Wammy's children were never taught that it was a game. Solving cases is a matter to be taken very, very seriously, W had told them. "You hold the fate of innocent lives in your hands when you take on a case. You are upholding justice. This is not a matter to be taken lightly."
But when L's distorted voice would speak to the detectives in training through the laptop, he made it sound like a game. "Start at the end of all your queries to learn where things begin," he'd start off. These were the words that everyone, B especially and obsessively, would take to heart.
"You analyze by working backwards. Effects reveal their cause," the voice would drawl.
For even perfect crimes have perfect flaws.
These words, these lessons, became B's personal Bible. He'd listen, eyes wide and bright, as L explained how a kilobyte of information could change everything you know about a case.
"Well, sure," A had whispered. "That's common sense." B had ignored them in favor of listening to L's order to anticipate the criminal's adaptation by using priorly gathered information.
Sure, L's voice calls taught them nothing new, nothing they weren't smart enough to figure out for themselves. But that L, the busy, talented, genius L, had seen fit to tell them even this unimportant information himself made it all the more valuable to B. He didn't have to. He did anyway.
"That has to count for something, doesn't it?" B had asked A one chilly autumn afternoon.
"I think W and R make him," A had replied. They hadn't even looked up from their book. Though secretly he agreed, B chose to ignore that in favor of the prettier lie.
So instead B followed L's advice to the letter. He poked and prodded and bent and broke his suspects, made the most of every minor mistake. The mistakes that the police didn't catch, that the untrained eye might not see became the keys with which B locked his criminals away.
That's how the game began. The rush of being the first to realize it was the stepfather all along and the intense low of being just a few steps behind your fellow students. Innocent lives be damned. B played for the win, not the morals.
But he never quite won the game. It was always him and A, neck and neck. B didn't want to resent A, he cared for them. But as he stared at the data on his computer screen, connecting it all into neat patterns, only to find A had solved the case not even half an hour before, he couldn't help the bite of anger in his chest.
B knew that W and R would want him to solve the case on his own anyway, just so he'd get the experience and understand what it all meant on his own.
So B sucked on his teeth, sucked up his pride, and solved the case. Yes, it was the intern. Yes, she used a plastic bag from Selfridge's and a triplex wire. Yes, the secretary knew. Whatever.
The following week B was sitting backwards in his chair, feigning disinterest as L spoke to them.
"The calculus of the solution, while changing, stays the same. The stronger mind and evolution determines who will win."
Evolution, huh? Ironic. B thought of his eyes, his teeth that drew blood when he bit down on his bottom lip, his strength, his chameleon-like personality. Did monsters subscribe to Darwinism?
If B wasn't even human to begin with (and this suspicion grew with every passing day), and L said that the strongest mind and evolution determined who would win… Shouldn't that mean that B, who likely stood outside of human evolutionary habits, could have a shot at winning?
This was not a road he should be traveling, and some base part of him knew that, but nevertheless B found himself treating L's words less like scripture and more like a challenge.
It was a game, and B was ruthlessly competitive. He was playing with everything he had, and he'd long ago resolved to either win or die trying. Failure was simply not an option.