The next day Jubilee knelt on the carpet of her room, leaning forward on her knees, her eyes glued to the laptop on her coffee table. Onscreen were Light and Kiyomi, seated across from each other at a small table in a private hotel room.

The footage of their reunion was supposedly streaming to the downstairs monitor only, where the rest of the Task Force was gathered in the main room. But, unbeknownst to all of them—save one with ghostly skin and a particular affinity for sweets—Jubilee was hooked into the connection as well. And, she suspected, so were Mello and Near.

Fifteen minutes earlier she had watched Aizawa do a final sound and visual check of the hidden cameras, an unsuspecting baby blue hovering over his features, before he took his leave of Light. Minutes afterward, Kiyomi Takada arrived.

Jubilee was mostly bored for the first ten minutes of Light's and Kiyomi's meeting. Hellenos had to repeatedly tap her on the head to keep her awake whenever she started nodding off. She had grumbled, thinking resentfully that if certain eccentric successors of a certain enigmatic genius hadn't kept her up most of the night, she wouldn't be so exhausted. And even though she'd promised Mello that she would monitor Takada from now on, the woman still exhibited the same normal-looking colors and shadows that she had from when Jubilee first looked at her. As far as she could tell, the short-haired brunette was shrewd and cold, but not a murderer.

Then Kiyomi's cell phone started ringing and she let slip one soft, surprised word as she glanced down at the number.

"Kira—"

Jubilee—whose eyelids had been drooping again up until this point—instantly snapped awake and scrambled forward, taking the monitor by her hands.

"What?" she breathed. "What'd she just say?"

She said Kira, said Hellenos needlessly, then added, Told you you needed to stay awake.

Jubilee ignored him, knowing full well that he knew that she knew what Kiyomi had just said. And the straight line over the woman's head indicated that it was no bluff.

"Mikami is calling her," she said, dumbfounded. "They...they're in contact with each other." That brat was right, she thought with chagrin.

"You should answer it," said Light's voice, his tone unreadable.

Kiyomi's eyes had snapped up to him in uncertainty, a dark blue quavering about her in fearful suspicion. So, she wasn't in cahoots with Light after all. At least not knowingly.

"It's alright," assured Light. "You know my dad was former chief of the police, and they've publicly stated themselves as neutral towards Kira. I actually worked for them this summer and am interning with them now, and I can attest to the the fact that they are passively in support of Kira by staying out of his way."

Kiyomi's shoulders relaxed slightly. "I didn't know you were a Kira supporter," she stated with some caution, though her hand was already pulling out her cell phone.

Light shrugged. "Since I'm working for the police, I guess I am, indirectly." The line over his head snapped.

That statement seemed to seal the deal for Kiyomi, who quickly flipped open her phone. "Hello?" she spoke softly into the receiver. After a pause, she said hesitantly, "No, I'm with a...friend. We decided to meet, unexpectedly."

Across from her, Jubilee could see colors start to churn over Light's head. It was almost like watching a parallel version of whenever L was in deep thought, except that the colors over Light's head were much darker and tinged with an oily black smog. Jubilee couldn't discern what he was thinking, but a sense of excited anticipation seeped from him.

Kiyomi's eyes widened in surprise at whatever she heard through the phone, and she brought the mobile away from her ear. "He wants me to give the phone to you," she said to Light, sounding just as astounded by this revelation as Jubilee felt.

"What?" Jubilee gaped from her sitting position on the floor.

She said that he wants her to—

"I know what she said!" Jubilee snapped, frantically motioning for the angel beside her to shut up.

Light extended his hand out to Kiyomi, his face expressionless. Kiyomi slowly, tentatively held out the phone to him. Their fingers brushed as the mobile exchanged hands.

Light held Kiyomi's phone to his ear. "Hello?" he said into it. There was a pause as he listened, and then he said, in a confused tone, "Two days ago? Half of the pages? Another notebook? What are you talking about?"

The line over his head snapped. Jubilee leaned in closer, her breath held. Light was not confused at all.

"Yes," Light continued. Then, "Are you really Kira?"

Again the line snapped. The shade of glowing excitement that was over him heightened.

"Sakura TV, you say?" he asked.

Jubilee started, then scrambled for the television set in her room, grabbing the remote and turning it on. With frustration she realized that she couldn't watch both the TV and her laptop at the same time.

"Gah!" she cried, whipping her head back and forth between the two screens. "Hellenos, watch that one for me!" she ordered, jabbing her finger at the laptop behind her before settling her sights on the television.

She could almost hear the angel rolling his eyes in response. Hellenos always saw everything that was going on around her—his vision wasn't limited to a pair of eyeballs—and he knew that she knew that.

