Kaho didn't tell Ryohei that the cult member who had threatened them was Misao. All she told him was it was a crazy, young woman who got way too caught up in the Kira bandwagon. She followed her home from the station. He wasn't exactly satisfied with that, but he didn't press her for more details.

As for why she didn't tell him it was Misao, she couldn't exactly say. It wasn't like he wouldn't find out. Eventually. But the girl had been a mutual friend of theirs. She had introduced them, had set them up on their blind date. She had been Kaho's only girl friend past high school, someone more than just an acquaintance. She didn't really have many of those. And despite the annoyance for the girl Kaho had displayed in the past, Misao had always called again. In her own, messed up way, Kaho loved her.

Kaho suddenly hated Kira with a fire she didn't know she had.

She asked Ukita to file a restraining order on her former friend, and suddenly it felt as though she had washed her hands of the whole affair. The fire died. But Kaho still felt shackled, still felt a sense of loss. It was like her friend had died.

The killings switched to an hourly pattern. Kaho noticed it after only the third death of the morning. Though, such things were easy to spot when you knew they were coming. It was like someone tiptoed up to you to startle you, but you had been watching them approach through a reflection.

Kaho wasn't herself that day, so soon after the Gift affair. She felt a little reckless, a little impatient. Instead of waiting for someone else to catch it, she walked straight up to Mr. Yagami, after the second death that occurred during school hours. She felt a little exhilarated, like a mad woman on a mission.

"Chief," she stopped at his desk. He was on the phone, in what appeared to be a heated discussion. It was also, apparently, a finished one, because he slammed the receiver down.

Kaho didn't ask who could have been on the other end.

"Yes, what is it, Matsumoto?" Mr. Yagami looked up at her.

Kaho noticed Watari glance at her from beside her boss. L's logo was on the screen next to him; The detective was logged in at all times now, always present to hear new information the moment it was discovered.

Kaho almost regretted drawing attention to herself, but Misao's face flashed in her mind and she felt her spine straighten.

"Two criminals collapsed inside their cells in the last two hours, on the hour."

Mr. Yagami's brow creased. "During school hours?" Kaho nodded in confirmation.

"That… certainly pokes holes in the student theory," he admitted, rubbing his eyelids underneath his glasses.

Kaho shook her head. "I wouldn't say that. Not yet, anyway."

"What do you mean?"

"Mr. Yagami," interrupted L's auto-tuned voice, "If the murders continue to occur in such a fashion, please let me know. I believe this may mean Kira is directly confronting me."

"Yes, understood," Mr. Yagami nodded. Kaho bowed, returned to her desk, and continued with her work.

L, she realized after some time, had probably figured what Kira was doing after the first killing. The way he waited to act upon his hunches or discoveries was a little annoying, she decided.

Kaho was still restless, and couldn't stop thinking about her nurse friend, who was probably in a holding cell right about now. She couldn't decipher whether she was sad, angry, or satisfied at the thought.

She decided not to figure it out.

Kaho noticed a shadow tailing her by the end of the month. It was a man in dark clothing and a hat that, in a rather convenient fashion, was always between his face and her line of sight. She could tell he wasn't Japanese by his height.

She knew exactly who he was: an American FBI Agent working an investigation on the police force under L's orders. She let him follow her from the station to her apartment, and she let him follow her back the next morning.

What else could she do? L was beginning to suspect the police, or maybe just their families. Confronting him or shaking him off would do her no favors. She would let the investigation go through without a hitch, even if it was a little creepy to know someone was watching her every move.

Kaho was in the middle of printing a report of an interview with a misguided teen who claimed they had seen Kira on the streets ("Oh? A completely black shadow with Raven's wings?") when Mr. Yagami's phone rang. It was not a strange occurrence, as the man was busier than a bee, but he sounded perplexed from what he had learned from the other end. He hung up, saw Kaho watching him in curiosity, and sighed.

"Another six inmates were found dead from heart attacks."

"And?" she asked. The murders themselves were old news. Something strange, something new, she could tell, had happened.

"Some of them behaved… bizarrely before they died." Mr. Yagami seemed to be at a loss for words.

Aizawa slipped by her side and crossed his arms. "Bizarre, as in how?"

