Watari Pt 1: L\'s Heirs

"Slag!"



"Wanker!"



The exchange was being screamed across the street, but Mello and Matt just walked silently through it. Across the road, the woman was shivering in her strapless top and mini-skirt, goosepimpled arms wrapped tightly around her. She was walking in the opposite direction. As they passed her supposed ex-boyfriend, he shrugged conspiratorially at them. "Women, eh?" Neither said a word, they just carried on walking. They had gone fifty yards or more, before Matt suddenly said, "Slag."



"Huh?" Mello turned his whole head, the fake fur of his hood denying periphery vision.



"You\'re supposed to say \'wanker\'." Matt shrugged. "Just thought they might have been onto something."



"Right." They walked on. "Wanker."



Matt smiled and Mello laughed. Matt halted. "We\'re going to have to go back and find out what the next lines are." It was impossible to see Mello\'s face. His hair was poking out of the hole of his hood. "You pulled a gun on Jonny, didn\'t you?"



"You tried to commit suicide over me, didn\'t you?"



Matt blew. "Ok, so we both got it out. That\'s good. What now?"



"That\'s twice now, Matt. Three times if you include agreeing to come with me to take on Kira." Mello\'s shoulders were hunched over. "I\'m not angry. I\'m a bit scared to be honest."



"Scared?" Matt frowned. "You?" He reconsidered it. "Why?"



Mello\'s hood turned to look down the road, towards the splattering of pubs and bright lights along the way, then back to face him. "First one I knew about, I could put down to madness brought on by cold turkey. I think that some people are just meant to smoke. I also like to think that that was a cry for help rather than something real. You knew I was coming back that day, so I\'d find you. You had too much pride to not give up smoking when you said you would, so that was a really clever way of getting me to make you stop giving up. Fucking scary though." Mello bowed slightly, staring at the floor, and bouncing up and down the kerb. "Then the Japan thing, well, if that\'s you suicidal, then I was too. I chose to believe that we were doing the only thing that we could do, more potential matyrs than trying to die. Now I find out that there was another time too. You\'re twenty years old and you\'ve tried to kill yourself three times. Yeah. I\'m scared."



"Yeah, but not recently." Matt had leaned up against the wall, watching him steadily. "You can\'t count Kira."



"Why do you hate yourself so much?"



Matt stood poised, his cigarette flaring between his lips as he inhaled. He pouted, looking up and down the street, then fixed his gaze on Mello again. "I dunno. Haven\'t really thought about it. I don\'t really do that self-analysis thing that you do all the time."



Mello stopped jigging on the spot and the faceless hood was directed in Matt\'s direction. "I wish I could kiss your scars away as well."



"I wish we could stop getting side-tracked by things that happened five years ago and concentrate on you pulling a gun on Jonny half an hour ago." Matt shrugged. "It did kind of screw up the contrite and sorry, aren\'t I lovely now, image that you were trying to project."



"I don\'t give a shit."



Cars had been passing them, unnoticed on the busy road, but this one sidled in behind Mello, parking on the double yellow lines. He jumped away and turned to find Luigi looking back nervously from the passenger seat. "Mello. Matt. Are you busy?"



Peering in, Mello could see that Nathalie was driving. She waved back. "Hello again. Hop in."



"You just posted to a forum that you want to kill me and now you\'re asking me to get into a car that you\'re driving." Mello commented wryly. "Ok." His fake fur and hair looked at Luigi, but Matt pushed past and opened the back door. Green eyes narrowed slightly under raised eyebrows and Mello climbed into the backseat. Matt slid in beside him and shut the door. The car had roared off into Central London, before Mello asked, "How are you going to kill us?"



"Slowly and painfully." Nathalie smiled and winked into the rear view mirror. "Lamond and Deontic ditched the launch too. They went in the opposite direction looking for you. Luigi is texting to call off the search." She licked her lips. "I thought we would all go back to mine."



Matt\'s head, as far as the goggles, disappeared into his jacket collar. Mello unzipped his hood until his eyes could be glimpsed, along with the lower part of his face. "Why?"



"Because there\'s a mystery here that us four have never worked out, nor have Linda, Jonny, Hollow or Century. It occurred to us that you might succeed where we failed." Nathalie smiled. "Again." She lifted a shoulder and let it drop. "When has this sort of opportunity ever turned up? When is it ever likely to again?" The car stopped at traffic lights. "Here\'s your chance to flee. You might have been the best of us, Mello, but I know this is nerve-wracking. But, for your information, I think it\'s so sweet that you and Matt are holding hands."



