Continuing with the fornightly installments, here's chapter 15. I'll have the next one for you on the Sunday after next ^_^

Whammy

UNDER A RARE, cloudless October sky Misa Amane strolled buoyantly along a parade of shops. A gentle breeze stirred her loose, blonde hair ties. From her hand she swung a bat-shaped bag back and forth. Her interest piqued by an object to her right, she weaved through pedestrians upon the striped road crossing before arriving at a shop window. There she stood, entranced by a decorative skull suspended by invisible string.

At that very second, two hundred and fifty miles away in an Osaka prison, inmate 137 rolled off his steel toilet onto the cell floor.

Misa bobbed past shop fronts, her bag still rhythmically swaying by her side. The corner of the street housed a coffee vendor who waved to the young model in welcome. As steam rose into the cool, autumnal air, Misa reached for her purse. The vendor gave a careless wave of his hand, insisting that she accept the drink 'on the house of course! '

Meanwhile, at the same moment on the west coast of America, a suspect on bail following a high profile murder case collapsed in his macaroni and cheese.

Around the corner from the coffee stall, Misa approached a magazine stand. The proprietor eagerly pointed between a glossy cover which bore the model's face and the live incarnation which stood before him. Misa laughed, overwhelmed as the man offered both a free copy of the magazine and a staggeringly large chocolate bar to accompany it.

Simultaneously, in a quaint city in south west England, a woman who was about to stand trial for manslaughter gave a strangled gasp. Her lover, a rather insecure fellow, took the utterance to be complimentary and continued his efforts.

As Misa walked, her bag now far more weighed down than when she had first entered the street, she seemed to be chattering happily to herself. Heaving the bag upwards, she reached inside, rummaging amongst her many freebies, to offer a red apple to the empty air.

x-x-x

Three days had passed since Light's discharge from hospital and, much like any awkward segway into an unfamiliar story arc, the investigation was once more underway. Following an exhaustive exchange of emails with the warden of a county prison, Watari was leaning back in his chair to read the result of his endeavours. Although initially reluctant to test the Death Note upon a death row inmate, blackmail against the warden had indeed proven effective.

Watari's grey moustache bristled as he reached into the biscuit tin. The laughter track from the current episode of One Foot In The Grave punctuated the silence of his small office, so much so that the old gentleman could hardly hear the soft creak of his door. Thereupon Watari sensed, rather than heard the presence behind him. He slowly wheeled his chair around to witness L, with arms held stiffly at his sides, staring down at his bare feet.

"What's wrong, L? It's past midnight." Watari hastily closed down his programme and opened up an email filled with profanity instead. "Why are you standing up straight?"

"I know it's late, I... just wanted to check if you had renewed my life insurance?" the detective asked, his face hidden beneath a mop of untidy hair. Watari obliged by clicking through the rest of his email folder.

"Let me just see… yes. It's a good job that I didn't choose Yotsuba. They're already close to bankruptcy after this unpleasant business with Hatori." The old man adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses, peering over the top of them at L, who seemed as disconsolate as ever. "But why the sudden interest?"

"Just making conversation," L continued in a leaden voice. "It's… also highly likely that we will both die within the next two days."

"What?"

"I would say there's around a sixty percent chance of it happening later today. I'd put it at over ninety by teatime tomorrow."

"L, why are you saying this?" The old man had started to rise from his chair. "Do I need to update my will?"

"Yes, that would be wise." L came forward now, slouching by Watari's side. "And I would be grateful if you could make a few other preparations. Please initiate Protocol Zero." At this, Watari grumbled.

"Not again. How many times have we frightened Roger and the children needlessly with Protocol Zero?"

"Please Watari. You should also delete the harddrive and my internet browsing history."

"Of course. And you should be thankful that I will be taking that to my grave." Watari typed in a string of commands before giving a small nod of approval. "The timer is set up."

"If I should die first..."

