I know exactly what you're all thinking. Yeah, seriously. No, I'm not psychic, but I bet it's something along the lines of:
Holy crap. The bloody punctuation mark actually updated after a forever-long hiatus.
Am I right? You know I am.
And I apologize now for taking so damn long, believe me when I say it wasn't intentional. I apologize muchly.
And, now to reply to my many comments on the last chapter (and WOW there were a lot). Since there were so many, I'm not going to reply to all of them. I'm sorry if I don't get yours. It's not because I didn't appreciate it very much, it's just because if I can't think of anything to say in reply, I can't reply very well. But I appreciate everyone commenting and reading and everything, believe me.
ThreeBooksInTheFire: Slartibartfast? YES. I'll coin it as the word of the year at the bottom of the page, Hitchhiker's Guide was awesome XD Ah, I don't think I could bring myself to kill of Don or Pat, I like them too much. Who knows, though? I'm sorta evil to my OCs.... Ah, I didn't even notice the Eifel Tower thing. Yay for unintended puns!
ActionFry: You're the only person who knew what the word of the day was! Have a cookie. Anyway, yeah, I'm a bit cruel to L XD lol, yeah, don't feel bad, I've gotten into a habit of thinking in an Irish accent while I'm writing this story. I blame it on BBCA and my obsession with Top Gear. But aaanywho, yeah, thanks for the review :P
watergoddesskasey: XD Monty Python and the Holy Grail rocked, that was one of the best parts in the movie.
E: That it will. Just not so much for Pat :P
blueness12: Don't we all, I'd love to be able to hack into computers like that XP. Yeeaah, I hope everyone understands my lateness. I don't want to be killed via internet. That would suck.
Sparanda: Si, mucho fummins XD
Sybil Corvax: Aye, very much needed, if only for the amusement factor. Torturing my OCs is how I put up with being such a kind person in real life XD Oh, but yeah, it would definitely suck if he did end up running into Wedy.
Madeline Cullen: Will do, and muchos gracias :]
Marisol Akyri: Welll, there will probably be more random Monty Python references just because of who's writing this fic, buuut none in this chapter :[ I didn't even think about it.
I Major In Magic: I was thinking more along the lines of them attacking him with ecky-ecky-ecky-ecky-pi-kang-zoom-boing. That would be priceless XD
Stalker of Stories: Thanks for the in-depth review, I like reading longer ones that actually offer a bit of constructive criticism. I recently began rereading everything myself and I'm probably going to end up rewriting a good bit of the first half of the story. The characters are a bit static, and it's rather late in the storyline to fix that entirely. I didn't really offer enough information about their histories in the story and I changed things around about them as I went on with it, so I'm not happy with the beginning of the story at all anymore. The main aspects of it that I worked on all the way through were the plot change (since I like screwig with storylines to no end) and the humor (since I can't write anything without injecting humor into it at some point), so I'm glad that much worked out. Still though, I'd like to rewrite it and improve it as much as I can. If you've got any suggestions or advice for me, I'd be glad to hear it out.
leone: Thanks very much - stuff like this is a good distraction from the real world, but I've still been busy lately with all the crap that's going on. Real life sucks sometimes, but I can't hide away from it all the time. I'm glad you've enjoyed the fic, and I definitely have no intentions of discontinuing it.
whatthehell: Thank you for the compliments, I do appreciate it. To answer your questions, however. I know Light's not an idiot. He's managed to outsmart L, after all, and considering who L is, that automatically sets him to genius status. The reason I "idiotize" him is because in writing from Katherine's perspective, I have to. Yes, I dislike Light, but I definitely respect his intelligence. I'm not inserting myself into the story, however, and Katherine doesn't respect his intelligence. Even though he isn't Kira at the moment, she still holds a grudge against Light himself for the death of Al - I haven't elaborated much on Al's relationship with Kat, Don, and Pat, but I will in later chapters. Writing about Light in any other way would cause me to be writing the thoughts of my own original character in an OOC fashion, which would just be odd. And for the other half of your question, Katherine already knows Light's entire plan. See Chapter 18 for details. She's not guessing what's going on, she knows because she was told by Kira himself when she convinced Light she was on her side.
Vampire Note: :le gasp: No! My L! :steals a rather confused looking L back and places him back in the story: And no worries. There shall be pink XD
Takun123: As I said to whatthehell up above, I know he's Kira at the moment. Heck, if I were on the investigation team and I was aware of that, I'd be cool with him. I hate Light as Kira. Katherine hates Light in general; she sees him, not Kira, as responsible for what happened to Al in the earlier chapters in her subconscious mind. When I am harsh on him, notice I'm generally writing from her point of view. That's because she is harsh on him. But, thank you very much, and I'll keep writing - updates might be a bit slow, but they will keep coming.
