Title: Rudbeckia
Rating: T
Pairing: None
Disclaimer: Nope. I only own my character Fen and the plot
Summary: AU. L supposed that it could be an imaginary friend, though it didn't explain the notebook with the ability to kill people with a swish of a pen.
A/N: I'm surprised people liked this, considering the general dislike for OCs as they had a nasty habit of changing into Mary Sues or Gary Stus if you're not careful. Thanks for reviewing people! And here's the first chapter of Rudbeckia!
Before that though, L's characterization in this will be different to canon!L's, as he's a ten year old child in this. Though he's still introverted and socially retarded, there will be differences, subtle ones mind you, but differences all the same. I'm trying to keep L's reaction to meeting a Shinigami (at the dead of night ¬.¬) realistic and what have you, and I'm trying to convey Fen's character too.
Not sure if I'm succeeding D:
And to answer a question from a reviewer, the story won't be focused entirely on L's childhood, it'll actually progress throughout his teenage years and how he was able to create his reputation of being the top detective in the world. So it'll be a loooooong story. Very long.
Huge.
Everyone thank Tensei-chan for looking over this as my usual beta went on a trip!
Criticism welcome!
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"It's amazing how they always solve the mystery before they run out of pages."
-- Marge, The Simpsons
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CHAPTER 001: FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Night time in the human world was beautiful.
In the Shinigami world, the realm was in a perpetual state twilight, the sky a broken smog of grey, ebony, navy, and sometimes a streak of silver blending in with the jagged horizon that was as equally depressing as the sky. But here, in the human world, the sky was a navy blue, or inky darkness patterned with twinkling silver stars. The air was…was alive and not at all stale and rotting like the Shinigami World.
Ah…what was it the Spanish for it…Heuco Mundo?
Heh. That suited it. Hollow World indeed.
But Fen digressed.
The human world, from what he had gathered from personal experience, (granted, this 'personal experience' is from trekking highways and countless fields of creatures called 'sheep' – that scared the crap out of him, they were the very epitome of creepiness) was so interesting. Even if it smelt bad and the humans' stupid little inventions were loud and aggravating, there was something different around each corner, unlike the Shinigami World where you could travel north, south, east, west for miles and still see the same catatonic Shinigami and serrated stalagmites wherever you go.
To conclude his internal monologue in an easy sentence; the human world pwned the Shinigami World.
Fen heaved a sigh, the blades of grass under his three toed feet oddly pleasant as his glowing gold eyes smouldering in his skull mask's sockets surveyed his surroundings. The tugging was rather insistent now, coming from the rather grandiose building across of the impressive lawn. The sign near the heavily surveillance gates called it Wammy's House – Orphanage for Gifted Children, something that made the Shinigami's heart sink with despair.
A child had his precious killing tool. A stupid, impressionable, innocent child! He won't have to suffer through wailing and irritating questions for more then a few months, he'll have to suffer through it for years!
What was that noise? Oh, it was his tortured soul screaming as it did a suicide leap into the black hole that was once his heart.
Ambling across the lawn, Fen decided to forgo the front door and embedded his claws into the outside wall, gouging out foot holds as he scaled the red bricked wall up to the highest window with the light still on. Hell, if the brat was still up, he might as well scare the shit out of it for kicks. Maybe make it scream and laugh at it.
Grunting, Fen allowed a hollow snicker to overlap the chirp of crickets in the otherwise silent night; time to play with this brat who had the audacity to claim a Shinigami's Death Note.
Let the fun begin. Fen thought maliciously as he phased through the closed window and into the brat's room.
X.x.X
L was intrigued.
It seemed that through an extensive search, the last three names were recorded as dead from the same thing. The last person written in the 'Death Note', Paul Johnson, died a mere ten hours ago of a heart attack, twenty minutes before he picked up this notebook. No one knew why; as he was a perfectly healthy, thirty three year old male, but it was written off as purely natural.
The second last name, Francois Gould, died twenty six years ago of the same thing, heart attack. Except she was some low classed prostitute who didn't make it past twenty so the only recordings she had was her birth certificate, a police record and her death certificate. So her death was regarded as either overdose or natural heart failure from her unsavoury lifestyle.
The third last name, Adolf Schwarz, was tricky to get, as his death was just before the turning of the twentieth century. Deaths weren't recorded electronically then, but the man was an important official of some sort in Germany, so his name was updated in the database once storing Death Certificates on the computer was mandatory. He also died of a heart attack at age fifty nine, completely natural.
He presumed that the names before those three happened too far back to be found on the Internet or government files, or even on paper. It seemed that from the bottom up, the further back in time the people's deaths were. This increased the Death Note's authenticity by seven per cent, but it could've been some strange heirloom passed through a family, or between friends of certain people dying of heart attacks.