"One of them drew a pentagram on the wall with his blood," Mr. Yagami said. "Another left a note, and another ran into a bathroom before collapsing on the ground."

"But they all died of heart attacks?" Kaho frowned.

"It's like they knew they were going to die," Aizawa said. "It sounds like they were shitting their pants."

The deaths struck a familiar chord. "Wait, a note?" she asked. "As in, a suicide letter?"

Mr. Yagami hummed. "I'm getting the details in an Email now. I'll let you know."

Kaho read the letter maybe a hundred times after receiving a copy from Mr. Yagami. She remembered it, mostly, but she felt like she was missing something. She knew there was a deeper meaning, a special clue inside the note. Was it important? And if it was, how had she forgotten about it?

"Mr. Yagami," L said from his screen. "We cannot allow the details of these three deaths into the media. As far as the public is concerned, these were just heart attacks."

Kaho's boss frowned but didn't argue.

"I have reason to believe that Kira was using these to perform some kind of test. If that is the case, we'd only be giving him the results.

"Right, I understand," Mr. Yagami nodded. "Matsumoto, I'll leave you in charge of sorting through the information and delivering it during the press conference."

"Yes, Sir," she bowed.

Hashimoto scowled from his desk. "So now Kira's experimenting on his victims?"

"He's playing with people's lives, as if all this was just a game. It's sickening," Mr. Yagami said.

Kaho was once again reminded why she would follow that man to Hell. He was everything righteous in the world. Maybe Light only wanted to be like his father, in some misconstrued, misguided way. It was definitely a big shoe to fill, to be such a great man. She wondered if an evil thought ever crossed his mind. They certainly crossed hers.

Kaho glanced down at the letter. Immediately, the top horizontal line held her eye. Maybe it was because she had originally spoken English and often times caught herself reading from left to right instead of top to bottom, though it was probably because she knew to look for something at all, but she definitely saw it just then.

'L, did you know'.

She suddenly remembered the letter's meaning and subsequently felt so very, very dumb, and so very unlike herself for forgetting.

L, did you know

Gods of death

Love apples?

It all came back to Kaho rather rapidly. The deeper meaning. The deeper meaning's deeper meaning, that the letters were a distraction.

"Did you notice something, Miss Matsumoto?" Kaho glanced at the proxy L. He must have noticed her reaction.

She handed the copy of the letter to Aizawa. "No, nothing."

It took her all of two seconds to realize that it hadn't been the answer he was looking for. But what coherent reason, in this world, would she have to lie to him?

The next day, while on her merry way to the station, Kaho came across an unfortunate scenario. While strolling through busy streets, she suddenly heard an unceremonious thud behind her. Being the curious person she was, she turned around to see a short, grubby man donning a greasy apron huffing angrily at a poor victim. He gripped the taller man in his sausage fingers, dragging the figure to his level and spitting in his face, a pristine butcher's knife in his hand telling of his profession. Kaho deduced from the capsized cart of slabs of meat that the butcher was angry at who had knocked it over. The pork spilled into the sidewalk and stained the pavement behind them with oils and blood.

Kaho approached them, brandishing her badge.

"Excuse me, sir," she addressed the butcher as she slipped her credentials back into her jacket pocket. "I must ask you to release this man." There, nice and diplomatic. When no one reacted, she eyed the knife in the short man's hand. The butcher grumbled, but eventually complied, letting go of the other's lapel and tossing the knife on a table outside his shop.

"He just wasted over ¥50,000 worth of pork," he spat, literally, at the man's shoes. Kaho's lip twitched.

"Then filing a claim against him will serve your purposes in full, but I must remind you to keep your hands and your knives to yourself." She nodded in the direction she had previously been walking. "If you'd like, I can personally escort the two of you down to the station to file a case."

The butcher's face turned sour. He spit again.

"So, what will it be?" Kaho asked, her face blank and her voice monotonous.

The butcher glanced at the offender. "Ah, it ain't worth it." He waved the two off and limped back inside his shop. Moments before the door swung shut behind him, he called over his shoulder, "When I get back out here with a mop and you're not gone, I'll whack you with it. Stupid foreigner."

A soft chuckle escaped the man beside her. "I guess that's my cue to scram," he said in a thick, American accent. "Thank you for your help."

Kaho knew then that she had messed up.

