Death Note Alternate Reality- Welsh Edition
Chapter 3- Writing oneself into a corner
Dean Street Lecture Theatre, Bangor, Gwynedd, North Wales, two weeks later
Within a fortnight, Matt had managed to kill exactly fourteen British criminals on parole, all in a different, yet somewhat suitable manner. He had forced an unrepentant rapist to castrate himself and die of blood loss shortly after, and had caused a gangster who had accidentally killed a child in the midst of a gang war to die after anonymously placing flowers by the child's grave before collapsing from food poisoning.
However, one thing he had been forced to do, hence his choice of British criminals on parole in particular, was have every single one of them buy a crate of apples and send them to his address, and every single day barring weekends, when the Ffriddoedd mail office wasn't open, he would pick up the crate from the criminal which had died two days prior, and thus he was keeping Ryuk somewhat satisfied.
Sitting through his lectures, Matt had been writing in a very different kind of notebook on the morning of November the twentieth, and seemed to have been getting away with it despite the sociological strain of concealing his guilt was at breaking point. Quite suddenly, within a lecture, Matt turned to a friend of his, and whispered, "...hey, Gary... can I ask you something?"
Gary, a mature-looking, bearded student with a far more manly face than the almost child-like face of Matt, turned to his friend and whispered back, "...sure... but you almost never need to ask about the lectures, it must be something big..."
Matt shook his head, "It's not about the lectures... Gary... you know rapists?"
"Uh... yeah?" Gary asked, somewhat put off by the morbidity of the discussion.
"...do they deserve to die?" Matt asked.
"Well, considering most of them don't hesitate to do it again, I'd say they do." Gary replied, "Why'd you ask?"
Matt shook his head, "I don't know. Really it's something I should ask Halley, what with her being a criminology student. Guess I'm wondering whether the death penalty should be brought back..."
Gary closed his eyes calmly, "Well, it's not like we have any say in it one way or the other."
"...yeah, I guess I just think too much..." Matt mused.
"That's certainly true." Gary said with a laugh, "Anyway, I haven't got any notes on Cephalopods, so is it okay if I listen to the lecture?"
"Yeah... sorry." Matt replied, coughing after he apologised.
Ryuk, who was standing in the left stairway of the lecture theatre, looked over the situation with a patronising grin, "You sure are defensive today, aren't you?"
Matt glanced at the Shinigami, before looking back at his lecturer and scribbling down some notes.
Once the lecture was over, Matt walked with his group of friends, carrying on discussions with his friends and ignoring Ryuk, even when he spoke up. It seemed that Matt was becoming more confident with ignoring the Shinigami now that he had settled into a routine regarding his 'appeasement' of Ryuk.
"Hey! Hey, Matt! Stop talking with your stupid friends and listen to me!" Ryuk shouted.
Matt continued to talk to his friends about the lecture, and the party he was attending that night, causing Ryuk to become a little exasperated.
"Matt! Okay, just listen, even if you can't respond..." Ryuk said, and brought his head close to the just about sane student, "...you'd best find time in between your stupid parties to pick up my apples today..."
Matt paused, and once he let one of his friends finish what he had to say, he said, "...uh, is it okay if we stop by the mail office on our way back to the halls?"
"NO!" a man called Mike sarcastically blared, before saying, "Of course, I need to check my mail anyway."
"Guess we might as well all go, then." Gary said, and a murmur of approval suggested Matt was free to do as Ryuk said.
Matt put his hands behind his head, "I'm glad. Oh... Bitch Hill..."
'Bitch Hill' was the name the students gave to an incredibly steep hill which separated Upper and Lower Bangor, one which was either an exercise regime to climb upwards sober or a slapstick comedy routine for anyone going down it drunk. It was, however, the fastest way for students to get from their halls of residence to their lectures, and thus was a notorious hill indeed.
Climbing up the hill slowly, complaining all the way, the five people Matt was walking with began their usual rants about the hill, all while Ryuk laughed a little to himself.
"It must be difficult for a human student, having to walk everywhere." Ryuk commented, "Then again, humans with cars are more likely to have a fatal accident, so I guess that walking isn't too bad..."
But while Ryuk was content enough to joke about his situation while his entertainment monkey barely retained who he was, there was a certain set of humans who were less content with the situation, and seemed to have noticed a certain... odd streak in current events.
MI5 surveillance and intelligence sector, Thames House, London, England, during former events
An anonymous agent known by the alias of 'Derek Deacon' was walking into the room he considered his office during what seemed like a relatively quiet time in the Military Intelligence's fifth section, and sat down at one of the many computers that seemed to line themselves in rows at the surveillance sector of the MI-five Headquarters.
