Probable Improbability

by Moonraker One

A/N: My first Death Note fanfic. I must say, as a writer who's written for DBZ and Naruto, and even one Pokemon story, that I hope I can bring my talents to this fine anime. This is a crossover with Azumanga Daioh, although, with one character only. I hope to silence all doubters that should come.

CHAPTER ONE

Quite possibly the biggest cliché of all time is the old saying, "don't judge a book by its cover."

This single, powerful statement has all the authority of a holy writ from a deity, yet more oft than not falls under the category of "ignore this crap." After all, most homo Sapiens who go about their daily lives seldom think of the deeper meaning buried beneath millennia of overused statements. Even when they do, they seldom think past the words written down. Don't judge a book by its cover? Who decided that those words should be the moral? Why a book and its cover? Because they were the simplest connection most people could make? Why not, "Don't judge a person by their appearance?" Because those were too obvious? And even so, why don't most people think past the analogy anyway?

This is only part of a thought process being repeatedly processed inside the mind of one Ayumu Kasuga. She'd earlier been thinking about her job, and the things she had to deal with. All of that came to a screeching halt when she saw the tagline for the ad. "Don't judge a book by its cover," was written directly beneath a smiling supermodel. She knew immediately that something had to be askew, since supermodels never smiled.

Her high school education had been really more of a journey of the soul. She met people she never would have otherwise, and they came to be known as her friends. College had been quite interesting, especially since she hadn't gotten in the first time around. She mulled a number of topics around in her head before deciding upon a most un-Osaka-like career of insurance. She was the person who asked people questions, then put those results into a computer and it told them how screwed they were.

Her nickname of Osaka was, as it had been from the start, her second most defining characteristic. Even more so than her space cadet status (even at work she frequently would daydream), she would introduce herself with, "Hello, my name is Osaka," then correct herself if they asked for a more real-sounding name. Many people shot her funny looks but she either didn't notice or didn't care. She sat down on a park bench in front of a tree. The sidewalk beneath her feet had many people strolling by, busy contemplating their own problems. Tables with chairs sat in the grass several feet behind a tree. One of these tables had a man sitting in an awkward quasi-fetal position with his feet on the chair and his knees by his head. His newspaper sat against his upper legs.

A break from the typical Kira case saw L Lawliet trying to relax his mind from endlessly pursuing an apparently out of reach figure with the power to end life remotely. It didn't occur often, and in fact he didn't like having to take breaks from his typical thought patterns, but when it did, L knew the only way he would keep his logical ability up would be to stop using it awhile. He noticed a series of questions in the "oddly enough" section of the paper. These "brain benders" were questions that weren't as much common sense as a way to trick the logic centers of most people's brains. Some ninety-five percent of the population, he predicted, wouldn't have the logical observation to notice the answer inside the answer. Most of the questions answered themselves, but people wouldn't notice.

"Hmmph," he half-uttered, half-breathed. "It looks like they're trying to step up their riddles," he whispered to himself in his usual way of thinking out loud to alleviate the need to think internally. It might weird people out, he figured, but to get away from too much thought by thinking out loud would rejuvenate his mental power. "If the vice president of the United States died, who would be the president?" he whispered.

"The President," a voice replied.

L looked over. "You do these riddles often?" Already he was breaking his oath of taking a vacation from complex thought for a few hours. He contemplated what the odds of a random person figuring out a riddle immediately. Numbers went in and out, being changed repeatedly.

"Naw," the girl shot back, her thick Osakan accent audible. "But I got a good mind about those things."

L decided to do a test. He continued reading. "Lee's parents have five children. Four of them are La, Lai, Lo, and Lu. What is the name of the fifth?"

"Lee." The answer came without hesitation.

"There's thirty American cents in a person's hand, consisting of two coins. One is not a five cent piece. What are the two coins?"

"A twenty-five cent piece and a five cent piece."

"An airplane crashes on the border of Germany and Austria without fatality. Where are the dead to be buried?"

"Nowhere."

L looked back to his paper. The last one had not come from the paper, but from his desire to test the girl's psyche. Clearly, her common sense took a large part of her thinking, but the riddles were such that most people would miss them. The opportunity was one too big to pass up. He got up and approached the girl. "Are you going somewhere? I can have my driver take you there."

"Driver? Are you rich, mister...uh..."

L responded immediately. "The name is Ryuzaki."

"Well, Mister Ryuzaki, I'm just tryin' to get home. I suppose I could accept your offer. It's kinda crazy in this messed up world. I mean, some guy tryin' to kill all the bad people," she amended her words, "well, the people he thinks are bad, anyway. They may not be for all he knows. But anyway, how can some guy just kill without goin' up to them and stabbin' 'em a few times or shootin' 'em? Is he like a walkin' disease or somethin'? And if so, why ain't the rest of us dead?"

