CHAPTER 12:
"The Return of the Greatest Detective"

Raye eyed the sign. "Why is this familiar?" He said it to himself.

Castra went to scroll in her tablet, as if to get some more information.

Raye then snapped his fingers in recollection. "Yes, now I remember," he said excitedly. "Naomi told me about this place. She said L once told her a story in secret while she was working with him on the BB Murder Case in Los Angeles, California, to garner her confidence. She said L attended an orphanage for gifted children in the United Kingdom. She was an excellent detective for the FBI, so she conducted some research of her own, and learned more about this place: Wammy House. She also said she had a working knowledge of the possible identity of L."

He looked around further.

"Yes," he concluded. "And the description fits from what she told me. There are no pictures on the internet, but she was able to get a friend to send her a photograph someone once took, which I never saw. Unfortunately, then the Kira Case came up, and nothing more was said about it."

Castra then revealed some further background information she managed to find from Quindecim records. When she was finished, they all had a better understanding of its importance. Wammy House was one of several orphanages established by man named: Quillsh Wammy. This particular orphanage was located in Winchester, England, and was initially designed to house exceptionally gifted children. Qullish Wammy was owner of so many patents to products that he could afford his projects with a mere penitence of his large wealth.

"And everyone here uses fake names to protect themselves," Castra then stated. "Or, used to, against Kira."

"That's actually quite smart," Raye said, "considering the advent of Kira, and L's connection to this place."

"His real name is…"

Just then, a small, brown-haired boy came out from behind a slide set in a near-by children's park area. Had he been hiding, or had he been there all along? Had he seen their sudden appearance and heard them talking? He was four feet tall, give or take a few inches, and was well dressed in light brown trousers, brown lofters, a white dress shirt, wearing a checkered, sleeveless vest. Age-wise, he may have been between seven and eight years old.

Neither of the trio knew what do or say as the boy looked at them.

"Are you monsters?" the little boy spoke up. He didn't appear frightened. "He's normal looking," —the boy pointed at Raye— "but you two are very different."

Clavis and Castra looked at each other, they were indeed the odd people out.

Clavis then crouched down slowly, lowering to the boy's height. "Come here, kid. Don't worry, I won't bite." The boy didn't approach, staying near the slide set. Clavis looked up at Castra, but then back again. "No, kid," Clavis smiled, "we're not monsters, and far from it. In fact, we're actually here to hunt one down. Can you take us to the facilitator of this school. And to clarify, he is not the monster. Can you tell me his or her name?"

"It's not a secret," the boy replied. "His name is Roger Ruvie, but we all just call him Roger. He manages Wammy House, solely now, ever since its founder died. We all called him Watari, but that wasn't his real name."

"We know, it was Qullish Wammy, and we found his obituary," Clavis said sombrely. That was a lie. He hadn't read it. All Clavis basically knew about the man was he founded the orphanages.

Castra put a hand on Clavis's shoulder. It was a way to inaudibly say to use a different approach. Kids needed reassurance and trust before they began forfeiting information.

"You are a very well spoken, young man," Clavis went on to say. "Please, lead the way."

The boy shook his head and then folded his arms across his front. "What if you're here to cause mischief or violence? I don't trust you. Besides, you look like a villain from a comic I read. He has green hair, too."

Raye Penber snickered. "Trust me, kid. Clavis is no Joker, at least, not in the literal sense. But he's no Batman."

Clavis asked who that was and Raye said he would tell him later. Raye then took over for Clavis. Maybe a human approach was needed. They were in the Human World, after all.

Clavis stood up, and stepped away to allow Raye to try. Raye didn't crouch, he stood tall and confident. This apparently coaxed the boy out of his hiding spot. Raye had dealt with a few kids in his time, and crouching in front of them showed weakness. One had to be strong. Boy's related bettered to a strong, fatherly figure.

The boy came to him, and looked up. "You're very tall, Mister," he said. "My name is Jayden, or that's what I'm called here. That's not my real name; we don't use our real names for fear of reprisal."

Raye understood the meaning behind the kid's words, but he let the slip in truth lapse. Obviously, telling a bunch of strangers something like that should not have been divulged. "My name is Raye Penber, that's Ray with an 'e'. It's a weird spelling, but that's how my parents wrote it. I'm American, and a former FBI agent. Now I'm working with these two. The green hair fellow is Clavis, and the beautiful, brown skinned woman is named Castra."

