Asking for everything on the Observer's employees.

Had Tanakabara known what the tide of horror and dismay in his face meant to Light Yagami, he surely would have turned aside.

As the most damaging one came to his mind, it spilled from his lips automatically:

"Schooner47," he whispered. "Sue Fredericksen. I don't know where she resides at the moment."

He found he didn't have to say she was an American ambassador. He tried:

"She's made more personal calls to Exile Radio than anyone else. She's aristocratic - as much so as an American can get - and doesn't always seem to realize it. She enjoys windsurfing and folk music. She idolizes John Quincy Adams."

No. That was enough. He'd know.

He'd killed Schooner and Kira would have a good idea of what to do with her.

Damn it...

"Suzuki8. Arisu Sawaya." He drew back his lips from his teeth. "You've met." He touched her seat again. "I don't know her home address either. She's usually very sensible. But she's always been very loyal, too. I think that's why she did this. She knew something was off about you almost from the moment she heard of you, and it kills me that she was so reckless because I think the main thing she had against you was that you were corrupting me. She was my best newswriter. We were Exile Radio - well, us and Spiderkiller (I don't know his name and address), but he wasn't in journalism back then. Congratulations, Kira. You've wiped out Exile Radio. She signed on with NHN the very week Kira... you... appeared..."

At that point, that glimpse of their meeting, between the old world and this, it had got to him.

As he spoke on about Sawaya's friendship, he hurled himself into the back of the passenger's seat. The back of the driver's seat. Slammed the back seat with his hands again and again and again until he was spent, weeping, breath labored from the exertion. And Tanakabara sat and plowed on, as slowly as he could, but it was just the same as the snow shovel. He couldn't stop.

"The four MopMaids. I don't know their names or their addresses. Or whether they're all maids, for that matter. They're a comedy team who play up this mania for Lewis Carroll - Seven Mops Ecological Society. Four maids, seven mops, so MopMaid1 (she's the one who polishes their stuff for publication, if she is a she) jokes it's no wonder they're all falling behind. Though personally I think she's taking about the oysters, not the beach, she definitely knows her Canons even if she won't say so, and if I were a betting man, Dark 47 is one of the sounder options, probably the soundest if you insist on restraining yourself to Canon, but it doesn't really matter what time gap theory you use, that's the sort of thing we did before-- well-- you."

Before Kira had shown up in their midst, their pursuits had been largely useless.

There was some irony to that.

Actually, stepping outside the perspective of Tanakabara, Sawaya, the Observer, there was a good deal of irony...

"MopMaid2 scours the newspapers, MopMaid3 brainstorms concepts, MopMaid4 does sound editing for their podcast, which I guess also doesn't exist for the duration, thanks to your tender ego..."

If Kira was here in person... then Kira had driven four hours into the Akaishi Mountains just to play chauffeur. No, not even that. Just to torment a half-dead journalist without a platform.

Couldn't the de facto ruler of the world delegate that?

If Kira couldn't send someone from Tokyo... where the whole problem was delegation...

No, no, no...