Light Yagami stared at the words on his monitor, his body rigid, his jaw clenched so tightly it ached. The initial, furious rage he had felt from Poirot's trap had, for a moment, been cooled by a grim resolve. He would stay low. He would be smarter. He would be patient.
And then, this. A new message from the digital ghost that called itself 7h3_4r7157.
From: Anonymous [UID: 7h3_4r7157]
To: KIRA
Hayashi Rin. The old forensics man. He has information. Dangerous to you. Dangerous to me. Take him hostage. Make him talk. Then, erase him.
The message was not a request. It was not an alliance. It was an order. A short, brutal, and utterly insane instruction that sent a fresh wave of ice-cold fury through Light's veins. This unpredictable, chaotic variable, this creature he had begun to consider a useful, if feral, tool, had just attempted to put a leash on its god.
Hostage? Light thought, his mind racing, his contempt battling with a new, gnawing paranoia. He wants me to perform a common kidnapping? To get my hands physically dirty? To operate like a street-level thug?
It was a trap. It had to be. This B.B. was clearly an idiot, a reckless fool who, in his theatrical madness, was trying to get them both caught. To march into the home of a known, former NPA official, a man who was unquestionably under surveillance by the new American task force, was not just risky; it was suicide. He would ignore it. He would dismiss it as the raving of a lunatic.
And yet… a small, cold splinter of doubt lodged itself in his mind. 'Dangerous to you. Dangerous to me.' What if that part wasn't a lie? Hayashi was from the old guard. He had access to files, to memories, to cold cases that computers had forgotten. What if he did know something? What if this was a genuine warning, dressed in the clumsy, theatrical command of a madman?
He was being disturbed, pushed, and prodded from all sides. L's task force, this new American interloper, and now this supposed ally. He felt, for the first time, a flicker of something he had not experienced since this all began. He felt like he was losing control.
Miles away, in his darkened apartment, Beyond Birthday hit the 'send' key, a slow, triumphant, jam-sticky smile spreading across his face. He licked a dollop of strawberry jam from his thumb, his red eyes gleaming in the glow of his monitors. The lie was so beautiful, so simple.
'He has information.'
Of course, Hayashi Rin had no such thing. The old man was a retired, harmless fossil, a gardener obsessed with his perfect, boring little rocks. But his value as a pawn was immense.
B.B. leaned back, his mind a gallery of beautiful, interlocking schemes. The plan was a masterpiece of misdirection, designed to solve two of his most irritating problems at once.
First, there was Kira. B.B. found Kira's work to be offensively, pedestrianly boring. Heart attack, heart attack, heart attack. A endless, repetitive, uninspired conveyor belt of divine judgment. It lacked passion. It lacked art. A true artist did not simply sit in a room and wish people dead. A true artist got his hands dirty. He craved the intimacy of the act, the texture of the fear, the smell of the despair.
This little "mission" was designed to corrupt Kira's sterile purity. To force him off his mountain. To make him a performer. He wanted to see if the "god" would bleed, if he would sweat, if he would debase himself with a common, human act of violence like a kidnapping. The thought of the perfect, righteous Kira stooping to such a level was, to B.B., a delicious, artistic defilement.
Second, there was the far more practical problem of Soichiro Yagami. That man was a pest. A bloodhound. A creature of pure, dogged, methodical persistence. He was digging too deep into the Akane Tanaka case, pulling at threads that B.B. would prefer remain unwoven. He needed to be distracted.
And what, B.B. mused, would be a greater distraction than this? If Hayashi Rin, a respected former officer, was suddenly taken hostage and then died of a Kira-esque heart attack, the NPA would implode. The investigation would be torn in two. Was this Kira, escalating his methods? Or was it B.B., framing Kira? It would create a storm of such beautiful confusion that Soichiro would be forced to abandon his current path, sent chasing a thousand new phantoms.
B.B. smiled. Yes, the plan was perfect.
But the Kira problem, that was just a side project. A little game to play while he waited for the main event. His gaze drifted to another monitor, one displaying a saved video file: the feed from the warehouse.
L.
B.B.'s smile widened into a grin of pure, almost spiritual, ecstasy. The last few days had been the most thrilling of his entire, miserable existence. L's tribute had been magnificent.
The first murder, the heiress in Kyoto hanged by her own hair, had been a lovely opening statement. A classic of the genre. Poetic. Intimate.
But the other two… oh, the other two were masterpieces of inspired, degenerate genius.
