Howdy everyone! Firstly, I'd like to sincerely apologise with all my heart to everyone who has been following this story.
My personal life has changed dramatically in the past couple of months and I've barely been home at all. (It's nothing bad, I just have a new boyfriend who has pulled me out of my life sitting at home, feeling apathetic all the time).
I have been working on the story lately, almost every time I've been home, but it has just taken so long to get it this far.
And I promise I will be home more often to keep writing :)
Disclaimer: Death Note belongs to Tsugimi Ohba & Takeshi Obata, but the OC's are mine!
Chapter 5 – The Meeting
'I would like to meet with you...'
The words repeated in her head as she walked up the stairs. She was wearing her usual black pants, with her boots on as well, and a casual dark grey tank top that she hadn't even taken out of her draw in about a year since she hadn't needed it, a nice warm jacket, and a black scarf that tactfully wrapped around to cover the lower half of her face.
Usually something like that would turn heads, but she knew how to blend in and stay under the radar so no unnecessary attention was drawn to her. And if something like that did happen, she only appeared to be unarmed. A member of the Sora Ops never walked around unarmed. Even when at home.
She continued walking up the stairs until she got to the right floor and opened the door that revealed the long hallway. Glancing at the numbers on the doors, she kept on going until she finally saw the number 613.
Casually, she lifted the door card out of her pants pocket and swiped it through the small machine attached to the door. The red light flickered to green and the door was unlocked. She opened the door and stepped inside, simultaneously pulling her Sora Ops mask out of her jacket and over her face and cautiously looked around until she saw Ame, Kumo, and Taiyou sitting around a small coffee table in the middle of the room .
Another person in the room caught her attention. It was an old, bespectacled man wearing a smart, but not too formal suit and a kind expression on his face. Her blue orbs focused on him, and she deduced before he could react that going by his body size and height that he was Watari. He walked over to her and bowed politely and respectfully.
"My condolences, Tsuki." he said sympathetically with a hint of sadness in his voice.
When he stood back up, he offered to take her coat, but she declined politely as she could and walked over to sit down with the others. As per usual, Ame and Kumo both had their masks on, and they both greeted her with their eyes as they had become used to doing.
Tsuki could tell that they were still both pretty shaken by Hoshi's death, and she couldn't deny that she was too, and had even allowed a break in her emotional wall and shed a single tear for him when she had arrived home after everyone had decided to call it a day and get some rest. Taiyou was also upset, but he had been doing this sort of thing for years, so he wasn't too shaken by it all.
She noticed Watari going into another room, and he came out a moment later and everyone could feel the suspense rising.
"L will be with you in a moment." he spoke and bowed his head a little before moving off to do something else that no one really paid attention to, since all eyes were focused on the door he had entered and come out of.
The discussion - or argument, more or less – from this morning kept running through her head.
Watari had just left, and Taiyou was walking him out of the building like he did every now and then. Back in the office, predictably enough, Tsuki was having her own little tantrum in a very serious, rational and emotionless manner. Ame and Kumo were going to have to try and get through to her.
"This is a ridiculous idea. L is not in charge of this investigation. The Sora Ops are the ones being targeted, as well as anyone that we've worked with previously, therefore it is our responsibility. If we meet with L, they will gain control of this operation and when it concerns my agents that I work with day in and day out, risking our lives to complete our missions, I will not allow any usurpation of the lead." Tsuki hissed tonelessly, ignoring the gazes of her co-workers.
It wasn't that she wanted the top job. In fact, she didn't want to be removed from the field at all. And it certainly wasn't a case of ambitiousness or wanting Taiyou gone. She just wanted this all sorted as soon as possible and to get back at whoever was harming her comrades as well as the others.
She had worked with Hoshi for a long time and they had become good friends and comrades and when her life and the lives of her comrades were on the line, she wanted to know that they would be as safe as could be. To achieve that, they would need to solve this case swiftly, and L being around and in charge would undoubtedly limit her input and how much she would be listened to.
Inevitably, L would get in her way, which wouldn't turn out well for them. The only way she could make sure that she was in control is if she immediately spoke up and told everyone how this was going to go. This was the kind of case she specialised in solving, and she would make damn sure that her expertise would contribute to solving it.
There would be no way that she would just lay down and let L make all the decisions. Hell, she had completely ignored Taiyou's orders on a frequent basis, so L wasn't a huge step up from there. And besides, as if she would allow L to make decisions when they didn't have as many years of field experience under their belt, let alone any.
