AN: Does anyone remember what I said a few chapters ago about Yamamoto being the new Matsuda? Well, after writing this one I can honestly say that that plan has gone down the drain.

I wonder how many of you just went "YAY!" about that...?

February 21, 2011
2:15 PM in Tokyo, Japan

February 21, 2011
12:15 AM at Near's Headquarters, USA

"A video, hmm?" Near said after Aizawa had explained the situation to him.

"Yeah. Neither Matsuda nor Ide have claimed to have watched it--"

"Hey!!" Matsuda said angrily.

Aizawa rolled his eyes and ignored him. "Neither Matsuda nor Ide have claimed to have watched it, but none of us have had to watch it in order to figure out that he's a genius... The point is, L, this guy has gone too far with this whole thing, and none of us here feel like we have enough brain power put together to sort this whole mess out."

Near set something down, and it was audible over the line. "And none of you have watched this video."

"No."

"Could you watch it then?"

This confused Aizawa. "...L? You actually want us to watch it before you??"

"No Mr. Aizawa, you are going to stream the video here and all of us will watch it at the same time."

It made sense. "Well... Yes, of course. Let us set the computer up..."

A few minutes later, Aizawa said over the phone, "Alright. We can start it at any--"

"Roll it now, please. And if you don't mind, I would prefer your end of the line be on speaker-phone."

"Uh... Sure." Aizawa didn't entirely understand Near's reasoning for that, but he was hardly in the position to complain.

He started the tape.

On both sides of the line, there was some confusion when nothing appeared to happen when Aizawa pressed the 'Play' button, but then on the screen there suddenly appeared a disfigured... symbol. And along with it came a voice that had been processed through a computer.

"Greetings, to all of the investigation team and whoever else may be watching this. As you probably all know by now, I am Ryuzaki."

"Yeah, right," Matsuda burst out. "Ryuzaki died more than seven years ago and you--"

"Matsuda!!" Aizawa cut him off. "Shut up!!" Then he realized: that was why Near had wanted the phone on speaker. He could
hear everything going on in Aizawa's office and gauge their reactions to the tape.

After a brief pause, the voice continued. "I can't be sure, but there is an 88% chance that Matsuda just had an outburst because he is angry
at me for making such a normally preposterous claim."

Everyone watching the video--even Near--breathed in sharply.

"D-did he just say...?!" Yamamoto stammered.

"I can assume one important thing about those of you watching this," the voice said. There was a chuckle through the voice mask before he
finished.

"L is among you."

Matsuda promptly fainted.

Yamamoto squeaked as he fell and was quickly on the floor giving Matsuda CPR.

"Oh snap," muttered Ide in an unusually high-pitched voice.

Aizawa couldn't help but notice that Near said nothing to this claim.

"Anyway," the voice said, "with that being said, I should like to know: 'To be or not to be?'"

"'To be or not to be?'..." Mogi repeated to himself.

"What the hell does that mean??" Aizawa asked nobody in particular.

"Mr. Aizawa, please let us hear the rest of what this impersonator has to say," Near said calmly on the other end of the phone line.

There was a crackle as the person voicing the video cleared his throat. "I am extremely intrigued to know the answer. Fortunately, I have an address that a reply can be sent to. It's listed on the receipt in the photograph. With that, I will take my leave. Until we meet again... L."

The tape crackled again as it ended.

"Crap," Matsuda said as he sat up and rubbed his skull where it had hit the floor. He had come to seconds before, and had no idea what was going on. "What'd I miss?"

"Yamamoto, you fill him in," Aizawa ordered a bit absentmindedly. "Well, L?"

"...Our impersonator has an interesting way of phrasing his ideas."

"What?" Ide asked.

"Didn't it strike you as odd how he formed some of his sentences? It could give us some useful hints..."

Aizawa frowned. "I'm sorry L, but what does sentence structure have to do with ANYTHING??"

"If I may quote him, 'there is an 88% chance that Matsuda just had an outburst because he is angry at me for making such a normally preposterous claim.' A claim that is normally preposterous, but not always so? It doesn't make any logical sense."

When Near phrased it that way, they understood. "What other, um, grammar problems does this guy have?" Matsuda asked. "Like, can his sentences be rearranged to mean something else...?"

Everyone in Aizawa's office looked at him like it was the stupidest idea they'd ever heard.

"To point out another example," Near continued, "do any of you know where the line 'To be or not to be?' came from?"

"Well, it isn't anything that was originally, um, Japanese... that much I can remember from school," said Yamamoto.

"It's Shakespeare," Near said, "which means that he is probably giving us an obscure hint to something."

"Well... okay," Ide said, "so what are you going to do?"

"I think I might watch the video a few more times on my own," Near said. "And I would like a copy of that photograph as well."

"Sounds good," Aizawa said. "Let us know if you come up with anything... L, do you want us to continue investigating here and playing that news bulletin?"

"Yes, keep investigating, but it is time to take the bulletin down. I only wanted it televised on the off chance that he would panic and do something stupid, but that is clearly not the case."

Aizawa nodded to himself. "Understood."

Near hung up without another word.

As much as Near didn't want to admit it, he had to think that the old investigation team was being rather stupid.

Really, they thought that grammar was important??

That was a complete spur-of-the-moment example he had come up with to distract them (although the more he thought about it, the more he realized he had actually come up with something...). Ultimately, however, it had no importance that he could immediately see.

But that quote... that was another story.

"To be or not to be?" was more than a Shakespeare ripoff to Near. Certainly nobody raised outside of Wammy's House would have realized what this person actually meant. "To be or not to be?" ultimately resembled the philosophy all of them knew L had had throughout his life.

Ironically, it was now a philosophy Near faced on almost a daily basis.

And the symbol on the tape was also a very clever trick that Near was surprised the investigation team hadn't seen: almost nobody could instantly recognize a backwards, upside-down Old-English "L."

But while this was practically common knowledge at Wammy's, something just wasn't adding up. This person knew far too much--probably even more than Near thought he did--about L. While it would have been possible to get information from Wammy's, getting as much as he had about the Kira case was unbelievable. Even Near had started from scratch, and gathering all the important facts together had taken the better part of five years. The only way this man could have possibly done it would have been if he was also from Wammy's... but Near knew that nobody had left the orphanage for more than a decade, except for Mello, Matt, and himself. That was the only way this person could have known so much.

Or maybe if he was L himself, then it was possible.

But it wasn't possible...

Was it?

Suddenly the margin of 0.4% was looking rather large.

Well, Near knew what he had to do; it had become clear by now that this was no ordinary impostor. The only way he would ever find this fake L was--unfortunately--to play right into his hands. Near picked up a toy robot and clutched it to his chest.

What am I going to do...?

And when he finally came up with an answer that satisfied him, he felt--for nearly the first time in his life--truly scared of what he didn't know.

AN: This is random, but is anyone out there scared by Aizawa's mustache in that final wrap-up bonus chapter thing?

Confession: I am.

I have absolutely no idea where that came from, but if you haven't seen it then you should. It is so mothereffin creepy that after rereading it the other day online I've officially decided I can no longer take Aizawa seriously. But please, for the purpose of my fic, pretend he has the same 'do as in the Mello/Near arc, because he HAS to be able to seriously boss Matsuda around.

...And now that I've got that bit of randomness out of my system, do me a favor and click that nice little icon below labeled "Review this Story/Chapter"... :-)