Mandy: Hello and welcome to the next chapter!!! Hooray! I've been sooo busy lately, but I'm glad I found little bits of time to thread this together!

L: Stop tugging on the tether!

Twins: This is ridiculous, Light.

Light: You've got that right.

Mandy: -evil glare- What did you say?? (if you didn't know, Mandy hates rhymes)

Twins & Light: Nothing!

Mandy: Anyways…

Haruhi: Mandy does not own DeathNote, Ouran High School Host Club, or any of the following fans who reviewed:

NinetailsGirl09 (I was so scared of your driving, I ran back to L!!)

Lecture (Thanks! So did I.)

Dreams do Matter (L: No. I wish to figure it out myself, with logic, not your "future-telling abilities" that are nonexistent. I let her continue, for reasons that will become obvious later.)

The Infamous Salem-chan (Awww thanks. -runs from Renge-)

otogii

Fanfiction Fanatiction (such a weird name!)

KATtheVampireBunny (L: -munching on sugar cubes- Thanks. You'll see more of these sugar cubes later. Mwaha. Mandy: Influencing a story, KAT? Shame on you! ;])

one in the crowd (Yes. That would be funny. L vs. Hani…. hmm…)

sapphire (lol, but no. sorry. xD)

Heartbeat-like-a-drum (Arigatou!)

Thanks to all of you! Now, on with the chapter!

WARNING: Information is not 100 percent accurate. If it doesn't go with the anime/manga of DeathNote or Ouran, I just made it up because I'm not that far in the series. (Except Ouran. XD) So deal with my changes, because this is a fanfiction and those kinds of things happen. XP

^___^

Chapter Four: Surprises and Questions

As soon as club duties were over, Haruhi nearly bolted for the door. Unfortunately, she was blocked by the Hitachiins, successfully cutting off her escape route. They scooped her in their arms between them, effectively trapping her in the wall of their bodies. The twins led her (-cough manipulated her cough-) outside to their limo. The two lunatics hummed the whole way – no words were said; they just hummed a seemingly innocent tune. It was quite obvious that they were up to something, even to Haruhi (not to say Haruhi isn't clever enough to figure out the obvious… well, never mind).

"What are you guys doing?" Haruhi recovered from her shock at being shanghaied – but she should've been used to it by now.

"We're making sure you get home safely, Haruhi," they said, sliding all of them into the limo. As soon as Hikaru shut the door, the limo slid away from the curb and out into the street. Kaoru tapped on the glass for the driver and said to him, "To Haruhi's." That's all he said, like the driver had her address memorized or something! 'He probably does, knowing how much these two like to visit unexpectedly,' Haruhi thought, sweat-dropping.

"I'm fine, guys; I don't know why you two make a fuss about me walking home. What could possibly happen?"

-Welcome to the Twins' Inner Mind Theatre. Please take a seat, and no throwing sugar cubes at the screen. Thank you-

[Haruhi is walking home, skipping for some inane reason.]

SCENARIO ONE

Haruhi: Lally lally la…. Innocent girl dressed as a naïve guy – lally lally la….

[Grizzly bear comes out of nowhere and mauls Haruhi, screams are heard as the scenario is cut off.]

SCENARIO TWO

Haruhi: Lally lally la… [Robber runs around the corner toward her.] Oh my gosh there's a robber running around the corner right toward me!

Robber: I could use this kid as bait for all those rich snobs that go to that one school and maybe start a war between America and Japan!

[Robber kidnaps Haruhi, and uses her as bait for all those "rich snobs" that go to that one school and maybe starts a war between America and Japan.]

SCENARIO THREE (The worst yet!)

Haruhi: Lally – [Kira has been killing cross-dressers lately, and Haruhi is next! She begins to die tragically while falling in the arms of Hikaru and Kaoru.] Please… tell my father… [coughing] that I… love him. [said on her very last breath as she passes on into the afterlife, deserting the twins into desolation.]

Twins: Ha-ru-hiiiii!

-Thanks you for watching the TIMT. Please tune in next time for more unrealistic, sporadic spaz attacks regarding Haruhi and her total naïve-ness-

"Anything can happen, Haruhi," the Hitachiins said, gripping her arms, gazing at her with wide eyes, like owls that could see into the future… if owls were crazy, anyway.