People are strange creatures, so it was plausible.
Sighing, L turned his wide eyes to the digital clock on his desk, put there solely to spruce up his almost sterile room. The red digits proudly proclaimed it to be past 2am in the morning, Tuesday, slowly ticking towards another completely boring, mundane day. He would hold onto the Death Note for a little while longer, just to try and crack the puzzle.
He liked solving puzzles, and this seemed like a good challenge.
The easy option would be to try it out, but L had no place to judge someone to death for the sake of proving if something was real or not. He will try to find out the other names, or perhaps wait for this 'Shinigami' to reclaim its lost item.
The latter made the young prodigy shudder. Shinigami weren't real, and L did not believe in the paranormal, but the illogical part of L's mind almost whimpered in fear of being confronted by an angry God of Death searching for its lost killing tool. He immediately shook that foolish image from his mind, if there was an explanation for what the books does, aimed at humans and in multiple languages so people could understand, then there was an off chance that humans may use it and are expected to use it.
What is he thinking?! This isn't real! He should just write a name an-
L abruptly leapt from his awkward seating position and away from the innocent looking notebook, obsidian eyes wider then normal. There was something off about the book, and if he was willing to think irrationally, it almost seemed like it was calling out to him with the siren song of curiosity to just…just try it out.
All he'd had to do was write a name, right?
But…on the eight per cent chance it worked, he'd be a murderer…and if he turned himself in, the police wouldn't believe a kid, genius though he may be, confessing to the crime via a Death God's notebook. He'd be sent to a mental institute!
Maybe…he should give it to Mr. Wammy after all…
"What? You haven't written in it yet?" A husky, hollow voice grumbled in lazy Japanese directly behind him, disappointment evident.
L froze up, his breath catching in his throat. It couldn't be…no. No, his imagination was fabricating the voice! If he turned round, there will be nothing there! He always did have a vivid imagination, and his distaste for the supernatural was the cause of his nightmares when he was younger, all about monsters and the like. Succumbing to that childishness once more was degrading to his superior intellect.
"Hey? Ya deaf, brat?" Irritation was clear in that voice, muffled as it was, and there was a steady thump of heavy, clawed, footsteps dragging closer, a gently swish of some form of appendage brushing against his fluffy carpet. "Or are ya too scared t' turn round?" A mocking tone, the figment of his imagination's shadow looming over him threateningly.
L swallowed, slowly pivoting on his heel and straightening from his protective slouch. He was met with an almost anorexic looking abdomen, thin layer of silvery fur softening the sharp curves of sinewy muscles, and dragged his wider the usual obsidian eyes to meet hellish gold eyes burning in the eyes sockets of a great skull mask, wild mane of silver hued hair surrounding the mask and adorned with bedraggled black feathers.
It looked like some odd amalgamation of an anorexic werewolf, a unisex shaman and a bipedal lizard.
"What's wrong?" L knew that under the skull mask (absently, the prodigy noted it was some form of canine, a wolf perhaps) this creature was grinning maliciously at him, golden eyes alight with glee. "Cat got ya tongue, brat?" The demon's tail swished to the side as it bent over its impressive eight foot tall form, hellish eyes meeting the trembling child's with vindictive pleasure. "You have somethin' that belongs t' me, Lawliet."
L swallowed down the reflexive surprised gasp and slouched over once more, steeling his obsidian eyes. He could not be intimidated. If this creature wished to kill him, it would've done so already instead of confronting him.
Unless it likes to play with its victims…
"If it is a black notebook labelled 'Death Note'," L began in accented Japanese, keen eyes logging away the subtle shifts in glowing gold eyes. "Then it is your own fault for dropping it."
The young prodigy held his breath as the demon stared at him, before a low wheezing noise echoed in its skull mask. Warily, L blinked owlishly back as the creature straightened up to throw back its head, howling in wild mirth with a grating, annoying laugh.
What was so funny?
"Gyahahahahahahaaaa! Well, well, well, Brat." The creature wiggled its tail in a pleased manner, aura changing from malevolence to languid amusement. "Here I was, gonna peg ya as some snot nosed urchin who'd bore the hell outta me. But now I see…" It wheezed out that grating laugh once more. "Heheheheh…I think this is gonna be interestin'."
"Interesting? Don't you wish to reclaim your Death Note?" L asked curiously, suspicious of this creature's devil-may-care attitude.
"Ya kiddin'?" The demon snorted, brushing past the young human to hover over the open notebook. "Th' Shinigami world is a drag. I don' wanna return there immediately, might as well take a vacation fer a month or two…" It glanced over its shoulder, golden eyes glittering in a way that showed it was grinning under its mask. "As far as I'm concerned, ya can keep th' damn thing s'long as ya keep me entertained."
