1The lights that had been left on while she was out last night were still on when Ran woke up in the morning, making her grumble slightly in annoyance at how they seemed to beam directly into her brain and fry it. She had a bit of a headache already.
Cursing herself absently for always leaving on the lights, she burrowed down under the sheets to hide from the light, and mentally acknowledged the fact that she wasn't about to change her lighting habits. She was always going to leave some lights on here and there for her dog, since she didn't want him to feel sad and alone in the dark when she was gone. She was afraid he might think that she had abandoned him if he was trapped all by himself for hours on end.
Ran heard her lilac covers rustle and shift making her poke her eyes up above the hemline. A black fluffball crawled into view, his dark eyes and nose glittering in the center of his thick fur. "There you are, Bug!" She cooed, rolling onto her side so she could be closer to him. "Did you miss Mommy?"
Her only response was a tilted head and a curious expression. Giggling, the black-eyed woman reached out and scratched under the hot-pink, rhinestone collar she'd bought for him about a month ago when she had went on a little emotionally-driven shopping spree.
"Who's my little fashion mogul?" If there was one thing she loved more than treating herself to some luxuries, it was treating her dog to them, too.
She felt with all honesty that her little pomeranian was her favorite living being on the entire face of the planet. He was soft, fluffy, adorable, always listened, never gave her rude looks, and was loyal to her. There was no one that could compete with him in any way, shape, or form.
Even if the most chiseled, handsome man came up to her, she would turn her back on him in a split-second if he even looked at her precious dog the wrong way.
Sliding her way out of bed, she blinked at the clock hung up on her wall.
Noon.
Oops. Well, not like there was anything on par for today anyway.
Sliding on a pair of cushy slippers, she shuffled to her modestly-sized kitchen to grab a banana for a quick breakfast, before changing into a pair of black, leggings with mesh cut-outs, and an oversized, military-green canvas jacket to cover up her pajama shirt and to block out the afternoon chill that came with the fall season.
She called to her little fluffball of a dog, and clipped him onto his leash before cradling him in her arms and heading out of her apartment. It only took them a few minutes to find a nice spot for him to do his business. While she was standing with Bug's leash in one hand, and a doggy potty bag in the other, she read a newspaper article headline from the nearby coin-operated dispenser it was locked in.
Jun Hishou assassinated, company scrambling!
"Jun Hishou assassinated, company scrambling." A male's monotone voice read out, completely ignoring the sense of urgency the exclamation point in the title of the article signaled. "What do you think of this?" He held it up so the group of other men in the room could observe it.
"I think it sounds bad!" A younger man piped up, looking worried, eyes nervously flickering back and forth between his peers' faces..
"Yes, assassinations are bad, Matsuda."
Matsuda slumped down in embarrassment, feeling that he mine as well give up right now if L was just going to keep shutting him down like that practically every single time he said anything. He didn't understand why the world famous detective had to cut him down like that and make him look like an idiot when he was clearly trying to say something more meaningful. Sulking, he listened to the man next to him, Ide Hideki, as he began speaking.
"Could be one, for all we know." The eyebrowless man mused, taking the article from the disinterested seeming man squatting on a chair across from him. His eyes scanned through the details, which there weren't too many of. Apparently, the killer must have had access to some sort of all-access maintenance key, then taken the stairs all the way up to the roof. Coincidentally, all the cameras along their path had somehow shorted out, too, so no footage or pictures was available from the building.
"Maybe this is another one of Kira's experiments?" Mogi, a tall and broad man, said from the other side of the room where he was pouring himself a coffee. "For all we know, Kira could just be toying around with his powers to test his limits even more."
"It's possible…" L muttered, pausing and looking like his mind was elsewhere, likely reviewing and calculating some sort of percentage for the likeness of the idea. "However, it would still likely be above Kira's abilities to disable security cameras. Unless he was working with someone."
"How do we know Kira isn't some sort of nerdy super genius?" Matsuda questioned, attempting to jump back in the conversation without giving L an opportunity to make him sound moronic again.
"Yeah, he could be some sort of little freak who spends more of his time with computers than other people." Aizawa growled, glaring at nothing in particular as he imagined a sadistic twerp whose face was still covered in acne and lived in his mother's basement planning out the murders of countless people.
"I would consider myself a genius who spends more time around computers than people, are you trying to imply that I am Kira, Matsuda, Aizawa?"
