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The Flaw	By : ShinigamiMailJeevas Category: Death Note > Yaoi-Male/Male > Mello/Matt Views: 2603 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own or make money from the anime Death Note

Chapter List
- 1-The Flaw
- 2-Part 1
- 3-Part 2
- 4-Part 3
- 5-Part 4
- 6-Part 5
- 7-Part 6
- 8-Part 7
- 9-Part 8
- 10-part 9
- 11-Part 10
- 12-Part 11
- 13-Part 12
- 14-Part 13
- 15-Part 14
- 16-Part 15
- 17-Part 16
- 18-Part 18
- 19-Part 19
- 20-Interlude: The Past
- 21-Part 20
- 22-Part 21
- 23-part 22
- 24-Part 23
- 25-Interlude
- 26-part 24
- 27-Part 25
- 28-Part 26
- 29-Part 27
- 30-Part 28
- 31-Interlude: December 25th
- 32-Part 29
- 33-part 30
- 34-epilogue
- 21
- 22
- 23
Part 21

~Secret~

Mello had not had to do more than ask for Matt's help for the redhead to become completely absorbed in his work. Mello had always wondered if it had been because he had asked or if it were because it was hacking related, and Matt loved it. Or really doing anything illegal in general.

Mello had been working alongside the redhead for the last three days looking through any and all surveillance Matt was able to get his hands on the second he got it. They had started with the surveillance nearest L's building for up to a month before the reports of the men had ceased but had found nothing.

At least not until Matt had begun running all the videos into one of his programs and detected tampering in a few of them. Uncovering the real footage from under the layers of falsity was a bit trickier than expected and was taking time, so for the sake of not sitting around watching three seconds of footage every time it was debugged Mello had Matt look into anything around the former detectives' homes.

Mainly the routes where their houses met up with any store or traffic cams available; there were none any closer than that because of the residential areas. And if L had placed some of his own they were impossible to get a hold of.

There wasn't much in the way of activity on what they did have though. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary for the men, though it was difficult to really see anything in great detail with the grainy images. The footage was useless. And yet there Mello sat, going through it.

It was tedious and unfulfilling work having to find the men in the masses of people even with knowing their general schedules. However, on the off chance something came up, Mello would look through it as Matt hacked and recovered the others.

The silence, other than the taps of the keyboard, was comfortable to him. It felt almost like he was at Wammys back before everything had become complicated. But if being with Matt was considered complicated, than Mello didn't mind too much; he had never liked things easy anyway.

Matt was seated on the couch beside him, hunched over the computer with an unlit cigarette in his mouth. Matt never actually smoked around him anymore, and Mello hadn't even seen him smoke them outside in the past few weeks. He almost wondered if Matt had quit and merely kept the cigarettes as habit, though that seemed a bit unlikely to Mello.

Matt wasn't the type to torture himself with something he couldn't have. Not like that at any rate.

"Damn..." Matt cursed, and Mello paid it no mind until Matt's fingers had gone from the swift keystrokes into furious pounding. Something had gone awry. Mello paused the footage playing before him and peered at the screen on Matt's laptop. Though Mello made sure not to get in his way.

It looked as though something had glitched; pixels were breaking and scattering in the background as Matt streamed a line of code in the forefront, attempting to fix it or so Mello assumed. Mello couldn't do much computer wise, so he moved his gaze from the headache inducing code to Matt's face. He was much easier to read.

An eyebrow twitch meant he was surprised.

Lips pressed into a line meant he was annoyed.

And a frown meant something was unfixable or that Matt would soon destroy whatever annoyed him; it depended on the situation as to what that meant.

Mello guessed that the redhead's current frown meant that they wouldn't be getting the footage, the only leads they might have had in the case.

"I should have known. Damn I'm sorry Mello." Matt swore again, and though it seemed there was nothing to be done, Matt's fingers had hardly stopped their frantic movements. Mello wondered what Matt meant by 'he should have known'.

Known what?

"I knew there was layering on the film to hide the actual footage, but I never checked to see if there was any traps that would scramble and erase the stuff if anyone tried to get it."

"So the tampered film is tamper proof? Brilliant," Mello muttered sarcastically. He couldn't blame Matt, not really. They were dealing with L, and Mello had a feeling that Matt had forgotten that; normal criminals, having that level of video tampering already in place, wouldn't have added the extra safe guard if they would have even known how to.

"Don't worry about it," Mello sighed, "We'll find something else."

"Well... we still have fragments. And only because my program auto saves and backs up the progress to the hard disk." Matt said slowly, as though he were trying to keep a fight from occurring. Mello hadn't an idea why though; he'd already said it was fine...

