"Mel, wake up!"

"Matt…whatthefuckdoyouwant…"

Mello opened his eyes a little and found his gamer friend hovering next to his bed. "Goooo awaaay…" he mumbled, rolling over and pulling the covers up a bit further. "I need sleeeeep…"

"Mel, you have to get up!" Matt said, a note of urgency in his voice. "You've been sleeping! You slept for, like, sixteen hours or something!"

"Mmffg…whattimeisit?" Mello asked, still not fully comprehending what Matt was telling him.

Matt checked his watch quickly. "It's 8:54," he announced. "Get up!"

"Matt…mfgf…Idontcare…letmesleep…" Mello slurred into his pillow.

"Mello, we have about six minutes to get to the history exam!"

That got Mello's attention.

"History exa…OH, FUCK!" Mello's brain instantly left 'sleep' mode and switched into 'turbo overdrive'. He jumped out of his bed, nearly landing on Matt, and dashed over to his desk. "Why didn't you wake me up earlier?!" he moaned as he grabbed his carrier bag and began jamming all the books and notes on his desk into it.

"To be honest, I overslept too," Matt admitted as he watched his friend. "Possibly because you smashed the alarm clock last week."

Mello would have thrown something at Matt if he wasn't so busy cramming things into his carrier bag. Instead, he settled with yelling "You could have bought a new one!" and pushing the last bunch of papers into his bag with unnecessary force.

All his preparation was wasted. Near would beat him again, and he would still be second in everything. This was all Near's fault, Mello thought. He didn't know how, but somehow it all came back to Near. As he searched fruitlessly for his shoes, Mello tried to come up with a reason that this could be the albino boy's fault. Finally, a few seconds after Matt had informed him that he was already wearing his shoes, Mello forced himself to admit that Near wasn't to blame here.

"I hate that stupid fucking alarm clock," he said sourly as he followed Matt out the door.

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Mello's mood improved considerably when he and Matt arrived at their history classroom and discovered that they had managed to arrive just in time to avoid being late. He sat in his usual seat (the very last seat on the left-most row – as far away from Near as possible) and extracted a chocolate bar from one of the little outside pockets of his carrier bag. It wasn't a good idea, he had learned long ago, to take any test on an empty stomach. And even if he had a full stomach, it was still good to eat chocolate before a test. Chocolate made everything so much easier.

The teacher, a balding man in his forties called Mr. Dolle, cleared his throat loudly. Most of the chatter in the room died down quickly, save for a few conversations. When the room was finally silent, Mr. Dolle spoke.

"I hope all of you have studied for this exam," he said in a serious voice. "Whether you have or you haven't, you may take a few minutes to quickly look over your notes before the exam starts."

Mello snorted as most of the class immediately pulled their notes out and began studying frantically. He found it rather amusing that a class full of geniuses didn't know that studying things immediately before a test actually led to worse performance.

Instead, Mello opened his bag and began searching for his class notebook. He'd fill up a few pages with doodles of chocolate bars to pass the time. His bag was a mess, since he'd just shoved everything carelessly into it, and so he had to thumb through everything inside item by item: a history textbook, a bundle of notes on the Napoleonic Wars, his math notebook, more history notes, Matt'sPokémon Red strategy guide – how the hell had that gotten in there? – a copy of Macbeth, a lot more effing notes, a black notebook with silver lettering on the front –

It took a moment for Mello to recognize the black notebook. He pulled it out of his bag and examined it again – it was more interesting than doodling in his missing history notebook, anyway. Maybe he could ask Matt about it now.

"Matt," he whispered. Matt didn't appear to hear him; instead, he was occupied with some last-minute studying. "Maaattttt." No answer.

Mello ripped a page out of the notebook, balled it up, and lobbed it at the back of Matt's head. The gamer gave a slight twitch and turned around.

"What do you want?" he hissed, looking rather uncharacteristically annoyed at having been interrupted.

