hh_mirror | ::Open RP - A's Garden::

Entry tags:

::Open RP - A's Garden::

It was a lovely day, really.

Even if the weather had been less than ideal, A would have gone to the garden. The plants needed to be tended, after all, and right now he's kneeling by the catnip bed, pulling out the few weeds that have dared to encroach on his territories.

Now that he has a computer with an internet connection, A is Discovering music, and he's singing, very badly, as he weeds.

"Everyday seems a little longer
Every way love's a little stronger
Come what may
Do you ever long for, true love from me"

He can't carry a tune, but there's an odd hiccuping tone to his voice that's a clear attempt to mimic Buddy Holly.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It probably was, when it was all laid out, but - "You're still here."

"L's here."

Simple as that, really.

"I see."

For her it wasn't so much a matter of something here as not much to compete out there. She'd said once that with Raye gone she had nothing to lose, and that remained largely true.

And knowing what she did she couldn't help but speculate if one day she might find Raye standing, befuddled, in the Sorting Room. Low chances of that, to be sure, but there had already been clusters as with L and his associates, the Yagamis father and son...

"And - if he's going to die, there's a chance he might wind up back here." Matt shrugs. He's oblivious to how closely he's mirroring Naomi's thoughts, obviously, but she doesn't seem particularly happy.

"You worked together, right?"

So mirrored that for a moment she was unreasonably uncertain as to whether he meant L or Raye.

"On the one case, yes."

"LABB?"

Matt didn't follow it, not really. He was making a point of it at the time; which was dumb, considering no one cared.

"I don't know much about it."

"Yes. Did you want to know?"

Naomi had had cause to remember it anew over the past weeks.

"Yeah. I've - got some idea of what he's capable of, but..."

He shrugs.

"What idea do you have already? About that case?"

She wouldn't want to assume too much, let alone talk down to him (~~"It stands for Los Angeles BB Murder Cases. And it involved me, and L, and B. And people died"~~).

"I know barely anything," Matt admits, shrugging. "I was going through a Thing at the time. But I know B impersonated L. If L was involved, there must've been a pretty high body count - unless it was just to contain B? And I know dolls were involved somehow."

He could easily figure out more, if he tried, but he'd rather just hear the truth of it from Naomi.

"There were three murders," Naomi began, and proceeded to explain about the setup with the wara ningyo, nails, and thumbturn locks, the excessive cleaning of each scene, the obscured "clues," etc., and how she'd been enlisted, gone to Insist Street, and found B under the bed.

"He was calling himself Rue Ryuzaki at the time."

"... that's a bit creepy," Matt says. To B using 'Ryuzaki'; hiding under beds and wiping lightbulb sockets aren't as using L's alias.

Well. Maybe the hiding under beds part. Matt shudders, and lights another cigarette as soon as he finishes the first.

"How did he explain that? Just say he was investigating?"

"He said he was hired by the victim's family. In fact, it turned out he'd gotten himself hired by all three families. How he managed that I'm still not sure."

She explained then how in retrospect he had impersonated L, though one would only be aware of this if they'd seen the real one - the posture, the sitting position, the preoccupation with sweets. Then the "uncovering" of the clues he'd planted, the random attack, etc. All up to the day they'd been waiting in apartments nine floors apart. Then how he'd let slip the knowledge she knew capoeira, and how that had fit in to send her running down nine flights of stairs to 404 -

"Then I put him out and arrested him."

"Holy shit. He set himself on fire? That's worse than Mello."

Not that he's comparing his best friend to B, or anything. But Jesus fucking Christ - is he the only Wammy's graduate who doesn't think exposing yourself to lethal amounts of fire is a perfectly good tactical move?

"He's not burned, though. Does he come from an earlier point in the timeline or something?"

"I don't think so. He remembers me, and he wasn't exactly happy to see me when I came here. He said he was killed by Kira, though I don't remember hearing about it - it might have happened later. He also claimed he lost the burns when he arrived. For whatever his word's worth."

It was more plausible than extensive cosmetic surgery in a prison hospital, though.

"The Kira thing makes sense. I normally wouldn't trust a thing he says, but it's not like the story was kept out of the press..."

He shrugs. (He does that a lot.)

"Sucks that proving it was him involved having to stop him from burning to death, though," Matt adds, a little darkly.

"Mm."

Naomi had sometimes felt a certain ambivalence regarding B from time to time, but it was a lot simpler to be ambivalent about him when he was out of the picture, no longer a threat.

Matt nods, scratching behind Koopa's ears.

"It can't have been all that great, finding him here. Kira, too."

"Not really, no."

She sometimes rethought her initial decision not to kick Light in the face on sight. All in all, she doubted the consequences would have been that great. Too bad she'd already decided to be civilized.

"Beats being dead, though." He thinks about this for a moment. "Probably. Not like I remember much about it. But hey, I'd take drama over fucking 'mu' any day."

"'Mu?' Is it any relation to Zen Buddhism?"

Naomi couldn't remember dying at all, just an overwhelming feeling that she ought to.

"Something like that, I guess. I wonder if shinigami have religions."

"They might have a better view of how spiritual things work."

Whether they used that view was another matter.

"I've only met one, and it was here. The one Mello told me about sounded a bit... stupid, really."

Mello thought most people were stupid, of course, especially considering they'd be raised among geniuses.

"But hey, I guess they must know about - different realms and shit. So you're probably right."