Afternoon!
There's some fluff and progression in the case in this chapter!
What more needs to be said? Enjoy :D

Disclaimer: Death Note belongs to Tsugimi Ohba & Takeshi Obata, but the OC's are mine!


Chapter 13 – The Winter-Halo

"My house burnt down...it was them." Tsuki said with a very confused voice, and if he wasn't mistaken, there may have been a touch a fear somewhere amongst it.

"I will text you an address. Please go there immediately." he commanded in the form of a polite request, as per usual, and for some reason, his voice just put Tsuki's mind at ease. He seemed like he was concerned for her, and that he would make her feel better when she got there. "I will bring Hisuiro for you." he added in a quiet voice, and she nearly broke right there.

Everything to do with this case was absolutely killing her, physically, mentally and psychologically, and even though they were all stressed, exhausted, frustrated, and more than likely in pretty terrible shape medically, the way he spoke to her just seemed like all the exhaustion in the world couldn't stop him from helping her out and putting her mind at ease.

With a deep breath, she nodded, made a small sound – that was much weaker than she wanted it to be – and hung up the phone. She put her helmet back on her head, did it up and started the bike after receiving L's text and getting her bearings. From where she was down the street, she could seem the smoking ruins of her house, and her several neighbours standing out the front, looking worried, as well as the fire fighters who were starting the clean up.

Taiyou would sort the rest out and he probably was already taking measures to contain the incident, so she didn't bother worrying about it. She took one last look at the large red 'Sora' kanji painted on her driveway, put the visor down on her helmet and skidded off in the direction of the address L had given her. She nearly got lost after making a wrong turn, but eventually got back on the right track and found the building a few minutes later.

It was at least four storeys, with so many windows and an underground car park. She drove in and parked nearest to the door, where L just happened to be waiting for her, much to her surprise. She was still shaken up, and her breathing was slightly irregular and shallow, so she took it slowly as she got off the bike, and started undoing her helmet.

Silently, L just watched her with big, dark eyes with worry floating around in them, and even though she could tell it took him a lot of effort to do, he tried to erase the fatigue that was even getting to him from his face and his body language the best he could – which would never cut it with her as the person looking at him – and he did something so simple.

He smiled.

Just as she had taken off her helmet, he noticed the cloth mask had slipped down, revealing her face. If Taiyou or Kumo had looked at her, they would have recognised the expression scarily well, Taiyou in particular, having seen it twice before. Unfortunately, Ame wasn't around early enough to see the second of two times that this expression had been on her face in her life time, and neither had L.

But L had taken enough notice of her since he had met her to know that right now, she was just a young adult girl, who was going through one of the toughest experiences in her life, and at the moment, she was at her breaking point.

Things were getting too much for everyone, but Tsuki seemed to take it more personally than everyone else, as if she was thinking that it was her fault, her own incompetence as a Sora Ops agent that was stopping her from solving this case and catching the Aka Sora already.

She looked like she was a combination of worried, exhausted, angry, and the one thing he never thought he'd see in her icy blue eyes; fear. Tsuki, the second highest commanding agent of the Sora Ops, the agent who had been working for the Sora Ops since she was a child, and had caught countless dangerous criminals and had undoubtedly saved the lives of so many people without them ever knowing it.

He was very scared himself, since it wasn't every day that you encountered a case like this. Where the criminals never slipped up, and were able to hide themselves flawlessly, and did everything opposite to what the police and justice enforcement agencies expect. But he had forgotten his own fear at the sight of hers.

Slowly, she walked over towards him, intent on going through the door, but he didn't move out of her way. In fact, he leaned to one side a little to further block her path. The black-haired woman knew that if she looked at him, and saw the signs of concern on his face, that she'd probably feel even more pathetic, so she refused to do that just yet. They were standing only a foot from each other, and she could just feel his body heat radiating like her own.

A moment later, he took his pale, long-fingered hands from the pockets of his blue jeans that he wore day in and day out, and lifted his arms cautiously, so as to not alarm her. He reached out and put his arms around her shoulders, and stepped forward a little to close the small gap between their bodies.

Normally, Tsuki would have probably punched whoever was trying to hug her in the gut, winded them and left them there, coughing and gasping for air on the ground. But this time, she just couldn't gather any anger at him for trying to comfort her, she just couldn't manage lifting her arm up, pulling it back and send it launching into his flat stomach. She just couldn't do anything but accept his comfort right now.

