Death Note: Like Minds
Chapter 1: Meet Yousha Sorano"Ryuga! I need to talk to you right now!" Light Yagami shouting (nearly screaming) across the courtyard of To-Oh University with such urgency that L (called Ryuga Heideki on campus) was forced to stop in his tracks on his way to class.
L turned his dark-ringed eyes to his friend, who was tearing across the courtyard toward him, waving a newspaper and wearing a most horrified expression. "What's wrong, Light-kun?" he asked politely and calmly with a hint of curiosity.
"Look at this headline on the front page!" Light demanded, shoving the newspaper in L's face.
"Kira returns!" the headline proclaimed. The column read, "Kira's attention turns to those with mental or physical handicaps. Many have already mysteriously died of heart attacks. The recent disappearances of the intellectually and physically gifted have also been attributed to Kira."
"Ryuga," Light began seriously, "if this Kira is after the intellectually gifted, you and I could be in danger. We have to stop him before he finds us."
"Correct," L agreed, taking the newspaper from Light with a pincer grasp, "We can't let him escape to continue this killing spree. Let's go to headquarters after our classes."
"I have an hour before my next class," Light whispered so they would not be overheard by the dangerous serial murderer mentioned in the paper, "I'll call everyone."
~~~~~~~Death Note~~~~~~~Like Minds~~~~~~~
Matsuda, Mr. Yagami, and his son, Light, and L approached the entrance to headquarters shielded from the torrential rain by umbrellas. The skies over Japan have been overcast all day, so a thunderstorm was to be expected. The cheerful yellow butterfly sticky-note on the glass outer door, however, was much unexpected. "'The rain was ruining my make-up, so I let myself in,'" Matsuda read the note aloud and added, "The only signature is an illustration of a winged heart."
"Misa," Light said in an exasperated sigh, "She must be back from filming that movie in the United States."
"No," L corrected him, "that's not Misa-san's handwriting, and I'd expect a punk Hello Kitty note from her sooner than a cheerful yellow butterfly. Matsuda-san, Yagami-san, Light-kun, we must be prepared for anything."
Mr. Yagami and Matsuda drew their pistols. Since they had been reinstated into the police force, they felt safer relying on their training as they cautiously entered the building, fearing an encounter with Kira's latest incarnation. They let their weapons lead the way toward the center common room. As they rounded the corner where the monitors and computer equipment were, they found a plain-looking young lady in her early twenties wearing glasses in front of her chocolate brown eyes and ear buds in her ears under her black hair, which was tied into a tight bun. She wore a red v-neck t-shirt and jeans on her five-foot-four-inch, one-hundred-and-twenty-pound frame, and a pure white round cultured pearl was suspended in a silver wire cage by a silver chain around her neck. A manga in one hand, she lazily lounged in L's usual seat with her feet resting on the desk next to one of the keyboards. A mug with the initial "L" in old English lettering printed on it delivered coffee to this mysterious young lady's lips from her other hand.
"WHO ARE YOU!" Mr. Yagami demanded, pointing his pistol in her direction, "HOW DID YOU GET IN HERE! START TALKING!" But for another full minute, she was completely oblivious to his presence.
When she finally sensed that she was no longer alone, she looked up at Mr. Yagami and, removing one ear bud, asked innocently, "Did you say something?" However, she didn't bother listening to his reply. Instead she turned her bespectacled gaze to L and smile pleasantly. "You must be L, the famous reclusive detective!" she said in a musical voice and raised the coffee mug to him, "Great coffee, but since I couldn't find any mugs with my initial on them, I just used one of yours. You also have an impressive manga collection in your room, so I borrowed one."
"Watari," L whined nervously, "she's been in my room."
"Answer us!" Light ordered her bravely, "Who are you?"
"No need to yell," she answered, "The name's Dr. Yousha Sorano. I'm a psychologist."
"How'd you get by the security system?" Matsuda asked, impressed that one so young already held a doctoral degree.
"Your security system is no match for a little creativity and a silver gum wrapper!" Dr. Sorano cheered with a wide smile.
"What about the guards?" Mr. Yagami pointed out, noticing that the guards seemed unharmed when they first entered.
"Well, people are surprisingly cooperative," she purred with a seductive smile and conspiratory wink, playing provocatively with the caged pearl around her neck, "when asked the right way."
L tilted his head and stared blankly at Dr. Sorano for a half a moment before, in what he thought was an act of bravery, considering this woman could be the new Kira, snatched the coffee from her hand and coiled himself up in the chair beside her. Staring blankly at the monitors, L sipped the coffee and muttered, "Not enough sugar."
'I heard you were weird,' Dr. Sorano thought. She snickered, "This is going to be so much fun!"
"What's your purpose here, Dr. Sorano?" Light questioned her.
"Please, call me 'Yousha.' Dr. Sorano is my mom's name," she cringed, "And I'm here for one—no, two—no, just one—no, it's two—yeah, two—two reasons. One, this new Kira, with whom I am in no way associated, murders the physically or mentally disabled, and since I was born with a severe heart condition, it's in my best interest that this killer be caught. Also this Kira kidnaps the physically or mentally gifted, and since you, L, and I are extraordinarily brilliant, I thought you could use my help and protection. I have an IQ in the 170s."
'Almost as high as mine,' L thought, 'Interesting.'
"And B," Yousha continued, Mr. Yagami smiling at the incongruence, "I've been reading up on L's work, and I thought he'd make a most fascinating case study!"
L coughed, nearly choking on the coffee. He'd never really thought of himself as a fascinating psychological case study subject, and he wasn't sure he liked the idea. He snapped his head around and glared at Yousha.