"Oh… Kay…" She said, glancing out the window, "Well, we're here. Thanks for the lift, even if I didn't really need it." Haruhi managed to slip out of their grip, exiting the vehicle. She waved at them as they watched her to make sure she entered her apartment without incident. 'I wonder what's made them so super psycho all day (not that they aren't super psycho already),' Haruhi thought. 'It didn't start until Light came, but it's even worse after our club duties today.'

As Haruhi entered her apartment, she heard her father talking with someone. "Dad?" She called, announcing her arrival. He came out of the living room, smiling.

"Hello, my dear Haruhi!" Ranka said, moving toward the refrigerator, "We have a guest in the living room. Why don't you say hello? He was a friend of ours – I mean your mother and mine." She blinked at him, surprised. She didn't know that. Who was this mystery person?

There was no need for introductions on her part. He walked into the room with a hunched back, one hand in his pocket and the other sticking a thumb in his teeth. "Hello, Haruhi-san. I'm Ryuga Ryuzaki."

Ryuk watched Light as he paced about the only place he could get any privacy – the public bathroom at a local convenience store. Oh the irony. He couldn't stay long, but this meant that the human came to discuss something with the Shinigami. It was difficult to talk to invisible persons about plans you didn't want FBI agents and cameras to know without being followed by either of those. Ryuk waited impatiently, greedily eyeing the apple Light tossed back and forth between his palms. Reward for the Shinigami – but only with the right information.

"Earlier. What was with your snickering at Haruhi?" Light asked in a quiet voice. The fan from the ventilation kept them from being overheard (-grumblenoisy human contraptionsgrumble-), but there was always something. Light's a pretty smart guy, so he wouldn't take any chances.

"Snickering?" Ryuk said, his face pure innocence – in essence, that meant faked. Angels were the closest thing to pure innocence, so a Shinigami such as he would essentially not be even half as innocent – heck, maybe not even innocent at all. Light knew it, Ryuk knew it, and both were playing an extremely touchy game. Why not make it more entertaining? After all, wasn't that how this was all started? Shinigami get bored too, y'know.

"You know something about Haruhi, and it's not just that 'he's' really a 'she.'" Light placed both of his hands around the apple, as if ready to destroy it and not allow the god of death to have even a taste. "So spill." The threat upon his poor hostage apple made him pour the tiniest bit of information out of his ass – I mean, hat. (Or both, I'm not picky.)

"Her numbers are weird – I don't understand them. Makes it a little more interesting." Ryuk said, licking his lips, feeling as if he could already taste the apple in his mouth.

"By numbers I assume you mean the lifespan Shinigami such as yourself can see above our heads," the Shinigami numbly nodded, still gazing at the apple. Avarice was a habit impossible to break in a god of death. Light continued his investigation, hurried by the sounds of a line forming outside the door. "When you say weird, what do you mean? Is she going to die in another century? Or was her time already up?"

"No. Just a bunch of nothing, really," Ryuk said, still enthralled by the red fruit Light held.

Light knew there was more than just that, but this was his cue to leave the bathroom, knowing he had already stayed a little too long. He sprayed a couple of bursts from an air freshener (just in case someone got suspicious), and flushed the toilet, walking out.

Ryuk had snatched the apple before they went out, gobbling it as quickly and easily as his lies, particularly his lies from today. Lying was fun, especially when he didn't get caught immediately. But, with Light, he would eventually be found out. Who cared, though? Fun is fun is lying is fun.

And so the game continues…

Haruhi gazed at the strange man as he ate, puzzled that this kind of character would be friends with her mother (with her father, she understood so far). Ryuga would touch only with a maximum of two fingers: his thumb and his forefinger. Instead of the Ramen noodles the Fujiokas were eating, he asked instead for the bowl of sugar cubs he saw in the kitchen – which was in a cabinet, next to the tea, not visible unless he had opened it up to look inside. He was obviously curious as to every aspect of their apartment, if he knew about something as trivial as a sugar bowl – but, apparently, he found sugar cubes not so "trivial." Within five seconds of getting them, all of the sugar cubes had gone, but, magically, he managed to restore more into the bowl when the Fujiokas glanced away.

