So... remember how I said there wouldn't be much Matt and Mello in this story...?

Well, I totally lied. Because Mello's totally in this chapter. Like, a lot.

And this chapter made meh sad. So I'll probably be writing another Death Note Owner's Guide and Maintenance Manual installment to make myself feel better soon.

Review reply:

Shibo26: Thanks for the review n.n Haaa the llama song is win. I just couldn't resist the chance to use it both against L and Kira. L because I enjoy picking on him and Lighto because he's just such a $&! n.n' yeah... Anyway. I think they'd like some apple juices :3 One in particular I've tried, called Simply Apple, tastes like an apple in a bottle. I'd love to see a Shinigami's reaction to it.

Discoclammer: I no owns, as much as I'd like to.

Warnings: There are indeed profanities. And Roger, who's an asshole in general.

Quick Quote:
Mello was about to offer a smart aleck remark—just to let Roger know, yes, he was taking all of this in, and no, he didn't give a damn about any of it—when the phone rang on Roger's desk. This wouldn't have been quite so odd if not for the fact that the old man went slightly pale and gave the phone a look of great reproach, letting it ring a few times before picking it up.

Roger picked up his glasses from his desk with a heavy sigh and put them on to stare at the fourteen-year-old in his office rather wearily. He stared back, looking bored, and there was no doubt as to why. It seemed Mello spent as much time in this office as Roger himself did half the time—in trouble more often than any other child at the orphanage, taking over the title of chief spreader of destruction and mayhem. This evening wasn't at all going how Roger had planned it. He had simply planned to look through files on new potential residents of Wammy's and sip on tea before heading off to sleep, but obviously they had other plans for him.

First, there was the call from Watari.

Alpha's alive.

How do you know that?

Because she's here.

… Oh. Yes. Of course she is.

In his mind, his calm disposition hadn't been quite so evident. He supposed he was relieved to hear that she was alive, but oh how peaceful it had been around here with her gone! And even more in his own head knowing that he didn't have to worry about her antics anymore. The place for an ex-gang member was not an orphanage of this prestige; it was a prison, a juvenile detention center. Roger was never quite sure himself why Watari had thought it such a good idea to take her in, IQ test or not, intelligent or not. Trouble was in her nature by the time she had gotten herself arrested with the rest of that gang, and it was all she had to give to this place.

And now Mello, who otherwise would have grown up looking up to a rather more positive role model—though L was a bit odd in his own respects, anything had to be better than her—had taken her place. The resident smart mouth, wreaker of havoc, chocoholic blond fourteen-year-old that Alpha had once been had somehow been reborn into Mello.

Now, this havoc-wreaking fourteen-year-old was sitting in his office, chocolate bar hanging from his mouth, looking utterly bored. Alpha stood a chance of calling back at any given moment. Despite the nine hour time difference between England and Japan, the odds that she was asleep were slim, and the odds that she would call while it was three o'clock in the morning where she was over a matter she considered so important as this were very elevated. The odds that she would call while Mello was actually here in his office, given the way things were going this evening already, were also probably very high.

Mello just had to pick that precise moment to decide to bully Near over grades on last week's Pre-Calculus test. Roger sighed once again and peered over his glasses at Mello.

"Are we going to have to create a solitary confinement and lock you in it to start keeping you in line?" Roger asked. "I would hate to make this place seem like a prison, but you're really pushing your luck, Mello."

Lecture time, wonderful…

Over the past few years, Mello had practically turned ignoring Roger into an art form, thinking about anything but where he was or what he was doing while caught in the middle of one of his lectures. So he had walked past Near while the sheepy bastard was getting all of his usual praises and dumped half a glass of soda over his head. Big deal. It wasn't like he hadn't done worse things around the orphanage—it wasn't like hadn't done worse even just to Near in general. Yet, somehow, it seemed he always got the longest lectures and the worst scolding for bothering Near, like just because the sheep was number one he deserved to be tread around like he was an highly breakable and rare artifact. If anything, Mello was doing him some good. Without him around, the kid would end up absorbing all of the praises and thinking far too highly of his own abilities—that would be a dangerous thing if he ever had to take over for L.

Not that he would have to, of course. Not for a long time. L wasn't going to let himself be defeated by some schizophrenic asshole having delusions of divinity and thinking he was entitled to judge the bad people of the world. He simply wasn't, end of story.