Jayden looked at Castra. "She's pretty," he remarked.

"She is indeed, you have good taste," Raye said, and Jayden smiled.

Jayden cocked his head slightly. He looked Raye up and down. Raye had decided to dress in all blacks with a dark trench-coat, it was a fallback to his days with the FBI.

"The FBI: the American Federal Bureau of Investigation," Jayden stated. "L partnered with them on a couple of cases, the latest being in Japan. L was a wonderful detective, but after the Kira Case he started to doubt himself. Then something happened, and he died. They say he had a heart attack."

Raye was careful in what he said next. "So, Jayden, what do you know about the Kira Case?"

"Not much, Near doesn't talk to us about it. He likes his games and puzzles, and keeps a lot to himself. Only, he did say Kira suddenly came back after a year's absence. Now he has disappeared again. It was a very short stint of killing, Near said. Nothing like the previous Kira. This was one an imposer, he said."

Raye looked at Clavis and Castra. This new Kira could not have been Light Yagami, as he was in Quindecim.

Suddenly, a black cat, with green eyes and a bandage around his right front leg, came bolting out from the main doorway. The door was slightly ajar. The cat was instantly recognized as the feline that helped Ginti with his judgements in Quindecim.

"Memine," Clavis said. "You're here already?"

Memine meowed a yes, and then went to Jayden. Jayden picked him up, Memine allowing him to do so. Normally Ginti's cat avoided pretty much everyone, but here, he was being very playful with Jayden, as if to garner trust.

Jayden smiled, and laughed, as Memine rubbed his face all over Jayden's chin; the boy holding him. Then Jayden fell down on his butt. Obviously Memine was slightly heavier than Jayden could handle, or Jayden was holding the cat at an angle that caused him to tip over.
Jayden laughed again despite the fall. There was just something about animals that made kids open up.

Perhaps Memine knew this and had come to help them?

Memine jumped out of Jayden's grip and then sat down proper and started to lick his paws.

"Memine, is Ginti here with you?" Clavis spoke.

Jayden got to his feet, and then began to pet Memine. The cat let him, as he continued to lick his paws.

The boy smiled, and said: "Memine came here with his owner. I think you said his name right. He said his name was Ginti…with an 'i'. He's a very tall and thin man, and he has red, fiery hair. He also brought someone with him who looks like L, but L is dead, so it can't be him. I never take anything at face value. I only saw them once. I never asked a lot of questions. They told me more people would be coming, so I stayed here. And then, you came, appearing out of thin-air, like they did. They said, if you did come, to tell them you were here."

"But you interrogated us before hand, smart kid," Raye said.

"If Memine knows you, then you're not a threat. I trust this cat."

"He's a little ornery where we come from, but to each his own," Clavis put in. "Can you take us to Ginti?"

"First, show me what you have in your bags," Jayden said. "If you have anything like a weapon, you stay here."

They did so, without reservation, spreading everything out on the ground. Jayden picked up Castra's tablet, but it was password protected, so he couldn't get in.

He handed it to Castra with a boyish smile, blushing a little. The boy obviously liked her.

Clavis smiled, when Castra looked at him.

"Okay," Jayden said. "You can come inside now. Follow me when you're ready."

Once they had gathered their stuff together, they followed Jayden through the main doors of the school, and into a foray. Jayden then lead the party down a long hallway that contained classrooms of varying grades. One door was slightly opened, and Castra peaked in. The door was situated at the back of the classroom, no one would see her.

The teacher was educating students no older than Jayden. They were being taught quadratic equations that even some college students would have difficulty with. But these kids, of all nationalities, breezed through them, as if they were mere addition and subtraction pre-school questions.

Suddenly, one boy saw her, and his eyes bulged. Castra put a finger to her mouth to hush him from saying anything, then she left.
They travelled down the same hallway to a set of double doors that needed a digital code to unlock. Once the code was put in, they automatically opened under electrical power. There was a connecting hallway to the main offices and to the church. Clavis took notice of the code and remembered it, as they entered.

Jayden led them to an administrative, wooden office door. He knocked, announced himself, and then said: "The others have arrived."
An older sounding male voice addressed him and then told him that he and the others could come in.

Almost immediately when the door was open to the office, the trio were greeted to a beautiful and heartwarming sight. The young man known as Near, whose real name was Nate River, was hugging the man known in his profile as L with such emotion that it looked like a scene from a movie that portrayed a brother's long lost reunion. Nate River had his arms wrapped around L so tightly that L couldn't move. Tears in his eyes.