On the TV screen ahead of her was a man in long, cultish white robes who was gesturing wildly while expounding on the virtues of Kira. A dirty smog hovered over him as he spoke.

"I beseech you, fellow Kira followers," he bellowed into the camera, "If you believe in Kira's cause, then show your support! Please send your donations to—"

His voice died in his throat and he froze, wide-eyed, before clutching at his heart and keeling over. The smog lifted from him.

Jubilee stood, frozen to the carpet in shock, before snapping back to the present. Whirling about, she bounded back over to the laptop and knelt down before it.

Light, too, was staring at the TV screen in his room with an expression that looked like astonishment. But the line over his head kept snapping, and the dark, gleeful glow around him kept growing. Kiyomi's cell phone was still to his ear, and now he cocked his head like he was listening intently to whoever was on the other end of the line. His brow furrowed as though in concern. Leaning over the table beside him, he quickly scribbled something down onto a notepad and then held it up in front of the camera. Jubilee failed to catch a glimpse of what the line over his head was doing before the paper filled the camera's view completely.

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Kira wants to have the room checked for devices, it said. I'm removing everything before he sees them.

The note hovered there on the screen for a few seconds. And then, everything went black.

Jubilee stared at the dark screen.

"What?" she whispered, sitting back on her heels. Then she yelled, "What just happened?!"

Well, began Hellenos patiently, First, Kiyomi Takada entered the hotel room, and then—

Jubilee cut him off with an exasperated shout. "I know that part! I mean, what just—what was—" She made a desperate flailing motion towards the blank laptop screen and then exploded angrily, "I can't believe this! We let our guards down because we thought we'd be able to monitor their whole meeting. I even told Aiber to wait outside the hotel so Light wouldn't accidentally see him. But now..." Her fists clenched in agitation. "Now Light and Kiyomi are talking in private—and the Task Force will completely buy his excuse. He totally played us!"

She slumped backwards against the bottom of the couch. Briefly she raged to herself. Why couldn't she just be shown a vision of what was happening between Light and Kiyomi right now? What was the point of being able to see all she could see, if there was nothing to even look at?

After a moment of brooding silence, she asked glumly, "What do you think they're talking about?"

Hellenos shrugged and slid gracefully down to sit beside her. Oh, probably world domination and such. You know, the usual human stuff.

Jubilee groaned.

She wondered what was going on in L's head right now. In all likelihood he was already planning out a series of countermoves against Light. Near and Mello probably were, too. The chances were low that anyone besides her had no idea what to do. She passed a hand over her eyes, feeling overwhelmed and frustrated with herself. She was caught in a high stakes cat-and-mouse-game, with geniuses on both sides—most of whom were younger than her—and it was becoming impossible to keep up.

The headset around her ears buzzed. Surprised, she glanced back at the screen to see an incoming call from a number she didn't recognize. Briefly she wondered if it was someone she shouldn't be talking to. Then she dismissed the idea. L wouldn't have given her this laptop if just anyone could contact her on it.

Still, her voice was cautious when she answered. "Hello?"

An M appeared on her screen. "Hey, J," said Mello's voice .

"Mello," she greeted in relief, then leaned forward eagerly. "Please tell me that you tapped Kiyomi Takada's cell phone earlier."

Mello's voice sounded bitter. "Sorry to disappoint," he ground out. "Only had the time and resources to tap the first and second Kiras' lines so far. Bet you're wishing we decided to prioritize Takada sooner."

Jubilee made a face. "Rub it in, why don't you."

Mello gave a sigh that reminded her unnervingly of L. "It doesn't matter," he said dismissively. "Like I said, I only had the means and manpower to monitor two people at a time, and it was going to be the first and second Kira anyway. Though I'm probably going to ditch the latter to focus more on Takada now—listening to that Amane woman go on and on is starting to drive me nuts. I need you to check something for me though."

"What—" began Jubilee, but her monitor went momentarily blank before a video took over the screen. It was of Misa, sitting at a table in what must have been her apartment, eating lunch. Mogi—who, L had informed Jubilee, was now assigned as Misa's new undercover "manager" under the alias of Mochi—stood beside her, serving her from a tray.

"I like your cooking and having you around, Mochi, but we shouldn't be seeing each other so much," Misa was saying as she stuffed her face. "Light might get the wrong idea."

"Uh," said Mogi. "Light's the one who assigned me to be your new manager and keep an eye on you."

Misa looked put out, but continued, "Well, yeah, but still. I mean, I know he trusts me completely, but...what if he thinks I'm cheating on him?" A dusty shade of blue drifted from her in wisps, darkening the usual bubblegum pink around her. She was lonely and missed Light, Jubilee realized.