"You can't just pass up the offer to meet L, Tsuki! This might help us a lot. Just have a bit of faith!" Ame attempted to reason with her, hoping that she would listen but knowing how stubborn she was, it would take a lot of effort for her to agree.
"Yes, I can. And faith has nothing to do with it. I do not care for the privileges of meeting L, and I do not care for L being any more involved in this case than they already are. I have even less interest in unmasking myself to gain L's trust either." she retorted sharply, staring Ame down without restraint.
"Tsuki, as if we have a choice. You know that Taiyou will undoubtedly want to meet with him, so there's not much point in fighting it." Kumo said very nonchalantly from behind his computer, sounding very uninterested in the argument and knowing Tsuki well enough to not bother contesting with her and instead just telling her how it would most likely end up.
Before the blue-eyed woman could reply or even turn to glare at Kumo, the two large doors opened down the hall and Taiyou strolled in, looking serious and resolute. He glanced at Tsuki, who had now turned her head just enough to see him, and she closed her eyes in preparation of what he was going to say, since she was quite sure she already knew what he was about to say.
"We are going to meet with L, and I will not tolerate any arguing of my decision." he spoke loudly and confidently, with his brown eyes scanning the mask-covered faces in the room, but tactfully ignoring Tsuki, since he knew she would hate this idea and he was certain that while he was out of the room, telling Watari that they would meet with L as soon as possible.
"I am arguing your decision. This should be our responsibility. L shouldn't have even been here in the first place." the black-haired woman turned her head back to look in front of her and growled a little under her breath, just releasing a bit of anger and stress in the small gesture.
"Tsuki, I will suspend you from this case indefinitely if you do not obey my orders." Taiyou puffed his chest up subconsciously after seeing Tsuki's hand twitching for the feel of a weapon like she always did when she was beyond furious. Blank, toneless and unrevealing she may be. But her temper was almost unrivalled by anyone he had ever met before.
She turned her head back again to look at him with pure cold fury raging in her icy orbs and scoffed incredulously, since she knew that there would be no way he could stop her from working on it.
For the next few moments while they battled wits through their stares which was a quite often occurrence around the office, Taiyou thought about his options. He could always put on her house arrest, and not allow her to leave the premises. But if he did that, as soon as he got far enough away, she would disable the ankle monitor without setting it off and run off. Or, she might just leave anyway and he couldn't spare any of the lower level agents to keep watch on her. And she'd probably just beat them up if they tried to stop her.
In fact, there wasn't really any realistic way that he could restrain her. He sighed and brought his hand up to his face and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and middle finger with his eyes closed and still felt Tsuki's gaze on him.
"Tsuki...please. Just go with my decision on this. I believe having more assistance from L can only increase our productiveness. And in case you have forgotten, I am in charge here and I will enforce that if necessary." he said almost pleadingly after taking his hand away from his face.
"Well, I think working with L would be a good idea. And Taiyou is right. We can get more work done with more man power and with L resources." Ame put in, trying to help convince Tsuki, even though he knew that he would probably pay for it later.
"You're outnumbered Tsuki. I would love to work with L so I don't have to hack into every damn thing that we're not supposed to use. And think of the gadgets we could use." Kumo drawled dreamily, as if imagining how much easier his work would be right then and there, which was definitely true.
With one last Arctic wind glare at all of them, Tsuki mumbled something along the lines of 'Fine', walked back to her desk and sat down with a loud thump. She knew that she had lost, and she would just have to trust in everyone else's judgement and hope that they would be able to solve this case faster.
About a minute later, it opened to reveal the person known as L, the world's greatest detective who had solved numerous cases that the police couldn't, on their own. And none of them expected what they saw.
A young man of average height with a slim build, pale skin, messy black hair, dark eyes with rings underneath them, wearing a simple white, long sleeved shirt and blue jeans walked out, casual as can be.
This was L?
If Tsuki wasn't so shocked at his odd appearance, she probably would have laughed out loud. He looked like he barely ate, or slept, and his complexion was as pale as her own, and his hair just as jet black. He was probably only her age or a bit younger by the looks of it. She couldn't help but notice that he was kind of cute looking, in the way that he just looked hopeless and nothing like she had expected.
Taiyou wasn't at all shocked by his appearance, having dealt with odder looking specialists and agents in his life before and stood up then walked over to L. He bowed respectfully and shook L's hand confidently.
