Misa sat back down in the rolling computer chair. As Light was standing, she looked up at Rem.
"Rem told Misa that your Shinigami's name is Ryuk?" Misa said. She looked at Light. "Can Misa see him?"
"Uhh…" Light said uncertainly. "Sure. Turn around for a second."
"Okay!"
She turned the computer chair around. Light reached into his back pocket to take out his wallet. He took a small piece of paper from his Death Note out of one of the smaller pockets and touched it to Misa's hand.
"Okay," he said, putting it back in his wallet and putting his wallet back in his pocket. "You can look."
"Okay!" she said, spinning the chair back around. She looked up at Ryuk. "Wow! You're a Shinigami, too, but you don't look anything like Rem. I heard your name was Ryuk. Nice to meet you."
"Yes… nice to meet you too."
Misa looked at Light, smiling. "So, does Light know how to kill a Shinigami?"
She giggled at the shocked looks she was getting from both Light and Ryuk.
"Wait," Light said. "'Light?' Are we on first name terms already?"
Misa smiled. "If 'Light' isn't okay, then is 'Knight?' That's what Misa has always wanted to call her prince charming!"
Light shook his head. "Light's fine."
"'Kay," she said. "Well, does Light know how to kill a Shinigami??"
"No."
"Well, you can only kill a Shinigami by making it fall in love with a human. Rem told me that a Shinigami has to like a human enough to save their life in order to die. If a Shinigami likes a human who's life is who's life is being threatened, and the Shinigami kills the person who's threatening them, then the Shinigami dies because it lengthened the life of a human. But if the Shinigami just kills the person who's being a threat without liking the person that's going to be killed, then it won't die, because it wasn't doing it to save anyone else from dying. Right?" she asked Rem.
"Yes."
"So," Light said, "then if a Shinigami kills with the intention of saving another human, it dies?"
"Yeah," Misa said, nodding.
"I don't think any Shinigami would do that," Ryuk said.
"Yeah," Light said, looking back at Ryuk. "You definitely never would. Can I ask a little more about the eyes?"
"Yeah," Misa said. "What do you want to know?"
"First, can you see the name and life expectancy of someone from a photograph or video?"
"Yeah."
"How much of the face do you need to see in order to see? And how much does the face have to be concealed for you to not be able to tell?"
"Hmm…" she said, looking around. "It's really simple…" She reached back behind Lights computer and took a sheet of paper. "I'd have to draw it, though…" She picked up a pencil and made a quick sketch. "See, if you can see the eyes, like in these, then it's enough. If you can see the whole face, though, you don't need to be able to see the eyes – like if the person's wearing sunglasses like right here. But if a lot of the face is concealed, you can't tell. You can only tell if you can see the person's face straight-forward. If the person's wearing a mask or something, then you also can't tell. It's not drawn very well, but it's easy to understand," she said, looking up at Light. "Do you need to know anything else?"
"Where did you go to send the videos?"
"Oh," she said. "Umm… First Osaka, then Tokyo. The last one was Nagano. I took the subways to random places to mail them out."
"Do you still have tapes and envelopes with your friend's fingerprints on them?"
"Yeah."
"Make one last message tomorrow, then," he said. "Then dispose of anything you haven't used. Let the message say, 'If Kira finds me, I know he may use me and then kill me. So, I won't use his name in public anymore. Thanks to the police for the suggestions, but I still want to help Kira and get Kira's approval. I'll start by punishing the criminals that Kira hasn't yet. Also, I'm willing to share my power with anyone willing to help us. I want to change the world for the better.'"
"Share my power?" Misa asked, confused. "What do you mean?"
"That will cause panic for the investigators," Light said. "Since there are already two people with the power, it would be best to worry them about how many more there could be."
"Oh!" she said in realization, her eyes widening. "That's really smart!"
"Will you do it?"
"Of course," Misa said. "You don't have to ask me to, just tell me to go do it and I will. Misa will do whatever Light tells her to –"
"There's one more very important thing," Light said. "If you ever get arrested, you must not say anything about the other Kira or the notes. The notes are in my hands, but if they catch you, don't give them any ideas. Can you promise that?"
"I promise! So," she said, "those are the conditions I have to follow for our relationship to last?"
"Y… yes… basically."
"Then I have a condition, too!" she said cheerfully. "We have to go on a date once a week."
Light shook his head. "Impossible."
"Wh… Why?!" Misa demanded promptly.
"I haven't told you, so you don't know yet…" Light said. "L already suspects I'm Kira."
"He… he does?" she said. "Wow, he must be smart. All you ever hear anyone talking about is how dumb he must be since he can't find anything about Kira…"
"And the girl you said you went to high school with."
"Kat?" she said.
"Yeah. She can see Shinigami, which means she knows I'm Kira already, and she'll also know you're the second Kira if she sees Rem with you."