"Yes..." Watari spoke in the hushed tones of a father comforting a child, "I know. I'm to remove all of your teeth and then burn your body... but only because I know you'd do the same for me if it was the other way round. In the event that we die together, Wedy has the dental kit and full instructions." L placed a bare foot on the base of the empty chair beside Watari and absently wheeled it to and fro.

"There's one more thing I have to do. I need your phone." Watari raised his pale eyebrows and handed the device over. L dialled and held the cell up to his ear. In the pocket of his jeans, his own phone rang.

"L, surely it's less disturbing for him to go on believing the story which Roger and I concocted..."

Once the tone had ceased and the automated voicemail introduction was complete, L began to speak.

"Near - this is L. If you're listening to this message it means that I am no longer alive. I'm sorry that we never got to meet in person. I've always wanted to come and visit you, but circumstances have made that difficult. Now, this will be hard to hear, but I have something that you need to know. The truth is, I am your biological father. I am leaving you with approximately fifteen billion pounds of inheritance to collect, but to receive this in full you will have to kill Mello. Don't disappoint me."

L hung up with a regretful sigh; Watari shook his head despairingly.

"...and now I think I'll take one last walk on the roof."

x-x-x

For the past three days rain had hammered upon the face of the building, heralding the gloom of early October. A despondence had settled over the task force. Gone was the fierce determination which characterised the early days of the Yotsuba Kira Case. The resurgence of vigilante killings only served to remind the team of Kira's humbling omnipotence. Yet, whilst the former police detectives discussed the Death Note's rules in depth and searched for patterns amongst the new heart attack victims, Light found himself bereft of purpose. In part, he had willingly agreed to avoid close contact with the Death Note itself. Even without L's suggestion, Light sickened at the thought of setting eyes upon the black, leather bound cover. The memory of that horrific choking sensation followed by a vice-like grip in his chest lingered in the student's mind. It was, however, becoming increasingly evident that Light's presence was now more of a burden to L than a blessing. Far from remaining as L's partner, Light had been demoted to mere proofreading. This was, perhaps, one of the more generous errands L had ascribed him over the past few days. However demoralising it was for Light to circle the mathematical errors in Matsuda's reports, it was mildly more satisfying than providing coffee and snacks whilst the true efforts of the team continued without him. Light had begun to add in his own duties, maliciously timing his cleaning chores to coincide with L's moments of quiet contemplation.

"Oh, I hope you weren't concentrating," Light had spoken innocently enough as he sneered down at the spotless floor. Engrossed in the surveillance tape he was watching, L's noncommittal sound was lost in the fading whirr of the vacuum. Light recognised the footage from the evening of Yotsuba's launch party. There was Misa, flouncing across the foyer in her off-the-shoulder, pink dress. L licked his lips.

"What is wrong with you?" Light lashed out. Back on the screen the surveillance tape now showed the pair of them speaking with Hatori; Light with his arms bound by plaster casts. The student listened to himself complain of an itchy nose before L, standing at his side, reached out to him.

"Did I get it...?"

On camera, Light saw himself appear momentarily lost, with L's hand upon his face.

As he hastily dragged the vacuum cleaner away, Light considered again L's decision to so obviously exempt him from the investigation. On a rational level, Light knew that his deductive skills made him too valuable to lose. Yet there was the other, less rational explanation - L's wish to keep Light from harm. Perhaps, strange as he was, L had never experienced love to such a degree that he had ever feared the loss of it. It was easy for those who had never before felt the depths of such a bond to be swept away by a tide of emotion.

At least that's not true in my case. Only an idiot would let themself become distracted by feelings, Light thought to himself. Ugh, why isn't this thing working? The former honours student inspected the socket to find the device had not been switched on.

Meanwhile, Misa's apartment had only briefly stood empty before Matsuda had seized the opportunity to move in his own belongings. The model had attempted to entice Light to her new accommodation but the many demands of document checking, refreshment provision and housekeeping had deterred the latter. And so it was that on the third evening following Light's return to headquarters, Misa insisted on paying a visit to her overworked boyfriend.

