[FFML] [FIC][DEATH NOTE AU] Silent Partner, Unfinished Business ch. 10 FINAL

[Paul Durant]

    I am not Brian Azzarello, author of 100 Bullets, nor am I Tsugumi
Ohba, author of Death Note.


                               * * * * * * *


    SILENT PARTNER, UNFINISHED BUSINESS EPILOGUE:


    DECISION


                               * N A O M I *


    If I had any nightmares last night, well, I didn't remember them.
Hell, if I had any dreams last night, I didn't remember them. I woke up
with a puddle of drool forming beneath my face, with my arms wrapped
around Misa Amane, a blanket over our bodies. Her hand curled around my
scarred arm. Eyes closed, sleeping peacefully. The clock said it was 9:27.
We slept in.


    For a little bit I didn't wake her. I almost dipped back into
sleep, and awoke again. But it was already late. I tapped Misa on the
shoulder and I asked her "Mmm, honey, what do you want for breakfast?"


    I mean, I tried. But I couldn't. What was I going to say? What
word meant "breakfast," or "what"? I stammered uselessly. And I could
barely hear myself at all. Why didn't I --


    Right. I'm disabled. It's nearly impossible to talk. My one good
ear was pressed into the pillow. I guess... I woke up next to someone,
without a horrible lead weight bearing down on my shoulders. And I forgot.
I forgot, for a second, what had been taken from me. All the awful parts
just, they didn't feel real. Just for a second.


    We had the bag with the Death Note supplies in bed between us so
nobody would steal it. We were in Misa's windowless apartment with no TV
or Internet service so we couldn't theoretically kill any new people. And
the panic door was down to keep us secure. And keep the tower secure from
us. Misa could see everyone's name and how long they had to live. Ryuzaki
was going to have dangerous heart surgery at noon and if he didn't survive
we wouldn't either. If we did, we'd be subject to a battery of tests and
debriefing about what we'd done in the Kira investigation, and not in the
Kira investigation. I shot a man in the head last night and then I watched
a god of death burn to death and none of us did anything about it.


    But it was done. We won. Kira was gone. Light Yagami was dead.
Every scrap of Death Note paper he had available was accounted for. Isamu
Egawa was dead. Nabiki Egawa was captured. The man they raped into
obedience was captured and ready to be provided with a reversible suicide
method, to be restored as best we could. Ryuk the shinigami who started
all of this for fun was dead. We had what looked like a Death Note
reference book from him that would be invaluable to understanding its
power. The Second Kira had been overcome by who Misa had made herself
into, and banished from the world. I lived in a world without Kira, and I
woke up, I woke up for a second in a world that never had him.


    We won.


    It was over.


    ...I was hungry.


    I still didn't have a hearing aid to pull off the nightstand and
dig into my ear; I ditched it when I went rogue because it could be used
to track me. Gonna have to get another one, without the bells and
whistles. I did have a stack of notecards and a pen. I gently roused Misa
to consciousness; I knew she'd go back to sleep soon, she would probably
need 16 hours of sleep a day for a while to recover from the whole "dying
of hypothermia and then being treated with mostly improvised materials
instead of a hospital" thing. I gingerly poked her on the shoulder. "Eat?"


    "Mmh? Mmm, yeah, breakfast would be nice," she mumbled. "A big
American breakfast. With the... hyaaaaaaaammmm... the sausages wrapped in
the bacon... inside of an egg. Energy. Energy egg." I showed her my
notecard. A circle, and another circle with a grid drawn on it, and two
clashing arrows between them. She squinted as her groggy brain tried to
work out the detritus of my damaged brain. "Uhhh... Oh. Waffles." she
finally said, before turning over and going back to sleep.


    Right. I saw a waffle iron, I hoped there was pancake mix here.
Nobody was in the kitchen area, but I entered with my gun drawn anyway.
Can't be too careful. I believed Ryuzaki didn't want to use the Note to
ill ends, but for all I know there were people who weren't so ethical who
already knew about it. But nobody was here, and nobody was in the sitting
room or bathroom. Breakfast. Gotta make breakfast.


    Someone had kept my kitchenette stocked every week I was here,
even though I only used the instant, frozen food. Looked like they had
done the same for Misa, and nobody emptied the fridge out of spite. I had
to make an actual breakfast for two people. A big American farmhouse
breakfast, not just rice or instant miso or a toaster strudel that I
microwaved instead.


    I did check every package for poison. Fill half the sink with
water, submerge to see if bubbles came out of a puncture. Can't be too
careful.


    Where would I be in a world without Kira? I wouldn't be making
breakfast right now, Raye would be at work. I'd have made it for him
earlier. I'd be a doting, supportive housewife, because we'd have been
married. I'd have the implant dug out of my arm and I'd probably be
pregnant with his child, though not showing yet. With no kid to take care
of I'd probably be watching a lot of TV. Or talking on the phone.
Fluently.


    Rice in the rice steamer, pour in water to the line. No gravy to
be found, but biscuits just pop out of the tube onto the cookie sheet.
Bacon's thankfully the microwave kind. Pancake mix has directions on it.
More milk. More egg. Boil the water for the tea.


    Maybe I wouldn't be a housewife. Maybe I would have got cold feet.
Stood him up at the altar. Or got mad at him and called it off. Maybe "a
woman's place is in the home" would stop being a tender and supportive
message about having a place to be cherished that wasn't degrading like
the FBI, and start being demeaning. Or it would be something else. We
hadn't had a major fight yet, so it could have been about anything, and it
could have been nasty. I don't think he would have broken it off with me.
I wouldn't want to break it off with him. But maybe I couldn't help
myself. I was unreliable. I quit when it got hard.


    Okay, that's not how this waffle maker works. I had two
incinerated waffle briquettes I had to write off as a learning cost. Mix
together the eggs with a bit of milk, and salt so the yolk will break up.
Like Mrs. Pember showed me. Do we have sausage patties? No, we have
sausage links, microwave or griddle. Griddle. Crumble bacon into the
omelet as it forms. Ugh, I need to bring down the TTY and call Mom and
Dad, they're probably out of their minds right now.


    That's the part that's gnawing at me now. I thought I could not
live without him, that he was my world. But when I just woke up, when I
was three-quarters asleep and forgot all the bad things that happened to
me... I was not surprised at all by Misa Amane in my bed. That felt
natural. It felt right. I didn't even panic at the scars on my arm,
because she loved them, thought they were beautiful and powerful. So,
maybe I'd have a tranquil life of domestic bliss if Kira hadn't happened.
Or maybe I would have broken promises and loneliness. But Kira had
happened. And at least now...


    Breakfast. Big, hearty American breakfast, enough calories to run
all the way to Fort Worth and back. Cooked by a supportive domestic. Never
got the hang of flipping omelets, so put a plate over the frying pan, flip
the whole mess over, slide the omelet from the plate back to the pan.
Sprinkle the shredded cheese on top. Biscuits are done, let them cool.
Waffles are crispy but edible. Pancake syrup goes in the microwave to get
it nice and smooth.


    They say that before you set out for revenge, you should first dig
two graves. One for your victim, one for yourself. But I felt like...
maybe for the first time, I wasn't in my grave. So where was I? For the
first time this year I both felt like someone who could accomplish a goal,
and didn't have one.


    Break up some sausage into Omelet 2, hope that's close to what
Misa wanted. Waffles three and four, come faster because the iron is
heated up. Getting the hang of this now. Cut the biscuits so jam can be
applied. Rice is finally ready, dump it into a couple of bowls. Boiling
water over the tea bags, let that steep while I'm moving plates. Keep
every plate spinning, just enough time between each thing to do the next
thing. Capoeira cooking is a breakfast art where you never stop moving.
Put it all on Misa's totally unused dinette set? No. Lay it on the
kotatsu, by the couch. Where we had cheesecake. Was that a date? Or have
we not had a first date? Keep moving. Don't drop the plates. Get the
silverware.


    Misa emerged in her Dia de los Muertos pajamas with the bag -- not
to be let out of our presence -- and an impressive case of bed hair. Right
before I was going to get her. "Mmm, that smells delicious," she moaned
with her eyes still totally shut. "I am super hungry, too." I had to
gently guide her, keep her from staggering and knocking something over.
Chuck the bag under the kotatsu. Sit down. Deeeeep breath. "Mmmmmm..." she
purred, and finally opened her eyes. "I didn't know I had this much food
in here. I always had my meals prepared by Elena, the--" Yaaawn. "--the
nutritionist. Think Watari asked her for meal plans when I needed to get
my weight back."


    Misa folded her hands and politely said "Itadakimasu!" and I
graciously nodded. The meal wasn't masterfully made, but I think I did all
right for myself. Waffles, rice, omelet, bacon, sausage, biscuits. Tea and
orange juice. You could put a rock on there and it would be part of this
complete breakfast. She drenched her waffles in syrup. Grabbed her knife
and fork to dig in -- immediately, she dropped her knife. "Whoops! I'll
get that!" she said when she grabbed it off the kotatsu's blanket.


    She wasn't wearing a glove. I could see the stumps on her left
hand where her pinky and ring fingers used to be. Still stitched over with
black thread.


    "Yeah, they wanted to attach prosthetic fingers," she said when
she saw when I was staring at, and as she rubbed her knife clean on her
pajama shirt. "But it's not like we had any time to get them molded and
fitted. We can go back and get some when we get you a new hearing aid." A
pause. "If Ryuzaki lets us, I guess," she said around a chunk of waffle.
She chewed in silence. So did I. It was good, my waffle was fluffy.
Ryuzaki might not let us leave. He might not live. A DCA procedure always
had risks. The Death Note would stop paying attention to ensure his
condition was good once his heart stopped.


