Chapter Six: On the Topic of Transvestites
Asimosan's Corner: Greetings! Sorry for the long wait. My plot bunny mutated and turned into a gianormous octopus and threatened to eat off mankind and I was off fighting a classic war of good and evil (being good, of course) and was seriously injured and was nursed back to health by an unknown creature who I didn't get to catch the name of and... yeah...
Instead of meeting the clock, L's gaze crept unexpectedly onto the territory of a pair of solid blue, sparkling eyes.
Mello?
The name alone sent L's brain into spasms and paralyzed the rest of his body. Never in his life had he felt so humiliated before: how could she.
L's nose pricked up at the sight of the three children before him and his mouth slid open, moving without sound. He wanted—no, needed—to say something rational and plausible that would immediately alleviate the situation and quickly shift the attention from him—
That thought lasted until a corner of his brain piped up with "Yo, does anyone realize that we're naked and bound here? S-r-s, all we need is some wax and we'll make a great BDSM—" and was beat up good and well for the information.
"L, would you like a hand?" Near offered and Mello smacked the sheep over the head. A dull thud preceded vicious whispers about sexual innuendos and wanting to be stabbed to death by a rosemary.
After having silenced the shorter one, Mello tried and failed to display an awkward smile of comfort, "Uh, would you like to be untied?"
"Yes." L nodded. L quickly replaced his gaze on the clock; there was no need to worry more about a situation that had already turned out for the worst, after all. If he loses time, then everything was o—
No, it was already past ten? But that was impossible—the light which streamed through the window made shadows that were too long—it was definitely before ten… which meant—was Xiao screwing with him on purpose?
It made sense in retrospect. Any normal human being, after going on display butt-naked and bound before three genius teenagers would have gone crazy after realizing the discrepancy. Then again, normal was the polar opposite of the fitting adjective for L.
"Matt, do you have the time?" L mumbled, lifting his head to catch the red-head's eyes. Well, he didn't really need to catch Matt's eyes. It wasn't as if the younger kid wasn't staring horrifically at his bush of pubic hair already. Matt quickly snapped out of it and glanced at his watch and back at L, "It's eight-twenty."
L was busy thinking about how to sack the rest of Xiao's life for screwing with him when Near's voice popped into his dimension, "L? L, we met your girlfri—ow—your roman—ow—the woman that we saw with you last time, Xiaoxiao Liang, on our way here. In fact, she informed us of your coordinates and instructed us to pass onto you a message."
"And that would be…?" L had a bad feeling about this.
Mello cut in, mimicking Xiao's voice with frightening accuracy—"Dear boss, for your donating Ebola onto my records, I will be donating sexual deviance onto yours. Now, slave these children around and dress nicely. Good day!"
Slave the children around and dress nicely? Did it really mean what it said, or was there some other kind of message to it? And speaking of messages—
L's eyes turned a livid shade of black. He scrambled off the bed, still naked, and dashed from one end of the hotel to the next.
He finally found his laptop at the foot of the bed on which he had been tied. It was half open, and as he had feared, Xiao had probably…
"NYPD! THIS IS THE NYPD, OPEN UP! OPEN UP, RYUUZAKI RUE! YOU ARE UNDER ARREST FOR JAILBREAKING AND—"
L's eyes widened to uneven sizes and he dashed around the suite at super human speed. After realizing that his clothing was nowhere to be found, he finally stopped short and stepped into the shower, dashed out, wrapped a towel around his waist, and swung the door open to greet the group of officers.
In L's world, this was the perfect plan. If he appeared casual and collected, and in inappropriate attire, the police would first be confused, then be embarrassed, and then simply leave out of a sudden lack of confidence. Plus, he was a man. The towel wrapped around his waist showed proudly his (somehow) toned upper-half, which didn't have anything soft or near-bulgy. If anything, he trusted the officers to be able to tell that he was the farthest thing possible from a psychotic Chinese woman.
"Good afternoon, gentlemen. May I help you?" L smiled smoothly. It was a neat trick Xiaoxiao used to delay him, and it might have worked if he was female, since the cops would probably drag him to jail and stick him there well past the time of the bet. But L, by the look on the officer's face, knew that the delay wouldn't last long enough.