Mello was about to offer a smart aleck remark—just to let Roger know, yes, he was taking all of this in, and no, he didn't give a damn about any of it—when the phone rang on Roger's desk. This wouldn't have been quite so odd if not for the fact that the old man went slightly pale and gave the phone a look of great reproach, letting it ring a few times before picking it up.

Roger sighed. It looked like the chances Mello would run off tonight were quite high.

"Yes?" he said into the receiver.

"Hello again." Roger shut his eyes.

"Shall I or shall you?" he asked Alpha.

There was a silence on the other end of the line before Alpha replied, her voice hardly more than a whisper. "Is… he there right now?"

"Yes," he replied, eyes landing on a mildly puzzled-looking Mello. "So?"

He heard a nervous gulp on the other end of the line. "Don't tell him anything." The old man's eyebrows shot up—was this really Alpha speaking? "Please don't tell him."

This was… a rather sudden change of heart, especially after the report he had been given from L earlier. It was strange. Roger glanced down at the receiver, then back at Mello. He held his hand over the mouthpiece of the receiver and spoke to Mello. "Mello, please wait outside for a moment."

The fourteen-year-old raised an eyebrow. "Why should I?" he asked. "Too important for them to call back? Is it L—?"

"Mello," Roger interrupted, raising his voice. "Outside. It shouldn't be more than a few minutes."

With a scoff, Mello turned and walked to the door, glancing back at the caretaker as he closed it behind him. Anything Roger was this secretive about was nearly always interesting. It was normally a new kid coming to the orphanage or something about L's cases. He had learned this before he even hit ten. So, crouching down, he put his ear to the crack between the doorway and the door itself. It wasn't as though it was going to be information he would ever feel the need to bring up again, so no harm, no foul. Then again, it might turn out to be something he can use against Roger as blackmail. That would be quite useful, and it was generally this hope that made him listen.

"… your mind so suddenly?" he heard Roger saying. "Well, after the call I received around thirty minutes ago, I wouldn't have thought that—" He paused for a moment, and then scoffed. "Oh, really? You expect me to believe that? What reason would he have to lie about it? You should be grateful he was concerned enough to— All right, all right, calm down. So what should I…?"

There was silence for a long moment—Mello thought that maybe Roger had hung the phone up and was halfway considering knocking on the door when Roger replied, "You can't possibly be serious. That would have a worse effect than telling him—No. No, you hear me? I'm not—no, you're not, now you're being totally irrational. Listen, Alph—All right, fine, I will! Just stop making threats like that, that's just completely ridiculous." Roger sighed. "Yes, I suppose it will," he said resignedly. "No, no, I agree with that, but it still seems like a bad idea. Fine, fine, do whatever you please… yes. Good night."

There was the easily recognizable sound of Roger slamming the phone receiver down after a conversation that hadn't gone in the direction he had hoped or expected it would.

For once, though, the fourteen-year-old chocoholic had heard something important. He was sure of it, it wasn't just false hopes this time, it was real. There was no denying it. There just couldn't have been. That was how Roger always sounded when he was reprimanding someone, how he had sounded through that entire conversation. This wasn't just something that hadn't gone right in the Kira case that they had called to report to Roger about. This was bigger than that. He had even heard Roger nearly say it once before he was interrupted by the person at the other end.

Alpha.

"Mello, you can come back—" Mello was already swinging the door open at this point in Roger's sentence. Roger blinked. "… Back in," he finished ineffectively.

"Who was that?" Mello asked immediately.

Roger sighed, looking down at the hardwood desk in front of his chair. "Mello, come back in and close the door."

"Answer my question—"

"I will," Roger said, "as soon as you shut the door and come over here." Roger could see the blonde's fists clench for a moment and loosen before he kicked the door shut behind him. He stood totally still, looking straight at Roger. "Over here," Roger repeated. "I'd prefer this didn't get out to many people." Mello moved swiftly across the room and stopped at the desk, for once not saying a word. There was only one possible thing. "I get a feeling you were listening at the door," Roger said, "and have an idea of what I'm about to tell you."

Mello nodded.

'I still think this is a terrible idea…' Roger thought, sighing quietly.

