Been a while, eh? But I don't ever abandon my stories, I just go on indefinite hiatuses from them. Sorry for taking so long with this.

I'm a bit busy right now, so I can't reply to any reviews; I'll just say thank you for all of them :)

But, as a bit of a preview, I'll tell you that you get to find out a bit more about my lovable smart ass of a shinigami in the chapter. Yay? I think so!

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Holy mother of Bob. I was caught by the infamous Llama. It's twenty to life now.

Not really. Fear not, Ant. Even if I did head off to prison, you'd be coming with me. But I'm not , so don't worry about it. I'm just working on the investigation team.

And I'm totally fucking psyched out about it =D

I told you I'd tell you everything today, see? And you thought I was lying!

Of course, you're a notebook and you can't think. Maybe that's what Karen was talking about when she started saying stuff about delusional. I thought that was just her regular mumbojumbo.

Yeah, whatever. Getting on with it. To give you an update, paperbud, I found Llama and then he found me. Actually, his people found me. Matsuda and Aizawa did first.

––

Alpha paused here for a moment and looked at the names, then scratched through them. She protected that notebook with her life, but there would be hell to pay if anyone ever did get hold of Ant and read the notebook, particularly if that someone happened to be Kira. She continued writing.

––

Goofball and Afro, I mean. That's how I have to refer to them in case the notebook's found. You're almost as classified as the notebook BB had used to do away with A – God forbid anyone should ever find that notebook, I'd be screwed beyond belief.

Let's see, so there's Chief, Goofball, Afro, Frank N. Stein, Chainsmoke, and, of course, the one and only Lambda. Llama to me, as you so know. And we're all hunting the Killer Koala. I know this probably makes no sense to you Ant, but if I ever lose you and someone picks you up, I can't have anyone know what I'm talking about. This is my code and I alone understand it. You may one day when it's all over.

So here I sit in a suite in the Otto Inn (also code name) searching for a Killer Koala with a Llama leading the investigation. Isn't that a bitch? In the words of the greatest internet song about llamas in the world, "time for me to retire now, I've become a duck."

In other words, with that Llama Song sentiment to end by, I now leave thee, Ant.

Janua

Oh, almost forgot. There's now a bloody Shiniwatchamacallit following me around. Bloody hell, does it suck. Damn thing. And B's dead, by the way. Thought you should know.

Okay, gone now.

January 22, 2004

––

Alpha shut her notebook and looked around at the investigation headquarters. It was a truly nice hotel suite. The investigation wasn't too horribly far in yet, and Alpha herself didn't know much about Kira, only what she had overheard L saying in the past. That definitely wasn't much. Sure, she had been second best in their year at the orphanage, but second best wasn't the best. L was the best, and Alpha was almost positive she had only come up with about half of what L had for the Kira case. Even so, that was probably twice as much as what any police department on Earth could have concluded without L's help on the case.

As Alpha was stowing away her notebook, Ukita happened to glance up from his paperwork.

"You realize we can't keep written records of anything happening here, don't you?" Alpha looked up from the messenger bag next to her end of the sofa.

"Yes. Those aren't notes on the case."

"Then what is it?"

Alpha racked her memory. "A… 'means of disposing of my subconscious mind's anomalies and oddities through writing in general.' I think that's what Karen said it was," she added in a mumble. "It's my psychodiary. His name is Marcus Antonius."

"You named your notebook?" came a perplexed voice from behind the sofa. Alpha ignored it, knowing she was the only one that could hear it. "Wow. Slow." Alpha shot a glare over her shoulder, but otherwise ignored the disturbance. She had to be careful around the investigation team, even around L, in regards to when she spoke to Akino.

It wasn't until a few hours later in the day that L suspected there was something a bit offhand going on, at right around the time Alpha decided to compare notes on the Kira case with, of all the people in the room, Matsuda. It was even more obvious at about the time they both burst into laughter while looking at something on the laptop L allowed the investigation team to use for researching purposes. L gave a quick glance around the room. He caught Aizawa and Ukita both glaring at the cause of disturbance; Mogi glancing up from piles of paperwork, shaking his head, and going back to the papers; and Yagami attempting to ignore it despite the vein ticking away like a time bomb in his temple.

And apparently, the time bomb had just run out.

"If there is anything," he said loudly and rather angrily, causing everyone in the room (except L, who had been expecting this) to jump, "at all that either of you find funny about the Kira case, please feel free to share it with the rest of us."

Alpha blinked a few times from the sofa. She shook her head no slowly. "No Mr. Yagami-san sir. Sorry." However, upon glancing up at L, she gave a snort of laughter that she didn't quite manage to pass off as a cough. "Sorry," she said again upon seeing the look she was receiving. "Won't happen again."

"I definitely hope not."

"Ha," Alpha heard Akino say behind her in mild amusement. "Pwned." Alpha pretended to scratch the back of her head, but instead reached behind her head to flip Akino off. "I'm not good on sign language," he said cheerfully. "You'll have to speak up. When am I gonna be getting all these damn apples you promised me? I'm telling the truth when I say you don't want to see what happens when I start going through withdrawl. They're like crack for me, come on!"