"Is this yours?" Mello asked, holding up the notebook so that Matt could see it.

"No, it's not," Matt whispered back. "I'm trying to study now, Mells. Can't you save throwing things at me for later?" He reached down, picked up the ball of paper, and tossed it back at Mello, who caught it in his hand. Then he turned back around. Mello stared absent-mindedly at the back of his friend's head.

So, if the notebook wasn't Matt's, whose was it? …More importantly, why the hell did Mello even care? It wasn't like someone was going to die if he didn't find out who it belonged to.

Eh, whoever owned it probably wouldn't mind if he doodled a little in it.

Mello reached into his carrier bag and fished a pen out of it. Then he opened the notebook up to a random page and went to place his pen on the paper.

Damn it, this page was used. Somebody had filled it up with rows of Japanese characters that Mello was too lazy to translate. He flipped to another page. More rows of Japanese stuff. The next few pages were like that, too. All written in neat little columns, like an accountant's book.

God, whoever wrote this had a bad case of OCD.

…Hang on, there was something in English. It wasn't written in a column like the rest of the stuff had been; instead, it had been scrawled diagonally across the entire page.

"LIND L. TAYLOR"

That name rang a bell in Mello's head. He had the nagging feeling that he'd heard it somewhere before.

"All right, put your notes away," said Mr. Dolle. "The exam will start as soon as I've finished handing out your test papers." He had a pile of blank exam packets in his arms, and he began passing them out after he spoke. Mello jammed the notebook back into his carrier bag, still wondering about that name.

Lind L. Taylor.

Damnit, where the hell had he heard that name before?

And why do I even give a fuck? Mello thought as Mr. Dolle placed an exam on his desk. There were more important things to pay attention to, namely beating Near. He picked up his pen and began filling out the exam. As always, Mello was completely prepared, knowing every answer by heart. He always did.

All that Mello had ever wanted was to be the best at something, anything. As a small child, Mello was never first. His needs were always second to the wants of others. When he'd first come to Wammy's, he'd been so determined to make sure that everyone remembered him as number one, and nothing less.

And he'd tried so hard. But Near, without trying, always left him in second place. Mello hated Near so much. It wasn't enough that the bastard was next in line for L's spot – Near didn't even seem to care about L. Mello remembered that night that the entire population of Wammy's had been gathered around the television in the rec room, watching what they thought was a live broadcast from Japan. He had been so scared for L as he heard the great detective challenge Kira, taunt him, invite him to take his life. And then he'd looked over and seen Near sitting on the floor, doing a fucking puzzle, as if nothing out of the ordinary were going on. It made him sick –

Mello actually twitched slightly, causing his pen to leave a jagged diagonal mark across the exam paper.

He had just remembered where he'd heard the name Lind L. Taylor before.

Lind L. Taylor had been the man that pretended to be L. Kira had killed him on television the night that L had challenged the mass-murderer to try and kill him.

So this did have something to do with Kira. Interesting. And since Matt had said he didn't own it, there were two possible explanations. The first was that Matt had lied to him; Mello immediately dismissed this as impossible, because he knew Matt well enough to know when the gamer was telling the truth and when he wasn't. The second was that someone else had intentionally placed the notebook in his room. This explanation raised other questions: was this intended as a prank? It was a really stupid one, if so. And if it wasn't a prank, then what was it?

Sometimes Mello wondered if he thought too much. It was just a stupid notebook, after all.

Still, he was curious now, and his curiosity temporarily over-rid the part of his mind that was trying to convince him to return to his exam. He wanted to have another look at that Japanese stuff in the notebook.

But, of course, Mello knew he couldn't just pull it out and start reading it in the middle of class; the teacher would assume that he was trying to cheat. He briefly considered asking to be excused to use the bathroom, but then an even better idea hit him.