So she did.

She let him embrace her, awkwardly, but still an embrace and eventually she felt the need to return it. So she did that as well. Just as awkwardly, if not more so, she lifted her own, much smaller arms up and wrapped them around his waist, enjoying the feeling of allowing herself to show a bit of humility.

They stood there for a few more seconds and their grips on each other tightened as if they were letting all their pent up feelings out by holding each other as close as possible. Tsuki began to shake slightly and L's allowed his hand to glide up and down her back, trying to comfort her, and her hands fisted in his white shirt, as she stood there, shaking.

"I..." she tried to speak, but it wasn't coming out, just for the entire shock of what she was trying to say, as if her unconscious mind still didn't want to admit it to itself. "I'm...I'm scared." she managed to get out mostly coherently.

L's only response was to hold her tighter again, and put a hand around the back of her head and she tried so hard to compose herself again, but for the moment, it just wasn't going to happen. L knew that she wasn't scared of getting hurt, or dying. She was scared that she might lose the only family she had, the Sora Ops, she was scared that the Aka Sora would continue to hurt and kill people and achieve their goal.

Even though she had only said two words, those two words meant more than even Tsuki herself realised. After a few minutes, the shaking stopped and she evened out her own breathing, inhaling and exhaling as deep as she could as she gradually calmed down.

L didn't ease up his grip until she shifted her weight a little and began to pull back. He really didn't want to let her go already, but he wouldn't force her to stay in his hold (not that he could) and he went to drop his arms completely, when she just looked up at him instead of moving out of his grasp completely.

Her brow was pulled together in an upset looking frown and she was chewing on her bottom lip, but still, she stared directly into his eyes as they idly stood there. Neither of them let go, and neither of them broke the stares that were revealing their minds deepest truths.

They were both scared of what the Aka Sora could do, how easily they could manage to slip through their fingers without them even knowing it, and how Eclipse's intelligence and precaution taking almost matched Tsuki's.

Both of them had solved and experienced enough cases in their lifetimes to know when things were beginning to wrap up, the leads followed, the criminals captured and necessary information received. It was just the instinctual feeling that they both had in their gut. And Tsuki knew well enough the the Aka Sora weren't going to go down without a fight that would be spoken of for many years to come, no matter what side won.

Tsuki was scared that Eclipse would outsmart her, outmanoeuvre her and take the victory for himself. She was afraid that she would lose her two other agents and closest friends like she already had Hoshi, and Arashi, both of which she would never forget. Arashi in particular, since he had basically sacrificed himself to save her.

She watched L's face and even as he moved it closer to her own, she did not move. L's hand that was currently around the back of her head came to sit under her chin and lift her head a little, since he was a fair bit taller than her. As the gap continued to close, Tsuki did not move away or flinch, she just stood there, wondering if this was actually happening.

As his lips gently brushed against hers, both their eyes closed but snapped open at the sound of Tsuki's cell phone ringing. Expressions went completely deadpan, and Tsuki moved back just enough to reach into her pocket and lift out the noise-making device.

"Hey, are you here yet? Ryuzaki's waiting for you at the underground door." Kumo's voice was heard by both of them, and Tsuki almost smirked at his last words, knowing quite well already that Ryuzaki was at the door.

"Yes, I only just pulled up. I can see him, so I'll be in soon." she replied, sounding genuinely annoyed, which L couldn't resist smirking at.

"We better go in." Tsuki said quietly, and tilted her head in gesture of going through the door, and she gave him a barely there smile as he put his hand out as if to say 'Ladies first'.

As she walked in, L turned around and just saw out the very small window in the break of the concrete walls, the moon. It had a ring of light around it, but it was so faint that he could only just see it. A small revelation hit him, and a corner of his mouth turned upwards at the symbolism of himself being the ring, and Tsuki being the moon itself. After a moment, he followed Tsuki through the door.

They both headed upstairs, not really looking at each other out of shyness, but everything else was forgotten as they got up to the office floor, where Kumo, Ame, Taiyou, and Watari were all waiting. There were computers, TV's and large screens everywhere as well as couches, comfortable seats and large desks with drawers, all ready to be worked at.