Mello grinned. "You\'re observant." He winked at her reflection. "Only I\'m not as nervous as you think I am. I\'ve been in more intimidiating company before now."



It took over half an hour before they arrived outside a converted warehouse near Canary Wharf. The river was black beside them; a ship was moored on the opposite side. As they stepped out of the car, Deontic and Lamond drifted across the road to join them. They both seemed as cowed as Luigi had been throughout the journey here. Mello noted it and smiled to put them at their ease. Lamond, at least, smiled back. They filed, en masse, up the stairs to the front door, then climbed another four flights to an apartment right at the very top. The view out of the landing window took in huge swathes of docklands. Nathalie raised her hand. "Please excuse me a moment." She quickly performed seemingly random movements around her front door, each of her guests watching her like hawks. She shrugged. "I have checks to see if anyone has been in. They haven\'t."



"Reassuring." Mello grinned.



The front door opened into a huge room. Different areas were designated living room, bedroom, kitchen, small gym and some kind of study/studio. Only the bathroom was closed off. It reminded Mello and Matt of a posher version of some of their hide-outs during the pursuit of Kira. Nathalie switched on various lights and opened a cupboard. From the array of electrical equipment inside, she selected a handheld scanning device. "Who wants to check the room for bugs? I know that there aren\'t, but I warrant that everyone\'s mind will be easier for the proof." No-one moved for several seconds, then Mello took it and handed it to Matt. As the redhead wandered away, Nathalie crossed to her kitchen. High-heels clipped on the floorboards, then stopped as she explored various cupboards and the fridge. "Ok. Liugi, I have four eggs, which I\'ll put on to boil for you. Mello, I have a packet of Penguins, it\'s the closest to chocolate in here. Lamond, there\'s a sewing basket next to the chair nearest to the television, help yourself. Deontic, I\'ll get you some paper. Matt, best I can do is Wii Sports, but I think there were some other games that came free when I bought the Wii. Can I get anyone a glass of wine?"



Lamond burst out laughing. "You don\'t half make us all sound like freaks. Like we can\'t have a conversation without indulging our hang-ups."



"Lamond, we can\'t." Nathalie muttered darkly. "And this is part of the reason that we\'re going to pick Mello\'s brain." She filled a saucepan with water and dropped the eggs in. "Please do sit down. There are chairs enough. Make yourselves at home, instead of standing around so awkwardly. Anyone would think that we aren\'t all basically foster brothers and sisters." She clipped across to her desk and collect reams of paper, which were deposited into Deontic\'s hands. "Except Mello and Matt, who probably don\'t want to think of each other as brothers." She eventually had them organised into the easy chairs and smiled. "Right, are we all happy? Matt, you haven\'t got the Wii."



The redhead took his hand out of his pocket and exhibited the Nintendo DS that he\'d brought with him. "I\'m good. I\'m going to nip downstairs for a cigarette though."



"Oh, smoke in here." Nathalie rose and found two ashtrays from the bottom of a cupboard. She dropped one beside Matt and the other beside Lamond. "Shall we bother with small talk or just admit that we\'re all shit at it and cut to the chase?" Her gaze met Mello\'s. "God, Mello, you have an evil smile."



"What\'s the mystery?" He replied, not altering his smirk.



Nathalie looked at Deontic, who took over. "This is the diagram I drew in the car. It predicted where everyone would sit. I\'ve also written some other predictable facts. The first one being that no-one would take off their coats. We lived in each other\'s pockets for years and this feels more like a summit than a family get together. There isn\'t a person here who isn\'t weighing up everyone else, even Nathalie, who is playing hostess. The conversation has been completely dominated by Mello and Nathalie, because they are the only two with the confidence to talk and observe at the same time." She passed the diagram to Luigi, who glanced at it and passed it to Matt. It continued around the room. "It\'s taking an average of 1.3 seconds for each of you to take in the information from that paper and none of you have reacted in any way, despite the fact that it did predict your positions perfectly." She grinned. "Oh! It\'s so good to have an intelligent conversation!"



Lamond added, "Deontic\'s question is, why are we all freaks?" Her needle passed rapidly through the fabric in her hand. "Or, to put it another way, what did Wammy\'s House do to us?"



"It educated geniuses." Mello replied, blandly.



Deontic shook her head. "No, it didn\'t. I\'ve studied geniuses and of course we have similarities, but it\'s not enough. There are specific idiosyncracies that are only apparent in Wammy geniuses. At least at the consistency that we exhibit them." She raised her chin, defiance blazing. "I think that we were experimented on. I\'m still working out how."