    Then, around another mouthful, she spoke again. "Okay. This is
gonna sound weird, right? But... I kind of liked that thing, where you
gave me a heated IV to fix my hypothermia. And the doctors." I arched my
eyebrow at this. It did, indeed, sound weird. "It's kind of like... Did
you ever microwave your socks in the winter?"


    I did not, but the mental image made me giggle. And Misa laughed
along with me, even as she mimed bopping me on the arm. "Quit it! That's a
perfectly normal thing to do! People love socks fresh out of the dryer,
right? I want warm socks more often than I need to do a load of socks!"


    "Mmmph," I mumbled, and it was because of the maple-drenched
waffle in my mouth and not my brain damage. "Mmmm... Clothes."


    "Well you can't put your other clothes in the microwave, come on,"
she said. She crammed some omelet in her cheek this time, for variety, and
pointed with her fork for emphasis. "For one, can't put your underwear in
there, other people use that. For two, it's got, mmmmmph, every
microwave's got bits of exploded squid ball and pasta sauce all over it,
so your shirt's big enough it scrapes all over and gets messy."


    I waved my fork back at her, sausage flopping from it, and it kept
flopping as I searched for my word. "Uhhhh... Wash! Wash, and, and. And,
uh, and dry. Dry?"


    "Of course!" she said, and she theatrically slapped her forehead.
"You have to wash the shirt when it comes out of the microwave, and then
you put it in the dryer, and it's warm again! It's the perfect system!"
Another forkful of laden omelet into her mouth. "You just cracked the
code, Naomi. This is big. Winter's days are numbered."


    I shoved the entire sausage into my mouth. It was spiced, but not
spicy. And fatty. Oh so wonderfully fatty. "Mmmm... Ah. Ninety."


    "Exactly!" She spread the jam on the biscuit, had to leave it on
the plate instead of holding it with her three-fingered hand. "We got it
down to ninety so far, but with this, we'll take it down to sixty-five no
problem! Mmmph, is this raspberry, or blackberry? I can never tell."


    It was blackberry, so I held up two fingers. "Second one. Gotcha."


    And then I smiled at her. I tried to say something else. All I
could do was stammer. "Ah... uh..."


    And she smiled back. "I love you too."


                               * * * * * * *


    "Matsuda. Uh, I'm a police investigator, and I posed as Misa
Amane's manager. Ryuzaki also made me get coffee a few times. I learned
how to work the print shop pretty well. Oh, I got us into the Yotsuba
building to stop them from finding the bugs, right?"


    "I'm Aizawa. Local whipping boy."


    "Merrie Kenwood, designation 'Wedy', serial number W-8445. I
provide electronic security, surveillance, and infiltration when necessary
to L's investigations. In this case I created surveillance profiles for
the homes of Soichiro Yagami and Koreyoshi Kitamura via fax, then
personally infiltrated and bugged three office buildings owned by Yotsuba,
one of which led to the discovery of the Yotsuba Prosperity Council. My
surveillance of Eba Watsuji was incomplete and, as it happened,
unnecessary."


    "My name is Misa Amane. I was an actress and model before the
investigation, and I released a CD but I wasn't really a singer. Then, I
was, SHE was the Second Kira, and she got arrested and imprisoned for
that. I lost those memories of being Kira, so, so I stopped being her and
started being me, and Naomi questioned me for a while, but she got me out.
And when I got out, I became an investigator. I posed as Yotsuba's
spokesmodel to find their Kira. And I was Naomi's interpreter if that
counts as a role. But after a while we went rogue. Is, like, is 'rogue
investigator' an official job or does it not count because we weren't
technically in the investigation?"


    "Con man, code name Aiber. I get into people's trust so L can mess
with them. This time I posed as Geraldo Coil to infiltrate the Yotsuba
Prosperity Council under the guise of finding the Second Kira. Oh, and
this time I was also a guard, and we learned why I don't do that."


    "Kanzou Mogi. I provided surveillance and groundwork most of the
time. Low-level analysis of paperwork, pulling LUDs, things of that
nature. I was assigned to surveil Light Yagami before the headquarters was
constructed, but it was never meant to be a 24-hour tail, and I was often
sent on other business. "


    "Naomi Misora. Uh. Uhhhh.... Hm. Misora. Misora. Misora, and...
And, uh, and, uh... Question. Question. Ah. Nnnnn... Question?"


    "I am Watari. I serve as handler for master Ryuzaki as well as
providing marksman support and helicopter piloting. I took care of most
day-to-day tasks in running the investigation, at master Ryuzaki's order."


    "I'm Soichiro Yagami. I was a detective captain. I don't think I
provided anything of value to the investigation."


                                * M I S A *


    "It's nice that you came to visit me," Ryuzaki, aka //LESLIE
TAYLOR LAWLIET -8252//, deadpanned. He'd had a couple days to recuperate,
so it was safe to visit him and talk to him and stuff. He was in a
hospital gown, lying in a hospital bed, right next to his regular one.
Watari stood next to him. "You shouldn't have. By which I mean you
shouldn't have done most of the things you did. Shooting me in the chest
so I would die on the operating table was the least objectionable. You
changed the content of your message to the Yotsuba Prosperity Council so
that Kira would respond differently, and you did not tell me. Then, you
undermined the investigation at every turn, going out on your own instead
of consulting me for the course of action, endangering yourselves and the
mission as well as innocent lives. Potentially valuable sources of
information are dead. "


    "Hey!" I protested. I kind of wiggled in my own wheelchair, the
one I kept off my feet in, to try and look more disapproving since I
couldn't lean over him. "Light was all over you and he had some kind of
evil plan cooking. We had to be, like, decisive, and do something he
couldn't possibly have planned for! Did I get mad at you for abducting her
and then tying me up for a month? And not having any plan to let me out?
And not even letting me have a radio to listen to until someone twisted
your arm? No! I mean, I was mad at the time, but not any more, because I
know she deserved it." I mean, yeah, that was, it was kind of what the
situation needed...


    "You're a little mad," he deadpanned.


    "...Yeah, I'm a little mad," I mumbled.


    Naomi pitched in. "Nnnnn... danger. Danger. And, uh, and believe."


    Great, let's get back to the topic of Ryuzaki being totally wrong
instead of middle wrong! "Yeah! You didn't believe us anyway. I kept
telling you Light was Kira and you put him in charge."


    "Miss Misora." His big, sunken eyes were fixed on her. "Was it
your idea to go rogue and undermine the investigation? Or did Miss Amane
talk you into it?"


    She stared him down right back. "I." She was taking
responsibility, even though it was half and half. I was the one who said
we needed to do all that jumping through hoops to try and give Light a
chance. She mostly came up with the plan of how to do it, though? She
definitely was the leader between us but I'd take the fall if she wanted.


    "Hmph. Well." He closed his eyes and resettled himself in his bed.
Only Watari was around to see him anyway. "That shows you how dangerous it
is to get emotionally involved with the target of an investigation."


    We let that one hang in the air for a bit. Until Naomi added
"Sorry?"


    He cracked one eye. "Are you apologizing to me?"


    She shook her head. Watari cleared his throat. I sure wasn't
apologizing either, don't need to be an interpreter to say that.


    "Yes. Well. I suppose it's time I acknowledged my part in this,"
he said, squirmy. "I was hoping that I would only have to admit this
once... and that doing so wasn't deepening my error. But I allowed my
feelings to compromise the investigation. If you hadn't undermined it,
Light would have undoubtedly found a way to kill me and take over as L,
using my resources to aid his murder. So I suppose we both made -- OW!"


    Watari flicked him in the ear and then went right back to looking
like a butler.


    "Ughhhh... Thank you for saving my life, Misa and Naomi," Ryuzaki
said, like he was eight years old again and forced to thank a substitute
teacher.


    I did a chair-curtsy and Naomi bowed graciously. "You are
welcome," I said, because we were going to be the bigger people and not
rub it in what a total jerk he was and how dumb it was to make Kira the
head of the task force trying to stop Kira.


    "This doesn't mean your actions were moral, much less that I
approve of them," he said, staring right through me. "You may have secured
his confession and thus certainty of his guilt." I mean, we were certain
beforehand -- his confession wasn't really why we did it, we wanted to
know where his paper reserves were. "But Light Yagami was helpless and
surrounded when Naomi executed him in cold blood." Okay, first off, he
definitely deserved it. And second, I don't think that guy ever counted as
helpless. Ryuzaki started chewing his thumb again. Wandered off into the
weeds, lost in thought for a few seconds. "In retrospect... reviewing how
things must have played out for Light, something leaps out at me. Light
Yagami was astonishingly lucky. Events constantly seemed to break his way.
Nets seemed to appear where he leapt, and power and vital information
constantly fell into his lap. You would know; he had no idea you existed,
there were two hours between when you left your hotel and when you could
give your information to me and somehow he bumped into you in those hours.
Fortune continually smiled on him and it was only due to his arrogance he
ever wasted its gifts." Was Ryuzaki only just now figuring that out?
Because even the Second Kira figured that one out, I think. I know I did.


    He took a deep nose breath, looked off to the side. "I live in a
world where shinigami exist. It would be irresponsible of me to conclude
that it was impossible that Light Yagami was supernaturally lucky, because
it doesn't fit a paradigm of the world I now know to be false. Perhaps he
could not be safely imprisoned. Circumstances would conspire to set him
free and deliver more power into his lap. One of my staff would discover a
heretofore unknown undying loyalty to him. Or he would be visited by a god
of thieves with an Escape Note. Perhaps killing him while he was pinned
down was the only prudent course of action." And then he fixed Naomi with
his gaze this time. "But that wasn't why you did it, was it?"


