Second City Application
[IC Information]
Character Name: Mail “Matt” Jeevas
Series: Death Note
Gender: Male
Age: 20
Species: Human
Appearance:
Matt is 5’5”, 115 lbs, with a relatively thin frame; he has brown hair, decently long, and bright blue eyes, though not many people know that. His hair’s normally quite messy, and he just doesn’t pay that much attention to how he looks. Matt’s pretty pale, mostly from too many hours spent indoors, in front of a DS or computer screen, and he normally wears striped shirts, funky vests, blue jeans, and either Converse sneakers or some old, worn boots. He’s got a slightly small nose and a small mouth, normally set into a frown.
Personality:
A number of Matt’s attributes are shown through one statistic, provided by HTR13 - his social skills. He scored a 3 out of 10, which leads me to believe that he is very private, and he doesn’t offer up his opinions or views very easily; the same goes with his emotions. Unless he feels quite comfortable around a certain person, he’ll most likely maintain a blank expression and tone, opting to show an uncaring attitude. He probably actually cares about very little other than himself and his own goals (which are few and far between), and it takes a great deal of conversation and logic to get him to change his mind. This part of his personality could also be explained by an unavoidable awkwardness that seems to come with the Wammy’s package; a good number of the other children raised by the place (L, Near, Mello, BB) seem to also have extreme social problems, though some worse than others.
He has one addiction, and that’s smoking; he chain-smokes worse than a chimney, and he’ll often be found with a smoke. The lack of smokes at the Institute would make him go through almost immediate withdrawal, so he’ll likely be quite snappy and withdrawn most of the time. As evident in what few panels are shown of Matt’s daily activities in Volume 10, he mostly keeps to himself, refusing to go out and socialize with people, and instead chooses to work or play his video games. He also is shown to be surrounded by junk food wrappers on the floor, which indicates that he’s a somewhat messy individual, not exactly caring much about his surroundings or living space, nor does he seem to really care how well he takes care of himself (this is evident from both the smoking and the lack of substantial meals).
Matt’s very intelligent, but he probably chooses to hide this fact when he finds dealing with other people to be unavoidable, finding it simpler to just let people think what they will about him; if they find him stupid, he can only perceive this as an advantage. However, because of his lack of social skills and need to fit in with society, this intelligence is mostly based on book smarts; he most likely has very little real-world knowledge, opting instead to leave that up to others who he can work with or for, like Mello. He’s very fond of stripes and blue jeans, and he’s normally playing a handheld game of some kind, such as a Nintendo DS, and he almost always is seen wearing a pair of yellow-tinted goggles over his eyes; these are very important to him, in an almost sentimental or rebellious sense. Matt also tends to be less fixated on the grand scheme of things than the other former residents of Wammy’s House, and he also seems to view people in a more “normal” aspect - in the hormonal teenage boy sense. No other child from Wammy’s has exhibited the same sort of sexual mentality that he has, with just one word: “cute.” In the few panels that feature him in Vol. 10 of Death Note, Matt refers to Misa Amane as a “cute Japanese girl.” This shows that he does, in fact, take physical attraction into account when building an impression of someone, a factor that L, Near, Beyond, and Mello all seemed to ignore. Where the others always tended to view people as tools to be utilized to reach an end, Matt sees them as actual people, who go out and do actual things. This may be from his extensive work in surveillance; it’s become his job to view people as they are.
I’ve always felt that Matt’s almost complete withdrawal from society was indicative of resentment toward the setup of Wammy’s, disliking the fact that someone had plucked him from foster care and decided that he was too intelligent and wily to be a normal kid, but also not good enough to actually be what he was raised to strive for. Perhaps in the beginning, like Mello, he was quite eager to show what he could do and become the world’s greatest detective, but as time wore on, he began to realize that it would never happen, and decided that his time would be better spent looking out for himself. This would also help to explain the relationship between Matt and Mello (that unspoken camaraderie between a pair of boys who, at one time, held the same dream) and why he comes to Mello’s aid during the Kira case, after an implied number of years spent apart. Unlike Mello, however, Matt must have decided somewhere along the lines that he needed to be more realistic.
History:
*Because there is so little information given in canon, parts of Matt’s history and personality are assumptions that I have made based on both what I’ve seen of him in the anime, read of him in the manga, and statistics and statements made in HTR13, which is an actual canon source.
Matt really only appears in manga issues 10, 11, and 12, each for only a few short panels, and he barely has any dialogue; he actually appears in even less of the anime series. From what I’ve read of the manga and How To Read 13 and seen of the anime, Matt grew up with Mello and Near at Wammy’s House; he was the third in line for L’s succession, after A’s briefly mentioned suicide and BB’s romp into the world of serial killing. Based on statements found in HTR13, I feel that it’s safe to assume that Matt appeared at Wammy’s at a relatively young age, probably between years 6 and 10. Also, because of his lack of social skills (and the assumption that social skills were just generally lacking in this unorthodox orphanage because of the myriad of “geniuses”), he probably wasn’t able to make many friends; one friend that it’s quite clear he did make was Mello, the resident number two in line for the title L, who left at fifteen to make a name for himself in the world apart from Near, the number one, after L’s death. Matt, at that point, was fourteen.
