Note: This takes place in a world where Mello never died :)

December 13th

After the Kira case was long gone, Mello had been bored.

He was also feeling kind of lonely (although he refused to admit this, even to himself).

The truth was, Mello is a people person. Because of Kira, his cronies who used to hoard over him were either now dead, or left him in fear.

Even his best friend Matt was now dead

Grrr... he didn't like to think about these things.

He settled himself into his favorite leather chair. Even though it seemed cliche, he had placed it in front of the fireplace.

Staring at the blaze, his mind started to drift and reminisce about a time back when he was 8 years old.

It was nap time for the children at Wammy's House. Mello was one of the few who weren't asleep. He stared at the ceiling with his hands behind his head.

"Mihael?"

Mello stared at the voice above him.

It was Roger.

"Hmm.. it's a good thing that you're so restless, I guess.. There's someone here to see you. Please follow me. And please try not to wake everone up again (Mello snickered)."

Roger led him to his office. There, sitting (more like squatting) at his desk was a young man with unruly black hair, dark circles around his eyes, and no shoes. He had a small tower of sugarcubes in front of him.

Roger started to speak again. "Mihael, as you may know, at this orphanage, we serve to bring up some of the world's brightest children. Weve been overseeing you for the past few years, and believe you to be one of those great minds. In fact, have you heard of a detective L? Well, he was actually brought up he-"

The young man behind cut him off.

" I'm sorry Roger, but I'm going to cut to the chase. I believe that you (points at Mello) have the potential to be the next me!"

Mello stared blankly at him.

"Uhh... who are you, anyway?"

The man looked kind of pissed.

"I am L. Also known as Ryuzaki."

O.O

Mello started babbling.

"B-b-but I thought that you were just a legend!!!!!"

L seemes satisfied by this response and chuckled. "Well, I guess not...Anyway, how would you like to spend the day with me?"

Mello gasped with excitement. "Really?! You mean without that Near to ruin it?!?!"

"Oh, well I already saw hi-"

L saw Roger frantically shaking his head 'NO!!!!'.

"-I mean, yep! Just the two of us! Heh heh...-.-; "

"Cool!"

So L and Mello spent the next few hours walking around Wammy's House and around the town.

Mello thought it was kind of weird how L was giving him all these philosophical questions like, "What is justice", and "What is our life's meaning?", and "Why did the chicken cross the road?".

After eating lunch (a PB&J for him and a milkshake for L), L started talking again.

"Mello (Mello made sure that he wasn't called Mihael, since he hated that name), I can tell that you have the brains to be my succesor and the attitude, but..."

"But what?!"

"Hmm...how should I put this?... you need a quirk."

Uhh.."

"Ok. Let's put it this way. Every genius has at leats one little quirk about them. Like their posture or snacks or other habits of theirs. Take Near for example. He's always fiddling around with toys...?

Mello started twitching.

"WHY THE HELL WOULD I WANT TO BE AS SCREWED UP AS THAT OCD FREAK NEAR?!?!"

L panicked. "OK! OK! Bad example! Uhh...how about me...like, my posture may be different from others, but it works well for me!"

"Oh... is that why you look like a hunchback panda?", asked Mello completely innocently.

".....err.....sure -.-; ....Also, I find that eating sweets helps keep up my brainpower!"

"But then, if you only eat sweets all the time, then why aren't you an obese hunchback panda?"

L tried extremely hard to ignore this last comment.

"OK! I think you get the point by now!"

They headed back. After going to the bathroom, Mello came out to find a table full of random items and a smiling L next to it.

"We're going to find your quirk!" ^.^

~insert montage~

Among the many things tried and failed were: drawing in a sketchbook (frankly, he sucked), origami (he felt retarded) and handhelds ( while using it, Matt just simply walked over and took his Gameboy back).

"Hmmm...this is going to be harder than I thought.", said L. "We could always go for the less creative route. Maybe you'll like sweets.

They tried gum (got it in his hair, which led to him having a bob), jawbreakers (almost cracked a tooth), and gummy bears (somehow managed to choke). Mello could feel his cavities started to form.

As Near was walking by them, following his remote controlled car, he said one word.

"Chocolate."

And continued on.

"IS HE KIDDING? CHOCOLATE IS NAS-MPHREEY!"

As he was ranting, L shoved a chocolate bar in his mouth.

"WHAT THE? This is actually pretty good!"

"Well uh-durr! It is chocolate",pointed out L, "What did you expect?"

"But when I was younger, out on the playground, Near gave me something and said it was chocolate. But whe I tasted it, it tasted like dirt..."

O.o "Uhh...Mello, I don't think that was chocolate...."

*KNOCK KNOCK*

Mello snapped out of his memory and back to the present.

He went to the door to see who has knocked.

How would they even know where he lives?

He answered the door, but no one was there.

He looked down and saw a small envelope with his name on it.

Inside was a card.

It had a small cake on the front and messy handwriting on the inside.

It said:

happy birthday

-near

Mello chuckled to himself as he closed the front door and went back inside.