    No. It wasn't. And I was one hundred percent behind her in that.
He was a monster. He wrung people out and used them up and threw them away
like paper towels. He was gonna do it to me, and definitely to Wedy and
Aiber, and probably everyone else. And he stole Naomi's life. If whatever
Ryuzaki thought was Justice said taking revenge on that guy was wrong,
then forget Justice. Light talked enough about Justice already.


    I don't even think that was what it was, though. Ryuzaki was big
on defeating Kira, to prove himself as whatever. He didn't have such a
commitment to Justice he wasn't willing to fabricate charges to lock up
the Second Kira, so he knew when you had to cross the line, and you
definitely had to cross the line on Light. I think he was kind of sore
that someone else sealed the deal. Heck, maybe that means Naomi was gonna
be L, and I was gonna be Watari! I mean, I'd be mad about that.


    If I was going to be Watari, I would have a lot to do. The Second
Kira did a lot of evil. I felt like I wasn't thinking about how evil she
was enough. Like I didn't feel guilty, or guilty enough, but knew I should
be. I could say "Being with Naomi is bringing enough good into the world!"
but that was, like, that was too convenient, wasn't it?


    Anyway, not everything was perfect and great, so we were going to
be the bigger people, and change the subject.


    "Hey, so, uh," I said, "Ryuzaki! You have a negative number just
like us. It's all numbers though, no letters. Looks like they stopped your
heart //-8321//... somethings ago." Now that I didn't own any notebooks, I
could see my negative hexadecimal number in the mirror, but Naomi's was
gone.


    Ryuzaki grimaced. "Right. You have special eyes. You saw my name.
They can see lifespans as well, I take it. I should have masked Watari."


    "I won't tell anyone!" I protested. "I don't want to blab people's
secret names either! I didn't say anything because it would be rude, too."
Watari was //QUINCY MONTGOMERY WAMMY 13145787//. That number seemed a lot
lower than everyone else, but, he was pretty old. I'd have to ask him if
he wanted to know it when I got him alone. "I know you want to do like a
bunch of tests on my eyes, and that's fine, just don't, like, poke them
out. Maybe you can find laser glasses that block the wavelength of names,
like that guy in the X-Men. And then I can't see the names and I can't see
when people are gonna die and I don't like go crazy for seeing doom
everywhere and then everyone's happy."


    Ryuzaki grimaced. "Miss Amane. You are aware that the X-Men are
not real, aren't you?" Now Naomi flicked him in his ear because I couldn't
reach from the wheelchair. "Ow! Cut that out!"


    "Of course I know the X-Men aren't real!" Why did he always have
to mess with people like that, huh? "I'm a model, my job involves cameras,
I know how filtering light works! So they still based that stuff on actual
principles!"


                                 * * * * *


    //Anonymous Poster(OP) 1:08 AM IMG: Scarlet-Blood-River-Cast.JPG
Post your favorite movie trivia, /tv/! I'll start: Due to the appearance
of Misa Amane as Second High Schooler, "Scarlet Blood River" is the only
film about a fictional serial killer that featured a real-life serial
killer!//


    //Anonymous Poster 1:08 AM IMG: mj-popcorn.GIF//


    //Anonymous Poster 1:08 AM what the blue fuck are you on about,
OP//


    //Anonymous Poster(OP) 1:09 AM Misa Amane. The actress who
couldn't shut up about how great Kira was. And then who vanished because
of a 'car accident' right around when the Second Kira disappeared. And
then who killed a guy on a radio show to declare herself Kira's Prophet.
And said she was going to go meet Kira. And dropped off the face of the
Earth.
    Misa Amane is the Second Kira. That makes her a serial killer and
you an idiot.//


    //Anonymous Poster 1:09 AM IMG: STOP.GIF JESUS FUCKING CHRIST
THERE IS AN ENTIRE CONTAINMENT BOARD FOR THIS HORSESHIT WHY CAN'T YOU
KIRAFAGS STAY IN /L/ ALREADY//


    //Anonymous Poster 1:09 AM IMG: lolwut.JPG >year of our lord 2007
>still thinking kira and l are separate people >mfw//


    //Anonymous Poster 1:10 AM >declare herself Kira's Prophet it was
a tv show you absolute faggot and she didn't declare herself kira's
prophet, someone else did she was working undercover for l to catch the
real kira and kirafags fucked it up for lulz, they spiked the guy's meds
and called in to blow her cover there was a whole thread on /l/ that had
to get purged//


    //Anonymous Poster 1:10 AM why the fuck do you think Kira has to
be someone you recognize are you literally five years old Kira isn't a
celebrity he's like twenty Chinese dudes in a basement//


    //Anonymous Poster 1:10 AM Yeah, because that is definitely a
thing that happens. Someone who everyone in Japan recognizes is a fucking
great candidate to be an undercover agent. An anorexic model who is 75
pounds soaking wet can fight her way out of mobs of rape-crazed Kira
cultists trying to grab her, no problem. Yeah. You figured it all out.
Move over L, we got a new genius sleuth on the block.//


    //Anonymous Poster 1:11 AM Kira isn't a serial killer. Kira has
ideological motivations and wants to motivate action from political
groups, so Kira is a terrorist.
    Movies with terrorists are nothing special. Saudi Arabia still
makes movies.//


    //Anonymous Poster 1:11 AM IMG:
Misa-Amane-With-Security-On-Loca[...].JPG she has a fucking bodyguard
idiot black jacket lady in the back//


    //Anonymous Poster(OP) 1:11 AM hey guys what's going on in this
thread >this model I masturbate to is sure important and if I say she's a
super cool Kira then she'll give me a handy in a White Castle bathroom get
a life fags//


    //Anonymous Poster 1:12 AM LUL her bodyguard is a plant you can
see that scar on her lip wandering all the fuck over her face every time
they reapply her makeup MASTER OF DIS GUYS//


    //THREAD LOCKED BY MODERATOR AT 1:12 AM//


                               * N A O M I *


    "Check it out! Laser glasses, just like I said!" Misa proudly
presented herself with her new John Lennon shades, and lenses that looked
like the undersides of beer bottles. I could barely see her eyes through
them. "I can't see your name at all! It's not the green color that blocks
it, they said. It's that the glass is 5% iron. So they make everything,
like, SUPER green, but the lab guys said there's something else they can
add to it to de-greenify the glass and make it just a normal level of
green tint, but still be 5% iron. I'm gonna ask for like twenty pairs in
case I lose some or break some."


    Misa had been a very good, very patient lab rat the past few days,
testing exactly how her eye power worked. Spending all day looking at
images of herself with filters and distortions and occlusions, reporting
which ones did and didn't have her name floating above them. Pictures in
black and white had it, but pictures taken in color that had a single
color channel removed digitally did not. We were learning a lot.


    Ryuzaki and I were poring over Ryuk's reference manual while she
was tested. It looked like an alien language, but a reference Ryuk had
etched in English in the back tipped Ryuzaki off that it was a
substitution cipher, and he solved it like a newspaper Crypto-Quip.
Sticking sticky notes with English and Japanese translations to each page
as he went. Everything about the Death Note was bizzare like this.
Materials analysis had come back: the Death Note paper fragments were both
totally ordinary and unlike anything on Earth. Ordinary cellulose fibers,
from pulped wood, like make up every piece of paper ever made. But the
molecules were of left-handed chirality. Sinister orientation. Mirror
images, unlike the right-handed sugars found in all organic compounds on
Earth.


    Now that we were working together we had a safe, that required
Ryuzaki and either myself or Misa to simultaneously open, and all our
Death Note shit went there. It gave us a bit more freedom to move. But
then every single article of clothing we owned had to be inspected, and
our rooms cleaned without us, to ensure we hadn't hidden any scraps.
Ryuzaki wouldn't get fooled again.


    "Hey! Ryuzaki!" she said. "I can't see your name any more, because
of these stylish spectacles. Don't you think that's cool?"


    "Glass gets its green color from iron oxide, not elemental iron,"
he mumbled. "Rust."


    "Well, I think it's cool, and Naomi thinks it's cool." I did. They
looked a bit hippie-ish, but she made it work. "And you can... I don't
know, you can make a Popemobile out of rust and put important people in it
so they're immune to shinigami. You can figure something out."


    "I can't believe it," he muttered. "It's a program. There's no
other explanation. I've tried to think of something more... mythic.
Supernatural. But this is a program. Look at it." He shoved a page at us,
with translations at the bottom.


    //35a. If a Death Note owner accidentally misspells a name four
times, that person will be free from being killed by the Death Note.
However, if they intentionally misspell the name four times, the Death
Note owner will die.//


    "It's functional, it has predictable results for predictable
inputs, so it must be something like a program. A black box. The eyes have
a digital output. But this... This is an error handling mechanism. And
it's a hasty patch applied to the error handling mechanism to prevent an
exploit."


    I had indeed been thinking of it like a program. But I didn't put
that together like Ryuzaki had. It wasn't just coded. It was coded at
least a little clumsily. Misa looked to me for a cue, and I like to think
I gave it to her. "Ohhh..." she said. "They didn't write that in the rules
because they figured out that's how it worked. Someone decided it should
work like that. So, uh... Who?"


    "No idea," he said, chewing that nail again. "The rules have
several redundancies, and gaping omissions. Anyone who reads 35a will have
the same question: 'What if I intentionally make a third party spell a
name wrong four times, but he doesn't know that?' No answer. They mention
modern inventions like white-out. And the national family registry, very
particular to Japan."


    Misa didn't need to say it. She did not know that was a
particularly Japanese thing, and it just now occurred to her other
countries wouldn't have one. I didn't draw attention to it.


