To Remain Vigilant Forever
by Moonraker One
December 10, 1990
An elderly man took a long, downhearted drink of bourbon as he awaited the inevitable. He had dreaded this day for more than ten years, and it finally had come to him. The last time this happened was in nineteen seventy-nine, and when it happened then, it necessitated the discovery of another prodigy, just like the last one. He thought with fond memories of the previous child, having left the orphanage with such high hopes and dreams, only to be led to death within eight hours. This new prodigy, who had the misfortune of losing both his parents within days of birth, had to be the finest the elderly man had ever laid eyes upon. He hated the thought of the men coming to retrieve him. Yet, this was the ultimate purpose of his orphanage. The other gifted children might be trained to be master detectives, but only the best would be put into the program.
Bang.
A loud fist struck the front door of the orphanage. It preceded yet another.
Bang.
"Whammy House," the man introduced. "Who is it?" He kept up the proceedings, despite knowing who it was.
"Quillish," a male voice proclaimed, in an annoyed fashion, "let us in already. You know who we are."
Nervously, the old man opened the front door. Two men in raincoats stood with hands in pockets. An inconspicuous minivan sat out in the street near the walkway. A nod from the first man was all that was required to let Whammy, the elderly man, know what to do. "I see you're early. I'll go get him." He turned and left the gentlemen, but before departing their presence he asked, "Can you try, this time, not to bring me back a corpse? I do grow rather fond of these children, you know."
"We believe we've worked it out this time," the second of the two outside the building replied. They interchanged small talk with eager anticipation of what the early morning would bring. Big plans would await if the child managed to live through the procedure they had planned.
A frightened eleven year old boy with discordant black hair with dark bags of sleeplessness under his eyes, sat in a dark room alone. He fidgeted about, being uncomfortable even within his usually acceptable jeans and white, loose t-shirt. He sat in a near fetal position, clutching his legs. It helped him think. The eternity of silence ended when a familiar face stepped in and turned the light on. "Watari, you're finally back," the young boy exclaimed. "I can't sit in this dark room much longer."
The old man hugged the boy with a smile on his face. "Don't worry, L," he explained, "You're going to go and take place in a certain special program."
L's frown worsened. "I'm going to be experimented on, aren't I?" His question drove a stake into Whammy's heart, for he knew it to be true. This precious child, he knew, just couldn't be fooled."
"Don't make it sound like a horror movie, L," he reassured, "this will give you an even better ability to fight against the criminals than before."
L gave a half-smile. "Will I really be even better at it?" He hated the prospect of being a science experiment; and for good reason. His intelligence had led to the capture of enough criminals who utilized science as a tool of destruction. Yet, at the same time, the thought appealed to his nature; the same methods of destruction would be used for the criminals' captures.
Whammy knelt down in front of L. "Tell me something, do you believe in magic?"
L gave a curious squint. "No," he flatly stated.
The old man smiled and put his hands on the boy's shoulders. "Well, let me tell you, it does exist! And that there is a group of people I work with, that use magic the way most scientists use science." He turned away a moment, thinking. "Why," he said, turning back, "you could say that magic is a type of science in and of itself!"
L gave a disbelieving look. "Magic...?" he sarcastically replied.
Whammy laughed at the boy's disbelief. "You were taught to be scientific and intellectual, L, so I don't blame you. But, this will give you the chance to fight crime in a way the criminals would never see coming!"
"I'm the only one that lived through this procedure, though," he noticed, "so why should I agree to it?"
Whammy was taken by surprise, even having worked with L the way he did. "How did you arrive at that conclusion?"
"You'd have told me of the amazing things the other one would have done," L simply explained.
Whammy took a calculated risk of severe implications. He took L's hand and made a promise. "You'll survive this procedure, and I'll be there for you always, L, I promise. I swear from the bottom of my heart."
The several moments of silence were deafening.
L swallowed. "You do?"
Whammy nodded, fighting back tears. "I promise. Or else I'll die." A smile returned to L's face, and the old man found a smile on his too.
"I might as well give it a try, then," the boy proclaimed, heading out the door.
"Wait," Whammy stopped him with. "I have to give you this."
L looked at the hypodermic needle. "What's in that?"
The old man looked guilty. "A narcotic to put you out for a few hours. The procedure has to be done with you asleep." He shook his head a moment. "And I didn't want to inject you against your will." A tear trickled down his face. "Please forgive me, L."
