7. A Much Better Chapter
Near sometimes got sick of being Near. Especially fanfic!Near. Regular Near was a genius and had a lot of complex personality traits. But nobody liked them because that is hard to write, so in fics he was usually either a monotone robot/social retard; Hannibal Lecter; or blushing, shy, abused uke. He was obviously the first one (the robot-one) in this, but he was equally sick of all of the others. Switching personalities was kind of Matt's thing, but he decided to switch anyway... To someone else's personality.
He couldn't switch to Matt's personality, because that could be whatever the author makes up using smoking and videogames as the only anchors. It could even be his old personality, which would be a cruel twist of fate, but not interesting at all, so he just decided to go with the only other person he knew: Mello.
"Why can't I be the jerk to move the plot forward?" he thought aloud, now wearing Mello's clothes from the bag he stole on the way out of the hotel room. In his tight leather, he finally felt like he fit in as a white-haired anime character.
"Are you asking me?" A random geisha or gothic Lolita asked.
"Oh, sorry. Just thinking aloud," he apologized. Then continued, forcing himself not to look at a particularly awesome robot, "What is this thing we're on?"
"You mean the crosswalk?" she quirked, "That's how you cross the street."
"Woa," he gasped. "I'm totally doing it."
"Doing what?"
"Using it," he answered, unhelpfully, "All by myself."
"Uhh. You're hot and everything; like, with that shirt and all, but… could you not talk to me anymore?"
"I'm just thinking aloud," he said brushing her off.
"You're really a jerk, you know that?"
"You think so? Already?" he wondered, thinking how wonderful it was to have already made a random stranger angry at him like they always were with Mello, "Thank you!" He sighed with genuine delight, fear, and interest.
Near hugged the stunned and unimportant geisha/gothic Lolita non-character and ran across the next crosswalk feeling all kinds of emotions. He took a swig of Mello's left over chocolate whiskey from the knapsack. It still tasted like brown piss on fire, but he pretended it didn't.
"Piquant," he observed, devilishly, cheerfully, and full of disgust. "Piquant as shit!"
Matt was sick of being pulled in two directions by the more interesting characters, and not knowing the plan. He was not a second-tier character. And I don't mean in the sense that he is not really a character, because that shit's getting worn out. He didn't want to go through that again. He just wanted to know the plan. And to be a consistently-written character. But I only have time for one of those things in this fic.
After leaving the hotel to get away from Mello and find Near and the plans, he lit up a cigarette, and paused to change his personality.
"Oh my god!" he said, different from the way he was in the last chapter. "I just let everything fall apart in the last chapter!"
Being a genius, he calculated that neither Mello or Near would resolve the fight, they could hold a grudge for YEARS, no matter how self-destructive and harmful to their goals.
"That means I have to fix it."
Mello didn't want to be in the 'sick-of' theme. He was feeling depressed. Just depressed, he didn't even bother to have more than one emotion.
Was this why he was always second? Because he treated people as expendable and put himself on a pedestal above others? He was dangerously close to introspection when he realized that there was no money for the hotel room, and that he should defiantly break out now.
"Why didn't those guys just listen to me and do what I say? I'm everyone's favourite character!" he sulked, creeping down the fire escape. "All I want is to be number one, but everyone keeps throwing obstacles at me!"
Just then his pants caught and tore on the rusted metal of the ladder.
"WTF, Life? I'm just asking for a break here!" he shouted at the sky.
Alone in a stinking alley, surrounded by garbage cans, he realized that he was alone in the city with no money, no friends or family in the world, and torn pants. He was unable to stop his genius mind as he finally hit the conclusion he'd been avoiding, that most of these things were kind of his fault.
He was terrible at being a teenage runaway.
"Near! There you are!" Matt shouted happily, "God, it was easy to find you, were you just going in a circle around these four crosswalks the whole time?"
"Near what?" the white haired anime character said, turning around.
"Oh crap, Kaworu Nagisa."
"Over here, Matt!" Near yelled, stopping Matt from making another out-dated reference. "You, dickhole," he drunkenly added. "Why the fuck would I go around the same four crosswalks over and over again? I'm a genius so I pretty much figured that shit out immediately."
"Near, get over here and tell me the fucking plan!" Matt called back.
"Make me!" Near said, running in the other direction, "I don't take orders from you!"
"Near, what's gotten into you?"
"I'm a cocksure asshole from now on!"
"Well, I'm everybody's frigging mom for the rest of this chapter. Get your ass over here, mister. You don't have a middle name, but you can bet I'd be breaking it out for this occasion!"
"OH, are you going to give me a spanking?" he stopped.
"WTF?" Matt yelled, tripping over the short albino Mello.
"That's right, I hit on everyone now too!"
"You two are ridiculous," came a flat, emotionless voice from the alley.
"Mello! Thank Christ, two birds with one stone," Matt sighed with motherly relief.
Mello popped his head out of the alley dumpster, his face a mask of severe indifference.
"Why are you eating out of bins, Mello?" Near asked with several misplaced emotions at once.
"Mello, you're not even starving. It's only been, like, just a few hours since you ate." Matt chafed.
The blonde just shrugged and impassively sank to one knee on the ground in the filthy alley, "He took my chocolate rations," he tonelessly accused, pointing a listless finger toward the white-haired dopplegänger.
"Mello, we were looking for you." Matt soothed.
"No we weren't," Near smugged with drunken, cheerful abrasiveness, "Matt was chasing me. You were just here… I hate you."
"Near is drunk," Mello observed.
Near answered by holding the bottle to his lips, tipping it straight up and swallowing thrice in succession, while looking Real Mello straight in the eye.
