The Puppeteer

L

L was neck-deep in his work. Being the detective he was, was never an easy feat and it would never be so. Not a day's break, not a minute's relaxation, not a moment's happiness would rid him of the pressures the world constantly buried him in. If his rounded shoulders and posture that rivaled a camel's hump weren't proof enough of his stress then I don't even know what was.

His hair was as messy as it could get, his pupils were blown wider than his iris, and the bags under his eyes hung lower than his social skills. 

This wasn't anything new. It's just how he had always been. Always compromising, always reducing the time he spent on himself to catch the people that were ruining the world. 

It may seem like he was the 'obsessive insomniac' that drowned himself in mystery after mystery for the pleasure of it, but the sheer volumes of neverending dull in his eyes spoke otherwise. He seemed to gain no such joy in the conundrum and found it rather tedious instead. 

L's job was to solve the riddles that were sent his way and there was no childlike excitement about it. From ruining his sleep to ruining his health all for the sake of the public, L had lost the 'love' he had for his job long ago, but there was no stopping him. 

Cases usually weren't hard for him. He was like the Sherlock Holmes of the real world, solving cases as if they were nothing, but the newest case on his hands had him in a fix.

The Kira Case

Something that was unlike anything the world had ever seen, and it angered L too much for his own good. He never showed it though, never let his irritation come out, acted like the 'detective' he was supposed to be, and kept scratching his head over the vexing question with a grim expression on his face, but it wasn't working. He knew it wasn't working but he would never show it. 

So he delved further and further into the case till he could not swim back up in time to refill his lungs when the breath he held ran out. He did everything he could and forced his mind to run faster until finally, Lind L. Tailor happened. 

For that trick to have worked was like a blessing for him. It was the first massive breakthrough he had achieved in the case and he was more relieved than happy. It was all a ride after that. All his deductions to the FBI agents to their deaths to narrowing down their suspects to installing surveillance cameras in the homes of Soichiro Yagami and Deputy Director Kitamura, things were moving fast, just like how L wanted it to be..

But now, there was a new character in the play.

Initially installing the cameras was going to be about Light. He was the main suspect and he was the only one being investigated even though the surveillance was put up in two households, I mean, have you ever seen them look through the Kitamura tapes? No. It's because they were never looked at. They just stayed quietly in the corner of the hotel room the task force called their HQ, but on the 8th of January, when Kiyohime Ikari walked into the Yagami household for a simple dinner, Light suddenly wasn't the only suspect. 

It had all been going smoothly, a bit too smoothly to be honest. L and Mr. Yagami had watched as Light had walked into his home to his room, laid on the bed with a sigh, changed his clothes, and left the home silently. There was nothing suspicious about the boy until now and that just seemed to irk L. Was this all going to be a waste? All this convincing and shouting and going through tape after tape with no rest, everything just for this whole surveillance situation to turn into a disastrous fiasco?

"I don't see how you could even consider this! If this got out we would have a Civil Rights scandal on our hands, we'd all lose our jobs!" Aizawa had exclaimed.