Even though the room in general seemed rather relaxed, the man in question was somewhat stressed, as he had noticed a bizarre pattern in recent deaths of criminals. It had seemed that every day, one major criminal that had recently been released for parole had shortly after died, each by varying causes, but all consistent in that the pacing of the deaths were daily, and every single one exhibited bizarre behaviour before they had died.
Namely, there was one thing which standard surveillance of the paroling individuals had revealed before their deaths- they had all recently bought large amounts of fruit at their nearest greengrocer's and then gone to their local post office prior to their deaths.
Although the surveillance had initially been to ensure that no members of the public would be harmed by the paroling criminals, the surveillance had now become more to do with checking for suspicious behaviour before death. Their best theory at the moment was that there was some kind of illegal smuggling operation being fronted by an organisation willing to hire only the worst of the worst, and once their jobs were over, they organised their deaths to act as a way of making sure their mules stayed silent. And currently, Derek Deacon had been placed in the group of agents in charge of looking over all current paroling major criminals in Britain, part of a team of one hundred and fifty, waiting to see if the criminal they happened to be watching over took part in this 'smuggling operation' and died during that same day.
Surely enough, today would be the day that he personally would notice the 'death of the day'. Switching to another CCTV camera's view as his current angle obscured the path of a certain potential 'free criminal' named Zahoor Ahmed, a man who was on bail in Kingston-upon-Hull for a rape trial, and the man was already showing signs that he could be the next to die. He was walking towards a shopping centre called 'Prince's Quay', and had withdrawn a large amount of cash from an ATM.
The agent began to sweat as he saw the man walking into the shopping centre, heading straight for 'Marks and Spencer's: Food'. Once there, he began to speak to the cashier, and seemed to be negotiating something with him. After a short while, the cashier produced a small box, and Zahoor Ahmed walked to the grocery section, and took seven bags of apples from the area of the grocery that had fruit, and returned, placing the apples in the crate. Finally, the man paid for the fruit, and left.
Derek Deacon quickly changed his camera feed again, and as he did, pressed a button on his head-set, "Sir, we may have our 'daily death' right here..."
"Oh? Any signs of planting illegal goods in the fruit crates?" a man's voice asked.
"None at all. This time the shop cashier actually got out a crate and let the potential victim fill the crate himself..." Derek Deacon replied, "...if this is the smuggling operation we think it is, it's got to be incredibly well-coordinated. I doubt that a simple shop cashier is in on this smuggling, even if this Mafia are able to hijack supplies of greengrocers that arrive via lorry..."
"Have you recorded the footage you're taking?" the voice asked.
"Yes, sir." Derek replied, "I shall send it to you if Zahoor Ahmed dies."
The agent continued to watch, occasionally switching view, and eventually the man walked into the middle of a large dual carriageway, and allowed himself to be hit by a large, red car.
"...huh? Sir, Zahoor Ahmed has just died! He just... stopped. He walked into the middle of the road and let himself get hit, and the car didn't even try to stop..." the agent quickly said, panicking a little, "I don't understand... surely a drug smuggler wouldn't willingly let his superiors kill him to keep him silent..."
"Perhaps they were blackmailing him with evidence that could have tipped the favour against him in his upcoming rape trial?" the man on the other end of line suggested, "Have you managed to follow the car that hit him?"
"Sir... the red car just vanished! I tried to keep track of it, but the second I switched cameras, it was as if it was never on the road..." Derek said, his voice wavering.
"This is as bad as I thought..." the man muttered, "This criminal plot is as confusing as the Los Angeles BB Murder cases... we may need to contact Wammy's house. I'll appeal to the higher-ups for Wammy's House's involvement in this case..."
"W-Wammy's House? What's that, sir?" Derek Deacon asked.
"Supposedly the home to some of the greatest detectives in the making there are. While I know it's in England, I know no more about the place. The man who trains these detectives is a man who goes by the name 'L'..." the voice explained, "...they're the best of the best, or at least, that's what the higher-ups say. Send me the footage of the death, the events leading up to the death, and most importantly, the disappearance of the car."
"Yes, sir. Right away..." Derek concluded, and pressed a button to stop the recording software on his computer. Accessing the MI-five Intranet, he used his mailing service to send a message that had the footage he had just witnessed attached to a person known as 'Quartermaster001'. Sending it, the man exhaled deeply. This case certainly felt... unusual, not a typical covert smuggling operation.
The idea that organised crime could be this... well, organised, was a frightening thought to the many agents who were working on this case, and it seemed that the more they theorised on the nature of the so-called 'Mafia' that was working on such a widespread and seemingly random scale throughout Britain, the less likely they were going to understand the situation and be able to act in a way that would lead to the stopping of the elaborate smuggling operation...
Wammy's House, Winchester, England, one day later, around ten o'clock ante-meridian
Quillish Wammy, an ageing, yet successful man, had been proceeding through the day as he normally did- by supervising the children he so dearly loved to work with. Although his fellow supervisor, Roger Ruvie, despised his job as a caretaker, Wammy seemed to enjoy every moment of it, perhaps in part because he was glad to see the one orphan he had invested so much time into doing what he could only say made him proud.