"Can you pull up what you do have?" he tried instead, maybe if he ignored the small screw up then Matt would too.

"Yeah, just give me a second to get rid of this..." Matt gestured to the now completely frozen screen where not even the commands Matt had been typing in registered anymore. He waited impatiently, only to a slight degree, as Matt had to hard boot the laptop into restarting. It was slower in starting up, and the screen's color seeming dim to him.

From Matt's frown he hadn't imagined it. Mello wondered how much of the computer had been messed up, and remained messed up, from that one error.

Matt was silent as he pulled up a folder containing the video fragments and just as silent as he set them to play in some program Mello thought he recognized.

The first clip ended up being nothing of any real importance, just two task members entering the building with everything appearing normal, with the exception of the lateness of the evening. The next few clips were nothing more than distorted blobs, and it frustrated Mello though he tried not to show it.

His stomach had begun to bother him again by the time Matt got to the second to last clip. Mello froze, hand covering his belly, and leaned in as Matt dropped his cigarette.

"Jackpot," Matt mumbled, and Mello couldn't help but agree.

The clip showed Yagami Light being dragged from L's building, in handcuffs, by his father and two other task force members, the very same two that had entered the building sometime before. It was dated for the night before their supposed disappearance.

"Son of a bitch," Mello murmured. L knew about that, he had to. No one else could have done that to the footage. Even if Kira, Yagami Light, had the ability, he wouldn't have had the access after going on the run. Mello had Matt and they couldn't get into L's systems outside of the building.

Something more was going on then was being shown. L wouldn't have stopped hunting them for any old reason, so what had caused him to cease looking? Had it had to do with the Death Note, or was there something else, something that had occurred after the escape or breakout rather? For what reason had L covered this up? It was huge; it was a clue to where they would find Kira.

Mello was certain that Yagami senior would stay close to his son after seeing him break him out of L's holding, but did the same hold true for the other task members? They had aided in the escape, but that didn't mean they would continue on the run with them. Separate groups were more likely. Maybe meeting back up later on? It was impossible to tell yet.

And another thing: L had covered up that he'd been holding Yagami as a prisoner, as well as the escape that had happened under his watch. Mello doubted it was to keep his professional pride intact. So why? Why hold back all of that information?

L had never brought his successors into this to capture Kira. It had never been about that, never, and Mello was only just beginning to see how much the Death Note had affected him. Though he wasn't quite ready to believe that L, a normal Death Note free L, would do all this.

Mello tapped his free hand, the one not occupying his belly, on his thigh as he thought. Yagami senior was a family man, that much was evident… but would he go as far as to contact his family after doing something like that? Or would he have told them beforehand? A letter or something? Or tell them directly?

"Matt we need to get in contact with Yagami's wife," he huffed out. The look Matt gave him said it all. Are you crazy?

"You do know that they have disappeared, right? Each and every family connected to the Kira case has vanished. And you want to contact them?" Matt stared at him incredulously. So it did sound a little insane and impossible, but so did a guy sporting a baby bump thanks to a notebook that killed people. Mello told him as much.

Matt snorted and shook his head. "OK, so if we can't find out where Yagami went, we find his or the others families? If there is anything to find…"

Mello didn't like how Matt had trailed off though he realized the truth of that statement. While things had spiraled out of control before and they had not actively followed up on the disappearing act the missing task force's families had done, they needed to do so now. They needed to speak with one or all of them if possible.

"So I guess we start with their last known appearance, the week before, and if it was stated where they were going?" Matt asked, making Mello smile. He wished Matt would let his intelligence show more often; he was so damn smart but was content on the sidelines. It had sickened Mello so many times in the past. Matt could have done so much better, but he had no motivation…

He sighed. There were many more things to think of than Matt's utter dislike of the spotlight. Like why the fuck everyone connected to this damn case seemed to drop off the face of the planet. Mello decided that he and Matt were lucky; so far they hadn't 'vanished,' and that was definitely a good thing.

"Mello?"

Mello looked over at Matt, his name having been called, and he blinked in surprise as the redhead took hold of the hand cradling his stomach and used it to pull him into a standing position.

"Let's take a break before we continue. We'll have plenty of time to solve this, but we can't if we get exhausted all the time."

Mello pursed his lips; he wanted to dive right into the investigation, and he knew Matt was only using that as an excuse, but despite that, he nodded. They had been working nonstop for the last few days.

"You have an appointment tomorrow anyway." Matt grinned at him, and Mello frowned. Another appointment with the obstetrician? Just wonderful.

Matt patted Mello's stomach cheekily, and although it annoyed Mello to have his stomach touched, he smiled.

Damn he was getting soft…

-End 21-
- 21
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The Flaw