Episode 13-A
"What is some kid doing in my chair?" Oliver asked, later that next morning.
Alex looked over at Darius, examined him carefully, and then used their detective-like deduction to come to an answer. "It looks like he's spinning in the chair."
"It looks like he's spinning in the chair," Oliver said, turning the voice silly as he repeated it, "who is he?"
"Darius, don't you know? We're going to be working with him, sort of, from now on. Did you not check the emails again?" James asked, his voice dry.
"Buh...wah. What email?" Oliver asked. "It's the day after Christmas!"
"But information never rests," Alex said, "and now we have one of the two murder weapons, and we have one of the murderers dead."
"...what the hell else did I miss?"
*******
"People won't believe," Ignatius said, quietly, "at first. And then they'll believe and panic. This Darius, you know that getting him involved would just cause problems. I've seen his records, he's a vicious killer, and no matter what you see in him, the public won't see much. This is going to go up the chain of command. Maybe not quite yet, but the FBI will be involved, now that we have a supernatural notebook and a strange race of… Death Gods. Not sure whose jurisdiction that is."
"I'd like to see the United States declare war on death," James said, leaning back as he watched the scene, "but if they do believe and panic, then that might help. People would stop giving out their names online. They could wear masks or something, too? It seems like you could create a society where it was pretty hard to actually get someone's face and name. But then again, Ryuk, the shinigami, told us that his people just look down through portals into earth."
"Which means that they're not our business," Alex said firmly, "our job is to catch the first killer and figure out what's going on there. We can leave the negotiations to someone else. We shouldn't report on catching the second killer, because that'll merely lead to people asking about why there are two--"
"And if we claim to have stopped them, they'll ask how, and they'll tell us about all of the people dying," James said.
"Exactly. We need to keep this secret, but our higher-ups are going to learn. They've probably already realize that Darius matters. Darius matters a lot, and that means they're going to start asking why, and once they start asking…"
"Inevitable, and we can't keep it from them. We shouldn't," James insisted, "not if we like our jobs."
"Yes. But… a book that murders," Alex said, "they'll try to take it, and that…"
*******
"You want to know about the Death Note?" Ryuk asked, cackling, "do you have apples?"
"Actually, yes," Alex said. They were leaning back in their chair, right next to Darius, who seemed not to be paying attention, but was reading the book upside down.
Alex pulled out a red delicious and tossed it up, watching as the Shinigami caught it and ate it, core and all.
"Well, what first?"
"Can we take the note from Darius?"
"Welll, if you do, I'll have to kill you. It's the rules. Or the guidelines or whatever."
"Ah," Alex said, their heart-rate barely increasing as they reached out and took the book, flipping it open. "First, is this accurate? Anyone whose name is written there dies, if there's a face pictured as they write? How does that work with people they haven't seen in years, or decades? The face can change, after all."
"I dunno," Ryuk said.
Alex frowned deeper, a little frustrated with the shinigami already. They'd asked a few other questions, before this, and Ryuk had been at once open and also clearly not someone who took as much time as he 'should' in actually understanding how his note worked.
"You don't know. Alright, then. They die within forty seconds of a heart attack unless it's specified otherwise, in both time and date. I suppose it's not worth asking you whether the language of the writing matters, or if stenographer's shorthand works just as well as anything else?"
"Well, you have to be pretty blunt, Alex," Ryuk said, "if someone goes wrong, then that's someone not dead." Ryuk twisted himself around, looming over Alex.
"Yes, that's so. But, if you're just looking down into the world, then how do you get the names? Do you hear someone say it?" Alex asked.
"Ah! It took Marcus forever to ask about this, and you're already asking."
"It's simple logic," Alex said. The annoyance was starting to rise up, because Ryuk was strange. Weird, silly, not someone that Alex could imagine knowing for any real length of time without getting frustrated with.
"There is a deal that Darius could make," Ryuk said. "We shinigami have two main differences from you humans. Can you guess at what they might be?" Ryuk looked playful, in his weird, monster way.
"The why?" Alex guessed.
"We can take a human's lifespan from him. If I wrote down your name in my Death Note," he said, gesturing to the note that was attached at his belt, "I'd gain all the years you would have lived. And I could add them to my lifespan." There was something oddly sinister about the way he said it, as if he were--
"How can you know my lifespan?" Alex asked, then they realized. "Is that the other difference?"