The boy held out his arm. "I trust you, Watari," L calmly stated. He winced as the sharp needle slid into his arm gently, and again as the liquid burned when it entered his bloodstream. Quickly his concentration failed, and he collapsed backward, into the old man's arms.
Back up front, the two men had become rather unsettled and annoyed by the wait. "What took you so long, Quillish? Did you give a speech to the boy or something?"
"You should've just injected him," the other added.
"I do not lower myself to such standards," Whammy argued. "And this time, I want to be right there beside him when he's put through the procedure."
The first man raised an eyebrow. "Getting soft, are we? Fine. Get in the van." he took L out of Whammy's arms, and carried him onto a gurney in the van. L slumbered gently as the van took off. He dreamed about massive fields of sweets and candy, never ending as he frolicked in a never-ending setting of wondrous goodies. He felt the old man's soft hand brush against his arm a few times.
But then he was rudely awoken by the sudden sensation of very cold liquid against his bare flesh. The harsh contrast from the gentle slumber sobered him up rather quickly. Nervously did he jostle back and forth as he noticed there were lots of needles in him attached to thin plastic tubes. "What...what is this?" Nearby, a scientist in a protective jacket turned to Whammy and gave him an accusative stare.
"You didn't give him enough," the scientist scolded. Then he turned to L and his expression sweetened. "Don't worry, young one. This procedure should proceed just fine. We've discovered the main flaw with your predecessor and have corrected it."
"That's not what I asked," L corrected him, nervously jostling yet again. "I asked what are all these tubes for? Don't you need just one?"
"That was the problem last time," the scientist argued. "If we put too much into one area of the body, it is massively concentrated and causes death." He lifted a test tube rack with several different colored liquids. "These are all to be combined into one. We've discovered that, instead of injecting it all into one point, to inject it into dozens of points makes it easier."
L thought of something. "Didn't you say you'd done this formula lots of times? What makes the one you're giving me any different?"
The scientist nervously fixed his glasses. "Amplification," he answered. "We discovered, decades ago, that energy emanates from several points on the globe. This energy does not correspond to any of the four forces of nature, and seems to have strange effects on living things. It was then that we decided to harness this energy to enhance the human body."
He lifted the first liquid, a purple tube. "This seems to have an effect on perception of physical reality, improving thought patterns." Replacing it into the tube, he produced a light blue tube. "This one seems to grant quasi-psychic abilities." This time, he lifted the green tube. "Living things have what could be called a soul, which scholars have debated about for years. We haven't yet determined how it does or the exact specifics of what, but this does affect perception of the soul." He then lifted two tubes, one yellow and the other a more golden shade. "These two have the most profound effect. This one seems to be the main cause of increase of physical attributes, making the individual stronger, and more athletic than they should be. This other one next to it, we don't know what it does, but it affects the other two."
L interrupted. "Thank you for the explanation, but again, you haven't answered my question."
The scientist ignored the interruption and produced the final tube. "This one, is one we haven't done yet. The original formula was just the yellow liquid, and it enhanced a person's physical performance. We successfully proved that one would work with anyone. All but this last one was even done six times. The other five without this one proved to be one hundred times the potency of the original. But this one magnifies the effect of the overall potion by about one hundred twenty thousand times."
L practically seizured where he lay. "T...twelve million times the potency of the original?" He coughed. "One hundred times the original seems outlandish enough, but a hundred twenty thousand times even that?...! No wonder the previous one died! Watari, get me out of this! I don't want to take part anymore!"
Watari lowered his head. "L, I thought you trusted me. I thought you were willing to trust that I promised you." His words had a mild effect.
L calmed down, not wanting to tear the needles out of his flesh by movement. "Yes, but...I don't want to die."
"You aren't going to die," the scientist imparted. "The method of multiple injection points should have the desired effect." He removed from his pocket a small key and inserted it into a slot on a computer console. "Just be patient." With a single turn of the key, the liquids exited their test tubes and traveled through the console, mixing into a bright, glowing liquid that branched off into all the various plastic injection tubes. The first bit of the concoction then entered into L's body.
The moment the magical formula entered his flesh, the young prodigy felt as though the fires of hell itself had made a horrible journey into his body. Every inch of his body surged with energy as he felt parts of his tissues feel on fire, that he'd never even felt before. A scream left his mouth as restraints tightened to stop his violent jerking back and forth. He closed his eyes and tried his best to imagine the pain ceasing, but it never seemed to lessen.