Yami no Hebi: Thanks for the review. I described more of Katherine in earlier chapters, particularly in Chapter 2, I believe. Pat and Don, I have their descriptions posted up on my page on here, but I haven't really said much regarding them in the story itself. I'm bad about that, but I'll try to include a bit more about them within the next few chapters.
myuutsuni: Ah, thanks muchly :] Nope, wasn't a car, though XD And yeeeaaah, I imagine Pat would probably spaz a bit over the hair.
SmileyPenguin: Chinchilla XD I think I'll do that one as the word of the day for this chapter. Ramification will come next. Then flauccinaucihillipillification, just because it's fun to say XP Anyway, thanks for the review. I agree she was quite sue-like at first, as I mentioned in a few above replies, I'm planning on reworking the first parts of the story to fix that a bit. I'll probably include more of Pat, Don, and Al in the earlier chapters when I do that as well; I wasn't sure how important I'd make them when I first started writing the story, but as I managed to work them into the storyline more, they need a bit more recognition earlier on as well. Besides, I enjoy writing for Pat and Don, and while I know what Al is like in my mind, none of my readers do since I barely mentioned him at all, so I've gotta develop his character more as well. I will stay on the storyline, but there will still be humor included everywhere I can manage to fit it in just because I can't help it :P Ah, and love the penname, by the way. Penguins are total awesomeness.
8yume: I'm trying not to make an abundance of them for a reason. L didn't even have any human contact aside from Watari for most of his life, so moving things too fast would make the relationship seem quite a bit more unrealistic. There will be more in there, though, don't worry.
Phew! There we go. Now, onto other things.
Disclaimer: All your Death Note are not belong to us, as I would say if I was a character in Zero Wing. Which I also don't own, just for reference. I do own Pat, Don, and Katherine, however, and I own L as well, it's just no one knows it yet.
Warnings: Oooooh, so many. Including, but not limited to, homicidal Pat, Misa-bribing, terrible revenge skills, and a buncha damned mafia wannabes.
Quick-sum: It is evident that something something either very scary or very amusing is about to happen when an angered yell rings out from downstairs of the investigation room in earlier hours of the morning.
It had been four days since Don and Pat had headed back to Yotsuba. All of the cameras were installed in the meeting room on the nineteenth floor – all that was left to do was to wait. Fortunately, it was Friday, and the team knew the meetings occurred on Friday evenings. Unfortunately, however, it was only half past eight in the morning. That meant that they still had all day before they could view one of the group's meetings. The atmosphere was anxious, even at that hour, and the fact that they would finally get to see one of Yotsuba's meetings later only seemed to make time pass by more slowly. The three currently in the room had all only just clambered up to the investigation room within the past thirty minutes. For Matsuda, it was more along the lines of in the past five minutes. He still had over half a cup of coffee. Light and L were both already awake enough to be working. It would be a few more minutes at the most before Yagami or Mogi joined them – they were both usually up at around the same time as Matsuda. Then, there was at least another half hour before Pat got upstairs. It would probably be another fifteen minutes to a half hour before Don came upstairs in his regular not-a-bloody-morning-person mood and drank a couple cups of coffee. According to the surveillance of Misa's and Katherine's flat, Katherine would probably be downstairs in a few short minutes, as Misa had awoken her around fifteen minutes ago. She was currently grumbling under her breath as the blonde once again took to bothering her about her wardrobe.
When the door that led into the investigation room opened, L, Light, and Matsuda all looked back. Normally, no one bothered glancing back at the sound of the opening door, as there was no doubt that it was a member of the investigation team at this time of morning. However, at the very moment the door had opened, something else had happened that made them all look around in an at least slightly confused manner: a yell of absolute anger (with a side of utter horror, from the sounds of it) had issued from somewhere in the building. Given that Katherine and Misa were on the monitors and neither of them were yelling about anything (though Katherine seemed fairly close to the point of yelling if Misa continued bugging her), and that Mogi was never loud enough to make such a racket, that left it down between two very likely contenders. After a moment, L switched the cameras off of Misa's and Katherine's apartment. The view on the monitors was generally alternated every five minutes between the rooms when at least one person was in each monitored apartment, unless some sort of oddity occurred that required them to be alternated earlier or later. This was one such oddity.
