The King's Note: Chapter 1
Title: The King's Note
Fandom: Death Note
Chapter: 1
Genre: General, Romance (later in story)
Rating: T
Characters: Everyone from the first arc, OCs
Pairing: There'll be a couple, but I'm not saying who yet.
Spoilers: Just about everything from the first arc.
Summary: A few years after picking up the Shinigami King's death note, which allows its user to see all Shinigami and not only take lives (adding one year to the user's life for each death) but also save them (each at the price of one year subtracted from the user's life), Katherine Lynton, an aspiring con artist in Ireland, is sure she knows how Kira is killing off criminals; he has his own Death Note. Upon convincing her lifelong friends (and fellow criminals) Al, Pat, and Don to come with her, unbeknownst to the fact that she possesses a Death Note herself, the four head to Japan, rent a house in the suburbs of Tokyo under false identities, and begin tracking down both Kira and the great detective L at the head of the Kira case, as they search for a way to put a stop to Kira before he can put a stop to them.
xXXxxxXXxxxXXxxxXXxxxXXxxxXXxxxXXxxxXXx
"Are ya sure he can pull this one off?" Katherine looked at Don, biting her fingernail nervously. "If he gets caught-"
Don held up a hand, holding a headphone to one ear. She stopped midsentence to listen. "He's already broken into a hospital and nicked enough anesthetic to put ten elephants out without anyone noticin' while he was there. If he can't handle one bleedin' detective in a hotel room, then we're better off without him, anyway, yeah?-Ow!" He rubbed the back of his head where Katherine's fist had just collided with it. "The hell? I was only jokin', woman, relax! That bloody hurt…"
"Pansy," she scoffed, and then stood from her chair in front of the television sets. She stared at the only working one, wondering what was taking so long. Don and Al both seemed sure enough that it could be pulled off, and granted they had been in this together for much longer than she had been a part of this miniature crime "family," but there were some things that had to be impossible, even for these three.
One of these seemingly impossible things was planting cameras in the hotel room of the world's greatest detective without said detective figuring it out eventually. Banks and hospitals were broken into plenty, successful robberies made from museums and art galleries time and time again over the years, but L was on an entirely different level. The amount of time it had taken to simply track the detective down was staggering by Pat, Al, and Don's standards, so why should they be able to do this successfully, without leaving behind some trace that they were once there?
Running a hand through her hair distractedly, Katherine looked at the door that led out into the living room. "Need a bloody cigarette…. What's taking that bastard so long? I swear, if he hurt my car…"
Adding on to her apprehension that all of their plans were going to crash and burn was the ill-temperedness derived from a sleepless night and a killer hangover that had been persisting for most of the day. The worst of it had ended that morning, but the headache had yet to leave, and it felt as though it was trying to pound its way out through her right eye. She brought her hand to her forehead, attempted and failed for well over the hundredth time to shake the headache away, and ended up stomping irately off into the living room.
From a wireless earphone in her ear, she heard Pat finally give a barely audible status report as she entered the living room.
"All right, I'm in, shutting the window now. Any signs of the detective in question?"
"Nah, none yet," Katherine heard Don reply, both through the headphone and from the next room. "Now, around the corner of the hallway. And keep quiet."
A moment later, Pat replied with, "All right, I'm there."
"And visible on the monitor," Don added. "Which means that so far, the plan is going exceptionally well, contrary to the beliefs of the paranoid ginger-"
Rolling her eyes, Katherine called back over her shoulder into the monitoring room, "Oh, be quiet. You were the one talkin' about getting rid of him if he failed earlier."
"Joking!"
Katherine would have replied if not for the fact that she heard the back door of the small house close. With hopes that her nicotine withdrawal would soon be soothed, she rushed in the direction of the noise and met Al at the kitchen table as he was pulling a wig off of his head with a rather uncomfortable look in place. With an amused laugh, she commenced digging through bags that had already been set on the table, and was already in a better mood when she found a pack of cigarettes among many six packs of beer and a few other random items that the house had run out of.
Al looked a little more disgruntled, now removing a pair of color contacts from his eyes that had given them more of a blue tint than green.
"Yeah, laugh, you're not the one who has to go out in public lookin' like ya've been livin' under a bleedin' bridge for a week," he said, dropping the contacts on top of the black wig on the table.
Katherine shook her head, lighting a cigarette. "That's what happens when you're wanted for murder. And besides, I doubt a bum would be able to afford such expensive accessories," she teased, indicating the fake four gauge plugs he was now pulling off of his earlobes and also dropping on top of the wig. This earned her a glare. "Well, ya could've just let Don go pick everything up, but no, you insisted on being let out and-"
"I've got no problems with anything but the bloody disguise," he said disgustedly. "I'm never leaving you and Pat up to that sort of work again."
"Well, ya've got to admit, you looked nothing like yourself."
"No, I still resembled myself, and that's more'n enough with the charges I've got under my belt right now," he said. "And to top it off, the fact that I was buying all of this while lookin' like a damned bum didn't exactly help me blend in."
