Watch me pull this off.
XXX
Prologue
Naked as the day he was born, Matt stared coolly at his reflection in the oblong looking glass before him.
The long red hair, the red, transparent eyelashes, as though he had no eyelashes at all, and freckles covering the bridge of his nose, his neck and his shoulders, and down along both his arms, he gazed slowly across the white expanse of his chest, ripe with the end of adolescence, as though it got there before him, before he ever managed to mature at all.
His old, familiar smirk, smirking back at him, there it is, and get on with it, get on with it so I don't have to pay so much attention to myself.
The alternating protrusions of ribs, thin and hard with youth, giving way to the flat abdomen beneath and the angular depression of the inguinal ridge, farther to the symphysis pubis and his member, body and glans, and then the narrow thighs, the hard bones at his knees and his long lower legs, covered just so slightly with transparent red hair that stopped just above the articulation at the feet.
He certainly looked an awful lot like any other grown up human being.
But is that how it is?
Is that how it is.
So that's how it is.
XXX
My story begins thirteen years before.
Mello knew already, from the ominous blaze of purple diffusing slowly in the distance, beyond the thick twine of the trees, that it was too late.
Eight years old.
His blue eyes narrowed in spite, teeth clenching and fingers tight around the scathed handle of his sword, hard and heavy for his age, but his no less.
The beast was mine.
Ever since he'd heard of it, ever since he'd read about it, Mello knew, he was going to be the one, he would get there first, he had it in him and he would die before someone else beat him to it.
Clutching hard at the handle of his sword and the bag on his back, he set off running, driven by the fire of rage, through the woods to the edge of the cliff where the taste of smoke grew ever thicker, until at last he had to stop because he couldn't breathe anymore.
Sure enough, there lay the beast, something not like a beast at all but really a chaotic, enormous mass of dirt and scales, and the most pungent smell he's ever smelled in his life.
Out of breath and out of sorts, Mello stopped at his heels and stared, wide eyed with disbelief, at the slain dragon and the surreal gusts of smoke all around, and, furious, he scanned the area to find just who it was who dared take this from him.
There was no one around. Angry at his own body's weakness, he tried to suppress his cough, to no avail, refusing to collapse under the strain, until at last he came to the dragon's very face, enormous and repugnant and horrific, drenched in the toxic secretions of its own demise, and, forcing himself to stare, Mello took the whole image in, burning it into the reaches of his mind as never to forget what someone else had beat him to.
He swore in that moment of childlike revenge eternal hatred against whoever this person was.
Eternal.
An adult, most likely.
Someone who wouldn't believe Mello could do it in the first place.
And there went his chance to prove himself.
Refusing to leave the spot and deliberately forcing himself to remain and subsist in the hard fumes and smoke, he settled down, glaring angrily at the giant head, small fingers tight on the handle of his sword.
He thought he was angry enough to slay the person who did it.
But nobody showed up.
He waited for a long time. The sun had begun to go down. But nobody showed up to claim his victory. No one had showed up unto whom Mello at last could unleash his wrath.
…bastard!
Mello thought, already hungry for dinner as he rose from his seat in irritation. He weaved in and out through the trees for another twenty minutes or so before, at last, his eyes fell upon the sleeping form of another boy, around his age, serenely put out and covered from head to toe in pure filth.
And a book resting forgotten in his hands.
Within seconds, the glistening tip of Mello's sword was directed at the boy's neck.
"Who the hell are you,"
he hissed, but the boy would not rise.
"Spill it!"
Mello demanded, louder now, the sharp metal edge menacing at the boy's throat.
Very slowly, the boy's eyes opened and, drowsily, he inspected the sword at his neck and the hand to whom it belonged, and smiling the most sheepish, charming smile, he laughed.
Fucker actually laughed!
"That's quite a sword," he grinned, and his grin was irritating, mocking almost, and, in rage, Mello pressed it tighter against the soft flesh of his throat.
"That dragon was mine!"
Hardly intimidated, the boy smiled even more, his red lips stretching insufferably into a slow grin.
"Ah, the dragon…." He said as with knowing wisdom, as if now he completely understood how justified Mello was in his rage.
"You--!!"