He was sitting beside a laptop computer, looking at the screen and listening as attentively as the children sitting in front of it were, a stoic expression belying his satisfaction.
The computer itself displayed a letter 'L' in the 'Old English MT' font, and was relaying a slightly altered version of a man's voice, who was talking to the children in an almost indifferent, yet bizarrely invested manner, "So, if you ever want to make a particularly unpredictable suspect accidentally confess their guilt, the best thing to do is claim you have a vital piece of evidence against them that is undeniably false to anyone who knows the details of the crime intimately, thus they will give away that they are at least partially involved in the crime... as an example, imagine a man stabbed a woman, and the police had recovered a knife from the crime scene. If you have all but concrete evidence yet a good reason to suspect a killer, the first thing you should tell them is that their fingerprints were on the knife. If they are a..." L cleared his throat over the computer before continuing, "...loose cannon... then they should refute your theory with something, like 'that's ridiculous, because I was wearing gloves'... or at the very least that the killer wore gloves. Hence they reveal vital information with little effort on your part..."
The children were clearly impressed, with the exception of an odd-looking, white-haired child who was simultaneously listening and solving a thousand-piece milk puzzle at the back of the room, who's facial expression was neither impressed nor unimpressed.
Wammy, who had been simply sitting in silence, suddenly got up, and got a mobile phone out of his pocket. He answered the call, saying, "Roger? What is it? Someone's requesting Watari's presence? Requires the service of L? Which organisation? I understand..."
Hanging up, Wammy turned to the computer, and calmly said, "L. The MI-five are requesting your assistance in a case. They claim that it requires someone of your deductive abilities..."
The children of Wammy's house looked to each other, chattering away with excitement. The computer itself, however, remained silent for a while, before it finally said, "What is the nature of the case?"
"They said that they would only share the information with you within the MI5 headquarters..." Wammy replied.
The computer seemed to let out an artificial sigh, "Well, children, it seems that the MI5 are wanting to waste my time, whether I want to waste my time solving a case or not. If the case is interesting, you may have to go without my teaching for some time, and that most likely will mean Roger will be left in charge..."
A simultaneous groan from the children was heard, but among the noise, one quiet voice said, "Would we be able to observe your work?"
The group of children turned to look behind themselves, to the person who had asked the question. The boy didn't even look at the crowd as they turned to him, and continued with his milk puzzle as he spoke again, "...I was wondering if we could be kept up to date with the case..."
L's voice seemed to waver, "The MI-five are understandably fickle about who they allow to access their information and who they do not. After a certain... case with a former Wammy's student, the British Government's trust of Wammy's undergraduates is not exactly high. While I cannot promise you that you will know every detail, I assure you, I will share as much information on the case as possible... that is, provided I want to work on it."
The white haired boy's facial expression seemed to mildly change, if only for a moment, to a smile, "...thank you, L."
"Thank you for approaching your training seriously, Near." L complimented, "It's good to see dedication in my potential successors..."
"I was going to ask that too!" a tall, thin, and rather irritable-looking orange-haired boy shouted.
L sighed, and said, "But, Mello, Near got there first. And getting there first is all that matters. Because, no matter how close you are to your victory, if you don't actually win, you won't get a chance to win again... at least, in real crime-solving..."
Mello scowled, looking at Near bitterly, "Yes, L..."
"Hey, chin up. I'm pretty sure that one day both you and Near will make fine detectives. Even if you don't become 'L', you'll be a great detective in your own right. I think the title 'M' suits you..." L said, a hint of tenderness in his artificial voice.
Wammy cleared his throat, and said, "L, I think it is time that we headed for Thames House..."
"So it is. Goodbye for now. Hopefully, you'll get to see first-hand how detective-work operates..." L concluded, and Wammy proceeded to fold the laptop up, taking it with him as he walked out of the room.
MI5 Briefing Room, Thames House, London, around one post-meridian
The majority of the MI-five intelligence task-force had been called into the briefing room of their headquarters, for the purpose of receiving orders from a mysterious person who was supposedly so unique that he was beyond the hierarchy of the MI-five, and beyond the hierarchy of any government organisation, for that matter, yet was intimately involved with the affairs of all of them.
While some knew the man as 'the world's greatest detective', and others just called him 'the secretary-general', assuming he was affiliated with the UN, most of the higher-ranking agents of the British Intelligence knew this man as 'L'. Despite them all having their own thoughts on the man, very few of them believed that he existed, and assumed he was actually a representative of an organisation, some kind of mouthpiece for something greater.
So, when a tall, slowly-walking man wearing a large, black trench-coat, large fedora hat and face-concealing mask walked into the room, stepping in front of the large audience who had gathered in the briefing room, the area quickly fell silent, wondering what was so important that they had to call such a man over.
