August 24, 2001
5 years, 2 months, 30 days prior to Incident
"Vacation! Vay-kay-tion!" Kaito cheered with glee as he ran around the hotel room.
Mikuro, though decidedly more placid, was also clearly excited to be able to explore a new environment. "Onee-sama... When can we go play?"
"Miku, I told you to call me onee-chan. Come on, say 'onee-chan'."
"Onee-sama, please answer my question," Miku said instead, apparently having not heard her.
The quietly smug quirk of her lips told Sakura that the kid knew exactly what she was doing.
Impudent little brat, she thought fondly.
"Alright midgets, come over here. I just need you to do this for me..."
One day earlier
Sakura sat up straight as one of her security seals notified her of movement.
Time for a visit to Osaka.
Knock-knock-knock.
Whammy peered through the peephole and looked around, but couldn't see anyone. There was, however, a splash of pink along the bottom fringes of his range of vision. Hair, perhaps?
The old man cautiously opened the door.
"Yes?"
There was a young girl standing in front of him, pink hair, bright green eyes, perhaps 10 years old. He didn't let down his guard, knowing firsthand what dangers a child - especially a prodigious child - could prove to one's health.
"Hello," she said nervously. She tucked her hair behind her ear and rocked on her feet. "Umm, I'm looking for my little brother and sister... Have you seen them? They both have blue hair and blue eyes, it's very hard to miss."
"Ah, I did hear a bit of a commotion earlier, but I unfortunately haven't seen them. Is there a problem?"
The girl sagged. "We took the weekend off to celebrate Mii-chan's birthday - "
Ahh, that reminded him. Today was Near's birthday. Hopefully the child liked the present Quillsh had sent him.
"- but mom got called back to work. We decided to just stay and have fun by ourselves until she comes to pick us up. But now I've lost them! Both of them! Who knows what's happening to them? What would mummy say?"
Despite her best attempts, the girl's bottom lip began to quiver, and her eyes welled with liquid. When she tried to blink back the tears, moisture got caught in her eyelashes, and even they seemed to quiver despondently.
Whammy's weakness had always laid in children. He'd created an orphanage after all, a home to nurture those cast out from society at such a young age. He wasn't by any means a super man, but if he was, he would easily identify crying children as his kryptonite.
And so, the genius inventor Quillsh Whammy became another pawn to the whims of a sad little child.
Miku stared at the strange, tall teen in front of her. He stared back, eyes sharp, intelligent and a little unhinged. She blinked and tilted her head. He followed the motion with his own head.
She deemed him adequate for her purposes.
"Carry me," she demanded calmly, arms reaching up.
The stranger blinked and then his lips twisted into a cruel mockery of a smile. He said nothing and merely advanced towards the little girl.
His hands shot out, fingers hooked into claws.
Watari walked down the hall with small Sakaki at his side, paying keen attention to their surroundings for any sign of wayward children.
"Thank you for helping me, mister, you're really kind." The rosette abashedly rubbed at her nose with a sleeve. "I'm Sakaki. What's your name?"
"My name is Watari."
"Ah," she said. And then, "Can- can I call you Watari-jiisan?"
"My dear, I would be honoured."
The blindingly happy grin she gave him at that inspired a warm glow in his chest, and he easily smiled back at her, eyes crinkling.
"Nee-chan!" A blur of blue attacked the little girl at his side. Whammy's hand instinctively twitched to the semiautomatic in his coat.
He quickly stopped himself. The attacker in question was a little boy; blue hair, blue eyes, hard to miss, as according to little Sakaki's description.
"Kei-kun!" The girl cried, hugging her little brother tight.
And then she squeezed him tighter.
"N-nee-chan - can't - breathe!"
Whammy chuckled.
"That'll teach you to run off when I'm not looking, twerp!" She gave him a noogie, to the boy's obvious displeasure. "Where's Mii-chan?"
"I don't know, she wasn't with me."
There was a pause.
Sakaki blinked slowly, almost sleepily.