    "What's more, very few of the numbers involved are consistent,"
Ryuzaki continued. "If the numbers were derived from physical limitations,
then the time limitation on how far ahead you could plan deaths would be
the same as the time limitation on how far ahead you could write cause of
death before filling in a name. Or something of that nature. But every
span of time is chosen at random. Not only was this made, within the past
one hundred and fifty years, it wasn't made that well. And we still have
no way of squaring the circle between 2c and 67b."


    //2c. The human who uses this note can neither go to Heaven nor
Hell.//


    //67b. There is nowhere that humans go to after they die.//


    "Why write both rules? How does it make sense? 2c only makes sense
with the existence of an afterlife taken as given. It is an exception that
proves a rule; nobody writes 'no parking on Friday' if there is no parking
on any day of the week. This book was not intended for humans to read,
there's no reason to seed it with misinformation. But 67b refutes the
assumption that 2c relies on. It was made with imperfect information, by
contradictory authors, or..."


    Misa squirmed in her seat. She knew what 2c was and what it meant
about her. "'For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son;
that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life
everlasting.'" she mumbled. "Mom said that was the only verse that
mattered and so did father Aki. She wore her cross earrings to remind
people. If there's a Heaven... then Jesus decides who gets in, and not
shinigami. Jesus loves everyone. That's the whole point." She was trying
to convince herself more than anyone else. That there wasn't an indelible
stain on her soul that consigned her to oblivion. That she could be a good
person.


    I wished the same. If 2c was right, and the Death Note marked
someone even after death... Light had inflicted it on Raye without his
knowledge. I wanted the book to be wrong. I wanted Raye to be fine and
there to be a Heaven and he was in Heaven drinking a Sam Adams and playing
Madden 2017 with Albert Einstein and looking down on me and Misa and being
glad we were happy.


    But a Death Note didn't seem like the creation of a just and
loving God.


    I wanted it to be wrong about raising the dead. I wanted to bring
Light back so I could ventilate his other brain hemisphere.


    Even Ryuzaki noted how we were affected by bringing those rules
up. "...Ahem. Right. This is why I greatly appreciate you agreeing to be
the only one who uses the book, miss Amane. It's an effective security
measure as well."


    "Well, you know..." she mumbled. "If I'm already doomed, I may as
well take the hit." She wasn't meeting anyone's eyes. "And, you know...
it's different when it's people who are suffering. And asked to die but
the government won't let them. And Naomi says every step is okay. If I'm
already, you know, doomed. It probably wouldn't be worth dooming someone
else to do anyway." She didn't trust her sense of right and wrong. Not
fully built yet. So she was making up for it by looking to us for
guidance, erring way on the side of caution. So she could be better than
who she was. Surpass the Second Kira.


    "If you're doomed, you're doomed by something whose properties we
can unravel," he deadpanned. "I'm not going to give up on understanding
this. Shinigami travel to this world by a mechanism that must have
consistent properties. Maybe we can build a rocket to Heaven. You can get
there manually."


    She tried really, really hard not to laugh. And she failed. And
when she got the giggles, it was hard for me to resist.


    And Ryuzaki smiled. Maybe he felt like he had a friend, a little
bit.


                                 * * * * *


    "I don't think I'm the right person to ask about that. I thought
everything was fine for the whole time. I mean, I thought it was too
severe to keep Misa locked up like that once he knew she wasn't Kira. And
Ryuzaki was treating me like an intern for no reason. And he didn't really
seem to care that much about catching Kira if Kira wasn't Light. Okay, so
there were a couple of signs."


    "When we found out the NPA cut its backing of the investigation.
I'm pretty sure Ryuzaki was going to do some scheme to test my loyalty
that he just never got the chance to do. That's the kind of thing someone
does when he thinks he has nothing better to do. He was constantly
abrasive for no reason, someone trying to test his boundaries because he's
not doing work."


    "I received an incomplete and inaccurate operation profile, which
created a significant risk of discovery. That's very unusual for L. I
believe he was distracted from carrying out his duties."


    "Naomi figured out the only way I could fall in love with Light at
first sight was if he was Kira. So, after that. Once you looked at it that
way, you realized how close him and Ryuzaki were."


    "I have never been on an operation run by L that wasn't a dumpster
fire to some degree. I just roll with it."


    "He talked a big game about how certain he was Light was Kira, and
never did anything. I admit, I sort of checked out intellectually and
deferred to him. But it is clear he treated the entire thing as a chess
match between himself and Light. Instead of. You know. Trying to stop the
most prolific serial killer in human history."


    "Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Uh. Mmm. Light. Light, ah. Um. Eh. Light, and,
and, uh... Light."


    "Master Ryuzaki was increasingly distressed as the investigation
wore on. He viewed mister Yagami as his only confidant, something for
which I can only blame myself. His composure completely broke after
reviving mister Yagami, believing he had negligently endangered his only
friend."


    "My only concern was the mistreatment of my son, and his
suspicion. My involvement was what caused the investigation to derail."


                               * N A O M I *


    We were getting out. Security quarantine ended. Taro Ogawa and
Nabiki Egawa were still in custody, with Taro's deadline approaching. But
the investigation was going to meet together for the first time in ten
days so Ryuzaki could tell us what happened next, and free everyone to go
on their way.


    Misa needed to take it easy still, and sleep a lot, but she was
out of the wheelchair today. And okay to have a little alcohol. With her
new lighter-tint laser glasses blocking her ruinous vision, and some
pre-mixed lemon sour shochu, she was ready for the investigation wrap
party. Ready to celebrate our win. Probably not going to be an open bar
there, she reasoned, so she brought enough for everyone to have at least a
shot. All the glasses clinked in her purse as we walked to the main room.


    My drinking vice of choice in my college days, when I did drink,
was riot punch. It's flavored punch mix, only you make it with vodka
instead of water. You should not make flavored punch mix with vodka
instead of water. It has led to many bad decisions by many college
students over the years, and two of my most regrettable hookups. As I have
matured in my tastes, I have settled on the simple and noble screwdriver
as my celebratory beverage. Pour in some vodka, pour in some more orange
juice. It's hard to mess up.


    We heard quiet conversations as we came down to the briefing room.
The moment she turned the corner, Misa was cheering. "Congratulations,
everybody!" she squealed. "Kira's gone! I brought drinks, too!"


    Absolute silence.


    Everyone was here but Aiber, Ryuzaki and Watari. And they were
staring at us, at her, at her standing with one arm pumped in the air in
an increasingly awkward pose. Wedy, Aizawa, Mogi, Soichiro, Matsuda. Not a
word. Not a sound.


    I could hear us all aging.


    "...Nobody? Nobody's celebrating?" Misa asked to break the
silence. "Nobody's happy that we stopped Kira and saved the entire world?"


    Soichiro looked away first. Mogi coughed. Matsuda sheepishly
rubbed the back of his head.


    "...Fine." She stormed over to the center table and slammed the
2-liter full of cocktail on it. "Me and Naomi are going to be right here
having a wrap party for our very important and totally successful criminal
investigation that also proved magic was real and can be stopped." Two
glasses slammed on the table. "If anyone wants to join that's fine by me."
She poured herself a glass, tried to down it for emphasis, and gagged.
"Gyah! Agh! It went up my nose!" She pounded the table with her palm, and
I slid in next to her. "Agh, lemon, it burns! What is everybody's problem
already?"


    More silence, save the sound of her sniffing away the bubbly club
soda.


    God, what the hell was wrong with me. What was I thinking.
Soichiro was going to be here, for crying out loud. Why would I think this
would be a happy moment.


    "...You are the Second Kira," Mogi said with disdain, pointing to
her. "And you," he pointed to me, and left it unsaid.


    "No! I'm not!" Misa barked back. "SHE died, and Ryuzaki told all
of you about it and I know he did because we got the, the same debrief
thingy!" Another angry gulp of cocktail, while I held her other hand. "And
didn't you already know that! Ryuzaki kidnapped her and told you all she
was the Second Kira, and then he let me out, and none of you said boo
about anything."


    "Yeah. We didn't really believe him then," Aizawa snapped. "It was
some abstract gobbledygook. Then the two of you went on a rampage. And you
admitted it. You killed Ukita."


    "She's dead," Misa repeated. "She killed Hirokazu Ukita for trying
to save people from her. And Kazuhiko Hibima for hurting her feelings. And
Oba Sadao and Tomita Yoshimi just to prove a point. And even, and even
prosecutor Takamoto Nareo." All those names came to mind instantly. She'd
clearly thought about them a lot. I had to hold her closer. "Because she
was a weak person. And she's, she's gone now. She's dead. She's dead. And
I helped to stop the things she was trying to, to make happen."


    "I don't work with murderers," Wedy said. Not looking at us. "I'm
a professional. You executed a defenseless suspect in front of a gaggle of
witnesses."


    Wedy was thinking of us as a single unit, I guess. I had no time
to defend my actions. "FUCK YOU!" Misa shouted, standing up and slamming
her hands on the table. The bottle wobbled and tipped, spilling a
miniature lake of lemon sour cocktail onto the table. Nobody moved to
right it. "Who the FUCK are you, huh? Fucking master thief cat burglar who
sneaks out before there's any danger and thinks she's a better kind of
criminal? Kira was a monster! He was, he was, a a a a super intelligent
master manipulator and he had all of YOU all twisted around his finger and
he killed, he killed thousands of people, he wanted to take over the
world, he wanted, he wanted everyone to just follow him and do whatever he
said and just not be people and just and just BE HIM, but he wasn't,
wasn't even a PERSON he was this this this MOUTH that just wanted more and
more and more and he never cared about saving anyone because everyone just
had be empty like him for his, his perfect world, and and he was never
going to feel sorry, and he was never going to stop! Naomi did the right
thing and you know it! He had to go! There was only one way he was going
to stop hurting people!" She started panting, ragged breaths. She was so,
so much angrier that I had been attacked than she had.