L had his hand on Nate River's hair and patted his head gently. L was taller than Nate. He wore casual clothes: blue jeans and a white long sleeve shirt, and he had thick, dark hair.

"Now, now, Nate," L said. "No need to cry."

"But I missed you so much, Louis," Nate said, saying his real name.

"I've known you to be more reserved, Nate. More hard-nose. But I suppose I can understand the reasoning behind this outburst of emotion. I did die after all. But, thanks to a loophole, I was able to come back."

The "loophole" Clavis had learned, when he and Castra spoke to Oculus in the corridor, was that Louis Lawliet had actually written in the Death Note. Even a small mark would be like writing a full name. And as per the rules, he could neither go to Heaven or Hell as a result, and that also meant Reincarnation or the Void.

He arrived at Quindecim years before Light Yagami, and after his awakening, was assigned to Analytical Sciences. He actually helped create a faster processor for the Arbiter's to get their information for them to judge. According to Oculus, Louis Lawliet was instrumental in helping Quindecim run more efficiently.

Even though his body was buried and had decomposed years previously, it was reconstituted and revived. It was a much different process of re-birth than Light Yagami simply going back into the past to reclaim his life. And this was why special permissions and provisions were needed, because it went against the very law of physics. To simply resurrect a person when everyone thought they were dead, cast the very essence of death into doubt.

Both Louis Lawliet and Light Yagami were back amongst the living, now flesh and blood.

Clavis suddenly thought of the old adage of eternal rivals, that even in death, their desire would drive them to chase the other forever. Now, here again, they would be able to begin their rivalry anew.

Ginti was standing off to the side wearing his Arbiter's bartender's uniform. He didn't even bother to change. Next to him was an older gentleman with thinning hair, with glasses, and who stood like he was suffering from a bout of arthritis, hunched over slightly, his arms behind his back, clasping his hands together, as if to give balance.

As they were gathering up their stuff in the courtyard, Jayden had described Roger. Clavis positively identified Roger Ruvie for how Jayden described him.

L turned his head. "Oh, hello," he said, greeting them.

Nate also turned his head, then quickly unlocked his arms from around L, wiping his eyes with a long shirt sleeve. Nate was the kind of person who wore clothes twice his size and he preferred beige-white. He then whipped his head around, facing opposite, wiping his face fully, obviously embarrassed by his emotion.

"Forgive us, we didn't mean to interrupt," Clavis said.

L waved it off, and produced a smile. "Nonsense, this is a celebration," he said. "We were just catching up."

"Hardly," Nate turned around. He suddenly had a hard stare.

"Come now, Nate." L ruffled the boy's hair. "All appears to have gone well in my absence. Light Yagami was caught and punished. I knew he was Kira from the very start. My deductions are never wrong. He was sent to Hell to suffer forever in damnation. Or, so I thought when told otherwise."

L looked to Ginti. Memine hoped up onto Roger Ruvie's desk next to Roger himself.

"Yeah, well, hell…" the fiery-haired Arbiter said. "Things have a way of unhinging themselves when a Death Note falls into the picture."
"You told them everything, right? Ginti?" Clavis inquired.

Ginti, in his straight-forward, no non-sense fashion, said he had explained everything to L before they left for the Human World; Oculus told him it was authorized. He had been taken aside where he worked in Analytical Sciences and explained everything. Told that he was needed to hunt down Light Yagami and Yagami was to be brought back to Quindecim for punishment. If Light Yagami could be brought back, he would be sent to The Void, no questions.

In order to gain the trust of the others present, they were also told the fantastic story. But for those who knew of the Death Note, they didn't have a difficult time believing in L's tale or Quindecim. Up until five years ago, the Shinigami Realm or the Death Note would have been left to something written in the pages of a manga.

Jayden suddenly ran to L and hugged him. L let off a small huff from the impact. "It is you! It is you! How is this possible? I didn't believe it at first. I thought you were an imposter?"