The only explanations Haruhi could think of for his eating habits were that he was either a germ freak (his fingers never touched his lips unless it was to get the leftover sugar off his fingertips) or that he never got enough love as a child (what kind of parent doesn't give hi/her child sugar? He was obviously deprived). The circles around his eyes clearly stated he didn't sleep. At all. And to top it all off, he was sitting on the balls of his feet, eating his sugar cubes but staring at as if mesmerized, or maybe he was taking a mental picture of the Fujiokas – to compare with the memory of Haruhi's mother, perhaps.

'My legs hurt just watching him sit like that,' Haruhi thought, 'And why hasn't his stomach exploded from all of those sugar cubes? Does he need it because of low blood sugar?'

L could see all of these questions in her face. Why was he here? What was his problem? What's with his weird behavior? They all asked the same questions in their heads, but never aloud, never sating their curiosity. L saw that it was his duty to get the curious minds and put them to work – to get them to question it, bending reality to see truth, separating the fiction from what they need and want to know. Reality was just a concept everyone accepted, but those curious minds – they question it. Why is the sky blue? Why do we have rules? Why are there bad people in the world? Questions that adults never ask, teenagers think of, and children voice, but the latter are ignored and labeled "cute."

"Haruhi," he said, and she jumped, sending some Ramen splashing onto the t-shirt she had changed into quickly. She looked at him with wide brown eyes. "Would you like a job?" She blinked, not expecting such a strange question.

"I already work part time, and I have a club I have to go to after school, and I don't think I need it." She replied, somewhat puzzled.

"What if I told you that this job would pay more, and you can come on your own time?" He smoothed out the deal quickly and efficiently, waiting for her questions. Because, of course, there would be questions.

"I would wonder what job you were trying to offer me." He stared at her numbly, trying to decide if he should tell her or not.

"Swear you won't tell anyone, not even to the people in this room, or I can hold you liable."

Haruhi was used to these kinds of "promises" – from Kyoya, usually, about some secret or other about himself or a Host Club member. For example: her debt, Kyoya's supposed "kindness," and other general secrets of the Host Club (to keep the hosts "mysterious and alluring" to the customers). It was easy to promise, and even easier to break one – that is, if you're anything like Tamaki, and Haruhi wasn't.

She nodded, and L continued almost without pause. "I am L, and I want you on my team to track down the elusive Kira." If it was possible, her eyes must've gotten as wide as dinner plates. Haruhi's jaw dropped in extreme and utter shock – her right cheek twitched.

"Y-You've got to be kidding!" Haruhi exclaimed. "There's no way a detective like L would ask someone like me to be a part of his team – and how could you even prove that –"

"Haruhi, he's telling the truth," Ryoji interrupted, touching her shoulder. She looked at him as he said, "Your mother used to be on his team of expert detectives."

This time, her eyes nearly popped out of her head. She held her head to keep her world from spinning out of control. "But I thought she was a lawyer!"

"She was, honey," he replied, "She quit L's team when she met me."

L remembered the day Kotoko joined the team. He was home-schooled back then (still was, technically), and Watari allowed him to solve crime ever since he was two (he was still crawling!). He had a good head for crime, and the world knew him as L, even as a tot – thousands of cases were solved before he was properly potty-trained (oh, did Watari have trouble with that!). No one had seen him – he was an even bigger recluse than Emily Dickinson. This helped him immensely, because who wanted to work under someone who should be trying to learn his ABC's?

L had learned everything he ever needed to know from Watari. If that didn't satisfy him, he would go into it deeper – he read until he had memorized everything about the subject. He knew how to say words like "permediate" and "defenestrate," know what they mean, and apply them to his daily vernacular, all before his second birthday was over; he calculated math better than Einstein, and even attributed a few new theories of his own for common use. His favorite thing to do, though, was to solve crime.