"All right, ya don't look like a bum," she said. "Stepping away from the professional look won't kill you, I promise. You still look like a fully functioning member of society. It's buying this much alcohol all at once that makes you look more like a semi-functioning member. And," she said, going into a bag, "buying this probably didn't help yer case much either." She pulled out a canister of lye flakes. "As far as I know, there aren't any clogged drains in this house. So unless you're planning on makin' soap or somethin', care to explain?"
"Of course." He held up his hands, where ten vague traces of old burn scars could be seen with new skin growing around them. "I need to redo them. The fingerprints are starting to grow back."
Katherine blinked. "Oh. It's not permanent?"
"Lasts a few months at the most. And the three of you'll be needin' to get rid of your prints as well," he added-that had been her first suspicion. "Safety first. Getting caught on a job like this'd result in a lot more than a slap on the wrist."
"Oh, come on," Katherine protested. "We've never been caught before just usin' gloves, why-?"
"Safety first," Al repeated firmly, and Katherine rolled her eyes. That was always his philosophy, and even more since the murder framing. She didn't see why he had agreed to help with any of this in the first place if he wasn't willing to take any risk whatsoever-risks in situations like this were occasionally necessary. "If any of us get caught by L," he continued, "we'd prob'ly be lucky to get anything less than the death sentence."
"Fine, all right," she said. "I'll do meself bodily harm and forfeit the use of my fingertips for awhile for the sake of staying inconspicuous. Happy? Never mind the fact that we're looking to eventually gain L's trust." With a sigh, she added, "I'm going back to the surveillance room to see what's going on with the break-in now. Haven't heard any correspondence in a little while." She indicated her earpiece before turning and walking out of the kitchen and heading back into their surveillance room.
She took her seat back in her chair. "Still no L?"
"Not yet," Don said. "Probably won't take too much longer-"
"Er… minor problem." Katherine and Don both looked up at the monitor screen where Pat, who had just spoken quietly, was standing against the wall. "The anesthetics."
After a moment of total silence and stillness, Don picked up the mic from the computer desk in front of him, pressed down the button on its side, and spoke into it. "What about them?" he asked slowly.
"They may very well be sitting on the kitchen counter," Pat replied weakly.
"Are you sure they're not in yer bag?"
"Yes. Because now I'm rememberin' forgetting to pick them up."
Don sat back in the computer chair. "Bloody hell… is there anything else you could knock him out with?"
"There's a tire iron in the bag."
Blinking in slight confusion, Katherine looked over at Don. "Why is there a tire iron in the bag?"
"Why," Don repeated into the microphone, "are you carrying around a bloody tire iron?"
On the monitor, Pat shrugged and replied quietly, "Ya never know when you're goin' to need a tire iron." Don set the microphone down as a hand came to his face. As he was shaking his head in disbelief, Pat added, "I also have a crowbar, if that would be any better."
With a sigh, Don picked the microphone back up. "Either should work, just be careful about it. Make sure you knock him out on the first try, but no serious head injuries."
"No worries," Pat said. "This wouldn't be the first time I've had to hit someone over the head with a tire iron. Or a crowbar. And I've never killed anyone before or caused any permanent brain damage that I know of, so it should all be fine-"
"All right, quit talkin' and go get the fecking thing before L comes back out of the back room!" Don interrupted. Pat shrugged and moved quickly off camera a moment later.
Katherine shook her head. "I understand the hockey mask, but why did it have to be a clown wig? With any luck, L's bound to laugh himself unconscious at that."
"Honestly, it was the only wig that would fit without use of a bald cap or a hairnet, both of which he refused to wear under the claims that it would 'kill' his hair. And given that his most distinguishing quality is his hair, he sort o' needed to disguise it."
"If by distinguishing you mean 80's, then I couldn't agree mo-"
"Door, shit!" Katherine looked back up at the monitor and saw a door opening down the short hallway. Don grabbed up the microphone from the computer desk quickly. "Have ya got the damned thing yet?" he asked Pat.
"Yeah-"
"Stand at the other side of the hall, the target's already headed your way. Quickly."
"Right." And, quite quickly, Pat reappeared on screen to the immediate right of the hallway, holding a tire iron, ready to strike.
"The second he passes you, go for it. Don't give 'im any time to even think he saw a clown in a hockey mask before he hits the floor. If you understand, don't move or speak." Judging by the fact that Pat did neither of these things, he quite obviously understood perfectly. "Good. Get ready."
"Why does this seem like the worst idea I've ever heard of?" Katherine said, already starting to flinch even before L was at the edge of the hallway.
"Probably because it is," Don said, looking everywhere but the monitor. "He knows to get out if anything goes wrong, it's just a matter of which way it might go wrong in."
"Like if he accidentally inflicts brain damage on the world's greatest detective, for instance?"
"Y… yeah," Don said. "Like that."