"I smell a Pulitzer!" she giggled, "I've never heard of anyone this paranoid and neurotic!"
'Why not check the mirror?' Light thought, 'This one is stark raving mad!'
'If she's Kira,' Mr. Yagami thought, 'she already knows all our faces. Does she also need our names?'
"How can I be sure you're not Kira trying to learn my name to kill me?" L asked, still glaring at her.
"If I kill you, I can't study you!" Yousha laughed, "And what would be the use in getting your name if I don't even plan to use such identifying information in my study? So if I am Kira (but I'm not) you're safe, at least until this study is published. Besides, I'm an admirer of yours, L. You're intelligence and reasoning abilities are a great asset to this world, so if I were Kira, you'd be kidnapped, not killed. If I'm not Kira (and I'm not) you're even safer than you were before because I'd have to protect my study subject with my life."
L stopped glaring at Yousha, but he dared not look away. In his mind there was at least a seventy percent chance that Yousha Sorano might be Kira. "Watari," L addressed an unassuming old man who had been standing inconspicuously in the corner, "please prepare Yousha-san a room." 'If she's Kira, at least I'll be able to watch her closely,' he reasoned with himself.
"Does that mean you'll let me study you?" Yousha asked excitedly as Watari left to prepare the room.
L sipped on the coffee again. "I suppose so," he murmured.
"YAAAAAAYYYY!" Yousha squealed, hopping up and down and spinning 'round and 'round. 'Perfect,' she congratulated herself in her mind, 'What an opportunilty this is to advance my career as a psychologist and help catch a dangerous killer! Being such a brilliant detective, L will probably soon figure out that my antic disposition is an act. (He's also much cuter than I thought he'd be just judging from my research.) ANYWAY! Anyway, I hope my stay here won't prove fruitless. But since I pulled that little breaking and entering stunt, I know he'll be very suspicious of me. I'll have a difficult time getting him to trust me now, but for the safety of millions of people (as well as my own) I have to make sure L stays safe. He's the only one who could catch Kira.'
~~~~~~~Death Note~~~~~~~Like Minds~~~~~~~
"Icarus," whined a deep female voice from behind the left shoulder of Dr. Icarus Ijimeru. "Icarus Ijimeru," she whined again. Her voice sounded as if she called out from a very dark place, an abyss from which nothing but death comes. "Icarus," she somehow cried and sang at the same time, "How many names have you written today in the Death Note I gave to you?"
"Today is Friday the twenty-seventh, Shinigami Gryfe," Icarus replied, "So I wrote eighteen names of people with genetic disease. They were in so much pain. They should never bring a child into this world and put that child through such suffering." Icarus's black eyes peered out from under his dark, curly hair as his muscular arm guided his left hand to the right side of his desk, where the file drawer was. "I had to be sure those inferior traits could no longer pollute the gene pool," Dr. Ijimeru, a veterinarian and greyhound breeder, added in his unsettlingly soothing voice, speaking to Gryfe, a god of death. Gryfe liked the way Icarus spoke because he spoke with a Greek accent. His mother was Greek, but Icarus's father was Japanese. "I'm trying to use the Death Note to rid the world of disease and pain, as the first Kira tried to rid the world of evil," he explained, "And while the rest of the world is cleansed, here I will create a utopia, where culture is continuously enriched, science is ever advancing, and none are ever suffering due to the mistakes of nature." Icarus rose from his desk and parted the black-out curtains over the window.
The day was bright and beautiful now. The light of the sun flooded the room, revealing it to be some sort of library, and the shelves were lined with works by renowned scientists, philosophers, physicians, and psychologists from across time and around the world. Strangely, though, the books had all been re-covered so that they were all the same height on the shelf, exactly one-point-five decimeters, by Icarus's measure. The owner of these volumes was well-educated and well-read. All of his 81.65 kilograms on a 16 decimeter body was pure muscle. Since he lived in Japan, where most of the people were small in stature, Icarus felt like a mighty giant among mortal men, and now that he possessed the Death Note of Shinigami Gryfe, Dr. Ijimeru thought himself close to becoming a deity.
Gryfe, the Shinigami who gave Icarus her Death Note, had her own motives for her actions. Unlike the rest of the bored death gods, Gryfe found for herself a hobby. She enjoyed observing how different humans respond to tragedy, becoming somewhat of an amateur psychologist. The very human process of mourning death intrigued Gryfe, as no two humans grieved the same way.
One specific human, Icarus, who now stood before her staring out the window, piqued Gryfe's interest when he was a child. In an experiment, Gryfe wrote the names of Icarus's parents into her notebook. 'How would this child react to witnessing his parents' murder and the murderer committing suicide?' she had wondered, 'The unpredictable behavior of that schizophrenic with a club foot should make the results of this test very interesting indeed.'
After watching Icarus for some years following the gruesome murder/suicide, Gryfe found his behavior fascinating. 'I'd like to see what he does when he has control over life and death,' she pondered. She gave Icarus her notebook for nothing more than curiosity's sake.
They stared together out through the library window at the bright and glorious day shining on the wildflowers in a field surrounding a curious collection of tiny houses. Inside each house, a man and a woman stared desperately back, mouthing something like, "Let us out! Let us go!" These were Kira's kidnapping victims.
"These mating pairs will produce healthy and intelligent offspring," Icarus mused, "if they don't want to be killed by Kira. And those offspring will populate my utopia, where pain and disease will be completely unknown, and none will suffer the same type of loss as I have."