Mello sputtered, dropping his sword to the ground and now leaning in to punch the boy directly.
What followed was a brutal fist fight through which, aggravatingly, neither boy prevailed triumphant, and soon it was night-time, and soon citizens had come to gather, having heard of the dragon's demise, and soon also there came Mello's headmaster in his search, the wizened Quillish Wammy, with caretaker Roger Ruvie and followed by a train of children who really weren't old enough to go out at this time at all, and certainly not old enough to look unto a slain dragon, but who ultimately had grated upon the nerves of the wizened headmaster so much that at last he allowed them to come.
"Oh, hell, they can't know about this," the boy whispered suddenly to no one in particular, quickly letting go of Mello's clothes as his scrawny limbs began their clumsy ascent up the trunk of the tree, "quick, let me go—"
Confused, Mello almost let him go, catching him just in time.
"What in the hell do you mean, they can't know," he hissed.
About the dragon…?
"Let go," the boy warned, and because Mello wouldn't, he wrestled himself free, allowing the shirt to pull clear off his head as he made his way up the trunk.
Furious, Mello threw the cloth to the ground, clutching at his belongings as he climbed after him.
What the hell?
Mello whispered, watching as the town's citizens began to gather below, gawking with astonishment at the fallen beast, around which now the smoke had thinned.
The boy wouldn't reply, and merely continued staring downward, wide-eyed, as slowly the muddy palm of his hand came around Mello's mouth.
"I stole two hundred darts," he whispered, "they can't know it's me who did this."
Darts. He slew a dragon with darts…!
Mello flipped his head to stare at the boy incredulously. "You slew a dragon! Single-handedly—and with darts—! And you're hiding out!"
"Shhh—!!"
Came the reply, "they'll have my head!"
Mello watched with pure agony as the dragon he could have slain and didn't was slowly inspected by the townspeople and investigations had begun to figure out how exactly this happened.
"Shit."
He murmured when he saw that, quite patiently, under the tree there stood the kindly young Master L. Lawliet, gazing up with serene curiosity and all but waiting for Mello to explain himself.
"Don't tell him," the boy whispered, realizing they've been caught.
"I don't need to tell him," Mello responded in an angry whisper, "he'll figure it out."
"He did it," the boy announced to the youth standing below, one slender finger pointed directly at Mello.
Mello, who would have loved nothing more than to have done it, nevertheless couldn't stand being patronized.
He clenched his teeth in anger while the young Master Lawliet below wondered to himself whether it really was possible for two young boys to have slain a dragon. If it was, then really, he was quite impressed.
They would be hiding because slaying a dragon is a big deal, heroic an act though it may be. But not Mello. Mello wouldn't hide out after something like this. Then the other boy must have done it.
"All by yourself," he mumbled, expression unreadable and thumb nudging at his lower lip as he inspected the younger boy, "single-handedly…"
Sheer panic in his eyes, the boy flipped his gaze to the youth standing below, then to the blonde at his side, and whispered, "No, no, it wasn't—"
And soon there came commotion from below because it had come to the crowd's attention that the dragon was slain using a large number of poisoned darts, and now the boy was all the more panicked as the chatter of bewilderment spread through the group.
The youth looked back up at them, all the more amused now. "With darts…" he mumbled, "you slew a dragon with poisoned darts…"
"I didn't!" the boy protested, to no avail, as L's mind was set.
"But that's not a bad thing," the youth replied, now making his way up the tree among them, "that wouldn't elicit this kind of response."
"He stole the darts," Mello hissed, and, at that, the other boy was ready to punch him again, while L's eyebrows rose to his hairline; ah—there it is.
"…I see…" he replied, laughing softly to himself.
They continued watching the scene for several minutes more.
"Well then," he said at last, "we'll just have to make payment for the darts—won't we."
"You don't plan to tell them—?"
"But you'll have to earn the money," L continued, "by doing work."
More than anything, though, he was interested in taking in the seven-year-old boy so supposedly ingenious as to have pulled this off - if, really, he had.
The boy's name was Matt, and this is the story of how he came to live at Wammy's House, and all that transpired there and thereafter—
—and just what kind of boy he was.
To be continued..