As Light pushed open the door to his room he was, at first, struck by the scattering of rose petals upon his duvet. Soft candlelight flickered upon a half-drunk wine bottle and glasses - one of which already bore a smear of red lipstick.

"M-Misa…?"

In answer to his summons, Misa leaned suggestively against the doorframe, her bare shoulders pale in the room's glow. The model smiled knowingly, tracing her lips with a finger before beckoning Light closer.

"It's just you and me," Misa whispered as she stroked Light's cheek. "There's no one in our way..." Light could not help but glance behind wondering if, on the off chance, someone might have thought to pass into their way.

"Misa…" he tried, peeling her hands from the front of his shirt. "Remember what the doctors said? No strenuous activity for at least a week."

"That's okay..." Misa muttered, pressing her lips gently against his. Light winced at the sour taste of wine. "I can do all the strenuous activity!" And, with that, she buried her face in his neck. The model's hands wound under Light's arms as the pair stumbled backwards. Light spat out a mouthful of blonde hair and flumped down onto the mattress. Misa threw a leg around his waist, her pink nightdress fluttering above her hips. Astride him, Misa furiously began unbuttoning his shirt.

Shadows danced around the walls and amongst the stitched dolls who watched from the zip of Misa's bag. Light considered the decor of his room distastefully. She's brought so many candles it's like being in a church. How can something with such religious overtones be sexy? He felt a hand run up the inside of his leg. Misa sat up, looking perturbed.

"Light, is everything okay?"

"Er…" Light smiled apologetically. "I'm just a little tired. Maybe we should do this some other time?"

"But we've waited so long!" As Misa drew Light's shirt from his shoulders, there came the sound of ripping fabric.

"Sorry. It's Ryuzaki's stupid velcro sleeves." Light steered Misa gently backwards and shrugged off the rest of the shirt himself. "I don't know why I still have all these."

"Me neither. They look much better off." Misa drew his grey t-shirt over his head. Her hand smoothed Light's chest, the rings on her hand cold against his skin.

"I've loved you from the moment I met you, Light." Misa spoke so earnestly that Light felt compelled to hold her against him. She kissed him again; Light hesitatingly opened his mouth only to feel his teeth crack painfully against hers. As she drew back, Misa's tremulous voice was in his ear.

"I never knew that a feeling could be so strong. And now that you're Kira again, I think I love you even more..."

"What?" Light pushed Misa away from him and scrambled to sit upright, coughing on yet another strand of blonde hair. "Why would you even say a thing like that?"

"Huh?" With the mistiness of her voice evaporated, Misa looked no more than a scared child as she sat on her heels. "I don't understand… is this some kind of role play? Do you want to pretend this is your first time?"

"Pretend?" Light asked, panicked.

"Sure. If you want, the scenario can be you finding the Death Note?" Misa waded over on her knees, settling behind Light to stroke between his shoulder blades. "Your first kill is my would-be murderer and, in exchange for my life, I make sweet, grateful love to you?"

Light felt faintly sick.

"Look Misa, you keep talking about murder and it's really not doing it for me at all." As though to underscore his point, Light blew out several of the candles on his bookshelf. "You should go."

"Why are you being like this, Light?" Misa's voice whined like a tightened violin string. "I did everything you said and you promised you would love me forever!" With a furtive glance around the room, she spoke in little more than a low hiss. "I thought you would be happy that... you know…" Emphatically, she mouthed the words. "...you've got the Death Note back? "

"Wh-what?"

Light swooped down upon her and grabbed the model's arm. Misa gave a shriek of fright.

"Misa? What do you know?" Light's voice too was low, urgent. He yanked her forwards, almost dragging the young woman onto the floor. "What aren't you telling me?"

"Light, you're hurting me!" Misa wrenched her arm away, her face ghastly white in the glow of the candlelight. "Like I said, I just did as you told me! I always do!"

Before Light could press her further, Misa lifted her bag from the floor and began to sift through its contents.

