Beyond Beginnings
Name: Des
Personal LJ: deathdesu
Contact Info: Macrocosm Says
warning: from here on contains spoilers for the novel. Big, huge, massive spoilers. The character is a spoiler on legs.
Character Name: Beyond Birthday (goes by the code names "B", "Backup" and "Rue Ryuzaki.")
Character Series: Death Note: Another Note /The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases I'd like to be included with the rest of Death Note, although this book is technically a spin-off '-'
Character Age: 23
Background: Death Note on Wikipedia. Death Note: Another Note on Death Note Wiki. Wammy's House on Death Note Wiki. Shinigami Eyes on Death Note Wiki. L Lawliet on Death Note Wiki. Beyond Birthday on Death Note Wiki. (There are many blank spaces when it comes to his history, which I intend to fill with my own, fairly rich headcanon.)
There once was a boy. He lived with his mother and father, who named him and doted on him. However, their son was strange. He was able to read at a ridiculously advanced age, and seemed to be a genius in a number of ways. Stranger still, he would perfectly parrot the behavior of others, be they loved ones, celebrities or cartoon characters - and for a long time, that was the only form of communication he seemed to possess. If he couldn't copy someone, he refused to speak. And although it was obvious that he had picked up a wide vocabulary from reading and from studying adults, once he finally transgressed from his selective mutism, the sentences he formed while acting as himself were below average for his age group.
Apart from the difficulties in speech, the parents were concerned for another reason. Their son was a morbid child, and asked many questions about death. On the day that his father was murdered by robbers, the boy claimed that he knew it would happen, and was merely curious how. He didn't go through the ordinary stages of grievance - he didn't even seem depressed. From that point on, there seemed to be no end to the heartache that his mother would suffer. One day, she found her boy on the phone with an orphanage, asking them to collect him. When his mother cried, he looked at her with eyes full of fear, and told her that he had to make arrangements for what would happen to him when she died. She held him in her arms and promised that she wouldn't go anywhere. He didn't believe her. She forebade him from speaking to the people at the orphanage. He disobeyed her. Soon enough, his mother was hit by a train. Exactly on schedule.
The boy moved into the orphanage. A few months later, word of his genius had reached the ears of a man called Wammy, who asked the boy to make something of his life. To become the new L, and solve the most difficult crimes in the world. The boy agreed, and it was then that he met L for the first time. Shortly after, he was given the codename of "Backup."
He resented this name with every ounce of his dignity. He accepted it without complaint, asking to go as "B" like L and his new accquaintance, A. Then, in secret, he created his own "B" name for himself - it referred to his supernatural ability to see the names and lifespans of others. His memories went as far back as the hospital, where he saw the shapes that made up the doctor's name. Therefore, he presumed they developed in the womb - beyond his day of birth. "Beyond Birthday." It was the only name that suited him, now that his parents were gone and his codename was a joke. He kept his true name secret, as all children of Wammy's were supposed to. They were never any secrets to him, but he told nobody, considering the ability to be his trump card against L.
His life at Wammy's was unbelievably stressful. During that time, he became obsessed with the notion of surpassing L, instead of being only his successor. He believed that he was the only one capable of doing so - A's lifespan was definitely not lengthy enough. When A committed suicide from the pressure, B took even more work upon himself. Like his predecessor, he overworked and did not sleep. But L was like a mirage. The closer he became, the further away he seemed. It was too much. "B" eventually disappeared from the Wammy House, and was never heard from again.
In the year 2002, Beyond Birthday committed a string of serial murders known as the "Wara Ningyo Murders" because of a Japanese straw doll that he hung up at each crime scene, decreasing in number in accordance with the victims. The explicit purpose of the murders were to challenge L with puzzles that he created uusing the crime scene.
And L, who had been searching for him since he vanished, knew exactly what was going on - more than Beyond Birthday would ever have dreamed that he knew.
The tragic game left its players with scars that would never fade.
Personality:
"Brilliant and deviant" are the two adjectives used to describe B as a child at Wammy's house. They are both true of him as an adult. B is a genius with a number of quirks - he is obsessed with numbers, especially the number 13 and numbers that can be made to form 13 (like 4, being 1+3, since 1+3 looks like 13) , because the number 13 looks like a B. As can probably be guessed, he is also obsessed with the letter B, his own name. It stems from a need to remind himself of his greatness (because in fact he's depressive.)
After committing a murder, he cleaned up the crime scene so thoroughly, he not only removed his own fingerprints, but all fingerprints total - going so far as to wipe the light bulbs in their sockets and every page of every book in the house. One of his deliberately-left puzzler clues involved "Akazukin Chacha," a magical girl manga which he claims to be a big fan of. Since he seemed to have extensive knowledge on the topic, it's probably the truth - the set of Akazukin Chacha volumes present at the crime scenes were most likely his own copies, which is why he dusted all the books for fingerprints. That way, nobody would be able to fingerprint Akazukin Chacha and know that it didn't belong in the victim's house. This shows that B is extremely cautious ... and kind of an otaku.
