane as choosing new office carpet!"
"I know. Who are they to play God? To decide who lives and dies without a shred of remorse?" Light breathed, his hands balled into fists upon the desktop, "it's unforgivable!"
"Mmmm," Next to him, L continued to sedately lick the chocolate frosting from his next doughnut. It was only when the detective noticed the silent outrage of both father and son that he, at last, spoke.
"I mean, oh no. Crime."
"Can I request that Kira try to make this one more subtle?" the man with the long, dark hair - Namikawa - asked, inclining his head slightly, "I feel like he's milking the heart attack gimmack now. I'd like to see something a bit different. We were far more creative when we started out with this initiative, but now we're all just too busy to put in the effort."
"Good point," added a bearded man to his right, "And no more being killed by wildlife. It isn't any less suspicious and we'll just have Animal Control coming in again. Remember when they put down that whole troop of monkeys?"
"That was a bummer," sighed a man with a round, shining face and pale hair. "...I like monkeys."
"We all do, Hatori. So, Kira to kill by means other than a heart attack or a savage primatal assault," a thin man with dark hair and thick-rimmed glasses narrated in a monotonous drone, as though bereft of the ability to take down physical notes. "And the candidate this week is -?"
As the men on the screen fell to muttering over Shimura's printouts, Light swung round to L.
"Ryuzaki, I can't watch anymore of this! We can't let them get away with it!" he cried, before putting out a trembling hand to steady himself. Light blinked, the background whirring of the room's computers suddenly amplified. He pushed his serving of gateau away from him.
"Actually, I wasn't planning to," L remarked dryly, placing his thoroughly-licked doughnut upon the desk. "What did you have in mind, Light?" The former student gestured inarticulately for a moment.
"I… I don't know. Look, we have this video as evidence. Surely that's enough to warrant an arrest, right?"
"Speculating about killing a person isn't generally enough to convict. Not without hard proof of a motive, means and opportunity. Of course that works out well for you Light. Based on your own ideology, you would have convicted yourself by now." Light opened his mouth to argue but his words were drowned out by his father.
"Ryuzaki! What do you mean by that?" Soirchiro's voice was rising again. "I've told you my son isn't Kira."
"Right. Of course he's not."
Furious, Light swept L's doughnut onto the floor. Then, cringing, he wiped his hand thoroughly upon his khakis.
"All in agreement? A double killing. The CEO's son, Todo Yotsuba of Wonder Emporium and Gary Reid, the CEO of M&M World, have to go. With Yotsuba expanding into luxury gifts and confectionary, this will benefit us greatly. Now that has been decided, it's up to Kira to get it done within the fortnight. Okay?" The man with the sunglasses sat back in his chair, glancing at each of the businessmen who surrounded him, and flexed his interlocked hands lazily. "Let's proceed onto our penultimate item. Higuchi, you have a proposal about a Kira mailing service?"
"Come on, Ryuzaki. There has to be something we can do to save these guys…" Light's eyes flicked from the desk up to the screen in desperation. The man with gelled, red hair was now addressing the room, although he seemed far more interested in flashing a laser pointer at the faces of his associates than in the content of his presentation.
"What if I called one of them now and made a deal?" Light, unconsciously, pressed his thumb to his lower lip as he thought aloud, "I could pose as L..."
"I bet you would just love that, wouldn't you?" the real L turned on him in scorn. "Absolutely not."
"I'm not saying I want to become L!"
"As if I would give it up that easily!" L nodded resolutely to himself. "No. Watari and I had the talk some time ago. I won't be pressured into doing it before I'm ready, Light. I am waiting for the right person."
Matsuda, who had been draining the dregs of his coffee cup, inhaled his beverage and was forced to hack noisily into his hand. Light glanced away, frowning to himself. Well, that was weird... even for him. What did he actually think I was after?
On camera, the man with the sunglasses had resumed speaking. "And our final item is investigating L. Mido, do you have the budget details for that?"
"Shimura and I touched base with Mr Coil," Mido began, pushing his bottle top glasses further up his nose. "It seems there were a number of hidden fees in his original offer. What with his consultation fee, the deposit itself, the cancellation fee-"
"Cancellation fee?"
"Yes, he set a payment deadline of forty seconds from our phone call, which we missed," Mido muttered quietly. "And he reversed his call charges."
"That's how these jumped up private detectives make all this cash!" the man with the beard exploded, "What total b-"
Watari uttered a breathy laugh as he finished his coffee. "It's true. That's how I paid for that fleet of jet skis." He sighed in contentment. "To think that I could have sold little L back to the Russian Mafia all those years ago…"
"Hold on, Takahashi..." Namikawa lifted up the paper that had been passed to him. "He's charging us more to not give us information on L, than if we were to accept this information. Is this for real?"
"Oh, just pay the asswipe and see what he sends us," Higuchi yawned, crossing his arms behind his head. "I wouldn't worry about spending money. It's not like old Yotsuba's going to be hanging on much longer. Once he kicks the bucket, the company and its finances will be ours anyway. Meeting adjourned."
"Hey, wait!" Matsuda jumped up suddenly. "They didn't say who was gonna contact Kira! Or even how?" Soichiro gave a solemn nod.
"That's right. That means that Kira must be among those eight men." The Task Force members glanced between themselves; a strange thrill of exhilaration seemed to travel about the room. It was only L who looked down at his squashed doughnut forlornly.
"Ryuzaki...? Isn't that good news?" Light rolled his chair closer, straight over Misa's foot.
"Hmm. Something's not right." L heaved a great sigh. "I suppose I just prefer the good old days when Kira played hard to get."