"Oh, God," Jubilee whispered , staring at the dark screen of her computer in horror.

"What—what just..." Matt, for once, sounded completely serious.

They both said nothing for three long seconds.

"He's got to have figured a way out of this," declared Matt suddenly. "He always does. I'm calling his phone. Hold on."

Jubilee remained silent, still in shock. Distantly she was aware of the sound of a ringtone in the background from the call that Matt had just patched her into. But she didn't even have the presence of mind to pray that someone would answer. All she could think was, Not again. Not again. Not again.

The ringtone stopped. Jubilee suddenly felt a horrible, heavy thud in her soul, that of her heart cracking under the weight of another loss. Then she realized that the feeling wasn't coming from her. It was coming from Matt.

"Matt," she began, her voice a low croak. She had no idea what to say. "It's gonna be—"

A ringtone interrupted her. The feeling she was sensing from the boy suddenly spiked upwards in shock, and then into unbelievable hope.

"It's him," said Matt, sounding dumbfounded. "It's Mello."

Jubilee, equally flabbergasted, was too overwhelmed to respond. There was the sound of a click as Matt and answered, and then Mello's voice filled the line, sounding breathless and haggard.

"Hey," was all he began with. "J there?"

"Um," said Matt, his tone stupefied. "Yeah."

Mello addressed Jubilee. "You weren't kidding, were you," he stated flatly.

Jubilee was still too speechless to respond.

"So," continued the boy, "Who wrote Takada's name into a Death Note and almost got me killed?"

"Mikami," she answered, more out of autopilot than anything else. "He has a Death Note in a bank safe. Wedy saw him going there so I had her break into it."

"Huh," said Mello. "Just my luck."

At that, Jubilee's emotions finally flooded to the surface and she began to cry.

"Why are you crying?" said Mello after a minute, sounding uncomfortable. "I'm alive."

"I thought you died," hiccuped Jubilee as she tried to stifle her sobs. "Twice."

"Yeah, well...surprise," muttered Mello.

She rubbed her eyes with her sleeve. "You have got to stop doing that."

Mello didn't say anything for a second, then mumbled quietly, "Sorry." He sounded pained.

"Buddy," spoke up Matt, recovering from his stupor. "You okay?"

"Yeah," said Mello. Jubilee saw a line snap in her mind's eye. She was too startled to say anything, mostly because of the sudden realization that this was the first time in the last twenty minutes that she had visually seen anything in the spirit.

"How'd you get away from the explosion in time?" asked Matt.

"Well..." Mello seemed reluctant to answer. "I had already gotten out of the truck earlier, when J wanted me to stop Takada. I just hadn't gone back there yet."

Jubilee eyes started to well up again. Get it together, woman, she thought to herself.

Mello went on, "Then when J started screaming about Takada blowing up the truck, I was already moving. Just in case." His voice sounded strained.

Jubilee caught a glimpse of a blurred image then, of Mello and the fire. Licks of flame had shot out and lashed at the side of his face.

"Mello," she said softly. "You're hurt."

"You are?" demanded Matt. "He is?"

"I'll be fine," Mello grit out in both pain and irritation. "Your psychic powers are really annoying, J."

Jubilee laughed a little despite herself. "I'm not psychic," she said, remembering a time she had said the same words to another, older genius. "Will you go to the hospital, please?"

"You really should," added Matt.

"And tell them what?" returned Mello sardonically. "That I got caught in a truck explosion while kidnapping Kira's spokesperson?"

"Well," said Jubilee. "Cover stories are your speciality, aren't they?"

"They are," affirmed both Matt and Mello. The latter sighed. "Fine," he said. "I was heading there later anyway."

Jubilee's brow furrowed. "Why?"

Mello hesitated. "I was going to tell you, J," he began slowly, "After we'd finished the mission with Takada, and when there was more time. Something...something went wrong, back at Sakura TV station. The—" He stopped suddenly, as though distracted.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"The what?" prodded Jubilee, alarmed. "What happened at Sakura station?"

"I gotta go," said Mello hurriedly. "There's a car pulling up. Light's here." He hung up.

Jubilee listened to the silence on the line for a few seconds, her heart pounding.

"Matt," she began. "Do you know what he's talking about?"

"No," said the other boy.

She brooded over that for a moment. "Do you think he's going to be okay now?" she asked.

"Yeah," said Matt after a second of thought. "I think so."

There was an uncomfortable beat. "Are you okay?" she prompted.

Matt made a noise that sounded like a scoff. "I'm thousands of miles away in my room, surrounded by video games, and my best friend's not dead. Neither are the rest of you. Yeah, I'm okay." He paused. "Are you okay?"

Jubilee took a minute to actually think about that question. It was then that reality caught up with her like a giant wave crashing against the seashore. "Takada's dead," she breathed.

Matt didn't say anything for a moment. "Yeah."

"And...and so are lots of other people—"

"Jules," Matt interrupted. "I wasn't asking if Takada is okay. I was asking if you're okay."

"But—"

"Takada made her choice. What happened to her sucks, but you know what? Mello could've have died too. And he didn't, because of you."

"Me? I didn't do anything," protested Jubilee. "I didn't even have to use my sight. Wedy was the one who found out first, and that was only because Mello had me make sure she was monitoring Mikami like a hawk in the first place."