"Mello," he said, looking at the boy, "that was L. We, as well as Watari, have been discussing how to handle the… er… situation we currently have at hand." Mello only blinked. Roger couldn't help but wonder if he had guessed what he was about to be told, or had guessed the exact opposite.

Mello waited for Roger to get to the point and confirm what he had been saying for the past for years, that—

"Mello… Alpha's dead."

And quite suddenly, the hope and anticipation floated off, much the same way a balloon does when a child lets it accidentally slip through their fingers. Instead, a lead weight landed quite forcibly on the fourteen-year-old's chest. "Sh—she…?"

"I can understand how you're feeling, Mello," Roger said—he noticed Mello's fists clench again.

"No…"

"I know how much she meant to you."

Now he was shaking and gripping the edge of the desk. Roger had a feeling that half of the things on his desk at that moment weren't going to survive for more than fifteen minutes longer. New lamp, new phone… perhaps even a new desk. Mello was not a force to be taken lightly when angered, and underestimating him could be potentially dangerous. Right now, he might not have been angry, but he was progressing towards anger at a rapid pace.

No… right now, he was absolutely crushed. After four years, after she said they would meet again, she went and died? Why? Why couldn't she have just come back before then? B was gone, she could have come back at any time, but now she was… she was gone. There was no chance of ever seeing her again. And even more, how? That was something he had to know. Alpha… wasn't supposed to die, not yet. There was no way she could have, none.

"How?" he asked quietly, not looking up from the desk.

Roger sighed. "She was arrested in Japan." Mello looked up sharply. "She was attempting to locate L, apparently wanted to help with the Kira case. Why she didn't just come back here, I can't understand, but she didn't. The methods she had to use to locate him weren't… exactly within the law, and she got caught."

"And?" Mello's fingernails scraped the desk as he clenched it harder yet. Somehow, he knew the answer already.

"She had a heart attack," Roger said. "No doubt Kira's work."

The fourteen-year-old's eyes closed tightly. This… it wasn't right. Something just seemed off, so entirely off. As convincing as it was, as it would have been to anyone else, Mello felt like Roger was lying outright to him. What reason would he have to do something like that?

It was because he was a stupid old bastard—that was all. Alpha was alive and he didn't want Mello to know because he thought it would distract him. Roger was preoccupied on molding the children in this orphanage into perfect copies of L. And as much as he had liked Watari while he was there, that was Watari's focus as well. This place was nothing more than a farm, where they were the crops all genetically engineered to be exactly the same, and Watari and Roger—they were the evil scientists in charge of the whole operation, tweaking and altering them all to be the same as L. They had failed three times already, with A, B, and Alpha. Now Mello and Near were their last hopes, and they weren't going to let go of it no matter what.

Even if it meant lying and crushing their hopes of happiness, what had to be done would be done.

Mello looked up at Roger, eyes aflame with rage. Roger kept himself looking nonplussed, and merely raised an eyebrow curiously. The fourteen-year-old swallowed back the rage that was threatening to boil over and breathed as evenly as he could. "You're lying… she can't be dead." Even he realized how feeble this argument sounded when it came out of his mouth. This was bad.

"I'm really very sorry, Mello—"

"Don't lie!" Mello yelled, removing his hand from the edge of the desk only to slam his fist down on it. Roger did flinch slightly at this. "She's not dead, it—it was her you were talking to on the phone, not L!"

Roger shook his head, still unperturbed. If Mello was going to have an outburst, he was going to have an outburst. This was exactly what Alpha had instructed him to tell the boy, that she was dead, killed by Kira. He wasn't sure if she had taken into account exactly how Mello would react, but…

"Admit it," Mello said, seething. Eyes wide, he continued, "You're just doing this because you think she's a distraction! She's alive and you don't want me to know it because you think she'd fuck up all your attempts at turning me into a copy of L," and his voice was gradually rising now, "you don't want any of us to have a free will and you thought you could destroy mine by saying she's dead! I'm not bloody believing it you stupid old prick!"

He slammed his fist down on the desk again, and at the exact moment he did, as though summoning it to do so, the phone rang. There was silence for a few rings, in which Roger and Mello both looked at it—Mello was quicker to act, snatching it up just as Roger had started to reach for it, still gripping the wooden desk with one hand hard enough to bruise his palm.