"Of course we were." Mello grinned. "We\'re perfect machines of the system. That\'s why no-one is relaxing, because we are surrounded by our rivals. It\'s not like out there in the real world, is it? Where we can walk all over their tiny, little minds and bamboozle them with science. Suddenly we have to be on our guard again, because these are sharp minds. Yes, it was a fucking experiment. It still is."



Knowing glances were exchanged between Lamond, Luigi and Deontic. Lamond asked, "Did they inject us with something? Or was it in the food?"



"Nothing like that." Mello bit into his chocolate. "We were the fourth versions of the prototype. The interesting thing now, of course, is how far Near understands the Grand Plan and, of secondary importance, who will succeed Roger as Watari."



"Succeed Roger?" Nathalie frowned. "He\'s alive and kicking, isn\'t he?"



Mello stared darkly, with the faintest of sneers, "Yes. But he\'s on his fifth phase of this project and he\'s already ailing. He\'s an old man, Nat. Getting frailer by the second and pissing me off no end. Neither of those things suggest longevity to me." On the far side of the group, a sudden fanfare of music, quickly muted, startled the already nervous assembly. Everyone stared at Matt, who smirked and bowed his head further over his handheld. "Have none of you got that far? You\'re still concentrating on drugs in the water?"



Nathalie frowned. "Maybe you haven\'t changed as much as I was imagining." She was the only one still standing and she paced on the rug now. "Spell it out for us, Mello, and cut the crap about how much smaller than you we are."



"I apologize if that\'s how it came across." Mello sucked thoughtfully on the chocolate in his mouth. "Right. You have your patented machine and it\'s one of a kind. What do you do?"



"Make more, in case the Luddites smash it?" Lamond asked.



"Top of the class." Mello grinned at her. "So you create your first copies. They can stay in the warehouse, still in the wrappers if you like, but they exist simply to replace your machine if it breaks. Unfortunately, it was a little more complicated than that."



"Let me interupt." Deontic paused in her origami. "What machine?"



"L." Matt muttered, his concentration not so fully on his game as it seemed. "L was the prototype."



"So," Mello grinned, "the problem with your first copies is that they are children. They can\'t be left in the warehouse and they know that they only exist as replacements. So one went insane and one committed suicide. Beyond Birthday and Alberto were the original Wammy House failures and we have so much to live up to in their glorious example." Mello raised counted out two fingers. "So we get to the second generation. I deduce that there was a big pow-wow and maybe even Roger got a say this time. If the pressure was too intense for B and A, then let the second phase of copies relax a little bit. Give them free time. Give them love and cuddles. Don\'t strip them of their identities. But this failed too. Suddenly you get five children who aren\'t living up to their potential. They are too independent. It\'s a triumph for the geniuses and a complete failure for the Grand Plan. Most of them are shipped off to other orphanages and slowly we build in the third generation. Things get a lot stricter."



"Slow down, Mello." Deontic was staring at her paper bird. "I\'m following it, but I need to have a visual. My mind works better in 3D."



"Right." Mello licked his chocolate. "Maybe if my lovely assistant could hack into Watari and find the rankings... Nathalie, laptop please." One was produced and slid underneath the game onto Matt\'s forearms. He looked up. Mello sighed. "I repeat. Maybe if my lovely assistant could just hack into Watari for us please."



"\'kay." He paused the game and switched on the laptop.



Nathalie frowned. "Matt, how can you be bored listening to this? This affects you too!"



"I\'m not bored. Just..." He waved vaguely at the handheld. "Password?" Nathalie took it off him and logged in, opening a browser too, before handing it back. "What am I looking for, Mell?"



"Test results from sixteen years ago, until six years ago."



"\'kay."



Mello loudly snapped off a square of chocolate, drawing all of the attention back to himself. "The third generation had to work for it. This time there is less talk of being L\'s replacement, but it permeates everything anyway. These children know that the penalty for not doing well is to be sent away. It\'s hammered home that not being good enough is a Very Bad Thing. There\'s a benchmark of grades and falling below them means instantly leaving for some unknown institution. There is paranoia, but it\'s a personal one. The cracks soon start to show. It\'s the whip more than the carrot; Wammy\'s House is not a happy home. That generation last all of two years, most of its little cherubs already gone." He smirked. "Then along came the fourth generation. Us."



"I\'ve got the archives." Matt muttered. Around the room, people felt their seats to crowd around him. Only Mello remained where he was, eyes grazing each and every one of them. Matt scrolled down the pages, allowing them to see the changing names.