"Heh, I wish I knew. I mean, the idea of someone just killing when they're a long ways away is hard to grasp." L kicked himself mentally; why hadn't he considered the possibility of Kira being a person who can tailor diseases to specific people and not others? Surely the idea was ridiculous, but so was remotely killing. It would kind of explain certain things.

"Just knowin' a face and a correct name, is kinda weird. That's all Kira needs to kill, I figure."

L looked over. Who was this young woman? She looked to be in her late teens or early twenties, but how could she figure that? He knew she wasn't connected to the police. He expressed no surprise outside, but internally, he felt as though his head had been struck with a sledgehammer. "What makes you think that?"

"Well, obviously he's killed people whose names were published. I noticed he only kills people whose correct names are published. There are some criminals on the news with no name shown. They don't die. There are also names without faces. Those people don't die either."

L acted as though he'd learned something surprising. "That certainly does make sense," he commented. Her next comment intrigued him.

"But you wanna know somethin', mister? I'm positive there's some kinda supernatural force involved."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I ain't much for science, mister Ryuzaki, but I don't think there's any science explanation that is possible."

"And when the impossible has been eliminated," L finished, quoting Sherlock Holmes, "the possible, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

"Ya got it mister Ryuzaki." She started looking around.

L found the girl extremely difficult, even with his superior logical abilities, to figure out. On one hand, she displayed, at the very least, the ability to take notice of the obvious within a problem. However, her mannerisms, the way she looked around, all suggested that she had far less mental ability than he gave her credit for based on the simple teasers he read off. Although he hated judging based on the immediate, he noticed she didn't look like the stereotypical genius.

The call was made and within a few minutes, a fancy car appeared. He may have had the appearance of a zombie, what with his strange posture and circles around his eyes, but he always traveled in style. "So, where do you live?" L inquired, taking the initiative in the conversation.

"You sure are high class, mister! I live up about five blocks that a way in the apartment complexes with the bright colors on the roof."

"You heard that, right?" L said.

"I think I've got the idea, yes," Watari replied.

L got in the back seat, leaving the middle seat open for space between the girl and himself. He sat up on the seat in his usual abnormal style. He spent the entire time analyzing the girl as she stared at all the different aspects of the car. She said nothing, which he took to be symbolic of her nature. Her amazed looks served as evidence to him that she was an idiot in manners of public. But from where, he wondered, had that amazing problem-solving and logical pattern come from? He didn't know, and his lack of knowing did not fly. He had to know; he made it his business to know. This would be a task to prove, he decided. So when she got back to her apartment, he made it his business to make a personal visit.

"Do you mind if I come up to use your bathroom?" he lied.

"If ya gotta go ya gotta go, mister Ryuzaki," she fired back. "It's the third door on the left."

The first few steps into her apartment gave him a good idea of her walk of life. The living quarters consisted of a main living room, with a small, outdated TV on a stand that obviously wasn't a prized antique. The wood wasn't; it was particle board and veneer. Connected to this living room, a modest kitchen stood. Modest would be pushing it. It sat in a space you could walk eight steps from one end to another, and stretch your arms out to touch the other ends. A bedroom, a bathroom, and you had the entire space she lived in. L, who had grown accustomed to expensive living conditions, barely avoided claustrophobia. This too, he figured, did not meet the image of a genius. No, he realized, she had to be much simpler than his initial amazement said. But the nagging feeling that something lingered, was one he couldn't shake.

"I have somethin' of a weird question," she beckoned, as he stood in the bathroom pretending to pee.

"Go ahead." This he had to hear. The moment she described her question as "weird," he found himself needing to hear it for sheer curiosity.

"Do you know of any good people I can talk to? You know, about personal things and the like?"

L looked up a moment, pondering her statement. "You're talking to me about personal issues, aren't you?"

"No no," she corrected. "Like, people who're paid to hear you talk to them about your personal issues."

The moment that statement came about, his thought process became confirmed. He could have jumped for joy at that moment, if he wasn't trying to keep a low profile. A golden opportunity came before him; he'd be a fool to pass it up. "You know what?" he quickly fired off, jumping at his chance. "I do. In fact, I have a personal psychiatrist that I use in times where my troubles are getting too much for me."

"I don't want no medication or anything like that. And I really don't think I can afford your guy if you drive in cars like that big job out there."

L cringed inside; he couldn't afford to lose this chance. He had to find out about her. So, he did something he didn't do very often: he turned on the charm. "Now, ma'am, you obviously have issues you want to talk about. I want to help you. I'll tell you what: you can use his services for free; I'll pay each session."

"Now mister, you're putting me in an awful spot..."