Tsuki actually huffed because she was impressed with the set-up and only wished that the Sora Ops headquarters was big enough to allow for this kind of technology to be used by them. Watari got everything ready for them to start working, and they got down to it after having a well-deserved hot meal that Watari had prepared for them. Tsuki looked at news articles on the internet, Ame watching the news channel on the TV, Kumo still running the check for the traditional Japanese buildings, and L was studying the case files.

Taiyou was helping out everyone and doing a bit of his other work, occasionally taking phone calls and writing things down. Apparently, Hetoshi was also here, but just for precautions sake, he was locked up in one of the bedrooms and was looking through a bunch of old newspapers that Watari had picked up for them.

For several hours, they continued working, all of them either reading or watching something and there was a few times where someone thought they might have found something, and within moments, everyone (except Hetoshi, of course) would be crowding around the TV, or the computer and discussing or arguing why they thought it was or was not something relevant to the case.

Eventually though, it would be decided that it wasn't relevant and everyone would get back to whatever they were doing earlier. The only sounds heard was the sound of someone yawning or sighing TV Ame was watching, clicking and scrolling of mouses, the occasional beep of the computers and the constant hum of all the electrical devices being used.

That was until Tsuki thought that she had something.

"Guys...come take a look at this." she said, reading the article on a very wealthy old man who had died several months ago and he was the owner of a large block of land that had many traditional Japanese building on it that he had restored because of his passion for all things traditional.

"I think you might actually be onto something here." Ame nodded with a small smile on his face that grew more and more as he read through the article.

"Apparently it was supposed to be open to the public, kind of like a museum or something, but it closed down when he died." Kumo read out loud and the smile on his face also suggested that he thought it was worth checking out.

"Well, I think that sounds good enough for you to check out." Taiyou agreed, nodding as he read through the article.

"I agree. Please, go and check out this place." L spoke up from his seat which he had gone to sit back in after being satisfied with everyone agreeing that it was worth checking out.

"Alright. We'll wait until we have the cover of darkness, and then Ame and I will go and check it out. There'll be no attacks made on anyone, unless we have to defend ourselves. This will be a basic reconnaissance mission." Tsuki said with finality, and everyone gave a single nod and went back to what they were doing, or began making preparations for the operation tonight.

Even though Tsuki's mind was still all over the place, she took a deep breath, sat back in her chair and mentally prepared herself for what might end up being the break that they had been desperately searching for since day 1.

Her spirits were high, and her motivation was somewhat returning, and she just hoped that luck would be on her side...

Since they had decided to wait for the cover of darkness, it was the perfect time for everyone to get a really good rest. Even L slept for at least 6 hours, and Tsuki was crashed out for a little over 7 hours before waking up. Her body was much more used to sleeping very deeply when she got to rest, so she didn't need the 12-14 hours that Ame would probably be needing. Kumo enjoyed sleeping for 10 hours, and Taiyou got some sleep, as well as Hetoshi.

Everyone was still asleep when she got up, and she took to showering, changing into a loose pair of shorts, and a small tank top, and feeding Hisuiro, who L as promised, had brought along in him and his enclosure, along with the large frozen rats that she always kept ready for him in the kitchen at headquarters, much to mostly everyone else's disgust.

It still wasn't anywhere near time to start getting ready for the operation, so Tsuki quickly grabbed the large bag from the main room which the weapons that Ame had cleared out from the cupboard and brought along from the headquarters office, and do some training. She noticed that L was sitting in front of his computer, and walked around to speak to him.

"How did you sleep?" she asked politely, making simple conversation. She felt a little shy, but surprisingly, not awkward.

"I slept very well. I hope you did the same." he responded, actually turning his head away from the computer to look at her. He noticed that she wasn't wearing her cloth mask and as per usual, he was finding it hard not to stare.

She nodded before speaking again. "Uh, is there a spare room which I could train in by any chance?"

"Actually, I had a room prepared just for that purpose. Follow me." he got up from his seat and began walking towards the door on the right side of the room. Tsuki followed him, carrying the large bag that weighed at least 45 to 50 kilograms. They went down a floor via a set of stairs and came down to a hallway with a set of double doors halfway down it.

The double doors opened to reveal a massive empty space, and it seemed that L had made this whole floor a large training area. L turned the light on to show that there was tonnes of places to hang up and store various different kinds of weapons. She smirked at the many different sized and styled wooden targets there were, not just on the walls, but in the corners, and on the ceiling.