There was greater surprise to be held when the apartment Pat and Don were staying in within the complex was found to be completely empty. They would probably find out soon why this was. The odds were that they would be in the investigation room in a matter of minutes – they were only two floors down, so even taking the stairs up wouldn't take that long.
Of course, before this could happen, someone had to ask the most obvious question of the moment, and that someone just had to be Matsuda. It was a few long minutes before anyone spoke of it again, and Yagami had already taken a seat at one of the open computers to begin researching by that point, but without fail, Matsuda most certainly did speak.
"What do you think that was about?"
Right on cue, the door leading into the investigation room from the main stairwell opened hard enough to cause it to slam into the wall, bounce off of it, and shut again. All turned around, or at least glanced over their shoulder, to see the source of the disturbance. It was revealed to be Don, who was currently locking the door he had just run through. L rolled his eyes. This was almost definitely to do with something entirely absurd, as the look on Don's face was of a profound, wicked amusement, and it would do no good to know what was going on. However, the door of the investigation room was generally left unlocked for most of the morning, so something had to be said.
"What are you doing?"
Don turned around as he finished locking the door and looked at L. "Can't explain now, I've got limited time, but yeh'll all figure it out fairly soon anyway." And with a quick glance over his shoulder at the door, he quickly moved onto the next staircase. L changed the monitors back again, and the investigation team caught a bit of Misa and Katherine's post-horrified-scream discussion.
"– can't believe he actually went through with it, the idiot's going to get himself killed…" Katherine was saying, shaking her head as she took a seat on one of their sofas next to Misa.
"But why would Don want to do that, aren't they friends?" Misa asked. "It seems really mean…"
"Revenge," Katherine said. "Pat hasn't given him a moment of peace since Don had to have his hair dyed for that under cover job. Things like this are part of what makes them such good friends. I just think he might've taken it a little too far with this one."
"But didn't Kat-chan pick out the col –"
Misa was cut short by a few quick, sharp knocks on the door that lead out to the stairway, followed by a panicked, albeit extremely amused, voice. "Oi! Let me in, there's a bleedin' lunatic about to kill me! Hurry the hell up, dammit!"
Katherine stood up with a sigh and started for the door. "Yeah, I did sort of help a little in this," Katherine agreed. "I guess I could lend a hand." She unlocked and opened the door when she reached it. Don hurried inside. Katherine shut the door behind him and locked it, then turned around with her arms crossed. "And what good is being in here going to do you? Yeh know as well as I do he'll just pick his way through that lock and come in here to murder you."
Even with this information, Don gave a relieved sigh as he fell onto the sofa across from Misa's and put a foot up on the table. He crossed his arms and looked over at Katherine. "Yeh'll not want to be standing there, then, I told him who picked out the color already."
Katherine glared, and with a mumble of, "Bloody bastard…" she returned to her seat on the sofa beside Misa. Then an idea struck her, and she looked sharply over at Misa, then at Don. "He wouldn't kill Misa."
Don raised an eyebrow. "Yer point?"
"Misa," Katherine said, looking at the blonde, "would you mind standing by the door?"
Misa gave her a look of slight reproach. "Misa doesn't want to get involved in this. Kat-chan and Don were mean to –"
"Yeah, but either you do that or we die," Katherine said. "That means you'll lose yet another manager, and…" Katherine trailed off and closed her eyes for a moment. A bribe would certainly work, she just wasn't sure whether the idea was worse than death or not. She exhaled in a sigh and continued, "and you wouldn't have anyone around here left to practice your cosmetology skills on."
Misa's eyes lit up at the idea of this torture. "Kat-chan's going to let Misa give her a makeover?"
Katherine shut her eyes again. "If you can convince Pat not to kill us, then…" She gulped. "Then yes. Gladly." Misa cheered at this and promptly hurried over to the door. When Katherine opened her eyes and saw that Don again looked quite amused at something, she glared. "Don't even start, I just saved both our asses," she shot at him.
Before he could reply, the door to the room opened quite forcefully. Don and Katherine both looked over in time to see Pat's quite obviously livid, red-faced form standing in the doorway, and there was no question as to why he was livid, none at all. His hair was still slightly damp, and it was hot pink. Despite feeling slightly guilty, Katherine had to suppress a laugh. Unfortunately, she couldn't stop herself from talking. "Yeh know," she said wonderingly, "that shade of pink really goes good with the color of your face at the moment. Yeh might want to do something about the eyes, though. The green sor' of clashes with the current arrangement of colors."