However, the look of shock soon migrated onto his face when the officer continued, more stuttering but continuing nonetheless: "Y-you a-a-are under a-arrest for j-jailbreaking and—"
L couldn't let the idiot continue. He turned to the man who was obviously the head of the unit, smiling calmly.
It will end. This mistaken façade will end.
After all, didn't they notice his flat chest? His manly legs? If they were so dim, he had to enlighten them: "Gentlemen, I believe that the person for whom you are looking is female and of Asian decent—"
"OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE. THE THREE CHILDREN IN THE BACK WILL BE ARRESTED AS YOUR ACCOMPLICES." The head of the unit barked back loudly, shouting not without pride, "Don't think you'll confuse us just because you were dressed up as a woman last time. Heh, we're on our guard now. You won't run away in a century, Ryuuzaki, now that L's on your back."
And that was how L finally revealed his face to the world—consisting of NBC, MBN, CNN, ABC, and FOX. Not as Detective L, of course, but as a sexual deviant and transvestite, Ryuuzaki Rue, who had three mini-accomplices and who had hacked his way out of jail for robbery and assault.
"Guess who won our bet, handsome?" Xiao beamed, twenty-two hours afterwards. L sat across the glass window, hands cuffed and remarkably badass looking, with his bed-hair and eye-circles and all.
"Was it impossible to visit under the identity of a sibling?"
Xiao didn't know if the look in L's eyes was intent or murderous, "Well, I figured that we're more like a married couple."
Awkward Pause.
"…I mean, we don't look alike enough to be related."
"Actually, the probability of my marrying someone of your caliber, Xiao, is zero point zero percent. A similar value to taking e to the x with x approaching negative infinity, except less."
"Actually, you're quite right. No one in their right mind would marry a sexually deviant, jail-hacking, old lady-robbing transvestite like you, Ryuuzaki." Xiao smiled, "Anyway, it looks like you lost some weight, Mr. Transvestite. Are you getting ready for the cameras or what?"
"I am faring terribly and my brain has foreclosed due to low blood sugar. My probability of death within the next week has risen by seven percent due to the high energy expenditure which is required in order to lob a conversation with you, Xiao." L deadpanned, though Xiao's smile did not drop a single watt. She looked as elated as ever, wearing an obnoxiously bright neon green shirt with jeans in worse condition than those that L toss into the trash.
"Well, that's too bad. I still need you to clear some charges for me, remember?" Xiao winked, referring to her victory in the bet for the second time in fifteen seconds. And then her voice dropped a notch, which L diagnosed to be the I'm-telling-the-truth version of Xiao's speech, "Also, life's boring without a bossy freak trolling around. Get out quick."
"If memory serves correctly, you were the one who put me in here."
"No, L was the one who put you in here, Ryuuzaki. The voice scrambler on your laptop, by the way, is pure love. It actually makes me sound like a man!"
"There is nothing remarkably ladylike about Xiao anyways." L noted on the side, to earn a stabbing glare from the girl across.
"I don't mind what you say. Only real gentlemen could differentiate ladies from commoners."
"One does not need eyes of a king to realize that a handful of mud contains no diamonds."
"You little weener, I'm going to peel off your scrotum and stitch it over your mouth and nose later so you can die in the reek of your own fucking balls."
L smiled, "Why, I look forward to that. However, I have to profess that I find your objective highly unachievable, especially since this glass mirror is going to be the smallest barrier between us from now on."
"Don't worry, baby." Xiao whined in a new melodramatic tone that really made L want to vomit the few spoons of table sugar he stole earlier from the cafeteria. To his horror, she actually had more to say in the same voice, "We can still make love. Heart to heart."
"I am concerned about the length of time which you took to practice that tone."
"It's beautifully sweet, isn't it? Doesn't it make you want to run away?"
A twitch.
A glance.
A subtle smile. "Yes, it does…"
"If only there was an electric outage, eh? I heard all the doors here were digitalized. Wouldn't that be the perfect chance?"
"I would advise you to stop brainstorming. I will not be compensating for any work you do at the moment, as Watari is coming to release me soon." L declared. It was partially true. Watari was coming, but he was just coming to decide on an escape plan—most likely a moderately safe one which required Watari to fabricate a story to clear L of all charges…
"You know that Watari is the most boring person on this earth, don't you?"