Her blue eyes darted around the room, looking at all the things L had gotten to put in the room. This was glorious for her at the moment. She hadn't had a good, hard training session in so long and it was time that she got back into it. Even though she doubted it, but she had to be prepared if something like what happened in the hotel they were staying in last occurred.

Just after she finished that thought, she got an idea. She looked to L, who was already looking at her. Straight away, he knew that Tsuki was planning something, and he didn't know whether he should go back to looking over the case files, or just wait and see what she had in mind.

"I think it's time to teach you to defend yourself properly." Tsuki said smoothly and evenly, but the slightly mischievous glint in her eyes suggested that he probably wasn't going to like this all too much.

She gestured for him to walk in the training room and she dropped the weapons bag inside the door, and he did and met her in the middle of the large space. Firstly, she looked at the way he stood, his body size, stature, and build, getting at idea of what kind of styles would suit him best. He was a bit flustered under her gaze, but stood still anyway and watched her eyes look him up and down.

"Alright. First off, I want you to try and hit me. It doesn't matter where, or how you do it, just try it." Tsuki commanded, her confident voice resounding through the room. He nodded in response, and told him to start with a simple 'Go'.

His leg, clad in the blue jeans swung around to attempt kicking her head, but she easily dodged it, and continued to block, counter and dodge every swing of his legs. She deduced as soon as he started that he'd be prominently using his legs, from the way he shifted his weight and she was prepared right off the bat.

Aside that, she was actually rather impressed by him, not expecting him to be able to execute such an odd, but effective style. She told him to stop after a moment, and thought about what she could teach him to help him become a little more capable of being battle-ready.

At first, she helped him correct his kicking style, showing him how to properly shift his weight around, and how to stand whilst kicking at his opponent. His observation and deductive abilities allowed him to pick up on almost anything she explained and demonstrated within a few times of seeing it, and he made sure to take note of every foot movement, every arm movement and every ripple of her muscles.

Soon enough, she was able to move onto punching, which he picked up quickly, and they began sparring and combining the two things he had learned so far. By the end of it, he already had several bruises from where he hadn't moved quick enough and ended up earning a kick to the ribs or legs, or a punch to his gut.

Tsuki moved on after a while, teaching him how to block, dodge and eventually counter the opponent's moves. After he had grasped the basics, she sparred with him, telling him to only dodge and block her movements, whilst searching for the right moment to make his counter attack. Luckily, he did very well, and for the time being, he didn't have any more bruises.

She was very impressed with how quick he was picking everything up, but it seemed that he had already had some sort of combat training, but he probably just put his own twist on anything he learnt, and had pretty much made his own style.

After about 2 hours or so, they had a break, and got something to eat and drink. Tsuki practically force-fed him a sandwich, and banned him from eating cake or most of his sweets for the whole week. Watari was in the kitchen at the time, and his wrinkled face had a smile on it the whole time as he watched in silence while Tsuki literally chased L around the kitchen, eventually catching him and making him eat the sandwich she had made for him.

The old man was very happy to see L smiling more often, and was overjoyed to see him and Tsuki barely containing their laughter as he tried desperately to stop her from feeding him the apple she had in her hand. After a moment, she gracefully leapt over the counter in the middle of the kitchen, pinned him up against the wall and glared at him until he ate the entire apple, aside the core, of course.

L glowered at her, but secretly he had actually enjoyed the sandwich, and the apple she had fed him. But, even more secretly, he had very much enjoyed her pinning him against the wall, and being so close to him. Kumo made his appearance while Tsuki was eating her own food, and greeted the three people already occupying the room, and got his own food before dragging himself back to his computer.

Tsuki and L headed back to the training room, and continued the lessons. Eventually, just after Ame had gotten up about 3 hours later, L was learning much more advanced moves, and being able to mostly hold his ground against her. Something that was immensely impressing Kumo, Ame, and Taiyou, who were all trying to pay attention to what they were doing, but ended up just watching the two elite crime fighters go at it until Tsuki won the upper hand.

When she was satisfied enough with his hand-to-hand combat ability, she got some kunai out of the weapon bag. Kunai and shuriken were the best weapons to learn for any kind of agent like herself, as kunai allowed you to grapple, but also attack from a distance, and shuriken were great because they were small and easy to throw and aim.