And of course, this only made him angrier. He began to move forward. But then –
"Pat-kun!"
Misa's tackling him caused him to nearly trip over his own feet and stumble backwards before he could get even five steps across the floor. He looked down at Misa in utter shock when she let go – he apparently had failed to notice her at all upon opening the door. This was reasonable enough, as he was easily a foot taller than the blonde and hadn't been focused on anything but killing those responsible for committing such a horrible atrocity, and he had therefore been looking straight ahead rather than down. Now, his utter rage seemed to have shifted in surprise – then embarrassment.
"Oh. Er – ah, h-hello, Misa," was his reply to the enthusiastic greeting as he stared off in any other direction. Don sniggered at this, which turned out to be a mistake, as it directed Pat's attention back to his murder targets. However, Misa stopped him again before he could even start moving.
"Misa hasn't seen Pat-kun in forever!" She crossed her arms and looked at Don and Katherine, who were both biting back gales of laughter. "And Kat-chan and Don-kun are still being big meanies to Pat-kun," she added sympathetically. She looked back at Pat, who was again glaring towards Katherine and Don.
"Aye. Not exactly the words I'd use, but I can't disagree with that," he said coldly, glaring past Misa. "Now if yeh'll excuse me –" He started forward again, but Misa intervened once more.
"But they're still your friends, Pat-kun shouldn't hurt his friends!" Misa said a bit frenetically. "It's only hair, it can be dyed back!"
"But that would involve him going out in public looking like he's molded a bag of cotton candy to his head," Don pointed out happily. "And I doubt anyone in their right mind would want to –"
"Misa can dye hair!" said Misa as Pat pushed past her. He stopped in his tracks after only half a step, his expression changing suddenly and quite drastically from infuriated to intrigued. His eyebrows shot up and he turned around to face Misa.
"Can yeh?"
"Uh-huh," Misa said quickly, nodding. "But you might have to keep your hair like that for a little while if it was permanent dye…"
"It was," Don assured them. "Yeh've got two weeks, mate."
"But Misa has lots of wigs and hairpieces, Pat-kun could wear one when he has to leave the investigation headquarters."
"Actually, he might want to wear one at all times," Katherine said. "It's sor' of hard to take someone with a head full of cotton candy seriously. It would be horrible if yeh made a breakthrough on the Kira case looking like that, no one would pay it any attention."
This time it was Misa who shot Katherine a glare, but this was more of a warning than anything hateful. Quite simply, it said that Katherine wasn't making the job Misa had been assigned by her any easier, and she would be perfectly willing to egg Pat on in his originally planned idea of homicide if she kept it up. Katherine raised her hands in surrender at this, and then glared over at Don a moment later when she heard a cough that was obviously disguising a laugh come from his direction.
"Anyway," Misa said, now ignoring Katherine, "Kat-chan and Don-kun will probably still be mean about it, but Pat-kun needs to follow Misa if he wants to fix his hair anyway."
"Gladly." And with that, Misa forcibly dragged away the pink-haired, now rather cheerful-looking Pat by the arm, already chattering about different styles of wigs. After watching them leave the room, Katherine heard Don sigh. She looked back at him as he was standing.
"Revenge never works quite right for me."
"At least we're not both dead," Katherine pointed out, also standing. "I suppose I'll be off to go make sure Pat doesn't suddenly switch back to his psychotic-Misa-stalker persona."
"Aye, good plan," Don said, already heading for the door. "Just be downstairs before the Yotsuba meeting starts, I think we all need to be there fer that."
Katherine nodded shortly in agreement. "Definitely."
It was at around seven o'clock that the investigation room monitors were switched over to the meeting room in the Yotsuba building. No one was there yet, but they could enter at any given moment, and the monitors needed to be on the room for when they did. It would also definitely be for the best if the room would stay quiet, of course. Unfortunately, the local distractions were all on speaking terms again. Don was the only one of them even remotely uncivil, and he was only being irritable because his revenge had turned out to be a blessing in disguise for its subject – Pat was in a much less murderous mood than earlier after spending around an hour of quality time with Misa, though the blonde usually had adverse effects on everyone else. The fact that he now had a means by which to cover the pink mass atop his head and had practically been stalking Misa by means of the monitors since he joined the investigation team had probably helped with that.
L gave an inward side as he half-glanced over his shoulder at the four members of the investigation team seated on the sofas and discussing forming a band after the end of the investigation. He picked up a few sugar cubes from a small bowl sitting in front of him and dropped them in his coffee cup. Not everything in life could be fair.
