Cloak and Dagger

Chapter 2

"Thank you so much, Yagami-san." I say as I step into the car. "I thought I wouldn't get to go to this art exhibition."

Soichiro doesn't respond. He pulls out of the driveway silently, eyes on the road with a solemn intent.

"Yagami-san?"

"Ellen-chan, what do you think of Kira?" Soichiro asks, out of the blue. 

"Um... If Kira wanted to do something good, he should've offered his services to the authorities. As it stands, he's proven himself to be an egomaniac who thinks he has the right to make judgements on who deserves to die and, by contrast, who deserves to live."

"Ellen-chan, I'm afraid we're not going to that exhibition."

"Oh? Why is that?"

"Your help has been requested by the man -"

Bri-i-i-i-i, bri-i-i-i-i-,

Soichiro turns his phone over, sighs heavily and puts it to his ear.

"Hello? ... Yes, I'm on my way now... Ellen-chan's in the car, yes... Alright."

Mr Yagami holds the phone out to me.

"You need to speak to him," my foster father advises me. I take hold of the phone and bring it to my ear.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Ellen-san." My eyes widen as I hear the augmented voice.

"You're him." I whisper.

"Please call me Ryuzaki. Ellen-san, would you be so kind as to tell me what you are already aware of and what you can speculate on the Kira case?"

"A-ah, well... Kira is an egomaniac, and childish."

"Explain."

"H-his response when Taylor, the criminal who pretended to be - to be L, called him evil. He refused to take the opinions of another, and he impulsively acted without considering that there might be something Taylor hadn't told him or had lied about. The recent deaths, concentrated inside Japan - almost like he's challenging the police who now know he's here."

"Some very good speculations. What else can you tell me?"

"He probably has a connection to the police. The killings were reported to suddenly spread to one every hour, on the hour. I dug in a little and found that the reported deaths were all within the free hours of a school student, but the hours weren't widely published and there was no reknowned theory about the times. Kira got the information and immediately made a counter-strike. I doubt it would be an actual officer, not only because of the timeframes of the murders, but because they already had the protection of the badge and could abuse their power from within the force, most likely with much more discretion. It's happened before."

"Indeed it has."

"Kira needs a face to kill, and perhaps... a name, too." I murmur. "The FBI members killed recently, he couldn't have seen them all right away... Yet they died altogether. He must have been manipulative in order to gain all of their information. He knows how to threaten people, to make them do what he wants without allowing them to give away his information. And, what if he..."

"Oh? Please go on."

"I heard a woman talking to Yagami Light, a few days ago. She mentioned her fiance, one among the FBI agents, had to show someone his ID during the bus hijacking on December Nineteenth. The hijacker freaked out and ran off the bus, only to be hit by an oncoming car. She suspected that Kira staged the whole thing right down to the hijacker's death, all to find her fiance's identity... But that would require him to be able to kill in ways other than a heart attack."