She grabbed a few and looked around the room at the location of all the targets. It only took her a few seconds to hit every single bullseye on each target. He stood there, jaw dropped not even noticing that a shuriken had flown right past his head until he inspected each target to see if she had hit the bulls-eyes.

As she collected up each one, she explained the mechanics of using them and began showing him how to throw them properly and eventually he picked up the technique and every now and then he would hit the bullseye on the targets around the room. He was feeling very proud of himself over picking up on so much in such a short time, but as he recalled her hitting all the bulls-eyes within seconds and act like it was no big feat, he knew that it was mostly because of her thorough understanding of how it all worked, and many years of practice.

Kunai were a bit of a change for him, but it was much easier to pick up on throwing them since he'd already learnt how to throw shuriken, but the grappling part was the one that concerned him. Instead of using the sharp metal ones, she grabbed out the wooden ones from the bag, used for the very purpose of teaching.

He didn't really like grappling, but he knew that it was important to at least have an understanding of how to use kunai at a close range proficiently. They continued to spar, and Tsuki continued to teach, L continuing to learn and before too long, he was much too tired to keep going and went upstairs to take a shower and change out of his sweaty clothes, and into some fresh clean ones.

Tsuki decided to train by herself and she quickly setting up and putting away all the weapons in the places designated for them. Ame had brought all the different types of katana that they had and she idly stood, looking at them for a moment before getting a full-length blade to train with as she always did, even though in battle she used a wakizashi, which was shorter than a full-length katana.

It was a simple matter of speed and ability. In training, she used a longer, heavier blade, so that when she used her own blade when fighting, her movements would be so much faster and more easily executed. A few minutes later, after she warmed up a bit, and stretched, she noticed that L had walked back in the room, even though her back was turned to him.

She removed the katana from it's sheath and went through a few basic movements to get used to the size and weight before she began to get into using combinations which looked extremely complicated to L, who just stood there and watched her graceful and slow movements.

Gradually, she used more speed and did more difficult combinations, and eventually she was going as fast as she could, swinging around the katana like a hot knife through butter. After a while, she grabbed her wakizashi, still not paying any attention to the young man watching her curiously inside the doorway. She did the same thing again, starting out slow and getting quicker, and L was amazed at how much faster and more proficient she was with the smaller blade.

Tsuki eventually got tired of training, and smirked ever so slightly at L as she walked past him through the doorway, and jogged upstairs to shower and get clean. Soon, it would be time for them to begin preparations for the mission tonight, and she wanted to make sure that she was completely ready for it.

Roughly twenty minutes later, she came back downstairs, clean and ready to organise how this mission was going to work. Everyone was sitting around a table in the middle of the main room, and Tsuki sat down on the couch, next to Kumo, who gave her a quick smirk as if to say that he knew something she didn't. Taiyou's voice distracted her from questioning him, and they began the discussion now that Tsuki was back.

It was already decided silently that Tsuki and Ame would go on this mission and even though Kumo wouldn't mind going since it was only recon, he knew that the more people they had there, the more likely they'd be found. The brunette man had found a good entrance into the grounds since the walls around the place were huge, and all they'd have to do is go through the back door which you could secretly enter from the block of land behind it.

He showed them a satellite map of where the two blocks came together and bordered off, but he could only show them how the very small shed at the back would allow them to jump the fence of the block of land behind and get to the wall where the back door to where they hoped Eclipse and the other Aka Sora would be.

The place was massive, and it would take them a while to explore most of it, which also meant they'd have to be very careful of any patrolling Aka Sora members. They had already assumed that there would be tonnes of motion sensors, cameras and whatever else on the grounds, so Kumo had brought a device that would hopefully let him hack into the system and let him control the security systems.

Another thing they decided on was the use the Sora Ops masks which had the small cameras in them, therefore allowing them to watch all the footage later on and being able to take note of anything that may be suspicious, also to record any evidence that could be used against the Aka Sora case when they were being prosecuted.

Soon enough, the planning was finished and all they had to do was wait for the cover of darkness to begin...

So, I hope this chapter was good!
I worked really hard on the first part, to make all the introspective-ness fit and sound legitimate.
Please review, I'm dying to know what you guys think about where the story is going!

Til next time :D