"It is a pleasure to meet you. I am Taiyou, the first in charge of the Sora Ops. Thank you for wanting to meet with us." he spoke with respect and almost admiration of the young man standing in front of him.
Ame stood up next and walked over to stand in front of L and followed Taiyou's example of bowing and shaking L's hand as Taiyou went and sat back down. Kumo also got up and waited his turn to greet L.
"I'm Ame, the newest addition to the Sora Ops. It's a honour to meet you." he near exclaimed and Tsuki could tell that he was smiling under his mask.
"Kumo, technology guy and resident hacker. Pleasure." he offered simply and casually after shaking L's hand.
Tsuki decided that she would be polite, so that they could at least have met on a good foot. Besides, she couldn't lie to herself and say that she didn't respect him. He was the most powerful justice system embodied in a person.
She strolled over, and watched L's dark and analysing eyes look her up and down as he had with the others, but eyed her with a little more interest which didn't get past her amazingly observant eyes. The woman gave him a quick nod before introducing herself.
"Tsuki. Second in charge with 9 years of experience and deception expertise." she rolled off the top of her head, making sure that L knew exactly what kind of calibre agent he was dealing with here.
He nodded back to her, with a tiny smirk that she easily noticed and she was sure that he would have known that she'd pick up on it. L turned to where everyone was seated and walked over to sit in a single chair that was adjacent to where Tsuki was sitting.
Watari suddenly walked in the room and put down a cup of coffee in front of each person, a bowl with sugar cubes in it, and a small jug with milk in it. L began placing sugar cubes into his coffee until he had nearly used half the bowl while Taiyou, Ame, Kumo and Tsuki watched him with confused curiosity.
"As I'm sure you have already realised, I will need for all of you to be unmasked whilst here. Also, I must ask you to call me Ryuzaki instead of L for safety purposes. I don't believe your code-names will be an issue, so please continue using them." he informed them quietly and calmly, and took a sip of his ridiculously sweet coffee.
"We did realise that. Ame, Kumo, Tsuki, unmask yourselves." Taiyou ordered, even though he was expecting some sort of rebellious behaviour from Tsuki.
Ame and Kumo both removed their masks to reveal their faces. L, or Ryuzaki, studied both of them carefully before turning to Tsuki, who was very reluctant about this part. Taiyou cleared his throat, which was his way of enforcing his orders on her. She closed her eyes to prevent herself from rolling them and took off her mask to reveal the one underneath.
L noticed the mask and minutely raised an eyebrow, but was quickly distracted by Tsuki's icy blue eyes opening that he never really saw the proper colour of from behind the mask. She made eye contact with him, but it was broken by the sound of a quiet sigh from Taiyou.
"That mask too...Tsuki." he commanded, sounding like he really couldn't have been bothered telling her something she already knew but knew he had to say it for her to actually do it.
Her eyes narrowed at her boss for a moment, before she lifted a hand up towards her face. Ame and Kumo leaned forward slightly in suspense, since neither of them had ever seen what Tsuki looked like under that mask. Taiyou had known what she looked like most of her life, but he hadn't seen her face for almost 2 years now, and he was actually a little intrigued to see how she had changed.
Tsuki hooked her pointer finger underneath the mask and pulled it down far enough so that everyone would be able to see her face for the short amount of time she had planned on revealing it.
Ame's jaw dropped, and Kumo, L and even Watari's eyes widened at the sight of the revealed face before them. All five men stared for at least ten seconds before Tsuki got over them staring at her and pulled it back up to it's normal position.
"Wow..." Kumo muttered incredulously, wondering if what he just saw was real.
"Tsuki...you're....you're....really, really beautiful!" Ame blurted out with no existing discretion whatsoever and his jaw still dropped until Tsuki turned to glare at him, which made him avert his eyes and snap his mouth shut.
Kumo just smiled, knowing from her glare that Tsuki was actually quite flattered by Ame's compliment and she only glared at him because he embarrassed her. He knew that Ame was also much younger than both of them and just wouldn't have had the ability to control himself, especially because he's still not able to compose himself outside of missions. But no one really minded, since he usually brought some humour to their days.
"Quite so." L quietly spoke in an off-handed manner before taking a sip of his coffee and continue speaking. "Taiyou. I would like you to stay at your office in the Sora Ops headquarters. I'm sure you will have to deal with your other agents and will have other work to do aside assisting in the solving of this case." he said, as if he had not just sort of agreed with Ame's compliment.