"Here, let me show you." Misa reached in and removed a handful of pages. She touched the corner of one to the back of Light's hand. Where there had just been rose petals, the space on the bed was now occupied by a gangly, lounging figure. The shinigami's entire body was black, save for his pale face and shoulders. Dark feathers lined the creature's back but it was his features which appalled Light the most. Two green, bulbous eyes gazed back at him while a slow grin spread across the being's face. It was the very figure who had haunted his nightmares.

"It's nothing to worry about, Light," the shinigami gave a great, hacking laugh, "I heard it happens to every guy."

It took every fibre of Light's being to hold back his horrified cry. The room seemed to shrink around him, the space somehow smaller with the three of them enclosed within. Or, perhaps it was Light's slowly creeping fear that, at this most inopportune of moments, there were also intrusive eyes upon them. He looked quickly away from the creature's grotesquely smiling face to the ceiling, as though expecting to see the small, red blink of a recording light.

"Nah… you're not being watched," the shinigami contradicted him, much to Light's lessening dread. "There's no cameras in here."

Light leaned to retrieve his crumpled clothes from the floor. Rising to catch the shinigami's eye, he pointed to his ear.

The creature appeared to lift weightlessly to its claw-like feet. It moved about the space with little more than the quiet jangle of chains which were slung about its waist. Light hastily dressed himself whilst Misa rocked back onto her heels and sighed tearfully. Less than a minute into its investigation, the shinigami gruffly gave its verdict.

"Nah, there's no bugs in here either. Guess you've got no choice but to talk to me now, huh?"

"So, you've been in here the whole time?" Light demanded. "Have we met before...? Only, I think I remember seeing you in a dream…" At this, the shinigami's olive-like eyes bulged.

"Whoa, it was never like that with us. We were roommates. That's all."

"You were roommates," Misa assured him. "His name's Ryuk." She made a quiet noise of interest as Light stood before her.

"That's right… There were two Kiras and so there had to be two shinigami. Rem - and now, Ryuk," Light considered aloud. "Rem gave a notebook to Hatori… so, how did you come by Ryuk's, Misa?"

"I can explain." Misa's hand delved quickly into her bag again and withdrew a folded letter. With a thrill of dread, Light recognised his name at the end of the page.

"Huh? I never wrote to you!"

"Oh please Light," Misa spoke thickly, her eyes awash with tears. "Who else has handwriting that beautiful?" The student sighed, pained by the fact that his own perfectly formed letters and looping, feminine script could be his undoing. With his knot of dread tightening, Light read the open page. The instructions were brief:

Misa,

1. Remove some pages and rebury Death Note.

2. Kill L.

3. Burn this.

Love forever*

Light Yagami

*(conditional on all of the above)

Light's head jerked up. "Tell me you didn't!"

"I thought y-you'd got your memories back!" She clapped a hand to her mouth. Misa glanced warily around the room, eyes wide and shining. Between shuddering sobs, her words fell into barely discernible garble.

"Two months ago, I ran into Rem. It was b-back when I visited Yotsuba with Matsu. Rem told me you'd planned all this to save us from b-being captured by L! I just wanted to help you, b-but with everything that's happened recently and you stuck in the hospital… Anyway, I went and asked Rem and she sh-showed me where the Death Note was b-buried."

"Not that," Light's hand clamped around her wrist again. "Did you really try to kill L?"

"Of course!" Light's mouth fell open, but the model continued. "I'm s-sorry but I can't remember his real name. I'm so sorry! Maybe Ryuk and I can do the eye deal?" The shinigami, who had returned to lounging on his side, suddenly sat up.

"The eye deal?" Light closed his eyes in thought. "The deal… that's what Hatori said in his car to Rem. Misa, for you to know all this, it can only mean..."

Light's legs buckled as he sank onto the bed next to her, hands dropping from his half-buttoned shirt. "I… I know Kira's way of thinking is sometimes frighteningly close to my own… But even so, there's no way…" His head hung weakly. "No… It's not possible that I could have killed so many people and not even remember it…"

"Sure ya don't. You gave up ownership of the Death Note before you buried it. Now Misa has it, so I'm attached to her." Ryuk pointed unhelpfully at the model who was still shivering quietly. "Up until then you were cleansing the world of criminals and sending prank letters to L about it. It was pretty funny."