Alpha refrained from letting her vision turn into a glare as she picked the laptop back up from the coffee table and closed out the YouTube page she had been on – it wasn't her fault that some people had never seen the Llama Song video; she didn't see why Yagami had to go all bad-cop on her over it. Although, she had to admit that she did need to be on task. It was hard to be on task with such a distraction as a llama in the room. She vaguely wondered what would happen if she introduced a duck into this environment. She then coughed and managed to successfully cover a few stray sniggers.

Yes, she needed to be on task. She had to prove to the investigation team that she was an asset and not an unneeded nuisance. They already thought of Matsuda as an unneeded nuisance, but he actually wasn't. Aside from being the comic relief, he was more or less a stress reliever, someone to take out anger on. Aizawa in particular seemed to enjoy telling him off on a daily basis for saying something stupid. No one would tell Alpha off more than once, because she actually countered it. Therefore, if she didn't prove to be useful soon, everyone would be looking to have her off of the investigation team and possibly arrested for holding officers of the law at gunpoint.

Well, maybe not everyone. L might stick up for her, as they were sort of supposed to be friends and everything. Matsuda would if Yagami didn't tell him not to. Alpha had basically profiled all of them already. With Matsuda, if Yagami said jump, he would ask how high, or off which building, depending on the situation. Then Aizawa, who liked hard work and his afro, but loathed L and Matsuda (and probably Alpha by now as well). Ukita liked cigarettes and being a smart mouth, but also disliked Matsuda – he was slightly more tolerable of L, as the Kira case needed the abnormal, llama-like detective. Yagami loved his job and his family and disliked those who slacked off on the job. Mogi was a bit harder to peg considering the fact that Alpha had only heard him speak maybe five full sentences over the past week she had been with the investigation team, and he still reminded her of Frankenstein's monster, hence the name Ant would be destined to know him by until the Kira case was solved.

Absently, Alpha found herself typing the words "death note" into a search engine. Well, it was apparently what Kira was using to kill of criminals, so the results might turn out to be at least slightly fruitful, though no one would believe Kira was using something from legends and folklore to kill. No, there had to be a completely logical reason for the completely illogical murders of hundreds of criminals by means of heart attack. But of course there had to. Alpha rolled her eyes and clicked on a link to the first page she saw the word "shinigami" in the description of.

"Ah, reading up on us, are ya?" she heard a voice say next to her. She looked over to see Akino floating upside down beside her, looking at the page as such. "There won't be much, we don't let humans see us very often. Ya might find something useful, but not much at all on death notes. Unless Kira's an idiot, of course."

Alpha, rolling her eyes, moved the mouse pointer to the task bar, clicked on the start button in the corner, and pulled up a notepad file, upon which she typed the words, "Fuck you, shinigami."

"Oh, can't ya spare a bit of sympathy? I'm bored as hell, I've been stuck here for days! Without any fucking apples, thank you very much. It's a damn good thing you don't own a dog, it'd end up starving to death."

She backspaced the first line and typed next, "Come up with a way for me to get out and I'll get you as many apples as you want. I'm not very entertained right now, either, Yagami made me shut off the llama song which completely sucked."

"L's out of coffee. Go over there and get the last cup, act like you're about to make some more, and then point out that there isn't any more to be made. He'll probably tell you to go buy some, giving you prerogative to get the hell out of here and get me a bag full of apples."

"Attentive to detail, aren't you?"

"I've been stuck here for days, there's nothing better to do than float around and examine random crap…" Akino grumbled.

He flipped back into an upright position (Alpha dodged one of his wings as he did so, still not used to the fact that they wouldn't actually hit her but instead just go through her) and flew over to the other side of the room by the coffee maker. Alpha checked her own cup to make sure it was actually empty before closing the notepad file on her computer, as well as her internet window, and setting the laptop on the table. She picked up the cup and headed across the room to where Akino was hovering by the coffee maker, looking quite impatient. Alpha poured what was left of the coffee pot into her empty cup and checked the bottom part of the end table it was set upon, where the coffee creamer, sugar cubes, other sweeteners, and extra coffee was kept. There was indeed not a bit left.

"Hey, we're out of coffee," she said, straightening back out and looking at the rest of the team. Everyone else in the room looked at L cautiously. L didn't glance up from his paperwork.

"I thought that might happen soon. Watari is currently too busy…."

"I'll go buy some," Alpha offered, trying to sound helpful. "I don't think I could survive an hour of working on this case without it." There were mumbles of general agreement around the room.

"Go ahead."

Alpha was more than glad to "go ahead," and she therefore found herself in a convenient store about fifteen minutes later, paying for quite a bit more coffee and apples than the average person would generally wish to consume. When she placed it all on the counter, she received a rather odd look from the clerk.