Roger spoke up, stepping forward. "Nate, here, just arrived for a sudden visit. His police chaperone is elsewhere, conducting some other business. No one was expecting him. When your friend Ginti arrived in his butler's attire—"

Ginti grumbled. "I'm a bartender, not a butler. I work on floor Twenty as an Arbiter, in a place called Quindecim. I judge the souls of the dead and sentence them accordingly." Ginti was harsh. He was never one to midst words. If he had something to say, he always spoke his mind. "Incidentally, if I were a butler, I would ask for the highest going rate to clean this place." He wiped a finger on the desk, then wiped it on his pants. "It needs one."

Memine meowed in agreement, and then sneezed, as if a spec of dust got up the cat's nose.

Jayden broken the hug and frowned at Ginti. "You're a very mean man!" Then stuck out his tongue.

Ginti looked dumbfounded. "Why you little brat!" He rolled up his sleeves. "I'm not opposed to whipping your ass!"

"Ginti!" Castra scolded him.

Ginti snorted out frustration. "Oh, forget this!" he said sternly. "I did what I was told to do. Memine, let's go!" The cat leapt into Ginti's arms. And then, as if like a magician, Ginti and Memine vanished.

"How rude!" Jayden said. "But how did he vanish like that? Where did he go?" The boy looked around.

"He's always like that," Castra explained. "Don't worry, he'll get his up-comings later, believe me. But, if I told you how he disappeared, young boy, your head would spin."

Roger then said, "Jayden, would you please excuse us? We adults need to talk. But don't tell anyone about this. We can't have anyone else knowing Louis is alive, not yet. It would cause disruption in the student's learning."

"Aww, but I want stay here with L. I want to listen, too."

Castra crouched down, coming face-to-face with Jayden. She knew the boy liked her, even if he didn't know how to express his feelings yet. She gave him a big smile. "Tell you what, little man. You do this one favour, and I'll give you something special to play with. But just for a little while." She reached into her bag and pulled out a small black Orb. "You can see anything in it. All you have to do is think of something and you can see it."

He cocked his head curiously for a moment in disbelief when she handed it to him.

He cupped it in both hands, it wasn't heavy. It had all the appearance of a mini bowling ball. He was about to hand it back, saying it was a cheap way for her to get rid of him—when he looked into it. Mist began to form from within the ball. Whatever he had been thinking of at that very moment suddenly appeared on its surface, and it wasn't just a static picture, but it was moving just like a miniature television set.

"Oh, wonderful!" Jayden smiled. Then he left the office, but promised to bring it back.

Castra stood up, faced the others.

"Was that wise, Castra?" Clavis asked. "That's one of the Shinigami's Probable Orbs that we had in storage to see celestial events. I'd figure you'd bring one to help us find Light Yagami. But what if it breaks?"

Castra waved off his concerns. "You worry too much, Clavis. I believe we can trust the boy."

"Yes, well, hopefully we can now get down to business," L then said. Then he pointed at Raye. "I know you…Yes, you're Penber, the FBI agent who was on the train; killed by Kira by a heart attack. The amount of time I spent looking over the recordings of your death was tedious. Nice to meet you alive and in person."

Raye shook hands with L and said it was nice to met him as well. "I only knew you by a voice," he said.

Raye then told him what had happened on the train, to fill in missing gaps that the CCTV of the train station could not capture, and how he was forced to write the names of all his fellow agents onto pages of the Death Note, he later learned, which also caused his own death. And because of a certain rule, he found himself in Quindecim.

"I never officially wrote down a person's name, but I did make a tiny mark on the back page of a Death Note to test what may happen," L explained. "I never told anyone. Unfortunately, by that act alone, I actually used the Death Note, and was sent to Quindecim, as well. I was fascinated to learn that such a place existed beyond the human religious notion of Heaven and Hell. Quindecim is a world between worlds. Quite fantastic!"

"What did you do when you found out Light Yagami was in Quindecim?"

"I was never told until recently, probably for the same reason you were never told. I would want revenge for killing me. However, that is neither here nor there. We're both alive again, and we're here to track down Light Yagami, wherever he is now. We must also begin to hunt down his associates to determine where he may be."

"Misa Amane is dead," Nate then stepped into the conversion. "We just learned about it. She was, until recently, a member of a religious Christian group. She suffered from deep depression after Light Yagami's death, and committed suicide. She jumped out of her third floor bedroom window using a bed sheet as a noose. Her neck snapped instantly. We can eliminate her from our list of associates."

L nodded, and thanked him. "Let's all talk, I need to get caught on recent events," L said. "And only through thorough investigation and gumshoeing will the worse serial killer in Human history be caught!"

To be continued...