"Oh…" she said. "That's not good…"
"She can't tell the team anything," he said. "She's on the investigation team, but they'd think she was insane if she said anything. She's still a problem in this situation, though. I've been in contact with L already because of the suspicion."
"Kira and L in contact?" she said excitedly. "Both sides are amazing…. So exciting…"
"The team suspected that she – Katherine Lynton – was Kira, too, but it's doubtful that they do now. One of her friends was just killed by Kira, and now they probably pity her. L was the only one who suspected me. He's worried that I'm Kira, but he thinks he'll be safe as long as he keeps his real name hidden. Because he can't prosecute me without evidence, however, I managed to talk him into letting me join the investigation team."
"So… all Light needs to do… is bring Misa to see L?"
"It's not that easy. The security where L stays is always extremely tight, and no matter where he goes, he never leaves any pictures of himself behind. And if I suddenly take someone there without reason after Kira has supposedly met with the second Kira, then that someone will be suspected of being the second Kira and I'll be suspected as being the first. It would also be hard to believe we've built a trusting relationship with as short a time as we've known each other. Do you understand?"
"N… no, not really…" Misa said, looking a little sad. "But basically, we can't date because it will raise suspicion?"
"No," he said. "It means I need to find a plan for you to see L's face without him seeing you. The situation here is exactly the opposite of that. We'll need to see each other frequently to terminate L, as I'll need your help."
"That sounds better!" Misa said, smiling.
"However, in order to suppress suspicions, I'd have to see other girls –"
"No!" Misa said. "I don't like that, if I see Light with another girl I might end up killing her!"
"Come on, Misa," Light said, putting his hands on her shoulders. She looked up at him with a pouty expression on her face. "This isn't a game. It's a mission to change the world. Both our lives are on the line here."
"Yes," she said, "but compared to the world, Misa likes Light more…"
"What are you saying? You said you were Kira's supporter in the beginning."
"Misa wanted to meet Kira because she was grateful…" she said, looking at her knees. "But after seeing Light…"
Light sighed. "You said 'Misa will do anything Light tells her to.'"
"That's different from not wanting you to date other girls!!"
Not seeing any other way around it, Light used his last resort. "Misa," he said, "both of the Death Notes are in my hands. If you don't listen to me, I can kill you."
"I won't allow that, Light Yagami." Light looked up at Rem, completely alarmed. "If you try to harm this girl, I will kill you. I'm completely aware of her life expectancy. I'll know if she dies before her time, and I will not let you kill her before that time is up. If you make any plans to that I find out about, you will be killed."
"If you use your note to save her, you'll die," Light said.
"Yeah!" Misa said, looking at Rem with wide eyes. "You'd die, too."
"Yes," Rem said. "I would. But, that is fine with me."
The room fell silent in the moment. Light wondered how he could get around the threat from Rem. It seemed impossible to be able to avoid it. She was a Shinigami, and he was just a human. By definition, Shinigami may as well have been gods. In a battle of human versus god, then the god would be sure to win, wouldn't it? Now he had both a nameless orphan and a protective reaper to worry about. There seemed to be bad luck no matter what way he looked at it.
A knock at Light's door broke the silence. "Light, may I come in?"
"What is it, Mom?" he said.
She opened the door. "It's already 11:30," she said. "There won't be any train to catch if she doesn't leave soon."
"Ah, that's right…"
"Thank you for the reminder, Mrs. Yagami," Misa said.
Downstairs, Misa said goodbye to Light and his family. Light's plan almost came to a snag with a suggestion from his mother.
"Light," she said, "it would be polite if you'd walk her to the station."
Light looked at Misa. That's not a good idea… if we're seen, then there would be suspicion…
Misa, seeing the look on Light's face, smiled as she walked out the door. "I'll be fine," she said. "It's not that far. Bye, thank you for being so nice!"
They watched her walk down the road.
"She's such a cute kid," Light's mother said.
"Yeah," Sayu agreed. "At first I thought she was a little… but, anyway, she seems really nice."
"Pause it there."
"Why?"
"Oh, forget it," Katherine said, taking the remote from L and pressing the pause button.
The tape was from Aoyama on the twenty-second, from the security cameras the investigation team had set up everywhere. Katherine and L had been reviewing every tape of the incident. This tape was around the tenth or eleventh they had checked. Katherine had stopped the tape at a shot showing the inside of a small diner. Katherine pointed at a girl sitting at a table. She had short black hair, glasses, and was wearing a school uniform. She could see the Shinigami in the video standing behind the girl, but L obviously couldn't. It would make it a little harder to explain things that way. However, as Katherine had finally figured out how she recognized the girl, she was sure there would be some way to prove this girl was the second Kira.