"Will this be all…?"

"Yes, just ring it up," Alpha said, trying to keep the dismay from her voice when she heard laughter behind her, horrible cackling laughter that no one but her could hear. The clerk gave her a few more odd looks as he was ringing everything up, which Akino apparently found absolutely hilarious judging by his incessant laughter. Once out of the store, Alpha shot a glare at the shinigami, who was still grinning in an extremely amused fashion.

"You'll be lucky if you get any of these apples now, asshole," Alpha shot at him.

"Aw, come on, it was funny! Did you see the looks –"

"Yes, I saw the looks I was getting thanks to your apple fetish. Now be a good shinigami and keep quiet, and I might consider giving you an apple."

He scoffed. "Fuck that." And when Alpha turned her head to look back at him to see what he was up to, he was straightening up, apple in hand. "I'm faster than you. That means I can have as many apples as I want."

"Put that down, someone'll see it!"

"And I care… because?" He took a bite of the apple. "Deal with it. Hell, maybe Kira'll walk past and see an apple floating behind you and be dumb enough to ask if it's a shinigami. Then you'll have more information on the case than anyone – wait, you couldn't use it since you're the only one that can see me. Wow, this really sucks for you, doesn't it?"

"Yes," Alpha snapped, then added miserably, "I really despise you, you know that?"

"Ah, just complain about it in that notebook thing later and get over it. Honestly, in my opinion, you're an improvement from B. That bastard, I was just getting around to planning exactly how I was going to kill him when he had a heart attack. It sorta pissed me off, I'd like to have a word with Kira's shinigami and find out what the fuck he's giving out death notes for."

"Maybe he just dropped a spare one," Alpha said with a shrug. "Isn't that what you did?"

"Yeah," Akino said with a sigh. "And after the predicament that got me into, the Shinigami King banned everyone from having spare death notes. Nice, huh? Waits until after I get my ass stuck in the human world and doesn't do anything about it except give everyone else even less reason to head over to the human world."

"Why didn't you just kill B and be done with it? It would've been a bit easier, I'd think."

"I was too pissed off to think about it, and when I figured out I could, I decided I didn't really want to go back to the Shinigami World anyway. Pretty much sucks there. Everyone gambles and sleeps all the time, I only had a couple buddies there that'd help me wreak havoc over here. I was responsible for quite a few major disasters back then," he added with a laugh. "Take for instance, if there was a tropical storm out in the Atlantic and I wrote that a category five hurricane would kill someone in a certain amount of time, that tropical storm'd turn into a category five hurricane and hit land exactly where the person I specified was. Then bombings, same deal." He laughed. "It took more than one of us to start wars, but we accidently figured out that was possible, too. If ya word it right, the death note can do just about anything within reason. I'm betting it was one of my old buddies that dropped the death note Kira picked up. I hope so, actually. I'd like to be in close proximity of another one I actually get along with instead of one of those gambling bastards. You humans have it made; you don't like someone, you can just kill them. Us, we're stuck with each other until one forgets to write names in their death note for too long and dies."

"What wars did you start?" Alpha asked curiously, paying no heed to the family that had just walked past her that was gaping at the floating apple hovering behind her; if Akino was going to be a bastard about things, she was just going to have to get used to gaping bystanders.

"War, it was only one, I told you it was an accident…. Vietnam, I think it was. We hung around and watched it develop, it was nuts. We only got life off of the people whose names were actually written in the death note originally, but still, wars are a minefield of opportunity for us. We can kill people off like crazy without anyone questioning it since it's a war and no one knows the difference. It'll probably be a few thousand years before I actually need to write down another name after all that. I'd probably get my level upped if I went back to the Shinigami World at this point for that, I actually haven't been back since we started that war. It probably pissed off the King to no end, but that's his problem if his ass was too lazy to come find me. Hey, check that out!" he added quite suddenly, sounding amused.

Alpha glanced back at Akino to see what he was pointing at. The first thing she saw was a boy walking down the other side of the road on the opposite sidewalk, probably in his late teens. The next thing, though, was quite obviously what Akino was pointing at. Floating along behind him (and he looked slightly annoyed about it, to say the least) was an apple that appeared to be eating itself.

"That's really inconspicuous," Akino said sarcastically.

"Yeah, and you are?"

"No, but you're not Kira so you don't have much reason to care about apples floating behind your head, do ya?"

"Yes I do, I don't appreciate the concept of it much at all."

"Yeah, whatever. Hey!" he called across the street. "Ryuk, you son of a bitch, what the hell're you doing following around a human like a fuckin' dog?"

The floating apple stopped, and the kid it was following glanced over his shoulder and said something, then looked across the street. He spotted the apple first. With a sigh, Alpha sat down on one of the benches that lined the sidewalk. A shinigami definitely wouldn't have been her choice in a pet. The bastard was out to get her killed, she thought as he hovered across the road to his fellow apple addict. And if that was Kira the other shinigami was following, then he might just end up succeeding.

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