    Glug. Glug. Glug. The lemon sour sloshed back and forth as it
poured out of the bottle. Misa's shoulders were heaving. I took her,
gently guided her to sit back down. I was there for her, and I was okay,
and I loved her.


    Silence. Breathing. In the corner, Soichiro Yagami slumped down
against the desk. Holding something. Misa hadn't been the first to bring
alcohol.


    And Misa sat down. And she breathed, and I felt her breath getting
steadier, more controlled. And she calmed herself. And she didn't keep
yelling. She said, "I'm... I'm sorry. I'm sorry for all the unforgivable
things the Second Kira did and I'm sorry that, that there was enough in me
that she could have been made out of me. And I'm trying as hard as I can
to bury her and never be like her again. And make up for what she did. I,
I, I don't know... how to feel bad enough for what she did. It doesn't
come naturally to me. I, I keep making myself feel bad about it on
purpose, like manually. Because I don't, I don't know, how someone should
deal with all this." She put her hands over her nose. Deep breath. "And I
know none of you know either. Everything we're, like, we're reacting to is
something that should be physically impossible. So I say the Second Kira
is dead because all those memories are gone, she was too weak to change me
back into her when I got them back. But you don't believe me. Because
your, everybody's brain is built for a world where all of that is
impossible and it can only be nonsense someone was making up to get out of
trouble. So I'm sorry. Everything is messed up and I don't know what to
tell you or how or even if you'd be convinced if I could communicate it
perfectly."


    Wedy hadn't mentioned Kitamura's death. Maybe she thought I wasn't
responsible, I was magically manipulated. Or that I didn't really murder
him to begin with. She didn't know what I knew. I'd never be able to truly
communicate what that was, maybe not even if I had a fully functional
Broca's area the size of a watermelon. Not murder. Not manipulation.
Failure. Failure of so much and counted for such, such awful wrong
reasons. Still an awful condemnable failure.


    With a sigh, Misa got the base of the bottle with her fingertips
and pulled it back upright. It was down to like 40% full. Wedy didn't
really care. "I don't. Work. With murderers," she spat, almost like she
was offended things were calming down.


    And Misa didn't yell. Didn't get back up. She sighed. "If that's
how you have to think about what happened I can't stop you. And you don't
think you're going to send us to jail or get back at us. So I'm... I'm
sorry we made you break your rule, and you never have to see us again
after we're done. But you know it's a weird impossible situation that
nobody really knows about. So I think we all did a really good thing that
should be celebrated. So I'm going to have a drink. And you don't have to
join and it's not like I'm gonna be carousing loudly to disturb you and
can tell Ryuzaki what you think and maybe he'll agree and do something to
us. we're not turning ourselves in to the police, but I don't think you
care about that anyway." The words took a lot out of her. I could tell how
much she couldn't stand Wedy thinking of me that way, saying her savior
was just an evil murderer. But she knew what the Second Kira would have
done here. And she couldn't stand that either.


    "I'll... I'll have a drink with you, Misa," Matsuda finally said.
"I think we did... we definitely did more good than bad. Right?" Wedy
huffed and went to the corner. Aizawa was clearly at war within himself,
his desire to be a jerk vs his cynical feelings about the matter vs his
desire for free booze.


    And Soichiro was by himself. With a bottle. The whole room smelled
of lemons and alcohol from the spill. Misa saw me looking at him, and
after she poured Matsuda a glass, she tapped me. "Go." she said. "I'm, I'm
fine. Fight's over. Matsuda's here."


    This was something for which my interpreter wouldn't be suited. I
wasn't either. But she wasn't the one who had to go.


    When I stood up, Aiber came down out of the elevator. Sniffed
theatrically. "Someone brought drinks, huh?" And then of course he held up
a bottle of rum. "Fantastic, let's get trashed."


    I wasn't. Neither was Soichiro, though when I approached him to
sit across from him, his brown bottle was about half empty. He was crying.
He wouldn't want to be seen like this, but, but what could I do? God, what
could I say? Maybe this was wrong. I killed his son. It was the right
thing to do. But just because it was the right thing doesn't mean he
wasn't in pain from it.


    I was reconsidering. Maybe my presence would just bring him pain.
This was ill-advised. But then he spoke to me. "You killed my son," he
said, not an accusation, not a wail of lament. A statement of fact.
Slowly, I sat across from him. Just as slowly, with my tongue, I nodded.
"My son killed your fiance. And he crippled you trying to kill you. And
because of that you killed him. You took revenge instead of taking him in
for justice."


    Yeah. He was right. Even if I had words, what would I say?


    "If I'd believed Ryuzaki..." he continued, not looking at my
expression. "I was only offended. Every time. Every time Ryuzaki said
Light was Kira it got my dander up. I growled, I scowled, I told him to
knock it off. Because it couldn't be Light. My son was a fine, upstanding
young man. The perfect student and son ready to make his father proud of
him." He slumped so low the lip of his bottle touched his cheek. "If I had
ever believed, ever taken it seriously. I could have noticed something.
When he was at home. If I had been a better father, spent more time with
him and not at work. Maybe I would catch him. Maybe it never would have
happened. Your fiance would be alive and you would talk to him because
Light would have thrown the notebook away or turned it in to the
authorities." Long, self-hating sigh. "You killed my son. Because I
couldn't stop you. I couldn't stop him."


    No. No, no. This was wrong. This was not his fault. Light had the
greatest detective in the world fooled. He was a manipulative sociopath.
There was no way to expect his own father would know. At first I could
only grunt at him in the negative. "Ah, ah, ah, ah.... Nnn, fake. Fake."


    "He tricked all of us. The personality he showed was fake. But you
figured out something was wrong with him when I didn't." He took a long
swig, and didn't react to the alcohol at all. "What sort of father was I?
Who knew nothing about the woman, the women he was dating? I should have
known something was wrong. Because I should have cared more."


    And he turned around. Looked over at Misa, who had poured a glass
for Aiber, and was speaking very uneasily with the two men. Mogi, clearly
frustrated, had gone to get a towel. "I know that you love her," Soichiro
said. "And she loves you. And you love her despite what she did, or, or
what the person that used to be her did. And you saw something better in
her. I think... I like to think that I am an open minded person. About
homosexuality. If I, if it offends me, it's not other people's business."
And then he turned back. His lips tight, eyes crinkling. A sob was trying
to escape his face and being forced back. "But I loved my son too. I loved
my son. I was so proud of him. Why does she... and not Light... did I not
love him enough? Did you think I didn't love him enough to save him?"


    No. I reached for his hand and squeezed it, just a little. No. He
had to know that wasn't it. He cared. He was always trying to care for his
son. He couldn't have known how that son would use that care against him.
God damn it the word, the thing he couldn't do. "Uh. Ahhh. Know. Know." I
was shaking my head slowly, 'no' modifies the word. "And, uh, and can.
Know can."


    He couldn't have known. And yeah, Misa and Light were different.
Misa was vulnerable and weak and joined up with an existing promise of
safety. Light was... He decided to become God, via murder, with absolutely
no prompting and judging by the timeline within only a couple of days of
finding the notebook. He set his original plan with complete, confident
knowledge that absolutely no amount of character growth while his memory
was gone could ever dissuade his desire to be Kira when he got his
memories back. He was a monster. But how do you tell a grieving father
that, even with all the words in the world? That because the young man he
raised was so irredeemable, because of this and this and this, the person
I loved got to grow into a better person and the person he loved never
would?


    So I said nothing more. And Soichiro went on. "I know... I know
now he was a monster. How much of a monster he was. I know he was, he was
worse than Misa. The leader, the mastermind, not the follower. And I see
how he was going to exploit her pain and love. But I... he..." That sob
made a break for it again, only to be tackled at the last second by his
self-control. "...When the two of you went rogue. He told me that you knew
my name and my face, and I was a security risk to the team. He had me
locked in a cell so you couldn't make me undermine the investigation. But
he... he knew that wasn't going to happen. And that I would have done
anything he told me to, even kill the both of you. He locked me up so I
wouldn't be caught in the crossfire. That I wouldn't be in danger." A
single tear fled down his face, a single drop to vent all that terrible
helplessness and loathing. "He cared about me. Naomi. That monster. He
still loved me.


    "I hated you so much," he sighed, hand over his eyes. "When I
thought you had tried to kill him with Kira's power. I was ready to gun
both of you down. How dare you. How dare you hurt my boy. My only son. But
I, now I..." Another sigh. No words.


    "What if I wanted revenge, Naomi?" He looked into my eyes. So sad.
"Would that work? Would that make it right? Would it bring back my son?"


    I killed his son. As justified as it was. But he was right. That
still didn't make it hurt less. What could I tell him? He was wrong to be
in pain? To suck it up? I mattered more?


    Maybe it was because I just didn't think I would be alive by now.
That I had no idea what I would do, or be. But I found myself unbuttoning
my holster, and putting the gun on the desk between us.


    "What... is this?" he grumbled. "Is that what you want? To die for
your sins?"


    No, I didn't. And I indicated as such. But then I said: "Can."


    "You killed my son. So you're giving me the chance to kill you."
Yes. I was. "Because... what? You can't do anything better? That's how you
think you're better than him? You murder, but then you dare the family to
do something about it? What will you do if I take it and I pull the
trigger?"


    "Dead."


    Did I think he would do it? No. Probably not. But I wasn't
tricking him, or humiliating him. Maybe my values were messed up by what
had happened, or the brain damage. But I felt this was the only way I
could show him respect, and yeah, that I wasn't the same as Kira. His pain
was as real as mine. If I had the right to revenge so did he.


    Maybe that was the only way to not be Kira.