"That girl," Katherine said. "She's in disguise. I went to school with her last year, we both graduated the same year. So, it would make no sense for her to be wearing a high school uniform like that, unless she were in disguise because she had something to hide. I once told her the simplest way to avoid the police if she had to go out in public – if she ever needed to – was to go out in disguise. I didn't quite recognize her in Aoyama, but I'm sure it's her. Her name's Misa Amane, she should be easy enough to find online, and from there, it should be easy enough to find out her address, as she does small bits of acting and modeling now and people need some way to contact her. Now, the time in the corner there," Katherine continued, indicating the red numbers in the corner of the screen. "That was about five minutes before we walked past that diner."
"Right."
Katherine played the tape, and then pressed the fast-forward button on the remote. She played it at regular speed at about five minutes later. "Watch her reaction carefully."
Her expression went from one that seemed rather bored to one of extreme focus, then confusion. She looked up and to the side slightly and spoke, as if talking to someone. She then looked back out the front window. She spoke again after a moment.
"Either she's talking to herself, or she can see something no one else can," Katherine said. She laughed. "In a case like this, I think both theories are just as likely. But, I do think that was when she spotted Kira, as she left only a moment after we would have walked past the shop. That means Kira was amongst the group of people we were with, and she had some way of being able to tell. I think it would be wise…" she added slowly, "not to let Light Yagami know about this. After his… reaction to the suicide note my spy left, I believe he might be Kira. I think he found out I was connected to him, then killed him under the belief that it would make me stay off of the case for a while."
"She could easily find Light on the college website," L said. "That means she could also find his address and go see him, but it's questionable as to whether or not she'd be enough of an idiot to do that. If she sends another video, I'll be able to analyze whether or not she has met with Kira."
"Well," Katherine said, sitting back in her chair, "if she's still the same as she was in school, then she would definitely be enough of an idiot to do that. I blame myself slightly for her managing to be evasive. She had a tendency to follow me around last year when she found out that I was interested in the Kira case, because she was a Kira fanatic. She found out I was doing my own investigation and started pestering me about it. Odds are, the fingerprints aren't hers. That was another piece of advice I gave her back then. Never leave fingerprints behind, that's just asking to be prosecuted. They probably belong to a friend."
"It's still impossible to erase all evidence," he said. "Once Aihara-san finishes analyzing the envelopes, there may be fragments of hair and other things on them, which is just as good evidence as a fingerprint."
"Definitely," she said. "I doubt she'd be careful about that, knowing her. She could be smart occasionally, but not usually."
"How long had you suspected Light-kun to be Kira?" L asked.
"Hmm," Katherine said. "Quite a while. As I said, I was tracking the FBI agents. While I know an eyewitness account isn't enough to confirm anything, I can tell you that Raye Penber was on a bus that was hijacked by a man that had robbed a bank three days before."
"Alright."
"And on that bus, he showed someone his ID."
"What?" L said quickly, looking away from the television screen. "He did?"
"Yes," she said. "That day, he was tracking Light Yagami, who he followed onto that bus. Light was with someone from his school, and when the hijacking took place, he wrote something down on a piece of paper and held it up for her to see. Penber saw it as well and told him it was too dangerous. Light said 'My dad's a police officer, he's taught me how to handle these situations.' Penber said 'Fine, I'll back you up, then.' Light said that unless he saw Penber's ID, there was no way he could know that Penber wasn't an accomplice. So, Penber was forced to show him. After that, the scrap of paper Light had written on fell on the floor 'accidentilly'. He made an all to obvious move to pick it up, the hijacker spotted him, and came to the back where Light was seated. The hijacker picked up the paper, but before he could say anything, he looked at the back of the bus and freaked out about something no one else could see. He fired all the shots in his gun at whatever it was, then demanded to get off the bus. The bus stopped, he got off, tripped, and was slammed into by an SUV. That was three days before the FBI agents were all killed. Light decided he wanted to avoid the police questioning about the incident, so him and the girl left the bus to get a taxi."
"The girl on this tape seemed to think she was talking to something that was there," L said, looking back at the television screen, where the image was still paused. "Could it just be a coincidence?"
"I don't know," Katherine said. "But it's interesting enough. It definitely made me consider the possibility that when the second Kira mentioned the word 'reaper' on the tape, she could have been speaking on more literal terms."
"If you witnessed the bus incident, why didn't you mention it before durring the investigation?" L asked suspiciously.
"And get my head bit off by Asahi-san for incriminating his son?" she said with a laugh. "No thank you." She put her hands behind her head and stared up at the ceiling, crossing her legs. "All I've really been doing is playing along with the whole thing and releasing clues for the investigation occasionally. I was planning on staying in the shadows to do my own investigation, but I want Kira to be caught. In all honesty, I know for a fact that Light Yagami is Kira, and I'll take any and all actions that I can possibly take to prove it."