"Please clarify your statement."
"Isn't Watari boring? Playing everything safe all the time. No risks, nothing on the line because he's got an umpteen number of backup plans for every scenario—isn't it more fun to decide on the spot? Tell me, Ryuuzaki, you agree, don't you?"
"The probability that something ends in catastrophe is ninety percent." L sighed, rather exasperated by her energy.
"That's what makes it a hell lot of fun, eh?" Xiao grinned sheepishly, "Anyway, nothing will go wrong, so long as I'm here."
"I sense an oxymoron." L arched an eyebrow when Xiao responded with a grunt and whipped out her laptop to begin typing frantically. L couldn't hold down his smile when Xiao's head popped up from behind her computer screen. The frown on her forehead told him she was one-hundred percent for real, "Give me ten minutes."
L had no say in the matter, obviously, because she didn't acknowledge his existence—or anyone else's for that matter—after she ducked down again. It must have been less than five minutes when Xiao suddenly began counting down, "Plan change. Ten, nine—"
L shuffled up without a response, making his way slowly to a guard at the door separating the visitors from the prisoners, "Excuse me officer, where is the restroom?"
Before the man had a chance to open his mouth, all the lights flashed out at once. In the windowless jailhouse, not a single spec of light could be seen. Suddenly walkie-talkies began exploding with frantic "what the hell?"s.
In the darkness, Xiao felt a hand on hers.
It took Xiao less than two steps to realize that her plan was inherently flawed. She didn't memorize a map of the place… if anything, they couldn't make it out of the place in pitch darkness because L probably didn't have any idea where to go either—"Ryuuzaki… hey, hey L, stop! Stop and get back behind the bars!"
"My memory serves without failure." L seemed to have read her mind and yanked harder on her hand, sending Xiao into a perpetual fall at the floor. Xiao didn't know how it was possible that her legs were moving at such speeds… it felt like she was flying, not running.
If he knew where he was going, that must have meant that he saw a map of this place. "By chance, how did you come upon a map of this place before you went arrested?"
Maybe it was in her head, but Xiao could have sworn that L's hand went loose for a total of two seconds before his monotonous voice responded with something unintelligible.
"Ah." Xiao suddenly smirked. She had stayed at this jail the night of her arrival, and…
Oh, L. So he cared for her, after all.
"I think they would stare less if you took your mask off."
"I must conceal my face regardless."
"Paranoid freak." Xiao took a savage bite of her sandwich and glanced at L's triple delight chocolate-strawberry-vanilla sundae topped with gummy worms, caramel sauce, powdered sugar, truffle and cookie bites, and white chocolate, "Is that edible?"
"I would like to double our bet."
"We can discuss this when you take off your mask. I swear, why the hell are you wearing that creepy thing? Do you know how ugly and creepy it is? For your record—" She thrust out an arm, and yanked his hand over it, "I have goosebumps, damn it."
L quickly retracted his hand, due to his usual germaphobic this-might-be-later-crime-scene-evidence instinct. Before he had a chance to shake of his physical contact with Xiao, however, her hand shot up from nowhere and suddenly his mask was off his face.
She stared at his bared face with a grin, "You know, masking yourself only increases the probability that you're something important. Wouldn't you rather look normal? Like me?"
"You do not look normal." L stared solemnly at his now-torn mask.
"That's okay. To the abnormal everything normal seems abnormal."
"I would like to double our bet." L repeated, now more earnestly and Xiao grinned, as if she had been expecting it, "What do you mean? It's already over—I won. Speaking of my victory, when do you plan to drop your warrant and—"
"I would like to bet again, wagering not only our previous results but also three arbitrary wishes to the winner, to be compensated absolutely by the loser." L interrupted, "The bet will concern freeing Near, Mello, and Matt from jail. I wager that I shall be faster."
"Oh, that's right, I forgot about those three disobedient mini-bastards." Xiao frowned. The two of them did run off alright, but L's three substitute-prodigies were probably now heartbroken that their dearest idol had left without them.