Placing a laptop on the table at the very front of the room, the silhouette opened it and faced the audience. Finally, he spoke.
"Greetings. I am the one known as Watari." the man declared, his voice carrying surprisingly well given his mouth covering, "I was called here by the Head Quartermaster of MI-five, and have been discussing a particular case with certain divisions of the surveillance team. After much thought, L has decided to take on the case. L would now like to address the MI-five..."
Pressing a button on the laptop that was beside him, soon a letter 'L' appeared, not only on the computer screen, but on the wall behind 'Watari', provided by a projector at the very back of the room.
"Greetings to all staff of the Military Intelligence, Section five. I am L." the familiar altered voice echoed throughout the room, "I have been recently been informed of a rather odd case indeed. I am indeed aware, thanks to analysis of the news available to the public, that as of just over two weeks ago, one serious criminal which happens to be on parole or on bail, or otherwise free, has died by one cause or another. This information alone made me believe that this was either simple coincidence, or perhaps an incredibly travel-savvy vigilante determined to kill criminals he didn't want to see roaming in the public, making his kills by spiking food and using cars to obscure their identity. However, information not made available to me include the behaviour of such criminals before their deaths. After finding out about this, my thoughts on this case changed. From the records provided to me by the board of Quartermasters, I was surprised to see that every single criminal that died while on parole happened to buy a large crate of fruit from their greengrocer before death, mailing it to an unknown location before being killed in some way. While some died by causes that were certainly caused by external forces, like being hit by a car, or food poisoning, some of these seem likely to have been forced by, as the Quartermasters have suggested, a Mafia, or other form of organised crime. However, this is not an impossibility. The rapist who castrated himself, for example, could have been being blackmailed, and been so genuinely guilt-stricken that he would kill himself in a painful manner. However, others, like the not-yet-convicted Zahoor Ahmed, had no such reason. If he was being blackmailed by the theoretical Mafia, he would by all means perform the operation, but to walk all the way to a dual carriageway and allow himself to be hit by a well-organised Mafia member's car? It seems pretty contrived to do such a thing, even if he believed that life imprisonment was worse than death, to go to such a length to go along with their plan to keep him silent? It seems unlikely. Thus, I propose that this smuggling operation is something a lot more sinister... like they are able to control the minds of their 'mules', or at the very least, are able to manipulate them to the point that they are suicidal. This is perhaps why major criminals are being targeted. The goods which they are smuggling I have yet to ascertain, but for now, the only thing we can do is this... we need to predict the next criminal that will be used. If we can do that, then we can send two agents. One will find out the location which the crates are being sent to by following them until they are finished in the post office, and another will continue following afterwards to confirm their death. Is that understood? Once we figure out where the goods are headed, we can see who it is that's picking up the goods, and from there... how... and why they are doing it..."
One voice called from the crowd, "But L, how will we be able to predict the next Mafia victim?"
The artificial voice seemed to be happy with this question, and replied, "Simple. You may have noticed that all the criminals who have been used for this operation have only been released from their respective prisons within the last five days... while many criminals are always on parole, with pairs of agents only being dispatched for the recently released criminals, we'll have more than enough agents for the job yet be almost guaranteed to come across the next victim..."
The Military Intelligence team seemed genuinely impressed with the man's suggestion, and nodded with approval. 'Watari' decided that enough was enough, and said, "L has concluded his address to the British Intelligence. Good day to you..."
"...no, I haven't." L interrupted his assistant, and continued, "I have one request to make of MI-five which is voluntary. My organisation, known as Wammy's house, has a set of children set to be the world's next generation of greatest detectives. If it is not too much to ask, would you be willing to share information with Wammy's house? The Quartermasters have authorised this, but I will only fully authorise this on the entire organisation's permission... please raise your hand if you will allow this sharing of information..."
The room became alive with discussion, and finally, hands began to raise. After a short while, the majority of the hands in the room were raised.
L seemed to hum through his computer, "...I see. Eighty percent of the room are willing to share information with Wammy's house. In that case... this investigation shall prove to be a great learning exercise for all of my students. Thank you for your co-operation... that is all for now. Goodbye."
With that, the laptop's screen became black, and the image on the wall also faded to the same colour, with 'Watari' folding the laptop over and taking it under his arm. Looking to the crowd of agents, the disguised man concluded his visit with three words...
"Good luck, gentlemen..."
Author's Notes: Surprised?
Well, you shouldn't be! L was one of the characters on the general info on this fic! While Team Kira's canon characters are gonna be absent, why the hell shouldn't Team L's? I mean, Wammy's House is even in England! That's like the posh, north-east, less sheep-rich Wales! Or is Wales just the weird-talking sheep-covered version of England? I'm not really sure...