Barren. So very barren. This chakra tasted foreign in her mouth, a gray emptiness that slowly sucked away her energy and left her feeling lazy and laconic.
Maybe if I just... rested my eyes...
"Ah. It's onee-chan."
Miku! Sakura snapped herself awake. What was that? Danger? I can't fall asleep here, what would happen to Miku and Kaito?
Sakura turned, calling, "Mii-chan!"
And then she stopped. Miku was sitting on the shoulders of the source of the foreign chakra, a male in his early teens. He was tall and thin, his black hair neatly layered and his eyes a dark shade of some indeterminate colour. He wore a dark red tee-shirt and black jeans that clashed with his pale skin.
He could be considered attractive, if one was attracted to devious eyes and hard edges and an air of borderline-psychosis, but that wasn't what transfixed Sakura's gaze.
The barren chakra she had sensed earlier congregated around his eyes thickly, making them seem to almost throb with the alien energy. He had normal chakra circulation, similar to the other civilians of this world other than his unusually high spiritual energy, but he also had another set of pathways concentrated almost entirely in his head, serving the sole purpose of funneling the gray-tasting chakra.
A demon? No, this was a different feeling. That was sheer anger, chokingly oppressive in its power. This was emptiness, a slow gnawing on your will to live.
A dojutsu? But what kind of dojutsu could this be? What possible advantage could this boy receive from those eyes, living in this calm world of civilians?
"Beatus, what are you doing here?" Watari-san asked.
"Oh no. I was caught. How awful." 'Beatus' didn't sound at all as if he thought it was awful. In fact, if the maniacal light in his eyes meant anything, he seemed rather delighted.
Unbeknownst to Sakura, BB's glee did not lay in this situation with his caretaker.
It was she who'd caught his - admittedly dangerous - attention. It was the confusing mess of characters above her head, jumbled in such a way as to make her name unreadable. The red tangle looked as if several different names had layered over top of each other, each vying for the position of her true name, but all succeeding in doing nothing but obstructing the ability to read any other.
The clock that ticked over her was quite the work of art as well, the numbers constantly changing - not remaining stagnant onto one number, as they were wont to do, but jumping whole years, going up entire decades only to lose another dozen turns around the sun. At one point the numbers tumbled down to zero, and Beyond Birthday expected the tiny thing to drop dead right there, but no such thing happened; the clock just started up again at a completely different point.
Quillsh Whammy's numbers had increased as well. Was this caused by the girl's presence? BB was pretty sure the answer would be a definite Yes.
It was absolutely fascinating. Beyond wanted to snatch her and bring her with him wherever he went. He wanted to make her sit in a cage all day so he could stare to his heart's content.
Would things that normally kill people affect her in the same way?
BB suspected not. His hands itched to prove if it were true.
Can she even die?
Is she already dead?
He wanted to own this anomaly.
His pet.
His to play with.
He wanted her to be his.
"Mii-chan, come here," Sakura said, disturbed by the horrifically possessive way Beatus was looking at her. The little girl slid down the guy's slim body and made her way to her onee-sama, sensing the urgent undertone in the words.
Watari-san sighed at Beatus. It was an exasperated, I-should-have-expected-this kind of sigh. "How did you get here, Beatus?"
"I snuck on the plane," the boy responded shortly, still staring at her.
"Lee-san will need to be informed."
Sakura's ears perked up. She had gone to Watari-san's room because the seal had led her there in the first place. She didn't think the elderly man fit the description of a Yakuza member whose wife would be stolen by his boss, so there had to be someone else.
Watari-san's phone rang. As he picked it up, Sakura sent a spike of chakra to her ears.
"Watari," she heard a high, artificial voice say. "If you are finished with your current business, I require your assistance."
"Sakaki-kun, I trust that you no longer require my help?" the man asked, turning to her.
"But I wanted to buy you a delicious cake, as a thank you," she said loudly.
There was a pause.
"Please stay there. I will be joining you in a moment."
"... It appears I will be taking you up on your offer, Sakaki-kun. However, I assure you, I will pay for my own."