"Yes, I do. I have to make sure my other agents are working on the correct things, and I will also need to be there so I can contact you if they find anything. Also, I'm sure that we'll receive some other missions since this information has only been released to some of our staff, yourself and Watari. The Chief Superintendent and the Superintendent was the only other person to know of the operation outside of the Sora Ops." Taiyou replied informatively.
"Well, you have only been away for a short amount of time. Please return to your office, and let us know if you find anything." Ryuzaki asked in a manner that didn't really leave room for question. Taiyou nodded and looked to Tsuki.
"You are in charge of the field operations for the moment. But I expect a daily progress report, and if you are planning on making a big move, I will be informed immediately and you will ask my permission. I'll send over the results of Hoshi's autopsy and the lab results for the letter when they come in." he exaggerated the 'ask', knowing from experience that Tsuki had a tendency to just tell him how she was going to run an operation as if she was his boss, not the other way around.
"Hai." Tsuki confirmed with a hint of laziness in her voice before taking a sip of her coffee that had cooled down significantly.
"Kumo. Make sure she keeps me updated. And Ame, you now have Hoshi's position in the Sora Ops. Congratulations. But make sure that you show me that you've earned it." the older man announced, and shook Ame's hand briefly before standing up, walking over to the door and bowing to L and Watari before leaving the room.
"Nicely done, Ame. You'll really have to kick it up a notch now." Kumo said and nodded towards him but smiled, because he knew that Ame would be a great agent one day.
"I have faith in your abilities, Ame. Don't let me down." Tsuki congratulated him in her own way, and even allowed the corner of her mouth to turn upwards a little. She was certainly proud of him.
"Shall we get to work?" L asked after a moment of silence. "I would like to tell you about what theories I have about this case."
"Sounds good." Kumo answered for everyone, and drank the last of his coffee.
"It is clear that whoever the Aka Sora are, they have access to police files, and that may mean that they could gain access to your files. So, Kumo, please increase your security as much as possible." the black-haired man suggested politely.
"Not a problem. I'll email my IT team and tell them to keep alert for any unwanted visitors and to triple the security for all our files and databases." the computer master replied, pulling his laptop out and immediately begin composing an email.
"Also, please allow me access to everything you have as well. Your resources are most likely quite vast, and we may need to use everything we can to solve this case." L added, and watched Kumo nod once in acknowledgement.
"Continuing on, clearly whoever attacked and killed your other agent, Hoshi, was as skilled as he was, if not more. We may be dealing with someone who has had very similar training to you, which leads me to believe that this may be someone in the military, or police force. I will even offer the idea that it may be an inside job. Is there any ex-agents you have that might do something like this?" Ryuzaki asked calmly, not realising or caring that he might actually be insulting them by suggesting it was an inside job.
"There is no such thing as an ex-agent in the Sora Ops. You get out of it when you die." Tsuki said morbidly, knowing that it was true.
The only agents good enough to gain the title of Tsuki, Hoshi, Ame, Kumo or Taiyou had to be killed on the field, or die of natural causes to be truly out of the Sora Ops. The issue of an agent being too old had never become an issue because it had never got to that stage. Taiyou was only in his late 40's, but he was no longer a field agent now that he was in charge, so that didn't matter.
"I see. What about any of the lower level agents who's skill may have gone under the radar?" he asked, still so calm that you could think that he was an ordinary person, discussing something trivial like the weather with friends over coffee.
"We train the agents personally. We'd know if they were holding back." Ame said, getting a little annoyed at L's questions, which both Kumo and Tsuki noticed.
Even though she was quite annoyed with the idea itself even being thought of, it was true that if Hoshi's killer could take him down within a few minutes, there was a good chance that they were trained in the same styles of combat that they were trained in, which was mostly developed by Taiyou himself, and improved or revised by Tsuki.
"There would be no way something like that would get past us, and Tsuki trains nearly all of them since she doesn't take that many missions, and nothing ever gets past her." Kumo spoke just as calmly as L, knowing that there wasn't any point in getting annoyed since L was completely within his right to have those suspicions and ask those questions.
"We should wait for the results of the autopsy and the lab results to come back before we starting making any more theories at this point. Let's just go over what we have for the moment. And I'm planning on interrogating Takumi again tomorrow. I think I've let him sweat for long enough." Tsuki reminded them all of the half-prisoner they had been keeping in one of their holding cells ever since they had checked out the house the other day.
"Alright. For the moment, let's just go through what we have so far and look around in media reports for anything we may be able to go off." Kumo agreed and they set to work straight away.