"Um, no!" Matsuda looked flustered, sticking his hands out and waving them around in an apologetic gesture. "I was just trying to bring up the point that-"
"No, but he could be someone like you, Ryuuzaki." The stubbled man shot back, totally running over and interrupting what his younger cohort had been trying to say without remorse. "You are proof that people like you exist."
"People like me?" L began, looking both confused and interested as to what the challenging man might label him as.
'Yeah, freaks like you.' Aizawa thought darkly, but didn't voice it. "Yes. So there has to be someone, or several someones, that are almost as smart as you, or more."
L seemed to ponder that thought for just a moment before replying, completely deadpan. "No. I've found that no one is as smart as me at the current time. There are several people I know that could perhaps rival me one day, but certainly no one at the moment."
Almost the whole room sweatdropped at that. They were beginning to become a little more familiar with the world famous detective's strange habits and mannerisms, but his brutal honesty was sometimes a little too much to handle.
L rifled through a stack of newspaper articles both printed and cut out. He pulled one out detailing the attempted murder of an up-and-coming business man, Hoshi Kiseki, who had been shot in the shoulder by an unknown assailant. He was honestly incredibly lucky, considering the fact that a druggie by the name of Mitsuo had obliviously stumbled across the assailants hiding spot, attacked them, and then scared them off.
Unfortunately for Hoshi, the gunman had already been aiming and was midway to pulling the trigger when the drug-addled man had made himself known. L was sure that if the tweaker hadn't been there, the businessman would have been dead with a bullet hole between his eyes.
Another displeasing factor was that the only witness that could be of any real help, Mitsuo, had passed out immediately afterwards, and upon waking up, his memory of the events were all very cloudy and unclear due to the heroin he'd been shooting minutes before.
Nevertheless, he had sent Ukita and Mogi out to the station where Mitsuo was being held to ask him some questions.
The two men were currently sitting across from the disheveled man, who despite his cooperation with the police was still being charged for drug possession and was not given any sort of plea bargain. They had a tape recorder on the table, and both men regarded the sunken looking man with a bit of pity.
His dark brown hair was greasy and thinning, cheeks and temples hollowed, and his nose was at a near constant run. Overall, he looked about ten years older than he really was, and his condition was clearly deteriorating fast.
"So, tell us about that night." Ukita stated, lacing his hands together on the table, and leaning in to listen to the other man's answer.
"...Well… You know I can't really recall much and stuff, man…" Mitsuo muttered, running his hand through his hair and then prodding at the swollen, purple bruise on his cheekbone nervously.
"Of course. Take your time." Mogi assured him, inwardly wishing the man would hurry up and tell them what he remembered so they could return to headquarters, and do some work that actually seemed like it would matter.
"Can you remember what the shooter looked like?" Ukita asked impatiently, clearly having the same line of thought as his partner Mogi.
"Dark hair- short, dark eyes… pistol… full lips… short height wise, uhhh…" The man looked like he was thinking hard and wracking his brain, but he couldn't seem to pull any other details out. The two men looked between each other in exasperation. Mitsuo had just described about ¾ of the population in Japan.
"Could you draw what you remember, perhaps?" The shorter detective asked, sliding him a stack of sticky notes and pulling a pen from his shirt pocket. The man in question nodded hesitantly, and started scrawling.
Mogi and Ukita left with a defeated sigh, feeling that L had just made them waste their time. All the druggie had been able to tell them was a description that left them with a suspect list of all of Japan, and a drawing that consisted of a circle with dot eyes, lips, and a straight bob of sorts.
Mitsuo was clearly not an artist.
By the time they returned back to the hotel that L had holed up in, they were equipped with coffee and donuts to ease their frazzled nerves. They took the elevator up, and Matsuda let them in when they made it to the door.
L was looking at the pair expectantly, crouching on the couch in front of a slice of half-eaten pie. "Well?" He asked curiously. All Ukita could do was hand him the drawing on the sticky note. The sugar-addicted detective took it between his thumb and forefinger and stared.
"That's all we got."
Silence filled the room, as everyone looked on at L, who had stayed quiet and continued to stare intensely at the drawing. His thumb rose to his mouth and he smiled eerily. "This was all I need, thank you."
"Huh?" Matsuda toned, looking very confused at L's creepy smile.
"Watari!" L called out to the other room, "Continue the preparations."