A guilty hue of grayish-green rose out of Mogi and he shifted uncomfortably. He knew that Light was meeting with Kiyomi Takada today. "I'm sure he doesn't," he assured the blonde pop star. "Besides...if he trusts you completely, then he wouldn't ever think that. That would—that would be a contradiction."

Mello's voice interrupted Jubilee's thoughts. "See anything interesting?" the boy asked.

"Um." Jubilee took a moment to think of how to translate what she'd seen into words. "Misa misses Light; I guess he hasn't gone to see her in a while? And Mogi felt sorry for her because he knows Light's with another woman." A thought occurred to her. "I wonder if Light's purposely wanting Mogi to keep her company and out of the way, while he moves on to Takada?"

There was a pause, like Mello was waiting for more. "And?" he prompted.

"Uh..." Jubilee was confused. "And what?"

Mello gave another impatient sigh. "See anything different?" he clarified. "About Misa Amane?" he added, after more confused silence from Jubilee.

She squinted at the screen. From behind her, Hellenos was casually whistling to himself.

Look for paaaatterns, he said in a soft sing-song voice, quoting L. Compare and contraaaast...

Jubilee stared at Misa, at the colorful pink cloud all around her, and then it suddenly dawned on her.

"The haze is gone!" she practically shouted. "She...she doesn't remember being the second Kira anymore."

Mello let out the breath he had been holding. "That's what I thought," he said, a smirk in his tone.

"Wait, you didn't already know?" she asked, baffled.

"I'm not the one with special eyeballs, am I," he returned. "I needed you to confirm my suspicions."

Jubilee sighed to herself. It seemed that someone with a normal IQ like her could only ever hope to be a final proofreader for the geniuses. Though perhaps "normal" was a generous assessment...seeing as how she'd completely failed to notice the absence of Misa's Kira haze, despite it staring her in the face during the entire video.

"It's not in the eyeballs, technically," she explained, a bit sulkily.

Mello gave a snort of laughter. "Whatever you say, J."

Jubilee tilted her head, considering the M on her screen. "You know, you're not so bad to talk to, when Near's not on the line."

Tension filled the air for three long seconds at the mention of the other successor's name. Then it dissipated as Mello sniffed and said, "And you're not so bad to talk to, for someone with average intelligence."

"Ouch!" cried Jubilee, but with a laugh—somehow, despite his sharp words, there didn't seem to be any malice behind them.

"Hey, at least I didn't say below average."

"Fair point," she conceded, then asked, "So...what are you thinking, in regards to Misa?"

"I'm thinking that it's safe for me to pull surveillance from her for now and focus my energy elsewhere," replied Mello. He huffed. "Kind of annoying that she turned out to be a waste of time, but I wanted to be sure first. At least now we can be certain that Kira's power—or, in other words, one of the Death Notes—has transferred from Misa's hands into someone else's. Mikami, we're assuming. So Misa, at least, is not a threat anymore. Incidentally, it's possible that Light didn't want you seeing her and figuring that out, since Mogi's been making her meals at home and she hasn't been out and about lately. Otherwise, I would've just had you look at public security footage."

Jubilee's brain whirled to keep up. "So you're saying that she had a Death Note, but now it's with Mikami?" she questioned.

"Yeah. Ryuzaki's case notes said that there's more than one notebook, and you said that Mikami's got killer smog all over him, or whatever. So it makes sense that a Death Note was transferred from the second Kira to the new hand of Kira. That being said...there's got to be at least three notebooks, because the Task Force is in custody of a second notebook, yet you're still seeing killer smog over Light. Which means that he has a third notebook."

Jubilee's mouth formed a little o at this revelation.

Mello went on, "But he's probably not going to risk using it, since he's mostly staying at headquarters and knows he can be watched. Hence his using Mikami. But Light's definitely using Takada as a key piece too somehow, even if she doesn't have a Death Note—and I'm going to figure out how. Maybe that will be the way to get to Mikami."

Jubilee slowly nodded as she processed all this. "Okay," she said. "So you'll be focusing on her now?"

"Probably," said the teen. "Hopefully her apartment won't be as hard to break into and wiretap as Misa's was."

Jubilee nodded again, then stopped as that statement registered with her. It took five whole seconds for the implication of what Mello had just said to dawn on her. She gaped at the screen.

"Wait a second," she began. "Mello, you...Oh my G—" She clapped a hand to her mouth. Head spinning, she stared at the M on her screen for a moment before forming her next demand.

"Are you in Japan?!"