He had to use his ace in the hole. "You trusted me enough to get in my car, didn't you?"

"But," she argued, "there was a driver, and he looked like a respectable enough man."

"He could've been in on it, for all you know."

Without hesitation she replied, "there were people within screamin' distance."

He gritted his teeth in frustration without changing expression. She was outmaneuvering him in the conversation. "Who's to say I didn't pay them off?" She seemed to accept that answer. He hadn't counted on having to use his reasoning skills in a basic conversation.

"I guess you got a point, Mister Ryuzaki. I'll go."

L handed her his colleague's card. "Tell me your name, so I can tell him who's coming."

She looked at him strangely for a bit. Could she trust that he wasn't Kira? Then she realized, she was no criminal. Her fate was not at risk. "My name is Ayumu Kasuga."

"I hope you take my advice, Ayumu Kasuga." He then bowed and left the apartment. The moment he got back in his car, he used the phone inside the vehicle to call his colleague. "Takemaru? Are you there?"

In an office some miles away, a mid-thirties man with medium brown hair opened a drawer and answered a private cell phone. "I'm always here, Ryuzaki, what piques your interest that requires my services this time?" Takemaru Koizumi had his doctorate framed on the wall, and he made a vast majority of his money not through his usual patients, but rather, the people who L sent his way. The high-ranking practice Takemaru existed primarily to serve the whims of one L Lawliet, but the man would have it no other way. There was too much money at stake to turn his primary client down.

"There's a young woman who I told you could help," L explained. "Her name is Ayumu Kasuga. She has the mannerisms of a stupid person, but I can't get over the feeling that she might have some mental use on our Kira case."

Takemaru rolled his eyes. "So, let me guess, you want me to put her through the ringer without her knowing about it."

"Exactly," L responded. "First you have to listen to her problems to hide my motives. Then, you test her, and compare her results to every patient your friends in psychiatry and you have ever tested. I want thousands of results to compare her to."

Takemaru stared into the phone. "That's...gonna take awhile. You want all the usual fields examined?"

"Do it, and I'll double your salary."

Takemaru grinned. "I'd have done it without the incentive."

L smiled. "I know you would have. And thank you." He then hung up.

"You'd better be right about this girl, Ryuzaki," he whispered after hearing the dial tone.

Over the next few days L got back to the Kira case. If there was one thing he didn't like about this case, it was the idea that he had very little control over events that involved human lives. A lot of human lives, in fact, were at stake. He, being a person self-described as childish and hating to lose, liked even less to have very little ability to manipulate the situation. If there was one thing that he could do to even the playing field, it would be to bring in another to assist him. But thinking back to the girl brought up several important points. Was using her acceptable? Would she agree to assist in it, knowing full well she could die at any moment? And even simpler, would she possess the level of intellect his gut feeling told him she did, but his common sense said she didn't? Such ponderings would distract him from the task at hand; kira. He could not allow this to happen.

A few days had passed. He'd watched every tape of the subway event. Raye Penber and the other FBI agents, were killed. He knew they were killed by Kira. What he didn't understand, and desperately hoped to figure out, was how he'd done it in this instance. A few things just didn't seem to click with him. Matsuda had, in his hands, a list of videos that had the FBI agent in question in them. At L's request, he read it. Immediately, L recognized something.

"Play that image again."

All the police watched with L, as Watari scooped ice cream cones for everyone. "Pause it." L pointed at the screen. "See? Right there he has an envelope. By the time he dies, it's gone."

"My God, you're right! I'd never have noticed that!"

That's why L is in charge, Shoichiro Yagami thought.

"And look, it seems as though he's desperately trying to look inside the subway." L was about to go into further detail, when Watari answered a phone call.

"Ryuzaki," Watari replied, "it's Takemaru." He put the phone back to his ear. "Are the results in?" The older man nodded to L.

L approached. "Hello, Takemaru. Tell me what you got."

Takemaru Koizumi stared at a computer screen thanking the heavens he invested in the new record keeping system. "Well, I don't think I've had this unique a case in a while, Ryuzaki," he explained, "but I think you'll find this interesting."

"I'm listening."

"I listened to her first, to get her to lay down her trust for me. Most of what she might need me for is mere stress. Her work was getting to be much for her. After she decided to trust me I gave her 'the questions' under the guise of standard procedure. I gave her the first of eighteen sets of different questions. They test her flexibility of thought, observation skills, knowledge of particular subjects, calculation speed, memory, and reasoning."

"Uh huh. How did she do?"