The second victim, a corrupt CEO of a chemical plant, had been found in his own penthouse apartment. He had been perfectly, surgically bisected by a single, massive sheet of plate glass. The police, according to the suppressed internal reports B.B. had happily acquired, were baffled. No windows in the penthouse were broken. The glass itself was of a type not used anywhere in the building. It was simply… there. An impossible object for an impossible crime, a beautiful, artistic "how-dunn-it" that shrieked its defiance at a logical world.
The third, however, was his personal favourite. A notorious human trafficker. His body had been found in the pre-dawn hours in Ueno Park, kneeling in the dirt as if in prayer. His entire vascular system, every artery and every vein, had been injected with molten, 24-karat gold, which had then cooled, turning him into a grotesque, priceless statue. A perfect, horrifying monument to greed.
B.B. had been in awe. The police, naturally, had turned a blind eye, suppressing the details of the latter two murders to prevent a city-wide panic. They were overwhelmed, torn between Kira, the L betrayal, and the American task force. They had no time or resources for a new "artistic" killer, especially one this… elaborate.
L wasn't faking. He hadn't just been putting on a show. The great detective, the world's last bastion of cold, hard logic, had broken. The pressure had been too much. His brilliant mind had finally snapped, and in doing so, had liberated the glorious, sociopathic artist that had been screaming to get out.
L hadn't just defected. He had converted. He was a fan. An apprentice. A partner.
B.B. felt a thrill so profound it was almost a religious experience. He was no longer alone. He had found his equal, his collaborator, his other half.
"He has proven his sincerity," B.B. whispered to the empty room, his voice trembling with excitement. "It is time to welcome him to the club."
Thirty minutes later, he was there. The abandoned warehouse in the Ariake district. The stage upon which L had declared his magnificent liberation. The massive, rusted metal doors were exactly as they had been left, slightly ajar, a dark maw waiting to swallow him.
He slipped inside, his movements silent. The air was cold, thick with the smell of rust, old water, and concrete. It was a vast, dark cathedral, the only light coming from a few high, grime-caked windows and a single, perfect shaft of moonlight that pierced a hole in the rotted roof, illuminating the center of the vast, empty floor.
His heart was pounding, a wild, joyous drum against his ribs. He was giddy. What would they do first? A true collaboration? A murder designed by two, executed as one? The possibilities were endless!
"Ryuzaki!" B.B. called out, his voice a happy, echoing purr in the enormous space. "You put on quite a show! I must say, the gold-filling trick was a personal favorite. A bit ostentatious, perhaps, but the message was beautifully clear! You're speaking my language now!"
He walked further into the darkness, his eyes scanning the shadows. "Come now, don't be shy! We're all artists here! Your application for apprenticeship has been… enthusiastically approved!"
He heard a sound. A soft, wet, metallic scrape.
It came from the deepest part of the warehouse, from a pool of shadow just beyond the main shaft of light. B.B.'s grin widened. He was being coy.
"Oh, playing hard to get?" B.B. taunted, walking forward with a confident swagger. "I suppose I can appreciate that. An artist must have his little mysteries. But it's just us. You can come out."
He rounded a stack of decaying pallets and stopped. The source of the sound was there, in the center of the moonlight. A figure was kneeling on the ground.
At first, B.B. did not understand what he was seeing. The figure was small, feminine. It was kneeling over the crumpled, dark, and unceremoniously dumped body of the android, Connor.
The figure was… pulling at something. Prying something from the android's shattered skull.
Then, the figure stood, sensing his presence, and turned.
B.B. froze. His triumphant smile faltered, his mind locking in a feedback loop of pure, unadulterated impossibility.
The figure was bathed in the pale, silver light. She was wearing a white satin bunny suit, the fluffy tail matted with grime and dried blood. Her throat was a grotesque, puckered roadmap of lurid, half-healed stitches.
It was Akane Tanaka.
He knew he had killed her. He had felt the fine edge of his razor sever her throat. He had felt the hot, sticky gush of her arterial spray on his hands and face. He had watched, with his own two eyes, as the light of her pathetic, adoring life had faded in that cheap, velvet-lined booth. He had performed the act himself. It was a fact. An absolute.
But the fact was now standing in front of him.
"Master," Akane rasped, the sound like dry paper tearing, a grotesque, adoring smile stretching across her face. The stitches in her neck pulled taut with the expression. She held up the object she had just pried from the android's head: a small, blue, glowing sphere.
"You came for me," she whispered, her voice a ruin. "I knew you would."