    He stared down at the gun. Like he was afraid to touch it.
"Sayu... They heard from the news before they heard from me. I had to tell
my family over the phone what really happened. Sachiko still doesn't
understand. She says Sayu has gone catatonic. We have, we have no idea how
we can make her better. What happened to Light, what Light was. She
couldn't handle it. Shut down. How am I going to, is killing you going to
fix that? How am I going to fix that?"


    I pointed at my head. The little gap in my hair, where the scar
was. Where the shard of rock cracked my skull and caused a lesion in my
brain that robbed me of coherent speech. The word was so far away, so hard
to grasp. "Um." Something simple. "Errrr..." The only thing he could do.
Only thing I could do. "Try."


    He looked at me. He looked down at the gun.


    "What you did was wrong. You murdered my son. You could have
captured him."


    He picked it up in his hands. Shaking.


    "But he... He wasn't really my son, was he? I don't know when he
stopped being my son. But he did. You couldn't fix him any more than I
could." Deep breath. "I know what you're trying to tell me. And it... What
you did was wrong, Naomi Misora. But it... it isn't far enough away from
right to cost your life. Not nearly. And that's the only thing you can
give in trade. I don't want revenge."


    He slid my gun back to me. So one question remained. //YOUR
PREFERENCE: I am asking how you would prefer for this thing to be!// I
pointed at myself. "Do."


    "I don't know what I want you to do," he mumbled. "Commit yourself
to justice? Turn yourself in? I've had enough of justice. I've seen enough
of what the police do. Just... just leave me alone. Once this meeting is
over I never want to see you or Misa Amane ever again."


    And I left him with his pain. He hated me. Hated Misa. Hated
himself more than anything. Whatever small thing I could do to let him
know, that I, I couldn't fix things, nobody could, but I respected his
pain. I hope he understood that, maybe it resolved some tiny bit of the
anguished doubt in him. Maybe he could draw the line there of how he was
better than me. Maybe... I don't know.


    I had a shot of lemon sour. Nobody felt much like having a wrap
party. Except Aiber, and he couldn't party by himself.


    At least it wasn't long before Watari wheeled Ryuzaki into the
room.


    "Good. Everyone is here. I know you've completed your debriefings,
so I'll get right to it." He tried to shift in his wheelchair like it was
a much more regal seat, while Watari pushed him into the head of the
chamber. "With the capture or death of all suspects and recovery of all
assorted paraphernalia, the Kira Special Investigative Team is shutting
down. It is my position, in my capacity as L, that the Second Kira died in
custody on May 31, 2007 by means of self-inflicted supernatural trauma."
He pointedly looked over to Misa. So did everyone but Soichiro. "L will
release an official statement within two weeks, once I have finalized the
closure of the investigation. Two of the notebooks will have an unwritable
section of cover removed so as to grant the ability to see shinigami, and
the rest encased in inert material to prevent their use. The third will be
placed in a secure biometric vault, to be removed and used exclusively by
miss Amane." And then he glanced at everyone but Misa, lingering on
Aizawa. "Under heavily armed supervision, exclusively for the purpose of
testing terminally ill volunteers and, once the safest method is found,
immunizing individuals who have nuclear launch codes."


    I knew Misa was okay with that too. So long as whatever official
needed to be immunized provided a video where they addressed her by name
and described what was going to happen to them in detail and there were at
least two people with shotguns and masks in the room and the Death Note
was bolted to the table and there was a camera overhead to show everyone
exactly what she was writing and two completely different people signed
off on the accuracy of her circumstances of death before she wrote in the
name. Had to be absolutely sure that everyone knew she could not possibly
use the power that had stained her soul for evil purposes. Convince
herself, most of all.


    "L will not be publicly releasing the details of Kira's methods,"
Ryuzaki continued, "to avoid public panic. I will announce only that it
cannot be replicated, without equipment that cannot be created. As all of
you are privy to the details of the Death Note and shinigami by virtue of
being in the investigation, you may be called upon for special security
clearance if the details of Kira's power must be verified for other
purposes." He rolled his hands out a bit. "Ah, essentially, when someone
claims to have found Kira's power, or a police department panics and
thinks Kira has killed someone, I won't always be able to tell them why
they are wrong. So one of you may be asked to look at the details of the
incident and tell them that you know how Kira works and that it does not
match. Should anyone like to learn a second or third language to
facilitate this, I have access to the most skilled language tutors in the
world, and I can enroll you in a three-month intensive course." That last
bit was... not really sarcastic, but it had the slight hint of something.
Ironic? Wry?


    "Wedy and Aiber, your completion bonuses have been wired to your
Swiss accounts," he said. Ryuzaki had gone past the contentious parts
without objections, and he had other shit to wrap up. "Everyone who was
forced to terminate their employment to aid the investigation, you have a
five-year pension that continues your wage from me while you find other
employment, and a one-time completion bonus. Congratulations. I thank each
of you for your service and each of you were invaluable and professional."


    Matsuda was rubbing the back of his head again. I assumed that he
was only talking to the fired police officers when he talked about being
professional, even though technically Misa also terminated her employment
to aid the investigation.


    "For obvious reasons, the institution of L will now be concerned
with more matters than the solving of crimes, so I will need assistants.
Any of you who continue your employment with L as consulting detectives
will be given an on-call wage as well as per-case payment. Obviously this
applies to miss Misora and miss Amane, but each of you are invited to join
me as well." Wait. What? "No matter how much or how little you may have
done in this case, your presence here reflects an incredible mental
fortitude and commitment to justice. I would be grateful to be able to
call upon any one of you." He was laying it out in a total deadpan, like
he was reading from a script, even though I knew he probably really meant
the words he was saying. Just didn't know how to convey them well enough.
And Misa was nodding along, because I think she did respect the rest of
the team even though they didn't like her. She wasn't surprised or taken
aback at all.


    We were joining L? When was I supposed to be informed? I mean, I
knew she was gonna be shipped in to unlock the notebook and test it. But,
I didn't think... I never asked. Was it just so obvious it went unsaid?
Was I the only one who didn't really want to work with L?


    "All of your clothing and personal effects have been searched and
verified to not contain any Death Note material," he continued. "Once all
of our captives are taken care of, this building will be demolished and
its remains burned to destroy any possible hidden backup paper. You are
free to stay in the provided lodgings until that time. Taro Ogawa will be
provided with a means of suicide that gives the greatest chance for
revival at the appropriate time. Nabiki Egawa will remain in our custody
until the delivery of her child, and will be subject to secret trial to
avoid leaking the details of Kira."


    I mean, I had 'worked with' L before. Though most of what I
thought was working with L, was working with the killer impersonating him
and leading me on a masturbatory wild goose chase. So I thought of L as...
I don't know. I mean, I joined the investigation, didn't I? But BB said
that dealing with L was about sending absurd taunting serial killer clues,
like Zodiac, the BTK, Son of Sam. And L would be the jackass going "Oh,
what message is this killer sending us" even though none of those crimes
was ever solved by deciphering the killer's clues because they get solved
by forensics and police work like all of the other killings that aren't
ridiculous one-in-a-millions. And then this investigation, well, it was a
total shitshow. Joining L wasn't some great, reverent honor. I was far
less impressed with the guy than the people he had under him. He just said
he was going to subject someone to a secret trial.


    "If any of you have questions or concerns about wrapping the
investigation, or wish to contact me about employment, I will be available
all of this week," he said. "All of you should be proud of what you
accomplished as a team. You have defeated the most dangerous criminal to
ever walk the Earth. The security quarantine is over, and I trust you not
to speak the details of these events to anyone."


    But, I mean, I didn't want Nabiki on a secret trial because I
wanted someone to blow her head off. And where was I planning on going? I
hadn't really thought about it. Stay with my parents? Be Misa's housewife
in Hollywood while she waited tables and tried to break back in to acting
under an assumed name? I couldn't think of another way to use my skill
set. The FBI betrayed me and my fiance, I'd never go back to them. The
Japanese NPA had shown what a cowardly and traitorous and corrupt
organization it was, and oh yeah I killed one of their high-level
administrators, I couldn't join them. Go to a local American police
academy under an assumed name? Go into independent business as a PI and do
nothing but drink and catch people cheating on their spouses? Misa looked
forward to working for L, I think, and to working with me. Was I going to
tell her that L was corrupt and incompetent and would be a lead weight
shackled to my neck? Where else was I going to go? How else was she going
to be a force for good like she needed to be? How would working for L
allow her to be that force for good?


    Why didn't I have a plan? Why didn't I think I was going to keep
living after this?


    "Excuse me," Watari asked. "Is that alcohol I smell? Did one of
you bring alcohol to this meeting?"


    Misa blushed. "Yeah. I thought it was... gonna be a different kind
of meeting. It was lemon sour. I spilled most of it."


    "Fantastic," he said as he pulled a brown bottle from his coat.
"Let's get plastered."