8 hours later, Kumo and Ame were both asleep in their seats. Tsuki had been working so hard and concentrating so much that she hadn't noticed until nature calling had distracted her. They had been going through tonnes of different newspapers that had covered the 'Aka Sora' story, as well as watching countless TV news reports and looking up everything they could find on the internet.
Tsuki got up and quickly used the bathroom before grabbing two blankets out of a cupboard in the hotel room and covering both of her comrades with one each. She wasn't tired yet, and she had actually rested briefly the other day when she had gotten home after the Hoshi incident, so it would take her another 24 hours or so to need sleep.
Her sleeping pattern had been altered almost disgustingly because of her messed up schedule when she was training to be an agent, and during her first few years of barely getting a break because of her being the highest ranked agent after such a short time.
Instead of getting maybe 8 hours of sleep a day, she wouldn't need sleep for at least 4 days and then she would have a day off where she slept for at least 12 hours at once, then she would be set for another 4 days or maybe 5 if she slept for 16 hours. She had basically just made it so that she had one day to catch up on the sleep she didn't get over the past few days.
She had figured out already that L probably slept once in a blue moon, and after seeing him devour almost a whole cake as well as another 3 cups of sugar (coffee) in the last 8 hours, she guessed it was probably the extreme intake of sugar in his system and forced habit that allowed him to do so.
But, she wasn't going to complain. After seeing him work, and after discussing a few things with him whilst the other had been sleeping – no wonder they hadn't put their opinions forward – she had really started to respect him almost as much as she respected her own comrades. He was incredibly analytical, ensuring that every scrap of data and information was taken into consideration. He was perceptive, picking up on her train of thought before she had even finished expressing it, not to mention his deductive abilities which were almost unlike anything she had ever seen before.
And yet, he was such a child. He did not like being wrong, was also incredibly stubborn and seemed to look at things like a game. He never wore socks or shoes, and looked at Tsuki's boots in what seemed like near disgust when she had taken them off after getting over having them on inside. To put it simply, she had definitely been keeping an eye on him, and he seemed to be doing the same to her.
Tsuki was right to think that. He had been keeping an eye on her. It wasn't that he distrusted her, it was just out of plain interest. She had always seemed incredibly intelligent and very articulate and he was glad to see that it was even more true when in person.
Her knowledge of deception had actually allowed him to be caught out when he had said that there was only about a 2% chance that he thought it could be one of their own lower level agents who was in the Aka Sora. She spotted his lie rather easily, and he had eventually said that he thought that there was almost a 25-30% chance of that being possible.
So, Tsuki was actually able to challenge him, which was certainly interesting for him. Together, they had been through the letters as well as almost all the news articles, videos and everything else they had found. Blue eyes had stared at the screen showing a TV news report, whilst dark eyes had occasionally flickered over to look at the woman sitting next to the owner of said dark eyes, who kept picturing her without the cloth mask.
The woman's face being revealed had shocked them all (except Taiyou). L was still a young man, and he certainly did notice how she looked. She had a pale, almost flawless complexion, small, but full pink lips, high cheekbones, and a finely shaped nose.
In combination with the long black hair that framed her face, and the piercing blue eyes framed with black eye-liner, Ame couldn't have been more right in saying that she was really, really beautiful. She looked very elegant, but also very young at the same time. She had also taken her jacket off a while ago, and he had noticed that she was very much in shape, which could only be expected.
He did also see what looked like a very large scar on her left shoulder, that she absently massaged occasionally when she seemed to get a bit stressed. Curiosity was going to get the better of him soon, but for the moment he had decided to leave it be, especially since she seemed to be getting angrier by the minute.
One thing that surprised him, was how easy she was to read in person. When she got angry, her hands twitched, and she massaged her left shoulder when she got stressed. Thanks to his observation, he had figured that all out in the short time he had actually been in the same room as her.
L was definitely becoming more and more intrigued with this woman, and he couldn't tell whether it was a good or bad thing just yet. She was very mysterious, and even though she was surprisingly easy to read, he could never quite tell what she was thinking.
At this point, the only thing that was certain, was that things were going to get much more interesting...
Well, that's what you've waited so long for!
I really hope it turned out like super-duper-pooper awesome to make up for the disgraceful lack of updates.
We're starting to learn more about Tsuki's character, and there have been some hints which you should definitely look out for in the near future ;)
Again, I sincerely apologise for the lack of updates and I will put much more effort into making the time to write more often.
Til next time!