Author's Note: Upon reading Another Note, I was struck by Mello's description of the battle between Eraldo Coil, Deneuve, and L. Mello tells us that the other two were real people, who surrendered their titles and codes to L when he defeated them. A brief description, but it struck me profoundly.
If BB has never met L, then how did he know how to imitate him? It's not like Watari to casually betray L's habits and appearance to a psychotic inmate of Whammy's House that L has not chosen to meet face-to-face. As for the clothes, we only know that L appeared like that to Naomi Misora after BB was arrested.
An homage to a valiant enemy, perhaps?
It's been shown that L can change. Behind his computer screen, he stands up straight and sits normally. He is never seen eating sweets. If sitting like a frog improves his thinking, why doesn't he do it all the time? If it keeps him alert through all the sugar, how can he afford to sit differently if he eats so much of it?
So here is my twist. Make of it what you will.
The thing about L was that he absorbed things.
Obviously, information was one of them; he solved over 3,500 cases, all of which baffled the ordinary police, and he did so without once visiting a crime scene. He had an incredible knack for taking facts and drawing his conclusions: the ultimate consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes on steroids. Or maybe just Sherlock Holmes if he'd had access to computers and cameras and millions of dollars and had every police force in the world at his beck and call.
And then, more whimsically, there was sugar. It is doubtful that any other human being would be capable of absorbing that much sugar into their bloodstream without suffering serious health problems, yet it took a Shinigami and a Death Note to give L Lawliet the heart attack that killed him.
But what L absorbed most of all were identities.
Eraldo Coil, Deneuve, dozens more. Hundreds more. No one knew his name, his face, his true identity. And how could they, when he could adopt a new one and become it? Even he could no longer tell the real from the pretend. Maybe none of them were real; maybe L had no identity of his own, only the identities he stripped off beaten foes.
Maybe L himself was only an imitation.
And then came Kira. A killer who baffled not one, but every police force, a killer who passed the prerequisite ten killings in less than a day. The world's greatest detective settled back and flipped through his identities.
L? No, L was cool, straight-backed, confident. But L was for hiding behind computer screens, dealing with a police force at a distance. Not for dealing with Kira directly – he already suspected it would come to that. Besides…L was too close to that barely remembered real name, and the evidence suggested Kira only needed a name and a face to kill.
Eraldo Coil? No, Coil was hot-tempered, rash. This case would require careful planning and the absence of emotion. Undue rashness would get him killed.
Deneuve? No, therein lay the opposite problem. Deneuve was cold, too cold. He would lack the motivation necessary to bring Kira to justice. And, like Coil, like L, he was ill-equipped to meet Kira face-to-face.
A balance then. But who?
Asahi? No, he discarded that almost before he'd thought of it. Hideki Ryuga? Perhaps later. Too obviously an alias. He discarded half a hundred identities while he pondered the evidence and the criminals died.
It was Raye Penber's death that decided him.
Rue Ryuzaki. The one criminal who had almost surpassed him, the alias Beyond Birthday had taken while planning his unsolvable crime. Ryuzaki had helped on his own investigation. He had been simultaneously the most suspicious person Naomi Misora had ever met and the one least worthy of suspicion. While completely lacking in charm, he made others dance, protected by the shield of his ridiculousness.
She had already given him all the information he would need.
If Naomi Misora, with all her insight, had had difficulty thinking of Ryuzaki as anything more than a child and a freak, perhaps Kira would too.
Fortunately, he didn't have to make changes to his attire; he'd worn the same since 2002, and he didn't sleep much. He learned to crouch and practiced chewing on his thumbnail. Though he could not bring himself to eat jam, he stocked up on strawberries. He sent Watari out for cupcakes, cookies, ice cream, candy – these he already liked in moderation – and every other sweet thing he could think of. So talented was he at absorption that he drank his first cup full of coffee-flavored sugar without gagging. By the second cup, he enjoyed it.
If he had been anyone else, it might have disturbed him how easy it was to change. But it didn't. L was fluid. L could be anyone.
No. Not L. Ryuzaki now.
When he saw the task force's faces, he knew it had worked. They forgot L's brilliant deductions when they saw Ryuzaki crouched froglike in his chair, and were distracted from their suspicions of him when he noisily licked the frosting off a doughnut and stuffed the reminder into his mouth.
And when he finally met Kira, he could see the disdain in Kira's eyes. This is L? Kira underestimated him, and he would make Kira pay dearly for his mistake.
He was the most suspicious person imaginable, and yet the one least worthy of suspicion.
Ryuzaki had lost to L, but he did not intend to lose to Kira.