                                 * * * * *


    "--subject on everyone's mind. Sources close to L are reporting
that the latest pause in Kira killings is due to the capture of Kira
himself. While no details on the killer or his unprecedented method are
forthcoming at this time, Kira is believed to have been a male in his
mid-thirties, unmarried and with no familial ties, working as--"


    "--first murder since the capture of Kira, the brutal execution of
the defenseless To-Oh University student Light Yagami, took place in front
of dozens of witnesses yet the police say they have no leads. Please, join
us in solidarity at the 'When We Lost Kira, We Lost Our Light' rally, to
show the criminals of the world that their brutal pogroms will not go
unopposed--"


    "--question I'm asking, how will this affect the election? We have
seen both parties go through, through these painful realignments as they
try to pivot to what the American people believe about Kira, we've seen
Romney and Pelosi unseated in, in just brutal infighting. And now it may
become a moot point. So who has the best shot coming into 2008, and how
will they pick up--"


    "--manager Taro Matsui could not be reached for comment. However,
the manager of Sunshine Talent Agency had this to say:"


    "While all of us enjoyed working with Misa Amane, we cannot ignore
the controversy surrounding her views and associations, and as such we
have mutually chosen to terminate our relationship. We wish her the best
in her future endeavors, whatever they may be. However in the wake of
this, we are pleased to announce the debut of the very talented Nori Kaku
who will be taking the role of Kasumi in the upcoming film--"


    "--know it's all just horses***, right? Are you gonna bleep that?
Kira was already being worshipped as a God. He's not some jobsworth at a
desk for, for Honda or something! L could never nab a man with those
capabilities, and he knows it. It's all a front. Kira's faithful know he's
going to come back, and anyone who started celebrating in his absence is
going to answer--"


    "--sorry to inform our viewers that Sakura's programming for this
time slot has been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. Instead, we
invite you to please enjoy an encore broadcast of 'Orange Days',
starring--"


    "--breathe easier tonight, as L has confirmed in an official
statement that Kira has been neutralized. The news comes as a great relief
to some, but many aren't feeling much safer, and already people are
wondering if they will have to take justice into their own--"


    "--only question that we need answered, and it's not being
answered. How did he do it? And could someone else? Kira's power could
make the secret to nuclear weaponry look like a recipe for salad dressing.
And right now, thanks to an unelected internationalist with no oversight
whatsoever, we've no idea how to keep that secret in the box where it--"


    "--the facts. Our country has the lowest crime rate of any in the
world, the envy of the entire world. Most of our crimes are caused by
foreigners who sneak into the country. And yet still, as prolific a killer
as Kira was, he never even ran out of native Japanese criminals to kill.
How did he always have another irredeemable scumbag on hand to kill to
prove something? Yes, I believe Kira was a state actor. I believe Kira was
working for the Chinese, and that this is merely another part of their
plan, to embolden the criminal element and--"


    "--going to protect us from the criminals? These men were walking
around Japan with total impunity before and now they will again, raping
and murdering as they pleased. My daughters are terrified, terrified to
even leave the house! Is L willing to step in and keep them safe? Or is he
going to waltz off on a private jet to the next--"


    "--gonna go away for a long time. So was it worth it, Kira? Was it
all worth it? Was, pfft... I got some in my mouth... Kira! Do you have
anything to say in your defense?"


    "You'll be sorry, L! That space chicken is coming! It's coming
soon! And when it does, what will you say? Can you look it in the eyes and
say LIVE FROM NEW YORK, IT'S SATURDAY--"


    "--disgusting to see people here taking a Japanese issue like the
tragic death of Light Yagami and turning it into a political wedge. His
family has had to flee their home because of all the unwanted attention.
And let's, let's look at the facts. The Japanese police aren't
investigating his death because they publicly came out in support of Kira.
Yagami's father was a respected police officer who resigned his commission
in protest of this fact. Rumors still circulate about his involvement with
Misa Amane, who also had to flee public life for coming out against Kira.
Someone in that video, we don't know who, is clearly declaring themselves
to be Kira before he's killed. They made their own victim into their
martyr--"


    "--America? Nothing. Twelve FBI agents sent, ground up, and then
denied all resources. Japan? Nothing. Helpless. Surrendered to Kira
officially. The UK? Did Scotland Yard show up to help? Kira shows that our
governments are not willing to protect us, and the only thing keeping us
from falling into anarchy is L. If that scares you as much as it scares
me, then it's time for us as one to rise up and take action--"


    "--have any idea what they're talking about. None. Don't know any
criminals. Okay? These are all people who live in private gated
communities and clutch pearls about black people moving into their
neighborhood. The actual people who need protecting don't fear criminals,
because, because let me finish, because they know their friends and family
are criminals. They only fear an unjust system that poses a false
dichotomy between Kira and L to manufacture--"


    "--think all of us can agree: Thank you, L, from the bottom of our
hearts. You've protected civilization as only you could, and the world is
in your debt. Turning to sports, it looks like the Yatagarasu are at it
again--"


                                * M I S A *


    They don't really do, like official weddings between girls. It's
illegal. But there were unofficial weddings. At the end, instead of "you
may kiss the bride," the priest says "you brides may kiss," and I think
that's really cute! And it's not official anyway so Naomi doesn't
technically have to say "I do" and feel bad for searching for the words
and she can just nod. And then we lift our veils up for each other and
smooch. It's okay if it's not a huge gala wedding as long as it's
meaningful for us, and we get lots of pictures of both of us in white
wedding dresses.


    Misa. No. Stop it. Stop getting googly-eyed like a schoolgirl and
planning a dream wedding. You haven't even known her that long in the
grand scheme of things. And you are a crazy person. Maybe she doesn't like
girls all that much. Or what you had was fleeting and now the
investigation is over it's going to go away.


    But on the other hand, she shared her blood with me. And that's
really special and intimate, you don't do that for a fling. Maybe we could
do a thing at the wedding where we like prick our fingers and then push
them together as a symbolic blood tie -- nah, probably not, everyone wants
a Catholic wedding because it's this special ritual thing, you can't
change too much. We're already two girls and one of us won't be saying "I
do". I don't have to put my own personal crazy into it. I just have to be
hers. And she can wait to drink my blood on the honeymoon. And then I'll
be Miss Misa Misora. Or, no, in America don't they add your names
together? She would want to do it the American way, right? Misa
Amane+Misora. Misa Amasora. I'm not sure how it works.


    No! Cut it out Misa! Everyone is really mad and this is no time to
be gushing! You don't know if it will work out and you should feel sadder
than you are! Bad Misa! She still loves Raye, and Raye was horribly
murdered by the guy you used to worship and maybe she's never gonna get
over him! And you're gonna be super jealous of a dead man because you are
a crazy person and you won't be able to do anything about it and you'll
drive her away!


    But Raye wouldn't want her to be sad forever, right? He'd want her
to be happy. She can keep his engagement ring on and, like, and honor his
memory, and that's not bad, that's very kind. I would be happy for her to
do that! But she doesn't have to never get over him, right? I can, I can
do it faster than most people, but it's still a thing normal people do!
They heal! I healed! And I totally healed in the wrong way and Naomi
basically had to do the thing where like your leg bones knit together at
like an angle so they have to break it again so they can put it together
right, but then we did that! And the Second Kira is gone! And SHE was
super jealous because SHE was hollow and knew she wasn't worth anything
and didn't have anything to offer so someone could leave her at any time!


    But even if she's gone, the Second Kira still had 90% of herself
in common with me. At least. I could be dangerous. Maybe Naomi couldn't
stand it. She'd have to babysit me all the time to make sure I didn't
brainwash myself to evil, or something. No, I knew the reason. I didn't
deserve happiness, or 90% of me didn't deserve it and the other 10%
couldn't get it. This isn't a time to be happy. I'm empty, and someone
else filled me up with something that wasn't evil, but I was still hollow
and I shouldn't be rejoicing. The Second Kira was still made out of me and
I could never make her deeds right. I shouldn't be getting over things
like this. Those people she killed will never get over it and their
families aren't over it yet.


    But she really was dead and gone and I wasn't her even if I was
similar, so I could just do good things, but she wouldn't weigh down on
me. Naomi was proud of me. I was going to rebuild myself to be a better
person than the Second Kira was and yeah Naomi was going to have a bunch
of input on that but I wasn't HOLLOW, it was going to be my decision too.
I'm still a person. Being a new person means I am a person. I have the
right to be Misa Amane or Misa Amasora or whoever.


    Would I believe it if they told me "the people who killed your
family and covered it up lost their memories and are different people
now?" Probably not. I shouldn't get to celebrate. I had an obligation to
be sadder.


    Argh! I couldn't stand it! I'd been beating myself up while trying
to jump out of the ring like this more and more all week. That guilt
didn't come, I don't know, naturally, but more and more I was just
constantly making myself sad because I was too happy and hopeful. I didn't
know what to do! How do I, like what is the protocol? How do I wrap this?


    Ryuzaki had us eating a cheesecake. I couldn't even eat it.


    Okay, I could. I was. I was eating it. But I couldn't enjoy it.


    Actually I was enjoying it too much so I had to keep making myself
sadder.


    Naomi kept one hand on my leg, squeezing, like a reassuring
presence. I really appreciated it, but didn't know if I deserved it. It
was obvious she was super nervous and conflicted about being L's
"successor" out of basically nowhere. I needed to support her like normal,
but I also needed to be her Watari, only I wasn't in the Special Air
Services for like thirty years or whatever. I definitely had to start the
English classes soon. And it would help if I could pick locks and hack
computers. At least the second one because she can't type, like, specific
commands to make them work. And dig bullets out of people. Can Ryuzaki get
me nurse's training? Or, ooh, like that half-nurse half-doctor where you
only know how to treat maladies people actually get? Watari could
definitely extract bullets from someone while piloting a helicopter. Oh, I
need to get my driver's license too. I could learn capoeira to defend
myself. Actually no. Is there something capoeira is bad at dealing with? I
could learn the martial art that was good at dealing with that, so we
covered each other's bases. I wanna say aikido? If I was gonna say helping
Naomi was bringing enough good into the world I was going to have to do a
crazy good job at it.


    Naomi loved me but Soichiro loved Light too. I heard them before.
Light could have said he wanted to help Ryuzaki, or even his dad.


    All I was doing right now other than eating was waiting. We all
were. Watari had set the table for five people and there were four of us.
Me, Naomi, Ryuzaki, and Watari. Watari and Ryuzaki were chatting about
something. I don't think I ever saw them talk like normal people before.