When you're a top criminal expert and detective (even if you're 2 years old), you need a team of top criminal experts and detectives, too. L happened to be solving his third case (ever) in Japan when he heard of Kotoko. She was fresh out of high school and already getting into the police task force, as well as some business with Interpol. They hired the young blood as quickly as possible – even back then, L felt it was his duty to stimulate young, curious minds.

Kotoko swept the floor with the rest of L's staff; she was second only to L himself. She was also the only one to actually see L in the flesh. Kotoko was surprised to find that her boss and intellectual superior was less than half as tall as she was, and a few choice words…

"Awww, you're so kawaii!" She exclaimed, patting L's "kawaii," black-haired head. Watari sighed, exiting the room to get the chessboard and L's daily dose of "brain-stimulating" sugar.

"Cute?" L said in English, tilting his head, thumb in his mouth as he gazed up at her. "'Cute' is to be clever or shrewd, but it is sometimes applied to animals and small children. Why is that?" She could see where this conversation was going, but smiled at her tiny boss.

"Because animals and small children can be quite clever," she said as she bent on her knees to see him face-to-face. "That would make you the cutest of them all." L blushed – he knew what the other definition was, but he had wanted to see what she had to say.

To keep it short: Haruhi's mother Kotoko was L's first crush (feel free to squirm and say "AWWWWW!!!!!").

Most first crushes are teachers, or perhaps any kind of respectable adult – but L had neither of these growing up, at least, none that were female. Kotoko was the first he had met that wasn't over a voice-changing broadcast/phone call.

When she met Ryoji about a month later, L was heartbroken. She promised to keep in touch – true to her word. He never went to see her face-to-face ever again; he didn't with anybody other than Watari. When she died, L became even more reclusive, if it was possible, and he never talked with the Fujiokas again. When the Kira case came out, he had gotten into contact with more people in the flesh because it was important to him that this case must be solved. He forgot everything about that family, burying himself in his work, until he saw Haruhi's profile as a student at Ouran Academy. Seeing Haruhi's face – so much like her mother's – he knew she would be a good pick to join his team. She wanted to be like her mother, and this was what her mother had done, just before becoming a lawyer.

He remembered Kotoko sending constant pictures of her daughter growing up. She always thought they could be playmates, or grow up to be friends together, but L denied this invitation. Haruhi was born when he was three – he was convinced that such a "large" gap in years would separate them even if he had accepted. Although "this" was the case, L took all of the pictures and kept them in a small, secret room that not even Watari could get into. (There were other things there, too – like his first homemade electromagnetic field generator.) He had everything up to Haruhi's junior high pictures – after that, he never received any more pictures from "Ranka" again. He had forgotten the names of the Fujiokas even as he was getting the pictures. L just vaguely remembered that he found importance in them.

Now here he was, asking the girl whose pictures he had secreted away in his home, under better security than a billionaire's home (he would say the White House, but even that was easily broken into by a reality show couple), to take a job that every up-and-coming detective or police officer ever dreamed of. And she wasn't even sure if he was L or not! How absurd!

One thing he was positive about – if her mom did something great, then so would Haruhi.

She thought it at the same time he did. "Alright. I'll do it. I'm available after my club duties."

"Then Watari will pick you up straight from school, after your host club." She flinched when L said it, "Don't worry – you don't tell anyone, I won't tell anyone." Haruhi nodded – if she could tell her fellow Hosts, they wouldn't believe her, or, if they did believe her (by some miracle occurrence), would be extremely surprised.

But they love surprises.

Mandy: Ahhh, all done! Thank you, KATtheVampireBunny, for your infinite sugar cube bowl. I placed it in the story. XD

L: Yes. Thank you. -munching some more- … I guess I can let you go, Mandy.

Mandy: Yay!

L: But! Only if you do me one favor.

Mandy: What's that?

L: -glances left and right, whispers in her ear his favor-

Mandy: -nods- Done and done!

Light: What did he say?

Mandy: Well, that's all the time we have today-

Light: No, wait a minute, I want to know what he sai-

Twins: Seeya next time! If you review, maybe you can be like KATtheVampireBunny, and have something special added to our wonderous story.

Tamaki: I bid you all adeu.

Please review, it will feed starving fanfiction writers everywhere! So please donate!