After some years of unknown activity, Matt reconnected with Mello to do some surveillance work for him. It’s probable that Matt was quite clear on the target of his surveillance - model Misa Amane, the suspected “second Kira” and “girlfriend” to Light Yagami, who was thought for some time by both L and each of his successors to be the original Kira - however, it’s unclear whether or not he was fully aware of the danger of such a job.
Sometime in January of 2010, Mello received a call from a mole he had planted with Near - Halle Lidner, a member of the SPK who was also working undercover as a bodyguard for the Kira spokesperson, Kiyomi Takada, another “girlfriend” of Light Yagami. It’s unknown, what they spoke of, but, afterward, Mello worked to form a plan, probably with Matt’s input, and they both put that plan into action on January 26th, 2010. Using a smoke bomb, Matt created a diversion, scattering Takada’s bodyguards and allowing Halle to situate Takada with Mello, who disappeared into the city with her. While Mello made off with Takada, Matt drove off in his car to divert the attention of her bodyguards; his cockiness led him to be shot repeatedly by those same bodyguards once they had him cornered, and Mello didn’t get much further. He was killed about an hour later, by Takada, who used a hidden piece of the Death Note she hid in her bra to write his name.
However, their deaths were not in vain; Matt and Mello’s combined efforts to kidnap Takada may have cost them both their lives, but it also paved the way for Near to prove his case against Light Yagami.
Supernatural Abilities: None whatsoever.
Supernatural Weaknesses: No supernatural abilities, so I guess... no weaknesses?
Natural Abilities: Matt is extremely intelligent (near genius level) and is a whiz with surveillance, which leads me to believe that he’s also quite skilled with a computer.
As a Wammy's kid, he's probably got the Wammy's basic package; he more than likely took classes in logic, computer science, and several languages. Some basic languages that he probably took were English, Spanish, French, Russian, and Latin. I feel that's it's safe to say he was also taught one or more forms of self-defense.
Matt's also the one that Mello calls to do intricate computer and surveillance work for him, which suggests that Matt has skills in these areas that not even Mello, the second-best of Wammy's, has. He's normally shown surrounded by computers, which he obviously is actively using; this leads me to believe that, although Mello and Near would obviously know their way around a computer and other technology, Matt seems to have more skill with them.
I also feel that it's safe to assume that Mello didn't have any surveillance being kept on Misa Amane until he calls Matt to do it; this, I feel, speaks volumes about his observational skills. His trailing of Misa and Mogi is overall successful, though his sometimes easily distracted nature makes him mess up on occasion; this fact leads me to believe that he is a rather sneaky individual, able to keep his presence mostly under wraps for as long as he needs to.
Possessions: Matt will be carrying nothing but a pack of cigarettes and a cheap lighter - and the gun that's tucked into the back of his pants at his death, if that's all right with the mods. :3
First-person POV journal sample:
[text]
Starting a game of L4D2. Anyone interested? I'll text you my address if you are.
Third-person POV rp sample:
Matt took a deep breath, chewing on his lower lip in a quickly failing attempt to occupy his mouth; he kept glancing at the pack of menthols sitting so idly on his desk. After several moments of thinly-veiled self-argument, his fingers stilled over the keyboard of his laptop, and he turned his head completely to outright stare at the object of his desire. Heaving a sigh, he gritted his teeth, jaw uncomfortably tense, and turned his head back to the several browsers open on the glowing computer monitor.
It was still unclear to him exactly why he was refusing to smoke; he just didn’t like the way it always seemed to piss Mello off right off the bat. Here they were, a pair of old friends, living together and trying to crack the case of a lifetime before that little wanker Near managed it… And they were getting caught up in pissing contests and pointless bets? The entire situation had that ring of adolescence still attached to it, that need to bullshit through bad blood and bring an end to any and all awkwardness that came with it.
It had been a rough few years, all by himself at Wammy’s after Mello left, but Matt was a big boy, fully capable of taking care of himself. Plus he wasn’t really one to hold grudges, and this seemed to be a pretty useless grudge to hold. Mello was Mello, and nothing that Matt ever did or said or wanted was ever going to change that.
Not that he wanted it to, really.
Swallowing, he stopped his typing again. He licked his lips as his fingers twitched a little, the index of his right finger hovering semi-anxiously over the spacebar; he leaned back a little, his head canting forward to let his hair fall over his eyes. The goggles were starting to make him feel a bit claustrophobic - definitely a first for him. But Matt was unsure if taking them off would really solve that problem and make him feel better. Was he even really feeling all that bad in the first place?
This barely bottled anxiety was just a little more than he could take at the moment, and he started the process of shutting down his system. Making sure that the computer was completely shut off before grabbing his pack, lighter, and handheld, Matt started the course of transferring himself and his activities into the surprisingly spacious living room of the apartment.
He settled himself into the chair opposite Mello, who was strewn across the sofa like a king or something, munching his damn chocolate. After a few minutes of nothing but silence, chewing, and the faint beep of Matt’s video game, the phone rang, and Matt just ignored everything else as he struggled through level twenty, only pulling his focus away from the game when he heard Mello finish the conversation and hang up, setting his bar of chocolate down on the coffee table beside the cordless.
His cigarette hung between his lips, burning itself down to the filter without any aid. “What’s all that about?” he asked, knowing that he’d probably just wasted breath on a question that would never be answered.
Silence was all that met him, and it was disturbing, the thought that, maybe, silence was all he’d receive from now on. With that in mind, he turned the paused game off, setting it beside Mello’s chocolate bar.
They were unnecessary now.