L gnawed on his thumb, looking between the Death Note and the amused creature with anxiety. "So it is authentic? It can actually kill people with just a name?"
"And a face." The demon added, voice hushed, picking the notebook up between clawed fingers and holding it out to the human. "I'm guessin' there's a person that ya want dead, right? Ya can kill 'im in any way tha' ya want if ya detail th' death after writin' th' name within 6 minutes an' forty seconds…"
Disgusted, L stepped away from the creature and shook his head violently, teeth clamping down on his thumb hard enough to break the skin. The tang of blood made the uneasiness in his stomach curdle nauseously. "I am not a murderer." He muttered agitatedly. "I wish to become a detective and becoming a murderer will hinder that wish."
"Really now?" With a snort, the demon dropped the notebook back onto the human's desk. "Well, I can wait fer a while. Shinigami have perfected patience after all." L knew it was grinning at him. "Jus' know that it's always there fer ya t' write in."
"It is too bad, then, that I will never use it." L retorted, turning stiffly from the grinning demon and shuffling towards his bed. He crawled atop of it, hugging one of the many fluffy pillows as he glanced cautiously at the creature.
L was a private person. Even at his young age of ten years, he was paranoid and perfected the art of holding his secrets close; which was why he felt his nerves begin to fray under the intense scrutiny of this hellish demon. "Is there something else? If not, could you please leave?" The human pressed, shrinking back against his pillows.
The creature chuckled again. "Nah. S'long as ya hold th' Death Note, I'll follow ya until th' day you die…" The creature paused. "Oh. I jus' remembered! I didn' introduce myself, did I? How rude, eheheh…"
"You are Fen, correct?" L hazarded, hugging the pillow he was clutching tighter. "The God of Death?"
"Uh huh." The God of Death, or rather, Fen, bobbed its head and squatted beside the desk, shifting its position until it was comfortable.
L paused before asking almost hesitantly. "How…how did you know my name?"
"Magic." It scoffed gruffly before shaking its head. "Nah. We Shinigami have our eyes t' thank fer that. We can see a human's name an' lifespan with our eyes…" Fen jerked its head slightly, as if it wanted to add more, but fell silent instead, settling for staring shamelessly at the new owner of his Death Note.
L, not to be outdone where unblinking staring was involved, stared right back with his disturbing wide eyes. He mixed the information he had gathered in his head, mulling over the possibilities he had with the power of a Death God. He finally lied down in his puffy nest of pillows, not breaking eye contact with the Shinigami. "And is there any way that a human in possession of a Death Note will be able to gain the power of a Shinigami's eyes?"
Fen suddenly looked gleeful. "Yeah! We can swap eyes. It's painless and'll only take a few seconds." Its tail, coiled tightly round its splayed claws, betrayed its amusement with a series of sporadic twitches. "An' weighin' th' pros an' cons, the price fer 'em ain't half bad."
"Don't tell me." L suddenly cut in, allowing his eyes to close and pressed his face against the cool fabric of his pillow. "I have no inclination of participating in the deal. I was simply curious." Maybe if he fell asleep, and woke up, all this madness would be behind him.
Wishful thinking. But he didn't care.
"Heh. Yeah, right. Curious." The Shinigami shifted its position once more before falling silent, not saying another word.
Unsurprisingly, L didn't fall asleep at all that night.
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A/N: There we go, much longer then the prologue by at least 1000 words (dances). Things really kick off next chapter!
Oh, what'll really help is if you put in your review on what kind of character Fen strikes you as, need to see if I portrayed him alright…and I hope you enjoyed and that everything was in character! Stay tuned for the second chapter!
NEXT CHAPTER: SHADOW
Raito: I can't believe I'm not in this story!
L: I cannot believe I am a child.
Fen: An' I can't believe tha' it's not butter. Hell yes, I scared th' crap outta ya, Lawliet XD
L: (Stares) At least I am a canon character.
Fen: …Touché.
Raito: (Huffs) This is going to be my only role in this story, isn't it? Ah well, it's a stupid story anyway. Next chapter is Shadow! More L and that poser, Fen…
Fen: Aw, don' worry, pretty boy! I'm sure th' authoress will write a story centred on ya soon! A…heated story, gyahahahaha…
Raito: I don't like that laugh.
L: We have wasted enough time. (Walks away)
Raito: Hey! (Follows L)
Fen: …They left me all alone. Oh well, now they won' hear my warnin' 'bout an LxRaito lemon th' authoress is writin'! Gyahahahaahahaha!
KIVAEMBER OUT!