Mello reached inside his desk and extracted the balled-up page that he'd thrown at Matt before. Smoothing it over on his knee, where nobody could see it, he read the neat, annoyingly organized series of Japanese characters. Mello wasn't exactly fluent in Japanese, but he could read it well enough to get by – after all, the number of manga comics that Matt kept scattered around their room made it rather difficult not to pick up some bits and pieces of the language.

It took Mello a moment to mentally translate what was written, and even then there were parts he didn't understand, but all in all he could read enough of it to get an idea of what it said. It was odd, because it was just a list of names. No other information. Just names. As he looked down the page, Mello discovered a name that he recognized – carefully written near the bottom of the page, between Hiroshi Maeue and a name that he couldn't read: Dennis Rader. He knew that name – Dennis Rader was an American serial killer whose case Mello had written a report on for his psychology class the previous year. What was more, Mello had seen on TV that Rader was believed to have been one of Kira's early victims. He looked up and stared absent-mindedly at Matt's hair as he ran this information through his head.

So, whoever had owned the notebook had been using it to record the names of people that Kira had killed. If Mello's reasoning was correct…Well, he'd have to wait until he could look closely at the notebook, but Mello was positive that all the other names would probably correspond to people that Kira had killed.

Which meant, of course, that this person had been following the Kira case very closely.

Mello was about to consider the possibilities that arose from this line of thinking when he heard Mr. Dolle's voice.

"Mello, please concentrate on your exam, and not on the back of Matt's head," Mr. Dolle said.

"Wuh?" Mello said, his eyes darting over to the teacher's desk. "Oh, right. Sorry." He looked down at his exam, deciding to take advantage of the fact that Mr. Dolle didn't know what he was actually doing. When Mr. Dolle had resumed grading papers, Mello quietly folded up the piece of paper in his lap and slid it into his pocket. He could figure this out later – Matt's computer would probably aid his investigation immeasurably.

Now, that test…

Mello found the jagged squiggle that marked where he'd left off before ("List the countries that made up the Second Coalition Against France from 1798 – 1801.") and resumed writing:

Russia

Britain

Austria

Ottoman Empire

Portugal

Naples

Vatican

"Ah…M-Mello…" Matt's voice whispered. A second later, the gamer reached back and shook Mello's desk slightly. "Mello!"

"Matt, not now," Mello whispered, not looking up. He didn't want to get kicked out of class, at least not before he finished his test. "Whatever it is, talk to me after class about it." Twirling his pen in his fingers, Mello read the next question on the exam ("List the countries that made up the Third Coalition Against France in 1805."). He thought for a moment, mentally bringing up the answers he'd memorized, and then began writing:

Austria

Great Britain

Russia

Swe

Mello never finished writing Sweden, because his desk gave a very sudden, very violent jerk. He growled and looked up.

Matt was leaning back in his chair, twisting around to face Mello. One hand was on the edge of the blond's desk, while the other was pointing towards the teacher's desk. He gave a quick glance towards that direction, then looked back at Mello and mouthed, 'Look!'

After staring at Matt for a moment, Mello turned his head slightly to look at the front of the classroom. Almost immediately, he turned so white that he momentarily resembled a blond Near. Mello opened his mouth, but all that came out was a sort of "eeee" sound.

Standing beside the teacher's desk was the strangest, ugliest thing he'd ever seen in his life. It was far taller than any human and had what seemed to be bandages covering almost all of its form. And, most disturbingly, the yellow, cat-like eye that wasn't obscured by bandages was focused directly on Mello. In addition, Mello suddenly realized, it seemed that he and Matt were the only people who were even aware of this creature's presence. Even Mr. Dolle, who was just inches away from the thing, was calmly grading papers as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.

The gears in Mello's brain started to work furiously as he tried to process what was going on. What was this thing? Why was it staring at him? And why couldn't anyone else see it? His head also cranked out another, rather stupid, question:

'Why is today so full of fucking distractions?'

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Well, there's chapter 2.

In other news, I need a beta-reader. If anyone's interested, feel free to volunteer.

Review, or I will hunt you down and take off your face with my hatredcopter.