She stiffly turned to the cloaked man—the FBI Agent that had been tailing her—and bowed, ducking her face out of sight.

"No thanks needed." And she swiftly turned on her heel and sped away as quickly as she could without breaking into a jog. The American had left her vision just as quickly, no doubt in a similar panic. All she could think about was how quick she had been to inform L and Mr. Yagami about the hourly killings. That, and her little fib to L about the suicide letters.

When she arrived at the station, she found it was so busy that no one noticed her arrival. Which was a good thing, considering how pale she was. Knowing Mr. Yagami, he would send her home, concerned for her health, and then take up all of her responsibilities himself. And she really didn't need to speed up his heart attack.

When she was thirteen, Kaho's grandfather had—miraculously—allowed her to go on a school trip. It was her last year of junior high, she had reasoned, and she would rehearse her kata every morning and every evening diligently. Under these conditions, and with the addition of a luncheon with a sponsor for the dojo, the old Matsumoto had signed her permission slip. Probably to get her out of what was left of his hair. Kaho had never felt so excited before, at least, not in this new life. She had barely been able to hide her joy.

The trip was to a famous Shinto temple in the country, and though a large portion of the three days away from home would be spent there, the best aspect was the camping. Kaho got to share a tent with three of her friends, normal teenage girls. They talked about boys and painted their nails under the light of their lanterns—just about every girly thing except a pillow fight. The four even played Truth or Dare, during which Kaho had to steal the teacher's demerit board after curfew (which had gone smoothly—that clipboard was never seen again) and they all learned that Keiko was madly in love with a boy she had seen at the temple during the first day.

"He's from another school," Keiko twirled her hair, her skin green with a face mask. There were lots of schools on the same trip. "And he's younger..."

"Ew!" Hana made a face. "Wait, one year younger or two?" Keiko blushed. "I don't know... does it matter?"

"Shut up, Hana," Erika rolled her eyes. "One or two or three years don't matter to adults."

"But it does to kids," Hana stuck out her tongue.

Despite her disapproval, Hana led the search for Keiko's 'True Love!' the next and final day at the temple. Kaho followed Erika when the groups split in half ("This way, we can cover twice as much ground!") but didn't do much searching. She was more concerned with the ancient illustrations of Amaterasu. She barely even noticed when Erika had gone on ahead and left her behind. In fact, she didn't notice anything until something hard nearly knocked the wind out of her. Kaho glanced down to see a brown haired boy—another student—blushing madly.

"Er, um, sorry! I wasn't watching where I was going!"

Kaho didn't respond, just then noticing her friend was gone.

"Stupid Matsuda!" another boy laughed from behind. "Hurry up, or you'll miss the bus again!"

The boy ran off. Kaho slipped around one, two, three corners, at this point back to where she had started.

Erika waved at the bottom of the lengthy stone path, one that they all had been forced to climb to get to the temple in the first place. Hana and Keiko were with her, their phones out, giggling. Kaho jogged over to join them.

"We saw him!" Hana gushed before Kaho had even reached them. The girl handed Kaho her powder blue device, the charms swinging cutely from the antennae. Kaho blinked at the partially blurry snapshot of the boy who had run into her side.

"I wish you had a phone so we could just send it to you..." Erika sighed.

"Why!?" Keiko puffed out her cheeks. "Why does she need it? He's my future husband!"

"Shut up, Keiko," Hana stuck out her tongue. "But you should really get a cellphone, Kaho. It's annoying when I want to hang out and can't reach you."

"I can't," Kaho shrugged.

"Why?"

"My grandpa doesn't believe in cellphones."

The last day had been as fun as the others, if not a little sad. The students didn't particularly want to go back to classes. Kaho didn't particularly want to go back to her grandfather.

Especially when, as the cellphone talk made her recall, she had been so caught up with her friends that she had forgotten to do her kata.

And somehow, her grandfather always seemed to know if she made mistakes. He probably had one of the chaperones keep an eye on her.

She tried to imagine what her punishment would be, but she soon forgot to worry. At that moment, laughing with normal thirteen year old girls, Kaho didn't really care about her grandfather.

AN: It was NOT my intention to go so long without an update. And I'm sorry that this chapter is so short!o much for all of the feedback! It means so much to me! I just can't believe all of the support!