The group looked on with much anticipation as the boy's body began to change shape. The pencil-thin body began to reshape into a much more defined, healthy form. As the final bit of the formula disappeared under the child's skin, his body began to glow, faintly at first, then strongly. For a brief instant, the artificial illumination of the room held no comparison. It shone so brightly that it shot upwards into the midnight sky. Once the tremendous light died off, L lay still, the only sign of him living, being that his chest rose and fell with his breathing. All the needles slid out of his body as the machine completed its activity. Watari hastily ran over to his beloved prodigy's position, cradling him in his arms and helping him reach a standing position.
"L!" Watari yelled. "Are you alright? How do you feel?"
L himself struggled to find the words to describe what he felt occurring inside of him. Even with his considerable intellect, he felt bewildered by the sensation. "It's...unusual," he attempted. "it feels like I have a sun inside my body." Curiously did he run his fingers across his arms, feeling pulsations of energy move about like water disturbed by a leaf. He turned to Watari. "This is amazing, but tell me, what have I gained that will help? Haven't I already helped put a lot of criminals away?"
"Yes," the elderly man replied, "but now, you can play a more active role. Groups like that terrorist organization in Croatia that you helped put away, that was difficult to extricate, now you can capture them, as well as prove them guilty."
One of the scientists interjected, "you have become, in effect, a perfect symbol of justice."
"Yeah," another replied, "the people may look at you as a god."
L gave him a disappointed glare. "I have no intentions of revealing myself to the public, nor do I have any godly aspirations. I may be magically powerful, but I am, after all, a person."
The scientist in charge of the project took L's left arm in his hand. Before the child could react, he spread out the left palm and fired a gun point blank at the hand. Both the boy and Whammy shook suddenly in reaction to the sudden use of the weapon. The scientist looked in childish awe of the result: the bullet was crushed, but no damage had been done to the tissue. "This is amazing," he uttered, his face still beaming. "Now we know exactly what to do to replicate the results."
Watari clicked a remote in his pocket. "I'm sorry, gentlemen, but that isn't happening." The computers began to delete all files in response to the button press. Somewhere nearby the police had been alerted to the activity and had been sent selective pieces of documentation from the hard drives that would incriminate all present. "You see, I had to use my orphanage and the children as bait, which is my shame, because I knew if I didn't, you'd take it to the military. This illegal experimentation will cease, and enough evidence of your actions has been sent to the authorities." He looked at L a moment. "Although, I do believe I must thank you for giving such a wonderful gift to my L."
Several scientists pulled pistols on the duo. "Bullshit! If we go down, you're going with us! Your setup is going to fail!"
Watari swallowed hard as sweat poured down his brow. He'd waited for them to finish the experiment for the reason about to be displayed. "L, now would be a good time," he suggested. As advised, the child put to use his new abilities. In a blur of motion the men were relieved of their weapons. The old man put down his hands and adjusted his collar. "My children aren't the only smart ones. I could have activated the transfer and deletion of data at any time; but I knew once I'd heard of the magnitude of your work that it'd be best to wait to see if L gained the powers you spoke of." He checked his watch. "Oh, I do believe we must be going. It is rather late. See you gentlemen at the trial."
"Hey, you aren't going anywhere..." one of the men yelled, grabbing L's arm. In response, a gentle shove from the child sent the man all the way across the room.
Outside, the old man led the young boy into a disguised vehicle. He then drew the boy into a tight embrace. "L, I'm so sorry I had to put you through that. But this is a take down I've been waiting for since nineteen seventy-nine." He shed a few very important tears. "But I'm amazed you got accustomed to your new abilities so fast!"
"The moment they finished, I'd already learned it. It is magic, after all." He thought of something. "Watari, tell me, my predecessor died from the same procedure, right?"
"Other than the additional injection points to lessen the chance of death, yes."
"Then, you would've executed tonight's plan back then if he'd lived, right?"
Watari nodded. "Yes. That has long been my shame."
L grabbed his shoulders. "I would appreciate it, if you didn't use me as bait ever again, Watari."
The old man couldn't help but laugh a bit. "I won't. Let's go home and get some sleep. You've got another case in the morning."
It seemed a triviality, then. Even the intellect of L did not imagine that any serious problem would come out of the closing of the magic-meets-science case. Watari certainly imagined that with such godly powers bestowed upon him, surely nothing could oppose L. It was, quite possibly, the biggest failure of L's to reach the correct prediction of events to come.