Short, yes, but I'm working on bigger, funner things. (lolfunner)
If I owned Death Note, Mello would have died a lot sooner. Trust me.
-~-~-~-
Near loved building things. He loved seeing things balance each other out, he loved seeing the counterbalances working with each other to keep things from falling, and he loved it when his towers, his beautiful towers, reached the point where he was no longer tall enough to work on it without standing, or without standing on a chair.
Near hated it when his buildings fell down. Knowing that he had done something to mess it up, well aware that he could do it perfectly. He could do it flawlessly, until the Eiffel tower stretched above his arms reach or a simple skyscraper touched the ceiling. But when it fell down, he felt as if he was the one to mess it up.
When his buildings, his structures, hell, his life, were destroyed, he was angry. Yes, it made him mad to see his work fall at the hands of another. Exasperating beyond imagination. But it was fine with him when someone else destroyed his work, because it wasn't his fault.
And usually, it was inevitable.
People became jealous when he built something they never could. Perhaps a thirty story high card house, perhaps a domino tower that stretched to the ceiling. Perhaps it was even something as simple as a small stack of dice.
Mello had once tried to stack dice. His small tower was only ten dice tall when it fell.
It was human instinct to destroy. When they saw how a small child did something they simply couldn't, they wanted to destroy it, demolish it and let the small child know that its foundation wasn't strong enough.
But as patient as he was, Near could never make an indestructible foundation. It was his nature to be a detective, and as a detective it was impossible to be rooted in entirely facts. Nothing could be connected with each other through mere facts, it takes intuition to be a successful detective.
If all detectives worked entirely in facts, there would be a lot more killers, cons, rapists, and in general horrible people still on the streets, because while facts could build a solid foundation, they could never get the detective any higher. They would be stuck with a one level card tower, and that...that was just plain boring.
Anyone could do that. Even Mello.
Which is why when the blonde boy knocks down a tower built out of Jenga blocks, one where about eighty balanced on merely one block with wooden pieces sticking out at 45 degree angles, Near simply entwines his fingers in his hair and starts over.
He is angry, yes, but at least he was not the one to knock it down. He could start over, and build something just as...no, more amazing than before, now.
It comforted him to know that even when things were knocked down, they could be rebuilt.
Mello simply did not understand that. He dwelled on things that happened in the past. His two-story card tower fell down, and he left it there in peices. When his dice had fallen, he stormed away, fuming. Near knew how to start over.
That's why he was first.