Chapter Seven - Fine

It was 4:15 A.M. when I walked in.

"Soryu, what has taken you so long?" Ryuuzaki crooned from afar. Rain didn't even bother to say hello. He was in a bad mood and I knew why.

"I assume you know," I said, putting my hands on my hips. "You're watching the traffic channel."

On the plasma screen, there was a badly-dressed news reporter talking about a car crash, and how it would cut off most traffic lines. Ryuuzaki hurriedly shut off the TV, then glanced inquisitively at me. "What do you mean?"

I groaned. Someone save me from this idiot of a detective.

"Whatever," I said, pulling out my laptop and sitting on the piano.

I flipped it open and placed my laptop beside the music stand. After hitting the power button, I typed in my random password. I watched as the desktop revealed a picture by my old friend Katana, smiling at the beautiful colors.

"How's the search going?" I asked, pulling out a few music books.

"Horrible. We can't find any people who match the outline of Artemis except three young women," Raito replied. His eyes watched me carefully, adding tons of weight onto my already-heavy burden.

I furrowed my brow as an act of frustration. "Damn it, when are we going to find that murderess?" I knew that Raito and L had included me in the three young women.

L said nothing, but glanced over in my direction. He typed something on his laptop and hit enter.

Rain's attention drifted slightly to his screen. I decided that L had just confirmed a suspicion. He stopped glaring at me to type a reply. After reading the message, both L and Rain began to study me.

"Sheesh," I said, with a slightly joking tone. "Why are you two glaring at me like that? It's a bit creepy."

Raito stood and sighed. I was startled for a second: his eyes had a cold glare, as if he'd seen things more horrible than what I'd seen. But that couldn't be, could it? I'd known him practically my whole life, and he'd seen pretty much everything I had.

So what made him so cold then?

"What's going on?" I asked shakily.

L returned his attention to his computer. After a moment, he said, "You know what's going on, Artemis." His voice held no hate. It was just…his voice.

I laughed. It sounded a bit crazed. "Haha… Me? Artemis? You have no proof."

"You may have been intelligent, Soryu, but you were overconfident. You forgot about witnesses. The to-be victim of the first man you killed was an artist." Rain held up a drawing. "Though she didn't get a good look, she managed to recall Artemis's face."

I looked at the picture, afraid of what to expect. My face was drawn with a few errors here and there, but it was still very clear that it was me. Drawn with charcoal, it had a lot of shading and almost no tone, but it was still very detailed. My face darkened. Shit. I'd been found.

"So now what? Are you going to set me up for execution?" I said darkly.

L put his thumb to his lips. "No."

I almost fell. I really did. I'd been expecting L to give me the death sentence the entire time. But then again, with L, you can never really tell. Before I could ask what I was to do instead, Raito answered.

"We know you not to do anything without good reason. We want to know why you did this, first, before we issue any kind of punishment." His face was still as cold as ever.

I frowned. There was something wrong here. It was oddly… forgiving. It was as if they were forgiving me… but why?

As Raito opened his mouth to begin the interrogation, I beat him to the questions. "Why? Why are you forgiving me?"

Raito's face darkened even more, to the point where his angelic face seemed… satanic. He spoke softly, but had an intimidating aura. "I used to be Kira."

I froze. My angelic Raito… Kira? It didn't fully register, but it was there. It felt scary to know that the kind person was a mass murderer. He continued to speak, his head lowered in shame, something that he rarely ever felt.

"I killed L, Raye Penber, and many other people for my vision of justice. But it wasn't worth it. I got killed humiliatingly at the end of all my efforts." He glared at me. "We were reincarnated when we were born, as crazy as it seems. We think that I met L at such a young age to prevent me from killing many other people, as I did in my last life. But instead of me, you became lustful for blood."

My eyes widened in horror. It sounded so goddamn convincing. But I knew that, just because Raito was Kira and wasn't this life, doesn't mean that he's the reason that I became Artemis.

"Just because you weren't lustful for a crime-free world doesn't mean that I was lustful for the same reason."

"We are aware of that, Sora," L said. He never used my real name unless he wanted to make a point. His usually blank eyes glimmered with emotion. "My suspicion has been that you wanted to pull us into a relationship. May I say, you did a very good job with that."

I nearly toppled over again. These people are going to give me a heart attack someday, I swear!

"So now what, am I going to be sent to jail and killed?"

L laughed, startling both Raito and myself. We rarely heard L laugh. "Of course not. The criminals we sent out were sent out with a death sentence."

My mind registered the "we." "You… knew from the start?" My voice was shaky.

"Raito found the to-be victim and asked for her drawing on the first night. Of course we would have known. From then on, we decided to let you handle some of the death sentences, since you were already posted on the news."

I wanted to knock out L. I really did. "So why didn't you tell me you knew?"

"L wanted to play with you for a bit. He told me it was extremely exciting, trying to solve it without the picture, but then he gave up, saying it was too hard." Raito answered easily, brushing some of his hair out of his face.

"You will have no sentence. The rapist you killed first was going to be arrested in a matter of minutes, anyway, and killed on the spot. The police are grateful and sent a unanimous request to let you off of the death sentence, despite my protests. Even Interpol was against your death sentence. I have no right to send you to death."

I gaped. So… the police was using me as a tool? My pride was crushed. I glanced away from the two in shame.

"Instead," Raito's voice called, "you will be solving cases with us again, but in the same building so we know you're not doing anything like this again."

I pouted. Now I had to live with two homos, even if they are my best friends.

Fine.

I never thought it would finish this quickly, but at the beach scene, the story was like, "PUT RAITO HERE. NOW." :S Such a whiny story. And I figured it would be stupid to let L and Raito kill Soryu right off, them being so childish, and decided instead that they would torture her for it personally.

So yeah. I really enjoyed writing this story. It was fun, even though it didn't score many hits, since it has an OC… I was rereading this and found hints of LxOC and LightxOC. I really didn't intend for that to happen. It just did. ;;

Thanks for sticking through the entire thing! And for all you good reviewers, if you want the epilogue, review, and I'll post it up if I get at least 3 requests for it! xD (Yes, a small minimum, but this story doesn't have many different reviewers.)

For those of you who haven't encountered the word "Fine" before, it's not "Damn, she's FINE!"; that's just plain idiocity. Fine is a musical term meaning "end." And, since Soryu is a musician (too bad I didn't get to make much use of that), I decided "Fine" was better than "End". :P

Thanks for reading!

Sora Pwns x3