"Barely buzzed," he smirked. He tried to wink, but he was missing the coordination for it, so it was just a regular blink.
"If Near hates me so much, then why is he acting like me?" The sloppy, taller, blonder Near smirked back, curling his long hair around his finger indifferently.
"Because… you blondie, blonde… blonde douchbag," he slurred, "everyone loves you!"
He began to recreate a little scene by himself, "Oh, hey, Mello beat us up! Funny. Let's go talk to Mello later so he can beat us again. And then let's be mean to Near, unless we need homework help, because he is quiet and doesn't have any friends and we are jealous of how smart he is!"
"Oh, Near," Matt attempted to comfort, but his soothing hand was quickly slapped away.
"Oh my God, Mello! We're fangirls," Near continued, waving his hands, "We like you even though you do terrible things, and we don't like Near because he looks creepy! Mello can get away with anything he wants… Mello is pretty."
"Was that last part the fangirls, or you talking?" Mello asked placidly, still dexterously coiling his long blonde hair.
Near stared angrily transfixed for a moment, then just drunkenly forgot what he was talking about and asked, "Can I touch your hair?"
"Near does not know what it is like to be Mello," the monotone blonde answered, "Mello doesn't think things through and gets himself and others into trouble all of the time. It hurts Mello the most when his actions get innocent people in trouble just for trusting him."
"Aw, Mello," Matt's hand was quickly slapped away again.
"Near is the one who takes cautious and mitigated risks, and patiently fixes things when they go bad."
"Hey!" Near observed loudly, blinking his sore, watery eyes, "You mean like how we're opposite-doing now!"
"Damn, you're dunk, Near," Mello rolled his eyes.
"Nooooooo! Fuck you losers, I'm great."
"Near!" Matt scolded, tired of being ignored, "stop being a dick! "And Mello," he yelled at the seated orphan, "start being a dick again!"
"Oh my God, you nerd," Mello brusked, "calm the fuck down!"
"Good start, Mello," Matt encouraged.
"Well I…" Near proclaimed, "I.. don't feel well," he trailed off.
"Check him for alcohol poisoning," smirked Mello.
"I hate you, Mello," Near gagged, as the blonde boy held him up gently.
Mello tried to think of something amusing to say back, but the well-dressed albino started to vomit on the ground; Matt hoped that this part of the adventure had come to a close; Near puked up most of the horrible chocolate whiskey. Everybody had learned important lessons about whatever.
"Look, I've got our disguises," Matt told the others, "Let's just put them on, and tell me the plan, and then do the plan. I'm pretty anxious to just get our revenge and get on with our lives. And I assume that the plan covers what we will do for the rest of our lives as destitute, stateless orphans."
"It sure as fuck does!" the real Mello shouted with disgust and enthusiasm, as he changed behind a dumpster into a yellow jumpsuit with a black stripe on the side and brandished a katana.
Near straightened the buttons on his suit and handed Matt a pair of shorts and a wig.
"Ok, what are you supposed to be?" Matt asked, bemused, "Also, I think that you've confused disguises with Halloween costumes, but whatever."
"I'm Mr. Blonde," Near told him flatly, combing back his hair with gel. "We are disguised as 'every Quentin Tarantino movie'. I am also John Travolta's character from Pulp Fiction. Mello wanted to be Mr. Blonde as well, but he is just The Bride."
"That's right! Because we're going to KILL L," Mello yelled shoutilly.
"WHAT?" Matt screamed dramatically.
"Yeah…" Mello apologized, "I wanted us all to be Kill Bill characters, but then Near said that you and him would have to be our own antagonists, because we can't all be The Bride, but I said that's fine, because I also want to be Lucy Liu, but then he brought up Mr. Blonde from Reservoir Dogs and I was like-"
"I MEAN ABOUT KILLING L, NOT THE COSTUMES! ARE YOU SERIOUS?"
"Um… yes? Duh."
"L is the reason for our problems, Matt," Near added.
"L picked a different successor, Matt. Someone who's not any of us."
"We deduced that this was the case when Roger made his plan. Why else would Whammy's death mean that L's need for a successor was void?"
"We are going to Kill L, then Roger, and then the mystery successor and take their places!" Mello shouted, practicing katana stances.
"I… I can't believe you guys… You're… like, evil or something…"
The others looked at him unnervingly with their cracked-out-intimidating/creepy-horrormovie-kid stares. Then, at the same time, began to laugh uproariously, for way too long, and then way, WAY too long.
"No, no, no," Near trailed off…
"Stupid Matt," Mello wiped away a tear of laughter.
"We're morally ambiguous!" They said in unison. "That's just how this series is!" They continued, also in unison.
"Oh my god…" Matt blanched.
"Now let's get you a tourniquet," Mello laughed irreverently, putting his arm around his redheaded friend, "You're Cherry Darling from Grindhouse."
"Guns are not legal in Japan, so we have another katana for your leg," Near explained blankly.
"What do you need a katana for?" Matt snapped.
"Do you watch any movies, Matt?" Mello asked peevishly.
"Of course I do. But you can't base all these jokes on specific, old-timey, obscure stuff I haven't seen and expect me to get them. Since when do you two watch movies together?"
"We did not. We watched them separately," Near dryly explained.
"Let's just write 'gun' all over his thighs with sharpy," Mello sighed.
I am not sorry about all the Quentin Tarantino references. :-| It is your own fault for not watching all of his movies.
Cherry Darling has a gun for a leg. The joke was they are going to cut off his leg. This won't happen and also won't ever be mentioned again, that is not the cliffhanger. Kill L is the cliffhanger.