Sakura blinked. That was much too easy. Was this Lee guy a sweet freak or was he just that hungry?
"I'll go too," Beatus piped up. "I found your little sister, after all."
Sakura swallowed the instinctive "No way creep" that had been more than ready to roll off her tongue; it would be rude to do anything but agree, since he had a fair point. "Of course," she said brightly.
After a few moments of waiting, a suspicious character finally stepped out of the elevator. He was tall, thin, and slouched, adorned with baggy blue jeans and a loose long-sleeved shirt. Messy black hair peeked out from under a ball cap.
The person raised his head to reveal skin bleached white from hours of sitting in front of a computer screen and dark circles - reminiscent of a certain Kazekage - that screamed of insomnia. All-in-all, Sakura got the impression that this was not a man well-versed in social etiquette.
Most notably, his spiritual energy was incredible, near astronomical.
How much thinking can someone possibly do? she wondered.
Beatus finally lifted his heavy gaze from Sakura and instead stared at the newcomer.
"Lee-sama," the boy said, with biting sarcasm.
The people surrounding Watari-san are so... shifty.
Probably, then, this meant the kindly old man was shifty too.
Lee did a little wave, the resentful tone completely going over his head. "Let us embark on our journey to sustenance," he announced to the group, his voice deadpan.
"Ah," Miku agreed.
Sakura handed Miku and Kaito some money to buy what they wanted and turned to the dark teenager standing uncomfortably close to her.
"Beatus-san, what do you want to eat?"
He immediately pointed to a confection that made her feel as if she was developing cavities just by looking at it. Strawberries and Cream Cake, it said on the label. An apt description, considering the sheer amount of strawberry jam and frosting there was on the thing.
"One slice?" she asked, preparing the cash.
"No, the whole thing."
She stared at him. "I... don't know if I have enough money for that."
"Don't worry chibi-chan, I was just joking." His lips pulled into something grossly resembling a smirk and he patted her head. "I can pay for myself."
And, before her disbelieving eyes, he did indeed buy the entire thing, with obvious intentions of eating the whole cake by himself.
Sakura trailed after Beatus back to their table, her own slice of cake in hand, and did a double take when she saw half of it covered with different confections. Lee-san was perched on the bench like a monkey, bare feet on the chair and knees curled up to his chest, eating his way through a cake with a queerly held fork. Sakura sighed when she saw Kaito had copied him.
"Kei-kun, put your feet back on the floor!"
"But 'nee-chan, why?" the child whined, even as he obeyed her.
"It's rude to do such a thing in public."
"But Lee-san is doing it!"
"Lee-san isn't my responsibility."
He was also staring at her with unblinking eyes. "There is a 34% chance that there was an insult in your words."
"If the shoes fits," she shrugged and slipped into the opposite bench. Beatus, who had gone in before her, suddenly burst into a cackling laugh that sent chills down to the very marrow of her bones.
She was unbelievably relieved when he stopped.
Lee-san and Watari-san had refused them entrance into their hotel room. That was fine, she was just glad they had taken Beatus too; he looked ready to follow her to Tokyo.
Besides, she had her own means of getting things done. She'd just needed to scope out the inhabitants of the room.
It didn't look like either of these men were Hiroma Satoshi, but then how did they get ahold of the scroll and pen? Of course, it wasn't impossible that the man had been followed by a curious acquaintance... neither Watari nor the man named Lee looked anything like law enforcement, and it didn't particularly matter if normal civilians or even criminals knew the location of one of her snail stations, as they had no way of tracing anything back to her through it. Only, it had took her a considerable amount of chakra and several days of painstaking inking to create a single seal on every of those scrolls, and even the ink in the pens held a store of ambient chakra, so it was unacceptable to allow anyone unauthorized to bring the objects out of the station.
Most people were too afraid of backlash from her to do such a thing, but this guy, apparently, had no such fear. Damn civilians, too curious for their own good, she cursed to herself. After this, she'd have to integrate safeguards into all the snail stations she'd already set up.