Luigi covered his mouth and nose. "It all happened so fast! You are talking about generations, but the records are showing that this all took place within, what, six years?" He turned away to scoop up another boiled egg. "They didn\'t have a chance."



Mello sneered at her. "Of course they did. They just had to be good enough."



Deontic placed her hand over Matt\'s. "If you stop scrolling so fast up and down, you\'ll give everyone chance to notice the only two constant names here. They are, I believe, Mello and Matt." She fixed her dark eyes onto Mello. "You didn\'t deduce this. You were there."



"I was ten when phase four began." He shrugged. "I guess me and Matt, as the original phase two kids, were chosen as much because we were very young as anything else. It\'s easier to condition the young than it is teenagers. B and A had been teenagers when they were brought into it. L was the original and he was only eight when he was brought in. He had many years on his own, before they joined him. So if you can get that out of an eight year old, it\'s only logical to try even earlier. I was four and Matt was three. I doubt that you could go any younger and still identify genius. By the time phase three kicked in, we were still outstripping our age-group and we were about the same age as L had been when he\'d been placed in Wammy\'s care. It\'s reasonable to deduce that we still had potential to perform our roles as L\'s back-up."



"You met B?"



"I don\'t recall so." Mello took his first sip of wine. It momentarily stained his lips red and no-one knew how to read that. "But I knew that to be L was the ideal. I knew that I\'d be rewarded with chocolate when I got high marks. Then I knew that I could do no right. Overnight it went like that. Matt and I have been watching each other\'s backs for a very long time. Watching the tides coming and going."



Lamond leaned across to hug him. "No wonder you turned out so... hard." She ran her fingers through Mello\'s hair, then slipped onto his lap, seemingly oblivious to how startled he appeared. "No wonder you and Matt ended up..." People began drifting back to their seats, except for the thin woman, whose hand rested on Mello\'s chest. The blond blushed and everyone watched in fascination. "It must have been terrible." Three pairs of eyes followed Mello\'s back to Matt, but the redhead was just smirking as he watched. "Mello, have you ever had a woman this close before?"



Mello\'s gaze flashed back to survey her and a small smile appeared on his face. "The tom-tom drums never beat out the message that I was in the Mafia then? Yes, Lamond, I\'ve had women draped over me before, doing a lot more than you\'re attempting." The woman flushed, but Mello caught her chin and made her look at him, as he winked and patted her back to move her from him. Lamond returned to her seat and the atmosphere became tense. "Jeevas, where were you in defence of my virtue?"



Matt frowned. "You\'ve got virtue?"



The laughter around the room was forced, but it nevertheless brought the tension down a notch. Deontic seized the moment to bring them back on track. "Tell us about the phase four. Tell us what they did to us."



"Hold on!" Nathalie strode across to Mello\'s chair. "You were in the fucking Mafia?" She shook her head. "You were not. I can see you getting involved in a criminal gang, but..." Her words dropped. "You would! You would go to the top of the genre, whatever it was!"



"Nat." Deontic groaned. "Please keep on track. I need to know what was done to us."



Mello grabbed Nathalie\'s wrist and held it, staring up with a Mafioso smirk. "I was in the Mafia. I am in the Mafia." Her eyes widened, as did everyone else\'s, all watching him as scittery as rabbits in the grass. "You also need to know that I didn\'t shut Jonny up with a kiss earlier. I think that the deciding factor was the gun I had pressed into his gut." He didn\'t blink, just stared at her until fear broke through the mask of her composure. Then his gaze slid towards Matt and he let her go. "The fourth generation was all about competition. Yes, it worked brilliantly. We all have our game-plans, even now." He fixed Nathalie with his stare again. "What did you want to be when you grew up, Nathalie?"



She took some mints off the mantelpiece and sucked one, breathing steadily to calm herself. "I wanted to be L\'s successor."



"Deontic?"



"Same. I should think it would be the same for everyone here."