He is an excellent mimic - specifically, he is a mimic of L, the world's greatest detective who happens to be B's object of obsession. While pretending to be L, he calls himself "Rue Ryuzaki", wears prosthetic makeup to look exactly like L, and his impression is almost indistinguishable from the original at times - he adopts his mannerisms, his eating habits (though the love of sugar may even be exaggerated - he eats whole jars of strawberry jam and puts about 80 sugar cubes in his coffee), his speaking quirks (such as throwing out random percentages). There may be differences where B is lacking in data, however in those areas it seems that he just goes out of his way to act as weird as possible. It could be that it's actually his own personality shining through. In his own words, "If L is a genius, then B is an extreme genius. If L is a freak, then B is an extreme freak." He also acts a little friendlier than L does, in order to play the fool and gain trust. He's a good liar and will lie often if it suits him.
B's desire to surpass L is not only an unhealthy obsession, it's basically his entire world. This is partially due to the then extremely rigorous training methods implemented on him by the Wammy House, but B sees himself as a clone of L that must surpass the original in order for his life to have value. This mentality causes no end of self destructive behavior. Dressing and acting like L are his addictive drug.
Though he was a serial murderer, B gets no thrill out of killing others, and considers the method of murder as little more than an interesting experiment. He targeted his victims based on their names having the initials B. B., and their time of death as told by the numbers he saw above their heads, and attempted to kill them on the exact date, as his absolute faith in his shinigami eyes lead him to believe that even if he didn't murder the person, they would definitely die in some other way. Therefore, he hardly believed them to be casualties at all. They were simply a means for B to surpass L.
When he is alone, he has a habit of talking aloud to himself, sometimes using the third person. He boasts about himself and goes over his plans, all while sounding much more simple and deranged than while he's in his "Ryuzaki" persona. Every morning, sometimes while still in bed, he practices his crazy evil laugh. Unlike his true laugh, which is said to sound like that of a Shinigami's, this is a routine act that lacks any sincerity.
But then, so were those murders I mentioned. You see, Beyond Birthday had a huge secret throughout his case, one that he tried desperately to hide. The string of murders that were meant to seem like the perfect crime, were actually nothing but an elaborate suicide note.
After running away from Wammy's House, he erased the identity he had as "B," and started going by his true name, "Beyond Birthday." The purpose of this was so that, after staging his suicide (by burning himself alive) as a murder, he would be lost among the other B.B.s that he killed, and it would look as though no killer was ever caught, since Beyond Birthday was the final victim. Therefore, the mysterious 'killer', being nothing but B's shadow, would never be found. It would haunt L for the rest of his life.
So you see, B's bravado was a facade. The truth of the matter was that he had grown so desperate to defeat L, that he viewed his own self on the same level as those he had killed - nothing more than a means for B to surpass L.
However, his driving force ended up being his downfall - he was so focused on L that he underestimated all other potential opponents. In other words, because nobody has value to B besides L, including himself, he was unable to foresee Naomi Misora being the one to catch him.
Once he was rescued from the fires and arrested, he was taken to prison to live out a life of embarrasment and longing for death. However, if only Beyond Birthday's eyes could see things other than death, he may have realized that L had been searching for him all along, and took B's case in order to save him from himself.
Also, the existence of Kira had shaken B's faith in the shinigami eyes. The Death Note is able to end lives before the time designated by their natural lifespan. At that time, he was full of fear and guilt - but his suffering was short. He died of a mysterious heart attack - presumably at the hands of Kira himself.
Abilities: Shinigami eyes - Although most shinigami eyes require a trade of half of a Death Note user's lifespan, B's were acquired congenitally through unknown means. The eyes raise a human's vision 3.6 times their current seeing ability, and cannot be detected by any scientific or supernatural means - not even other shinigami can tell if a human has the eyes. But most importantly, the shinigami eyes allow the user to see the true full name of any human, as well as seeing a strange array of numbers that represents the person's lifespan. Rather than a countdown, it is a fixed number that is assumed to be some sort of Shinigami code, which Beyond Birthday has somehow understood for as long as he's had the eyes. This is his only supernatural ability, but it has warped his personality considerably.
Photographic memory - B can recall explicit details very quickly. This may also be the reason for why he's so good at mimicking L, though their amount of past interaction is questionable.
Make up - B is a total expert at making realistic prosthetic makeup. His 'mask' can pass as a real face.
Fighting - Beyond Birthday is very smart in a fight, but dodges a lot and fights dirty by using a black jack and a club.
GTA - B stole a car at some point in the novel, so you can assume that he knows how to hotwire a vehicle and any other skills that go long with car thievery.
Contraptions - One of the key points of the BB case was the doors, which were locked from within although there was nobody inside but the victim. He pulled this off with a little trick using some string and the dolls nailed to the walls - the dolls served a double purpose of disguising the trick.
Cruciverbalist - Apparently, B's crossword puzzles are impossible to solve unless you're a genius of equal level.
Hacking - Wammy kids are all pretty good at this.