"Will you join the bet?" L took a gulp of his coffee, which wasn't too different from a cup of moistened sugar, "My victory results in the accumulation of six wishes, to be granted by Xiaoxiao Liang. Your victory consists of my discharging you from the Pentagon case and three wishes, to be granted by Ryuuzaki."
"To be granted by L." Xiaoxiao corrected, in case L was going to use the minute detail to his advantage later.
"Limitations to the case—the winner must lead the children out of jail by hand. Failure to do so is an automatic loss. In other words, if you free them without personally escorting them, your opponent has won."
"Why don't I like the sound of this?" Xiao pouted, sticking her lips out without any charm whatsoever.
"Time limitation is five hours. After reaching five hours without results, the bet will be off." L continued. Xiaoxiao wondered how long it took him to plan this one—and seeing as he had twenty-two hours of alone-time in jail, he probably used all of it to devise a plan with fifty-billion back-up plans.
This time Xiaoxiao Liang was at a major disadvantage. L had the upper hand in time, in connections, and in knowing the subjects. It might be possible that the three idiots outright refuse to let Xiao free them and consequently push the victory to L.
Actually, on that thought, Xiaoxiao could just sit around and do nothing until L has finished whatever work he needed to free the children, and then suddenly jump in and kidnap them out of jail. And if L doesn't free them on time, there would be no win or loss.
She dawdled around with the thought until L was visibly impatient and finished his coffee, "Will you bet?"
Xiaoxiao took a sip of Coke, bobbed her head aimlessly, stared out the window, fixed the wrinkles in her shirt, did something on her phone, and finally—"Five hours starts from now."
And the next thing L witnessed was a Chinese woman jumping crazily out the window next to their table. He wasn't about to say much—until he realized that the restaurant on which they stayed was on the fifth floor and—
His thumb dropped out of his mouth in horror and he quickly poked his head out of the window, expecting to see a psychotic hacker's corpse on the pavement below. After all, Xiao had the strength and agility of a toddler and would be massacred in a dodge-ball fight. Ducking out of windows, therefore, was nothing but suicidal.
However, he soon regained his composure and smiled wryly and the scene below him. As expected. It was Xiaoxiao Liang, after all.
Henry Jonsson jumped when a woman—yes—a woman, (he confirmed this after erasing his initial suspicion that it was a ghost from The Grudge out to get him) pounced on platform, sending the entire pulley trembling.
"What the hell are you—" Henry started, but the girl, who now he recognized with horror as the one that the TV said had Ebola, cut him off cheerfully, "What's your name, sir?"
"Don't come any closer." Henry tried to ward her off with his mop, swinging it here and there and hoping that she'd fall off his platform and die. And save him from contracting whatever nasty disease she had.
"Why not?"
"I—I—you're sick! Why aren't you in a hospital? Do you realize how—"
Her mouth tightened into a small O and she laughed, "Well, you see, the disease I have here is kind of magical."
"Don't bullshit me!"
"You would only catch what I have if I sneeze on you." She clarified, obviously stifling a grin—which Henry didn't and didn't want to understand—and clearing her throat continuously, "But you see, I don't have to sneeze on you. But I can, whenever and wherever I want. And if I do sneeze on you accidentally, since you haven't gotten the vaccine, you'll be bleeding out of your asshole, penis, ears, eyes, nose, and mouth. And even finger tips. And you'll feel your insides rotting and a worm the size of Godzilla wiggling all through your guts and poking into your lungs and you'll be vomiting shit and blood and piss through your eyes, because your eyeballs will rot—"
"I don't want to know!" Henry took a step towards the opposite end of the platform and banged against the rail. He steadied himself, though falling to death right now might be a better option than undergoing whatever the fuck it was that she just described.
"If you don't want to know, sir, you will cooperate with me on a small mission."
"What the h—" Henry shrieked like no other sonuvabitch could ever when she suddenly went ACHOO on him. He trembled, shaking from toe to the tips of his hair and he was feeling tingly all over and—oh god, oh fuck, oh fuck fuck fuck, was he going to explode now, like she said or—
She took out something from the pockets of her jeans. It was wrapped in a napkin.
A sugar cube?