"Shinigami can see a person's name and lifespan about their head. The hour, minute, the second of their death. Ticking closer and closer. But no matter how many names you write in the book, it can't make you live longer--"
"What happens if you kill someone who would have killed you?" Darius asked. "Cause I shot that motherfucker dead right before he finished writing my name."
"That's the power of the Death Note. It can alter the lifespan of other humans. I dunno how it works, my friend was always more clever with these sorts of things. He's the one who is with the first Death Note user, I bet. But any human can make a trade with us Shinigami. Our eyes, for half of their lifespan."
Darius whistled, "Is that what he was doing? The kid was screaming about eyes."
"Yes, he didn't know your name." Ryuk laughed, "Who would guess?"
"It is a silly name, isn't it?" Darius asked, shaking his head. "So, do you think Killer #1 made the deal?"
"No. I am absolutely sure that they didn't. They're too ambitious for that. They aren't the type to sacrifice themselves, they're the type to work towards their goals. Giving up lifespan, especially if they don't know how much they're giving up? And the Death Notes surely warp it. If they hadn't gotten the note, then none of this would happen." Alex shook their head, "And I bet that they're changing the lifespans of large groups of people. They kill a dictator, and things get worse, or they get better, but… determinism, huh." Alex frowned, "And a way out, but through murder."
This Death Note, Alex decided, was more dangerous than they had thought. And that was a hard task indeed.
"If you say so," Ryuk said, "the eyes are pretty convenient."
"Maybe. So what other rules are there…"
*******
You had to be fast to write in the details of the death. Or, you could write them in ahead of time. That seemed to make most sense. And because all of the actions had to be possible to do, or at least, you couldn't order someone to do something they couldn't, it meant that you had to be careful. As they had been.
As the second killer had not been.
The first killer, though, still killed no matter what. If the target couldn't do the action, then they just died of a heart attack. Hence why saving the pedophile coach from the noose hadn't actually saved his life.
Other details were weird, or silly, like how you could not kill anyone under two years old, and the rule that four misspellings made one immune to the powers of a particular Death Note.
And notably, you could lend out pieces of paper. Only someone who had touched the Note could see the Death God, and more than that, the Death God followed the owner at all time.
Which meant that if either Rachel or Patricia was the killer, a shinigami had been watching Alex as they had lied and presented themselves differently.
Though Ryuk swore up and down that a shinigami couldn't take either side, and apparently the deal Darius had made, in general, was that he wouldn't kill Darius, like he'd sworn to do with the Death Note users when they died or lost, and in exchange…
In exchange, this investigation became a petty game, to watch and see whether or not the first killer would be caught. It disgusted Alex, really, but they tried to think through it.
********
A single scrap of paper. If any of the investigators had been digging through those boxes, then just touching a single small slip of the paper hidden would mean that they'd suddenly see a Shinigami where there were none.
So, would Rachel or Patricia have been so clumsy as to leave it lying around? But what was definitely obvious was that they had hidden the Death Note itself, well. With the way the cover was so obvious, the gothic writing and the rules inside, it was immediately obvious as a murder weapon.
Of course, you could, actually, destroy the cover. Alex suspected that they were not taking out the book itself, in a pristine and untouched form, and that they were clearly offloading their material. If, for instance, they hid a single slip of paper somewhere private, they could write down the names on it, and the paper shredder in Patricia's room/office would definitely be useful.
Though, even a shred of the paper could hold the power to kill and yet also reveal. So, either someone had touched the shreds, or, if she were the killer, she had a more thorough way to get rid of it.
Which was an interesting thought.
What's the scheme here? (Choose 1)
[] Try to get Darius into a position where he'll cross paths with Rachel and Patricia. It'd be hard, since it's just after Christmas, but it might lead to them being tipped off in a way that might lead them to panic… or cover their tracks.
[] Follow them around, and try to find any evidence of paper exchanged, or dropped off, or anything like that.
[] Go the the higher ups. Get the FBI involved. It'll start to make waves, and those waves will ripple, and then one will see what happens.
[] Try to see how they react, if a slip of paper touches each of their hands and they see a shinigami.
[] Back off, act as if nothing has been solved or changed, and bide time while monitoring them, to see if they slacken off...
*******
A/N: Here we go.