Light's eyes were wide with terror.

"So... Misa really was the Second Kira… and I… I was Kira." Light lifted his hands to the top of his hair then left them suspended there, quite forgetting where he had been meaning to place them. "Oh no… no, no, no, no..."

He stood and began to pace absently, drumming his fists against his skull.

"Oh… I feel like my brain is going to throw up… oh this is bad… oh, this has gone so horribly wrong… oh no, no, no…"

Misa glanced at Ryuk in fright.

"Oh no… oh, I'm going to jail… Oh god, I'll never survive in there. I mean, look at me!" Light rasped a shallow breath, his chest rising and falling rapidly. "Oh no, no, no, no, no…"

Misa burst into fresh tears.

"Rem and I were just doing what we thought you wanted us to do!"

"I didn't tell you to do anything!" Light yelled back, his hands clenched at his sides. Misa rose to her knees.

"I asked you and you said I had 'things of my own' to be getting on with, so that's what I did! I killed sixteen criminals!"

"I was talking about your career as a model, NOT AS A MASS MURDERER!" Light roared, Misa shrinking beneath his unbridled fury. "Do you have any idea what you've done? Now shut up so I can think."

With his loosely-stitched composure at risk of fraying, Light stood, his head bowed in thought. Ryuk watched on in quiet amusement.

"I… I guess, the first thing is... we need to get rid of the evidence," he began in a strained voice. "The rest of the investigation team has been analysing the rules of the Death Note. From what I've learned, there's one rule which specifies that if the notebook was ever burned, it would cause every person who had ever touched it to die..." Light brought his other palm to his chin. "Whether that's true or not, I can't afford to risk it. Besides, L will already assume that there's a second notebook after those sixteen criminals died from heart attacks. If the trail suddenly goes cold whilst he's looking for it, it will just seem all the more suspicious..." The student lapsed into silence as though hypnotised by the shuddering candle flames surrounding them.

"Misa!" his voice cracked like a whip, causing the model to sit bolt upright on command.

"Give me one of your pages." Misa obliged; Light stood, holding out the note as though it was a soiled piece of toilet paper. He considered the pocket of his khakis before pulling gingerly at a tiny lever on his watch. Within, a hidden compartment slid open bearing a torn strip of paper.

"Huh. Guess I know myself too well…" Light pressed in the second shred of paper and slid the metal tray shut. "I used to keep notes in here all the time at high school. Now, I can't imagine bringing myself to use this, but I may have to as a last resort."

"But why-?"

"Don't you get it?" Light descended upon Misa, causing her to cry out. "We're in serious danger! It might be our only chance to protect ourselves."

"Keep your own pieces of the notebook close and don't kill any more criminals." Light's tone had taken on that of a parent scolding a child. "First, we'll need to dig up your Death Note and disable it so that it can't be used against us. One of the rules states that misspelling a person's name multiple times can render a Death Note useless in affecting them. It's knowledge like that which could help us..."

Misa nodded.

"When I give the order we'll have Ryuk lend the notebook to another person. It can't be someone we know personally, but they'll need to be the type to cooperate and follow our orders. That way we can keep tabs on them and gradually lead the investigation team to them." Light heaved a breath and sat on the edge of the bed once more, exhaustion evident on his face. "That should satisfy L's curiosity. It'll only be a matter of time before he'll be able to find it and close the case once and for all..."

The student shifted round, regarding Misa shrewdly.

"You know, something about this whole situation feels off. Before you go, you need to tell me anything else you know about the Death Note…"

It was approaching midnight when Light bid the model a weary goodnight. He watched Misa disappear from view into the lobby, Ryuk gliding eerily along behind her. With a heavy heart, Light returned to his dimly-lit room. Less than half the candles were still alight, giving the place a distinctly dismal air. Thinking better of it, Light buttoned his shirt and walked into the corridor. As the door clicked shut behind him, he began his ascent to the roof.