"Alpha?" he said into the receiver, his voice hysterical and desperate at this point—Mello himself even took note of this, but he didn't care right now. All that mattered now was proving that Roger was a lying asshole, that Alpha was alive and—

"Mello," L's voice said, calmly. Heart sinking as though weighed down by a lead anvil, Mello collapsed heavily to his knees, his hand slackening its grip on the desk. "Have you talked to Roger about this yet?"

"He's lying…"

"She's dead, Mello." His grip tightened on the phone. "It's no use trying to accuse anyone of lying."

Gritting his teeth together and shutting his eyes tightly, his voice shook as he replied, "No… don't say she's… sh-she's not, I know she's not, she promised she'd come back…" He laid his forehead against the front of the desk. "She can't be…"

"Mello—"

"She isn't dead! She's there right now, I was listening through the door while she was talking to this old bastard who's trying to tell me it's you he was talking to. His tone is different than that when he's talking to you, he sounded like he was talking to… like it was…. Look," he interrupted himself, "I know it sounds ridiculous, but you can tell the difference. You can!"

"He was speaking to me like that," L said, "because he thought telling you the truth would cause you to react like this."

"Kira," Mello said quietly, his last possible hope, "needs a name and a face to kill. He couldn't have gotten her name, he can't get anyone's name who's lived here, no one can..."

He heard L sigh at the other end of the line. "It's only speculated that he needs a name. There's still a chance that he only needs a face."

Shaking, Mello nodded, half-forgetting he was only talking to L on the phone for a moment. "Y… yeah," he said quietly. He hung his head. "Yeah…"

"Could you please hand the phone to Roger?"

Mello was quiet for a moment, motionless. "L…" he said quietly.

"Yes?"

"If you… if Kira… if you don't catch him," Mello said, hand tightening on the receiver, "then I swear I will. And I'll kill him."

"Mello—" The rest of L's sentence was cut short when Mello dropped the telephone receiver on top of Roger's desk, stood from his spot on the floor, and walked to the door, keeping his eyes on his feet. Roger picked up the receiver slowly, watching Mello leave.

"Do you think he'll…"

"He'll be fine," L replied to Roger. "Alpha knows him better than any of us. Just trust her judgment. Mello's too much like her to do anything drastic at this point."

"Yes, I… suppose he is," Roger agreed uncertainly. "You probably need to work on the case now. I'll let you go."

"Just keep an eye on Mello," L said. "Make sure he doesn't try sneaking to Japan in the middle of the night."

"I'll be sure to."

As he ended his brief conversation with Roger, L looked back at the sofa Alpha was sitting in the corner of, head on her knees and arms wrapped around her legs. She looked up at the sound of the phone being hung up. "D… do you think he'll be all right?" she asked quietly. L nodded shortly. She looked back down at her knees. "I couldn't tell him. Roger was right, he would've just run off to come find me and gotten into God knows what sort of trouble. But since he was in the office… I'm the one who taught him about listening outside doors, so I at least knew sending him out was hardly going to do any good."

"He knew you were the one Roger was talking to," L confirmed, sitting in his regular fashion in an armchair. Alpha nodded.

"I knew he'd figure it out," she said. She smirked half-heartedly. "It was Roger's tone, wasn't it?" L nodded again. "He always sounds like he's scolding me when he talks to me. It's a dead giveaway." She glanced at L again. "Are you sure he'll be—"

"He'll be fine," L said. Alpha looked back down at her knees, sighing. "His interest in the Kira case has certainly increased thanks to this. He more or less said that if I don't manage to catch Kira, he'll hunt Kia down and kill him himself."

"It'll all be better once this Kira asshole gets caught," she said quietly, laying her head back down on her knees. "Mello'll probably hate me when he finds out I'm behind this, but…" Shaking her head, she continued, "At least I might get to see him again." She nodded. "It was for the best. This way he won't do anything irrational."

Alpha had a feeling this wouldn't be the last time she tried to reassure herself about the situation. At this point, she wasn't sure what was right or wrong anymore.

And that's that. Yeah, looks like I'm getting into torturing canon characters on top of my OCs. Woohoo.

Quite T-T-ful after writing that, so yeah. Gonna grab a soda, wake myself up, and work on writing something slightly more cheerful.