"At least they're not trying to kill each other now," Light said as he looked back as well, though he sounded just as agitated as the other three members of the investigation team who were still monitoring the Yotsuba building felt. "They could still take things a bit more seriously…. They've been more of a nuisance than a help since they got here."
"They have helped," L said, looking up at the monitors, "but most of their help has been with things I could have easily gotten done with my own resources. The only problem I might have had would have been with finding Misa a new manager at the current time."
"So two of them have been a help," Yagami said. "And what about the third? Pat has definitely been an issue. As you said yourself, Ryuzaki, the only things he has helped with thus far could have been done using your own resources. He takes the case the least seriously of the three of them, he's bound to get caught working for you eventually and Kira will trace him back to the investigation team."
"All three are suspects, Yagami-san," L said. "Now that they have seen our faces, letting any of them go is entirely out of the question. And if we did dispose of only one of them, the other two would almost certainly follow. I would say that with the amount of security in this building they would be incapable of escaping, but unfortunately, if Pat could manage to break in and get both himself and another as far as this room, he could also break others out undetected. He does have an advantage over my own comrades in that sense."
"Speaking of your comrades," Light said, "what do you plan to do if he discovers who they are?"
"I… am unsure as of right now," L admitted reluctantly. "However, there is barely a one percent chance that will happen." L had taken every precaution necessary to prevent any unnecessary meetings between Wedy and Pat, as they could (and probably would) end disastrously in some way, but nothing in this investigation seemed to be completely foolproof. The investigation building certainly wasn't an impenetrable fortress; it was simply a well-guarded building. No plans so far were entirely infallible either. Everything seemed to have an error somewhere. That meant there was a chance – even if it was only a chance of one percent, it was still a chance – that Pat could discover Wedy was a working member of the investigation team, and it would be a problem if any non-Kira-related deaths occurred over the course of the investigation.
"Yes, but any chance is still a chance," Yagami said.
The discussion dimmed all over the room at this moment, when the door leading into the meeting room on the monitors opened. Apparently the four sitting towards the back of the room had been paying better attention than they were letting off. First into the meeting room was Kida, and the last was Takahashi. Something was wrong, however. Something was missing. It became evident to everyone exactly what this was the moment each member of the group had found their one-of-eight armchairs in the room.
One of the chairs was empty.
Ooi was the first to speak, after surveying the other six members of the group. "I see everyone is here. Let's begin."
"But there are only seven of them, not eight," Yagami said.
"We shall commence our regular meeting," Ooi continued.
"Black suits and black ties, they're such a bunch of mafia wannabes…" Matsuda said as he looked up at the screen.
Don gave a hollow laugh. "They would hardly even qualify as wannabes."
"But only seven of them," Light pointed out. "That probably means they're in mourning."
"S… so one of the eight…"
"Has probably been killed by the others," L finished Yagami's sentence.
The room was again silent, so everyone heard Ooi's next sentence clearly:
"Let us discuss, for the brighter future of Yotsuba group…" He gave a quick look around the table, and continued, "… whom to kill."
For a moment after this, the silence in both the investigation room and Yotsuba's meeting room was utterly deafening.
Oooh, lookit, the bloody comma is moving on the plot! Wow.
But sucks that she cut it off at the beginning of such an important scene, no? Yeah, really does.
Random questions, anyone? Yeah, why not.
Is L actually considering getting rid of Pat?
Will Wedy possibly stop by at any point in time? Been a question for the past few chapters, I know. You'll find out eventually.
Will Don manage to think of a worthy revenge that won't end in benefit for Pat?
What will Pat, Don, Katherine, and Matsuda name their eventual band? Heck, I'm up for suggestions. Go on. Hit me up with some.
Will I write an amazingly insane alternate universe Death Note parody? Actually, I'm already working on one! Yayness.
Will Bloodstained Comma make sketches of her original characters out of boredom and a random urge to draw? Yeah, actually, I've already started them. And Pat's hair is a pain in the freaking ass to draw, I tell you what.
Anywho, yeah. It's almost three in the morning now and I haven't slept since Friday night. Soooo. Off I go.
BUT! Word of the day, first, is chinchilla, as suggested by SmileyPenguin. It's really quite fun to say. Go on, then. Say it. You know you want to.
And the word of the year for 2009, as coined by ThreeBooksInTheFire (who also instated last years word as "blarghlbitz"), is Slartibartfast. If you don't know what it is, start reading Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series IMMEDIATELY, or at least watch the movie. Hilarious series? Hell yes.