Henry was sure he was spasming, because everything before him was shaking and wait, was he trembling or spasming? Oh, it didn't make a difference and what that was in her hand and ow his hand hurt and oh god he was going to die and he didn't even get to go to Florida for vacation yet and he shouldn't have taken the early shift tod—
"This here is the antidote." She crushed the sugar cube—or antidote, or whatever the hell it was—and pinched some little crystals between two fingers. Before Henry knew it, her hand had sprung out of nowhere and now there was something sweet in his mouth and…
Why the hell was she feeding him sugar?
"Feeling better?" She grinned.
Wait. Yes, he… was he calming down? Ah, yes, the trembles were going and…
"Actually, you have to take this entire thing to be completely cured."
Henry dashed forward for it, only to be pushed back by a finger. He watched, petrified, as she held the hand with the napkin and the crushed antidote over the edge of the platform, threatening to drop it if he moved a muscle.
And so Henry stood paralyzed. She smiled once again, now too generously to be pleasant, "Don't worry. I'll give you all of it if you do everything I say."
"What do you want me to do?" Henry was quavering already. Could it be that the antidote she gave him wore off already? Yes, yes he was trembling again already and now he could feel perspiration on his shirt and—
"If you screw up, though, I'll eat all of this myself. Or throw it somewhere. And you'll die just like I said, in the most painful manner ever. Did you know that this strand of virus takes four days to kill off someone, and by the time you're dead, all your internal organs will be liquefied? That's right, like soup! Stench-y tomato soup." She laughed, "Well, are you going to do what I say?"
"YES! YES OF COURSE!" He shouted, eyes wide and almost dropping to his knees.
At thirty-four years old, with no relatives and a puppy, and a history of obedience and a victim of constant bullying, Henry was now the slave of a maniac Asian woman with Ebola. Never before had he felt so suicidal in his life.
"Yes! Yes of course!" The man shouted, dropping to his knees with a thud that even L heard quite clearly.
L arched an eyebrow, still staring at the couple three meters below his nose. He couldn't wipe the smile off his face no matter how hard he forced himself. It was downright absurd what Xiaoxiao Liang was trying to pull off.
Xiaoxiao had jumped onto the platform of a middle-aged window-washer, who was probably trying to wipe away some pigeon shit. Within seconds she had the man from slightly indignant to petrified to unquestionably obedient. L didn't want to know how she did it, though he had to admit he was slightly curious.
After all, after she had jumped on, nothing much happened. The man had a swipe at her with his mop, and she had been motionless and simply chattered amiably. Whatever she had said, however, had the man suddenly dropping to his knees and grasping onto the fence for support. And then she held out a tissue, with something inside, and then shoved something into the man's mouth, said something else…
And suddenly the two were now being lowered onto the ground and walking off.
L smiled and returned to his coffee. Now that he had tested Xiao's abilities through the first bet—which he took as nothing more than a warm-up (though a failed one)—he was ready to begin the game. He gave a waitress his credit card for the bill, while continuing to drift farther and farther into his thoughts.
And this time, victory was surely his.
That was until, of course, the waitress returned with an apologetic smile to his table, "Sir, this card has been reported as stolen an hour ago. May we see your ID...please...?"
L's thoughts about how to brutally mutilate Xiaoxiao Liang's corpse for reporting his cards as stolen was cut off short when he read the gaze on the waitress's face. Damn it, he should have been wearing his mask. He quickly lowered his head. God, how could he have forgotten that Xiaoxiao Liang had tagged something even worse to his face than Ebola?
"Actually, it's okay, Mister. I'm also a transvestite... especially on days when my little head wouldn't think the same as my big one. I'm have to punish myself to keep disciplined…." The waitress winked, flipped her-his-her hair, "…Ryuuzaki."
L's entire face flamed a shade of red that would have sent Xiaoxiao into hell with laughter.
"Oh, I'll take care of the bill for ya! It's okay, I understand your situation." The waitress-waiter-oh god, L's head hurt, "Us minority groups gotta stick together, eh?"
And finally L understood the message that Mello delivered a day ago: "Dear boss, for your donating Ebola onto my records, I will be donating sexual deviance onto yours. Now, slave these children around and dress quickly. Good day!"