"You're missing the point," said Matt. "Don't you see, Jules? If Mello was still sitting in that truck, he'd be a goner. He got out in time because you cared about Takada and the people who were dying...and he cared about what you thought. Even if he didn't want to show it."

Jubilee went silent.

"By the way," Matt continued, "It's pretty rare for him to care what other people think. Ryuzaki's the only one who's permanently on that list. I'm only on it half the time." He chuckled. "Congrats, Jules...you're the third person in the world who's ever made him give a flying flip."

"I think it was just an accident," she admitted weakly, afraid to feel too pleased by this revelation.

"And I think you still don't give yourself enough credit," said Matt. "You spoke up as soon as you had a concern. And you moved fast by delegating to Wedy, instead of waiting around for someone to tell you what to do. Both those things helped save Mello's life. Plus...now we know where Kira's Death Note is."

Jubilee went still. The Death Note. So much had just transpired in rapid succession, that the impact of this discovery hadn't fully registered with her until now.

"We've got him," she breathed in realization. They had found Kira's weapon. L and the Task Force would be saved.

A ringtone interrupted her thoughts. It was Aiber.

"I gotta go, Matt," she said. "Talk to you later."

"Later," said Matt, and she switched the line over to Aiber. "Hello?" she answered.

"Reporting in," said Aiber gruffly. "We have a situation."

Jubilee felt an anxious knot form in the pit of her stomach. "What is it?"

"There was a cop who appeared on the scene at Sakura, much earlier than anticipated. He got caught in the crossfire with the Yakuza. Guess who?"

Jubilee was silent, the dread in her belly growing.

"Soichiro Yagami," Aiber continued.

She gasped. "Mr. Yagami? But he—how?"

"Somebody shot a bullet and he was standing in the line of fire," the con man explained dryly.

"No, I mean—" Briefly she thought back to her surveillance of the Task Force downstairs, before they had left to retrieve Kiyomi. Soichiro hadn't been among them. "What was he even doing there?" she asked with despair.

"Dunno. Lunch break?" Aiber sighed. "Or he was itching to investigate on his own after being reinstated into the police. Either way, it was bad timing. He pulled his gun on them, so they did the same to him."

Jubilee could feel her breathing become shallow. "Is he—is he—?"

Aiber didn't answer for a second, letting the unsaid word hang in the air. "He's in critical condition," he said at last, quietly. "So he's still alive...but not for long."

----------------------------------------

L normally considered himself to have a high tolerance for mental strain. Tensile strength, he called it—the resistance to breaking under tension, like that of a strong rope holding a ship to anchor. At the moment, however, he found that this strength was beginning to fray.

In the last two hours alone, he had helped put out the fire of a truck explosion while choking on the smell of smoke, diesel, and burnt flesh...then he had watched as emergency personnel pulled out of the wreckage a body that was burned beyond recognition—only one, he noted to himself with only a small measure of relief...and finally, he had received word that Soichiro Yagami, former chief of police, had been shot and was in rapidly declining condition at the hospital. To top it all off, Jubilee Jenkins had left her room against his express wishes and was now standing in the main room of headquarters before him, Light—Kira himself, for God's sake, what was she thinking?—and the rest of the Task Force, her eyes blazing.

"I will not stay here in my room," she declared hotly. "He's dying! Maybe I haven't worked with him as long as the rest of you, but I still care about him. Don't I get to see him too?"

A few feet beside L Light was silent, looking uncharacteristically shaken as he gazed down at the floor with his fists clenched. Interestingly, he hadn't looked nearly as unnerved when they'd stood before Takada's corpse. But while he didn't seem as devastated by the news of his father as an outside observer might expect, he still seemed genuinely more fazed by the event than L had anticipated. Perhaps because he hadn't seen this coming.

Jubilee's eyes flickered briefly over to Light, and whatever she saw there made her look pained before she turned back to L. "Please let me come with you guys."

"J," L responded grimly. "You know the risk. You'd be increasing your odds of being exposed to Kira. And you are on his list of specific targets right now."

"So are you!" she cried. "So are all of us." She took a step closer to him, looking up into his eyes with a pleading expression. "But ultimately, the risk to me and you is minimal compared to the risk to Mr. Yagami. You and I both know that."

Instantly the memory he had been trying to avoid, that of a cold darkness so piercing and painful that it had almost permanently shredded his soul, filled his mind.

"There's nothing we can do about that," he said quickly, the words stabbing at his heart even as he said them.

"Yes, there is," she said fiercely. "We can talk to him. Together."

He closed his eyes, suddenly torn by a conflict greater than he had ever felt. "You would be safer if you stayed here, though," he stated quietly.

Her tone softened. "Maybe," she agreed. He heard her take another step closer to him. "But I'd rather risk being unsafe," she continued, her voice lowered so that only he could hear her, "Than let someone we know die and go where we almost went...without having done something to try and stop it."

He sighed at that and opened his eyes to meet her imploring look. As she caught his eye, her lips turned upwards slightly.

"Isn't that what you would do?" she added.

He measured her silently for a long moment. "Yes," he conceded at last, not breaking their locked gaze. "It is."

He turned away from her before allowing a small smile to creep onto his own lips. Maybe he was starting to lose it because of all the stress, but in spite of the current circumstances being bleak, he felt like he was finally starting to understand something brilliant.

"Very well," he said, striding towards the door and turning to address the rest of the Task Force. "Let's go."