chapter 3

disclaimer: I do not own death note


The next morning, Vanilla walked down the crowded streets. No one could tell that she was alone with this many people. She had stuffed the cape into her backpack so she didn't stand out too much. As she passed one of the shops, the news came on one of the TV's. She stopped when she saw pictures of the two men who had robbed the boy the night before.

"~Early this morning Arthur Brinks and Gavin Cooper were arrested and charged with theft~" Vanilla smiled slightly, knowing she was the reason the were caught.

'I actually helped the police catch a criminal, no, TWO criminals! I feel like some kind of mystery superhero!' She resisted the urge to fist pump in victory as her smile grew. But it was soon wiped away as she saw what else was on the news.

"~at 8:13 yesterday morning a pickup truck collided with another car, taking the lives of the driver of the pickup and of the small family in the other car.~" the screen showed a picture of a man, probably in his late 30's, with black hair and dark green eyes. "~the driver of the pickup truck, David Haft, had a seizure while driving and lost control of the truck.~" the picture on the screen switched to an image of Vanilla's parents. Her mother, who she looked so much like, with her tanned skin and shoulder length blonde hair and light brown eyes. And her father, with his dark brown curly hair and chocolate brown eyes and pale skin. "~the family in the other car was Hazel and Takeo Starr and their 5 year old daughter, Vanilla Starr, of whom we cannot find any pictures of.~" Vanilla stared at the television, tears welling up in her eyes.

'But I'm here! I'm not dead, I'm still alive! I'm not even hurt!' she thought. But, of course, she said nothing. She just hung her head and walked away into the crowd.

over the next few years Vanilla solved many more crimes and helped catch dozens more criminals, all while working as the mysterious Dragon. when she was 8 she started watching some karate, gymnastics and ballet classes. In almost no time she had mastered all of them and combined them together to create her own, unique fighting style. She learned to travel by rooftops to avoid being seen. She went a little ways outside of Tokyo once to get some sticks, which she tied some yellow yarn to and made her own miniature bow and arrow, witch she became quite good at. She made her home in abandoned buildings, traveling to a different location every day so she couldn't be tracked.

When she was 10 she found an old book about poisons in a dumpster. Using that, she created poisons to dip her arrows in for temporary paralysis, sleep, and itching rashes. She used them for catching criminals. The sleep and paralysis arrows were used on criminals when no one else was around so she could tie them up and call the police. The itching rash arrows were what she used when people were around the criminal or when she knew she couldn't catch them without revealing herself. As the effects lasted about a week on average, She would be able to find the criminal again by searching for someone with the rash scratching themselves a lot. Eventually the police realized this and started keeping an eye out for the symptoms of that poison to catch the criminals.

By the time Vanilla was 13 the police had improved their security so she couldn't sneak in unnoticed as easily anymore. She still could get in but in was much riskier, she found a broken laptop in the trash and repaired it. She found a criminal that was a hacker named Fumiko Conlin and instead of capturing him right away she convinced him she was on his side using the alias Ichigo Yuke, and got him to teach her how to hack computers before she called the police on him and disappeared again. After that she started hacking the police computers and leaving file folders titled 'Dragon' with the evidence on the desktop, And occasionally changing the desktop background to bad puns, like the picture of a colorful manatee with the caption 'oh, the hue-manatee' when she got bored.

When she was 16 she created a fake identity with the name Valarie Kurusaki. She got a job at a cafe called Cafe Yige-Wangba or just Yige as Vanilla and the other people who worked at the cafe called it. It was a weird name, Vanilla thought it sounded Chinese but didn't really think much of it. When she was seventeen she got her drivers license and a year later she had enough money to afford a motorcycle, which she preferred over cars. She tinkered with it and eventually converted it to battery power that could be charged by solar panels she placed on it in a way that just made them look like shiny decorative stickers. When she was 22 she finally decided to buy an apartment.