Takemaru gritted his teeth a moment. It was a nervous habit. "She did rather poorly, actually." Silently, L cursed. He'd figured as much. "Her memory? Below average. Out of 1000 people who've been given this same questions, 61 percent of them did better than her. Reasoning? Average. Very close to fifty percent. Calculation speed? Poor. 77 percent did better than her. Knowledge of particular subjects? Below average. 66 percent of them did better than her. Observation skills were a buck to the trend. She ranked way above average, with only 16 percent of them doing better than her. Her flexibility of thought was absolutely amazing. This was what astonished me. All the other categories taken into account, she's a moron. But I tested her flexibility of thinking with the list of mind-trick questions. She answered all 75 questions...in 77 seconds. Just a little more than one second per question. No one else came close. I've actually seen computers take less into account when solving a problem. When solving a problem, Ryuzaki, she might not be able to solve it very well, but she may actually take more into account than YOU."

L blinked in amazement. "Wow. That is abnormal. But here I was hoping she would be a better help." He thought of something. "Wait, maybe..."

Takemaru interrupted him. "Already ahead of you. I figured, as you do, that she might have some sort of self-esteem issue that was inhibiting her. Sure enough, she said, 'But mister, I don't think I'm gonna score high on your mind test. I'm a bit of a space cadet, if you know what I mean.' Her primary problem is that she considers herself stupid, as well as having a case of Adult A.D.D. But I decided to hypnotize her. Under hypnosis, free from both problems, she scored quite differently."

L began to get nervous. He desperately hoped for good news. "Such as?"

"I gave her the second of eighteen question lists. Her flexibility of thought was still the best. But her self destructive thought processes were inhibiting her. Suddenly her memory went from below average to exceptional. Only 8 percent of people tested better than her. She was able to memorize and recall long strands of numbers and recall them perfectly in the middle of complex discussion. Her reasoning suddenly went from average to exceptional, as well. Only 1 percent tested better than her. That's only 10 people. And of those ten people, you, Mello, and Near, are three of them. Her calculation speed only went up from poor to below average. Which makes sense, since her high school transcript lists math as her worst subject. Knowledge of particular subjects wasn't going to go up, so that, predictably, stayed the same. Observation skills went WAY up. In fact, without her self-esteem issues and A.D.D. affecting her, she actually scored higher than you. I'd say, Ryuzaki, that"

L interrupted him. "Wait, repeat that?"

"In the observation problems, no one tested higher than her. She noticed details I wouldn't have imagined, if I didn't design the problems."

L had to sit down. "Okay, thank you so much, Takemaru. I'm definitely going to try to get her on this case."

Takemaru chuckled. "Hell, if I were you, and if her calculation speed and background knowledge were higher, I'd put her in training to be the next L."

"Tell me something, Takemaru, do you think your hypnosis helped her get over her self-esteem issues? Because I'm gonna need her this good when she's not in a trance."

"Oh, don't worry Ryuzaki. I'd say me listening to her life story and giving her advice did that. It stems from her childhood, where her parents always gave her crap for not being smarter, when in actuality she was plenty smart enough, as those test results surely show. But she started to believe them, and it affected her. I think, if she had been raised in a better household, she'd be in the best college in the nation."

"Okay. I'll talk to you some other time, Takemaru. Now delete any record of her real name and simply call her 'Osaka.' in your records"

"I got it." Takemaru hung up.

Matsuda looked at L. "Ryuzaki, what's going on?"

L glanced at him. "First of all, we're going to change our plans. Now, we're going to focus primarily on those who Raye Penber shadowed. And I want to put hidden cameras and listening devices in your homes." Naturally, this caused an uproar. "Hey, I thought we were putting our lives on the line, not just our jobs?"

Chief Yagami looked down. "I'm ashamed to think that my family has come under suspicion, but myself and Ryuzaki will oversee the surveillance!"

"I was planning on it. But we're not going to put in the cameras just yet."

Chief Yagami looked at him funny. "Why not? Won't we be giving Kira time to take a lead?"

"More than likely," L admitted. "But I want to add another member to this case, if she will accept, and give her time to get caught up."

"Who?" Ukita asked.

"Someone, who, I think, will be a great help."

In a small building about twenty miles away, a phone rang, and a secretary answered it. "Greater Japan Insurance, Yahiko speaking." She put the phone down, and stood up. "Ayumu! AYUMU!"

"What?" Osaka cried out.

"Telephone call!" The secretary transferred it to the necessary office.

"Hello? This is Ayumu Kasuga."

L smiled. "Hey, Osaka? How'd you like to go on an adventure?"

She at once recognized the voice, and donned one of her "space cadet" open mouthed grins. "What kinda adventure, mister Ryuzaki?"

L thought of how to word it based on her personality. Ah! He had it!

"One that involves fun things like people getting killed and you figuring out who did it."

Osaka's spacey grin got wider. "I'm there!"

"Alright then. Come to the room at the hotel I'm about to tell you, and don't tell anyone or write anything down."