[Closed]
Who: L Lawliet sweetenedlogic & Light Yagami xanatospileup
When: After this transmission.
Where: Light's pad, Outlander Community Block.
Format: Paragraph.
What: L has arrived and demanded Light's address. Having acquired it, he then goes to meet him.
Warnings: Hoo, crikey. Um, probably violence and anything that goes with it. I'll put a rating on as the log progresses!
Light Yagami. The name glowed as demurely as all the others on the screen of the Forge, less than intriguing save for the odd amalgamation of English and Japanese, but to L it might as well have been glowing like red hot coals on a moonless night, standing out a mile.
The streetlamps had died down to a muted orange by the time L walked the greater part of the distance to the address sent by the very same man he loathed to once again look upon, but he still had a handful of miles to go on foot - barefoot - before he reached his destination. It could all have been a ploy to get L exactly where Light wanted him, but he was inclined to think otherwise with the threat of 'a number' of undefined individuals alerted to L's presence hanging over everything as a back-up plan, the fact he had spoken to anyone at all giving cause to the notion he would have secured his well-being to the greatest extent possible while shielding his true identity. Light, too, would have had to assume as much.
Near was the best candidate for an alliance, however much of a gamble had to be made. It was almost entirely convincing that the young prodigy would have followed in L's footsteps to become his successor according to the profiling issued by Wammy's House, although Mello was a factor L couldn't do without either, a 'strong social character' that would come in useful where Near could fail; L thanked a number of nameless, faceless deities that Roger Ruvie had done an excellent job on the boys' files, giving him even the meagrest amount of history to theorise off. Near would need to reign in Mello and form his own plan of action, L reasoned, when faced with the possibility of their predecessor's return, gathering to him a coterie of trusted associates in Anatole to share the information with. People who would believe in and respect L just because Near said so.
Having lost one friend, I suddenly need to gather a small army, L dismally acknowledged, cold soles slapping the cobbled streets with a numbness that had failed to become a priority since a few miles back, just another painful ache to deal with. Did I really lose anything concerning Light Yagami? It's pointless debating Kira's emotions when his actions take precedence.
Was it worth putting so much stock in unknown abilities? In a stranger's very ethics? L didn't know him, hadn't spoken to him even during a short interlude into the boy's life via a scrambled voice message, but he knew one thing for certain; he couldn't afford not to find out.
One way or another, things would become clearer when the dust settled upon L's arrival.
Mello wasn't surplus, despite L's choice in contacting Near first. If his confrontational personality was anything to go by, he would have been more of a liability than a help and L wanted his instructions followed to the letter. Mello would likely respond better to doing exactly what was asked if the source was a peer against whom he had been elevated for L's own title, wanting every small detail, unwilling to trust in anything he heard just once. Repetition was key in the cases of both. It wasn't difficult to imagine how the news of their joint 'victory' would have been taken. In truth, L cared nothing for the police station he had picked out on Anatole's map. He would deal with it later, but as he ignored the subtle influx of fog settling around his ankles, there was only one thing the detective gave a damn about, the reason he had ensured Light couldn't capture or kill him before they faced each other for the first time since L''s death. Once is once, an eye for an eye. Light had murdered L and it was high time someone drummed home the gravity of the situation. Childish to a fault, L was prepared to completely blindside the rest of Kira's victims in their thousands owing to one simple, vicious thought; How dare you kill me.
He was L, the world's top three-rated detectives, not some low-life that, frankly, wouldn't have been missed. There was insult added to injury when his mind replayed the last moments of his life in Light's arms, seemingly as astonished as to his sudden heart-attack as his friend, only to see an expression twist and morph Light's features into a devil-may-care hatred he had only ever pictured in dreams of locking up behind a six-inch metal door. Kira's smile, nothing to do with Light Yagami the altered young man who had become so earnest and devoted to the case mid-way through his imprisonment under L's own direction. Snide, egotistical and victorious.
L quickened his pace, a darkened scowl settled behind mist-dewy hair. The bags under his eyes were shadows of nights gone without sleep, now standing testament to the way he couldn't have bedded down if he had been given the chance, sallow and strained with the phantom pain in his chest echoing around a heart-beat that shouldn't have existed. Night had truly fallen, dark and chilling, but no more so than the grim man stalking the streets of the city in a bid to track down his murderer.