Katherine flinched at the sound of the tire iron striking against something, and then a muffled thump! coming from her earpiece. She glanced up to see Pat leaning down next to the motionless body on the floor, picking up it's wrist, and then glancing at his own watch. After a moment, he nodded. "Regular pulse, good sign," he said. "Now it's just a question of how long I have to get this done…"
Don picked the microphone up again. "First thing's first," he said to Pat. "Set up the connection between his computer and this one, we need the information on the case. Close the connection. Then worry about the cameras and the bugs."
"Right." Pat quickly rushed off camera.
"I think we have a problem." Katherine and Don both glanced back at the door to see Al holding up a syringe by its plunger, no doubt filled with anesthetics.
"Has already been solved, apparently Pat carries around a tire iron with him wherever he goes," Don said.
Al shrugged and set the syringe down on an end table. "Never know when you're going to need a tire iron."
Katherine was the one to facepalm this time.
xXXxxxXXxxxXXxxxXXxxxXXxxxXXxxxXXxxxXXx
The plan went over well enough. Not all of the cameras were put up before L had started to show signs of waking up, but enough of them were. Even after L had awoken and found a few of them, promptly tore them down, and spent the rest of the night being quite jumpy, there were still enough for them to get by on. He would no doubt find more of them as time went by, but the most important thing had been done; they had all of the information on the Kira case from L's own personal computer, which meant that it would be easy enough to catch up on everything in the case up to this point. They could worry about the rest of the cameras later, after L switched hotels again.
The newest, greatest bit of information they had was about the chief suspect in the case; Yagami Light. Light would be entering college after completing his final year in high school, and it would no doubt be the prestigious To-Oh University, and he would no doubt be a freshman representative. Those were all L's conclusions, and by them, L apparently had plans to pose as a representative himself; he was under the impression that Light would be fully capable of scoring perfectly on the placement tests, and so would L himself.
This was where the other three got the idea to have Katherine also pose as one to get inside information on both L and Light. The plan was to somehow create fake test results under the name Katherine Lynton and have them tie with the scores of L and Light, and have said results somehow planted wherever it was they needed to be. She was unsure of the details herself; she still wasn't at quite the level Don and Al were at with these sort of things. Conning people, getting into places on mere eloquence and intelligence alone (with the assistance of fake and stolen identification, of course), making friends in high places only to betray them later for the sake of money-she just wasn't totally sure she was cut out for it. Pat was fully aware that he wasn't and was all for the other side of things; he preferred breaking in to talking his way in; hacking into computers to faking any sort professional outlook.
Katherine was still torn somewhere in between. Perhaps Al was right in that she should have never run off when the orphanage tried to send her away for the sake of getting her away from them. Maybe she would have been better off growing up somewhere else, so she never would have gotten herself into this sort of life. Now, there was really no turning back. She had done the damage, and she was the perfect person to do fieldwork for this sort of job anyway.
After all, and completely thanks to her old orphanage, she had never been given an identity. No identity, no name, and Kira couldn't do anything.
Pat, Don, and Al were all completely ignorant to this, of course. They knew she had no identity, but they didn't know as well as she did how Kira killed. She had never told them about the death note, nor did she plan to unless it need be. Right now, the Shinigami King's death note was just a useful tool that could maybe help out later. It didn't need to be anything more than that.
Now flipping precariously through the pages of an empty, black notebook with bandaged fingers (she had decided it would be a good idea to burn off her fingerprints tonight just to get it over with) she wondered if it really held so much power. She had seen the Shinigami that had told her of its rules well enough, but it had been only one, and she hadn't been fully awake at the time. It could have been some strange dream. The unmarked notebook hardly seemed like it could hurt anyone, and despite the Shinigami's claims that it would allow her to see any of their kind as it was the property of the King of Death himself, she had never seen another Shinigami.
She supposed the ultimate test would be when she saw Yagami Light in person; if there was some strange spook hovering around him, she would know for sure. She certainly had no intentions of testing the notebook herself; if she would do anything with it, she would use it for saving lives, one of the capabilities the King's death note had that no other Shinigami's had. It would be useful in the Kira case, if it was true. It would ensure that none of the task force would ever die, that L would never die, that none of her friends would.
She imagined getting L's real name would about as easy as getting Al's real name would be; though on opposite sides of the law, they both protected their identities obsessively. Neither of them wanted to be known. Al, because he could be taken in or killed by his competition; L, because he could be killed by his own competition or any criminal in the world. Both had quite a lot to risk with what they were doing.
Climbing off of the bed she had claimed as hers when they all moved into the little house in Tokyo's suburbs, Katherine wondered how it was all going to be pulled off, how it could all possibly work out as they were planning it. She had never questioned Al's capabilities to plan these sorts of operations, or Don or Pat's abilities to enact them, but things were different this time. If they were caught by either side before the time was right, the only thing they faced was death.
After crawling under her bed and brushing away a few cobwebs, Katherine lifted a loose floorboard slowly, careful not to allow it to creak, and slipped the notebook beneath it before laying it back down on her bed. She glanced at the clock to see it was already after four in the morning; maybe she would get a few hours of sleep before being awoken to participate in the study of L's Kira case files.