    Anyway one third of the way into my first slice our guest came. I
had on my green rust glasses so I couldn't see names or lifespans, so I
couldn't see who he was right away. He was silhouetted by the light of the
hallway so he was mostly in shadow. But he was grinning. God, his teeth
were so white. My glasses made the entire world a few shades greener and I
saw them as an absolutely perfect ivory.


    He took a few steps in, enough I could see he was an older white
guy. Dropped a briefcase by the chair set out for him. And then he said
something in English, which I couldn't understand at all, but it sounded
like "<Congratulations, Huntsman. I'm sure your masters are very proud of
you.>"


    And then Ryuzaki said back in also English, "<What a surprise to
see you here, Agent. I never thought you cared about the well-being of the
world.>"


    The white guy took his seat and flipped himself a pre-sliced slice
of cheesecake onto his plate. "<Leslie, you mailed me an access card. Can
we please cut the bullshit?>"


    And Ryuzaki looked over to me. Back at the guy. "Philip. It's rude
to speak in a language not all of us can understand." Thank you! I know
Naomi could follow them but it sounded like there was some kind of
menacing dance of veiled threats or something and I was totally lost.


    "<Right. Crap.>" The guy, Philip, he switched over to speaking
Japanese. He spoke pretty slow and his pronunciation was bad but, like, I
know it's a hard language, I'm gonna sound worse learning his.
"Regardless. I wanted to congratulate Naomi on her work. My main business,
however, is that I am here to meet a man named Taro Ogawa, speak to him
about a woman who inflicted a horrible injustice upon him, and inform him
of his options in the matter." He tapped the briefcase. "If someone left
out some of San Michel's cheesecake on the way, I can't be held
responsible for wanting to stop by and have a bite." And that was what he
did, a decent chunklet on his fork. "<Oh my God. It's better than I
remember.>" Didn't need to speak English to get that one.


    This was the guy. He handed Naomi the magic gun. Him and Ryuzaki
were talking about ruling the world or something. And he was gonna give
that poor police officer, who barely came out of cardiac arrest with some
facial paralysis that might not go away, the same weapon. Naomi was
looking at him warily, like she didn't know what to think. No. Like she
wanted to think she liked him but didn't know if she was right.


    I was looking up at him with my eyes wide. He was like the
American version of the god of death or something. He kind of put all this
in motion but he had no idea any of it would happen this way. Was he like
a mysterious benefactor or a villain? He noticed me staring at him, and he
squinted. "Misa Amane, right? I originally came to Japan to talk to you.
Realized by the time I arrived that there was no point. The prosecutor who
betrayed you had died of a heart attack." He took another bite and looked
away from me. "I like your glasses, by the way."


    "Agent," Ryuzaki said. "While I appreciate your presence, I can't
say I approve of your... criminal activity."


    "It's your fault, Huntsman," he said with more cheesecake in his
mouth. "It was very foolish of you to have the plans, funding, and the
rare material components for your special vault all in the same shipment.
Now that Cole hijacked it, there will be no way for your employers to
trace where the Locker ends up."


    "How is Cole, by the way?" Ryuzaki asked.


    "He is getting back into the swing of things," Philip said. "He
left your drivers alive. One of them won't be able to use his hand for a
while."


    "Ohhhhh," I said. "You guys aren't supposed to work together. But
you did. So you're acting like it's coincidence that he's gonna make the
Death Note vault for you. Right?" I looked over to Naomi. "That's what's
going on, right?" She nodded, and then she realized she did it too fast
and she had no idea if she answered yes or no, but then I think she
guessed she got the right one by chance. And that means I got what was
going on.


    "If the room was bugged," Ryuzaki said, "which it is not, my
employers aren't known to react quickly nor nimbly to such news. She will
be fine."


    "I didn't have a problem with her," Philip said. "I was just
thinking. About Kira." He looked over to Naomi. "Having his fucking brains
scattered all over the parking lot. I hope he whimpered like a little
bitch before you took him out." He grinned. Now his teeth were pure white
with veins of red.


    Him and Naomi shared this look of really dark satisfaction. I
don't know if I should have been worried by it, or disturbed, because I
don't have that kind of equipment in my head. But then she caught herself,
I think, so that indicated to me it was probably a bad thing. She looked
down at her slice. "Uh." She wasn't just looking for words, but how she
felt. "Er, and... Uh... Safe. Safe."


    "What matters is she made people safe," I interpreted for her, and
she didn't look like I got it wrong.


    "Of course it is," he said. Bite. Chew. Little, tiny moan. "I
suppose that L already has his claws in you to do his work. Now that Kira
is dead, his employers are the worst criminals on the planet. You could
accomplish a lot with me. I doubt that is an option on the table."


    "I would think that Kira would have shown you how
counterproductive your crusade against stability was," L deadpanned.


    "Kira showed more than ever the importance of unseating the
corrupt and powerful before they can perform more atrocities," Philip said
back.


    This was probably some old Illuminati argument that went back a
billion years and maybe they were reincarnated spirits of abstract
metaphysical concepts or something. I don't know. Things were already
crazy, right? But if this was a political argument for vampires that went
on forever then they wouldn't hash it out over cheesecake. And I had some
questions.


    "Okay, I don't get it," I asked. I made sure to talk a little
slower than I usually do in case I was hard for a non-native speaker to
understand. "You seem to hate Kira a lot. But you also think killing
people who did bad things is really good. Is it, like, is it ONLY the
innocent people that make a difference? Because you, like, you hate
everything he stands for." I looked around the table, feeling small, like
a child who doesn't understand right and wrong yet. "I mean... I'm sure
there's a difference. There's rules about when you should and shouldn't. I
know Naomi did a good thing. I just... am not sure exactly what the
difference is?"


    "There is no difference," Ryuzaki mumbled. Philip was thinking,
mulling over how exactly to put it into words. And then into words in a
language he wasn't as good with.


    "Kira... thought that he was Justice. Justice involves someone you
have never met deciding he knows what will make your world into a better
place, whether you agree or not," Philip said.


    "It's the only way to have a civilization instead of a bloodbath,"
Ryuzaki shot back. I wished he'd stop interrupting. I wasn't next to him
so I couldn't elbow him. "Revenge is personally satisfying but its hunger
never ends. Justice is impartial and fair. Rules have no meaning and thus
no positive effect unless they are agreed upon by all parties -- personal
vendettas only create uncertainty, misery, and death."


    "Are you finished?" Philip asked. "Okay. I don't kill people. Not
many," he continued. "I give people a means to take back power over their
own world because it was taken, directly from them, by someone they know
about." He popped a strawberry into his mouth. "The difference between us?
At 32 names per day, one hour killing per day, Kira killed people after
less than two minutes of researching who they are and what they did and if
they were even guilty. Because he thought they were a category he was safe
to make judgments on. Because he was completely removed from all of it.
Every single briefcase I hand out contains reams of incontrovertible
evidence of betrayal that I personally verify. And half the time? The
people I give them to decide they don't need revenge. I got a guy who
comes to pick them back up to be reused. Because it's their choice."


    It was clear he was really talking to Ryuzaki, not me. This was
clearly a clash of deep value systems that I wasn't going to figure out,
but, at least I got where he was coming from. I don't know if I believed
it, but... "Okay... That sort of makes sense. But, okay. Hypothetical
question. Let's say... there was someone who did some very bad things. And
killed people because of how weak she was and spread misery and death. And
then she died. But there was someone else... who happened to have the same
body and brain and 90% of her personality but who didn't do those things
and was trying very hard to be a good person. Should she be killed for
revenge? How does she know, like, for a fact, she shouldn't?"


    "I am going to assume this involves the supernatural bullshit in
the Kira case," he said, and I nodded. "I just can't answer that question
for you. It's not really up to me. Even if it was, I have no idea what to
do to make whatever it was right."


    Oh.


    Oh.


    I got it.


    "Naomi, uh..." I said. "you know how we talked about, about
building myself up? To be better than she was? I think... I think I know
what Misa Amane has to do. Before we leave. You might not like it."


                                 * * * * *


    "Ms. Ukita. Hi. I'm, I'm sorry to bring you out here. It's about
your husband.


    "I'm... Yeah. He died because he fought against Kira. He was very
brave. I know. I was... I know who killed him. She was... Like, she was
me. But not really. It's, it's complicated.


    "No, wait. Just, just please calm down. I have more to...
Listen... I'm going to... I'm going to tell you what I did, okay? I'm
going to tell you exactly what I did, and what the person who killed him
did, even though I don't remember all of it personally. And then, and then
I'm gonna tell you everything that happened after that. How I helped to
catch Kira.


    "And a lot of it is going to be very hard to believe. But I have
videotapes, audiotapes, and sworn affidavits from everyone involved that
prove what I am saying is true. Including the sworn testimony of the
World's Greatest Detective. I have evidence here of all of it that's hard
to deny. That's why you signed the confidentiality agreement. Not for my
protection, but, because some of this is very secret and you can't tell
the world. Other people won't even be able to see some of this unless they
touch -- well, we'll get to that.


    "I am going to tell you why I don't think that I am the same
person who killed your husband. I think that person is dead. I think that
the person I am is able to do good in the world. I think that I have done
good in the world. I would like to believe that by helping to stop Kira,
your husband would have forgiven me, and say I deserve to have a second
chance. I think, I mean, I obviously wouldn't be here if I didn't think I
had a pretty good case!


    "But I don't know that for certain. I don't know if he would think
I deserve that. I can't make that decision for you and there is nobody
else who can. Making that decision for you is what Kira would do. There's,
now, there's nothing I can do to bring him back. I only have one thing I
can offer you.


    "So then, when I'm done, I'm going to open this briefcase for you.
You have to put what's inside back before you can leave, okay?


    "Inside of this briefcase is a gun.


    "Anything you want to do with it before you put it back, it won't
be against the law."