"Maybe. But do you even know what we were fighting for?" Mello watched their confusion, their pensiveness, their genius minds working it out. Matt had even put the laptop down on the floor. "Fifteen contenders. Fifteen clever, little shits, all slogging it out for the coveted title. No need for benchmark grades, as in phase three, because we are all raising the stakes for each other. There had never been so many of us in there. Peer pressure did it all. There was love and cuddles if we wanted them, but they stripped our identities again." He grinned. "Want to see fear? Ok." His arm extended and a finger picked out each of them in turn. "Hilde, Mail, Carl, Pek Wan, Claire..." He pointed to himself. "Mihael. Ooh! How scary was that?" All around him, all but one were suppressing the flight or fight response. "It\'s logical, especially since we were at the height of Kira then, but amongst ourselves? Strip an identity and you strip a mind. You can re-programme it into whatever you want. It had been done before. The programme said, \'compete with each other to be L\'s successor\' and not one of us thought to say, \'but L\'s only in his mid-20s, why would he need a successor?\'"



Even Matt looked up, his gaze fixed on his lover. "Freak. Do you know how dangerous it was to be L?"



"No. Near called it." Mello scrowled. "And I\'m not repeating that. When L died, I went into shock. I was mourning the death of my idol. My hero. Near was already thinking through stage two, already knowing what the stakes were." His voice rose suddenly. "It was in my fucking face and I didn\'t get it! I looked at him and I knew. I got it right there on the fucking rug in Roger\'s fucking office, prompted by that little shit!" Mello\'s shoulders became hunched, as he sank further into his chair. "It was about the succession, but not to the man. He was just the benchmark. That\'s when I knew that, despite the insanity, Beyond Birthday had been the one who first got it right."



Silence slammed down. Five sets of eyes watched Mello break chocolate with his teeth and crunch it savagely. His glare fixed on some point a million miles away, his expression deadly. It seemed that he was the only one not holding his breath. Matt lit a cigarette and used it to keep the fear from his own voice. "Mello. I think that some further explanation is clearly required, because right now you sound like a fucking psychopath." There was no reply. "Hey." Matt felt behind himself for a cushion and threw it. It landed smack in the centre of Mello\'s face and the blond reacted instantly. He leapt up, unzipping his jacket in one movement, fury raging across his features. Matt jumped up too, behind the armchair, and Nathalie stumbled into her fireplace in her zest to get away. The Beretta came out and pointed straight at Matt\'s head. A second Beretta followed, aiming for Mello\'s heart. Luigi curled into a ball on the centre; Deontic froze; and Lamond wrapped her arms around herself, staring at the two of them in horror. Matt slowly lowered his gun and stepped from behind the armchair. Hands out to his side, he walked towards Mello until he was within arm\'s reach. Matt\'s arm rose, in gradual increments, to take the cigarette from his mouth and to raise the goggles onto his forehead. He exhaled smoke and took the extra two steps into Mello\'s arms, then kissed him fiercely on the lips. Arms came down behind him and the semi-automatic was lowered towards the floor. "Welcome back."



Mello\'s hand came up to clasp the back of Matt\'s head and their eyes met. Mello sighed and buried his face into his lover\'s shoulder. "Detective codes. L wasn\'t squeaky clean. People tended to disappear if they attempted to impersonate him. He had all of those aliases not because he\'d come up with them, but because he\'d defeated the detectives who first named themselves such. L was L because he was the cleverest bastard of all. The Grand Plan, all those experiments, they were to find his replacement, yes, but Wammy was an inventor. He thought like an inventor. You don\'t just replace the prototype, you improve on it. As much as it irks me to say it, Roger was the humaniser in all of this. We were just version 1.1, version 2.3, version whatever the fuck else you want to call us. Wammy would defend L with his life, but if he was surpassed..." Mello turned to survey the frightened people all around him. "We were supposed to surpass L. We were competing for the name. Beyond Birthday got that. He challenged L. Near got it. But he was thinking like a mathematician. He followed the formula through to the name, but stopped there. I was competing to be L the man, he was competing to be L the name. That\'s why he was so calm that day. He was already wondering who held the name and what would be necessary to get it back."



Matt stepped back to flick ash into the ashtray. Mello kept hold of his hand, looking at him like a lost child. Matt picked up the ashtray and shrugged. "Sit down then. I\'ll come and sit with you. It\'ll probably bring down everyone\'s blood pressure anyway." He followed Mello back to his armchair, then sat on the floor, one arm draped itself across Mello\'s legs, but his back was against the chair. "Ok, carry on talking."



"I\'ve pretty much said it all."



"In that case, tell them how you caught Kira, so they can understand why you\'re pointing guns like a deranged arsehole."



Deontic\'s head snapped up. "You did catch Kira." She exhaled. "Yes, tell us. I want to know what happened to you, Mello."



Mello frowned, playing with the red hair against his thigh. "Ok. There are some bits I\'m not proud of, but I did what I had to as it seemed to me at the time." He told their story and, as he did, his peers thawed, drawing closer to hear.