"Kaito, Miku, don't get into trouble while I'm gone." Sakura closed the door to her room and jumped onto the windowsill. There was a puff and Fuyuno Sakura disappeared, with only a tiny fruit fly in her place. In a moment, even that fly faded away.
"Watari, do you have the results?"
Quillsh handed him a stack of papers and L rapidly flipped through them with a thumb and index finger.
"Curious. According to this report, there is a strange energy reading from the ink and the design on the back of the scroll." L absentmindedly squished a gummy bear between two fingers as he thought.
What kind of energy? How is that possible? What purpose did such a thing serve? Did it have something to do with the instantaneous connection between the scroll and the Kage? Can I reverse the signal to lead a team straight to him? What dangers would that prove to the team? No, I'm getting ahead of myself. First, what kind of energy is this? It seems to replicate the energy in living beings, and yet does not have traces of organic matter.
L spun his chair a few times. When it finally stopped, he was facing the rest of the room.
His eyes shot towards the scroll where it lay under an ultraviolet light.
"Watari. I have reason to believe that we are in grave danger."
There was a pause, during which Quillish steadily put a hand in his coat.
"Ah." L waved a finger at his old friend. "Never mind. However, I do believe you will find that our newest acquisitions have gone missing."
Indeed, when L approached the innocently sitting scroll, the sight in front of him rippled quite obviously, but Quillsh appeared to have not seen it. When he placed a finger on top of the surface, the detective felt only cold metal, even though his eyes told him that the scroll was right there.
L found himself torn between mild irritation, amazement, and a vague sense of exhilaration.
Fuyuno Sakura - age 11, 1st year junior high
Fuyuno Kaito - age 8, 2nd year elementary
Fuyuno Miku - age 4, kindergarten
L - age 18, formal education unknown
BB - age 14, formal education unknown
AN
Watari isn't going to call Beyond 'Backup' in public. That would be weird, and besides, to the Whammy kids, their codenames are supposed to be almost as important as their real names. So I gave BB another fake name. A super ironic fake name.
Beatus is a word meaning blessed in Medieval Latin. It also refers to a beatified man, a man given recognition by the Catholic Church of his entrance into Heaven and capacity to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in his name (aka, sainthood). Beyond? A saint? HA. (To be fair, I was thinking about how Mello is the least mellow person ever, and how Near is very far from everyone in terms of emotional distance.)
When L said 34, he meant 74. 'Cos L lies about his percentages when talking to people.
toolazytologin: Thank you very much! I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this either, but I plan to use the years in Sakura's life before the Death Note falls to establish:
A. The life Sakura's created so far.
B. Sakura's relationship with Light (that's coming after this little bout with L). It's really cute. Sorry Light fans, just wait a couple more chapters!
C. L's one sided relationship with Sakura/Shi no Kage. Right now, L likes and respects "him" a lot because her case is so incredibly hard to crack, and thanks to her he's learning about things that he didn't know existed, which makes him excited.
D. Sakura's relationship with the Whammy boys (I'm not sure how to incorporate Mello, Near, and Matt yet, but I'm working on it). BB creeps her the fudge out, but he likes her. Too much. At some point, he's probably going to try to hurt her as an experiment.
E. The effects of being an assassin on her life. I can't exactly say that she's killed hundreds (maybe thousands) of people in Japan without a trace and then have the world's greatest detective ignore that. I had to show at least one time that they clashed.
After the start of the series though, I'm going to do a proper incorporation of Sakura into the anime. I just didn't want do it abruptly, as many others seemed to.
I hope your answer is somewhere in there. If you need further clarification, you can PM me, and I'd be more than happy to answer. :)
[Edited 11/04/2016]: i changed B's shinigami eye thing to indicate that a lifespan is a usually stagnant number. and i added an explanation as to why Sakura didn't investigate L further, since someone pointed out that this was lacking and i realized that it's a big hole that should be fixed. smol beki... bruh... get it together...