[Near: Scorched App]
In Character Information
character name: Nate River (aka Near, N)
Fandom: Death Note
Timeline: Ch. 108. Snatched from Daikoku wharf during his confrontation with Yagami Light.
character's age: Eighteen
powers, skills, pets and equipment:
Powers None.
Skills: Prodigious talent for inference and deduction, objective and exhaustive situational/ behavioral/ statistical analysis, level-headedness, shrewd and meticulous strategizing, generally exceptionally intelligent and very factually knowledgeable, technologically adept. Good with micro-managing, stacking/balancing small objects, building models. Stone-cold poker face.
Pets: Not a fan -- prefers inanimate playthings.
Other: Near will arrive equipped with a set of baggy white pajamas, a pair of socks, a cartoonish plastic mask, a plastic Kira finger puppet … and maybe a dart or two.
canon history:
As it goes with the alumni of Wammy's House, the specifics of Near's past are withheld. Only a few spare facts are known: he was born Nate River on August 24th of 1991 and orphaned at a fairly young age. Sometime before the age of thirteen, he came under the custody of British inventor and philanthropist Quillish Wammy, who happened to be a collector of gifted orphans. Wammy’s House was the most selective of the many orphanages Wammy funded - but it wasn’t just a first-rate educational and boarding facility geared toward the needs of exceptional kids. It also doubled as training grounds for possible successors for the world’s greatest detective, an extremely secretive individual known by the pseudonym L. It's said in How to Read 13 that Wammy's House produced all sorts of little savants and prodigies - artists, musicians, physicians - but Near was one of the selected few directly in the running for L's title. In fact, he was the top competitor, considered by most to be the closest to L in aptitude.
Shortly before L became publicly involved with the Kira case (a case involving the seemingly supernatural mass murder of gross numbers of criminals), the children at Wammy's House were allowed the opportunity to speak with the detective via secure internet connection. Of course, L was synthetically disguised voice only, and he had view of the children via webcam. Most of the children were a-frenzy with questions and comments, but Near (along with Mello, second in line for L’s successorship) stayed silent, simply listening to the detective and observing his interaction with the other children. The bluntness of L’s remarks during this exchange surprised Near. L said things about his work not being a pursuit of 'justice', but instead a hobby, something he did because he enjoyed it -- in much the same way that many of the children enjoyed clearing a level on a game.
He also spoke of a fear of 'monsters' or liars - and made a cryptic comment or two about that fear.
After this, Near learned that L said if he had been asked to give his choice as to a successor on that day, he’d have gravitated between Near and Mello - not because he’d looked at their top-ranking marks, but because they observed him instead of barging forward with questions, and because they both had “nasty looks on their faces.” Not long thereafter, L assumed his role in the Kira case - and at this point, Near became convinced that L's strange statements were a play hinting that L planned to move in on Kira, to confront the killer face-to-face. The fact that the detective's later statement about the "nasty expressions" was allowed to filter down to the Wammy kids was subtle confirmation. Considering the strong possibility that the conversation session was in fact a test designed to gauge possible successors, Near also became certain L seriously thought that he might die during the course of the Kira investigation. Not that this was surprising, considering the fantastic nature of the killings - but it meant L was getting ready to make some serious moves.
Of course, L died, after all. He lost. Contingency plan, engage.
Four years of meticulous research and a social revolution in support of Kira later, Near approached the President of the United States with the detailed information he'd gathered regarding the Kira case - and a proposition. He'd found some odd things during the course of his investigation - chief among them, that the source of Kira's killing methods was probably a crazy supernatural notebook. This was information the US government had an interest in, and the meeting led to the formation of the SPK - the Special Provision for Kira. Through the SPK, Near moved in on the NPA with the intent of getting his hands on the murder notebook they’d apparently seized not long before L's death. At this point, the director of the NPA was kidnapped and presented to his officers with a ransom of the NPA’s 'Death Note' - which led Near to believe that there was a spy in the SPK who’d leaked information to an outside source with stake in acquiring the notebook (read: Mello). When the director was killed, it seemed to Near it must’ve been Kira who did it and not the kidnappers - thus, he figured he was getting pretty close to figuring who Kira was. By moving in on the NPA for that Death Note, he’d inadvertently moved closer to Kira, himself.
Sayu Yagami, daughter of the NPA's vice-director, was kidnapped at this point, and Near was contacted by the Second L, who proposed a collaboration. See, during this time, although the death of the original L had been confirmed by Wammy's House, the detective code L had continued making moves - and whoever was behind it was supposedly still on the Kira case. N wholeheartedly agreed to cooperating with this person, for his own reasons, and left the control of the situation in L’s hands. The new L seemed pretty tame and ineffectual in his attempts at stopping the trade, and the notebook went to Mello in an admirable coup ( -- after a couple of questions to Soichiro Yagami, it was obvious Mello was the kidnapper, also obvious he wanted N to know: a challenge). Mello struck at this point - and killed most of the members of the SPK, presumably to keep Near from approaching him via the double-agent to steal the murder-notebook. An aggressive set of complicated plannings to get info on the SPK then went down on Mello’s side, with Near basically watching from afar and cooling his heels, but those plans backfired a la Kira and ended up with Team L getting their hands on Mello’s Death Note -- and Mello acquiring a cool Phantom-of-the-Opera-y scar. Mello breached Near’s home base at this point, and a very helpful information exchange occurred. Apparently, shinigami were real -- and Mello doubly confirmed that some of the rules the 2nd L said were in the murder notebook were false.
The investigation became a complex spiral of relay-race rivalry, from there. Along the way, Near was able to narrow things down drastically - he came to suspect that Kira was The Second L aka Yagami Light. He was also able to devise who was doing the killings since Light was incapable, currently functioning as L. He put a tail on that person, Teru Mikami - a man who turned out to be pretty obsessive compulsive about his schedule.
Since Light had loads of circumstantial evidence pointing at him but nothing concrete, Near thought up a plan to swap Mikami’s Death Note with a fake so as to entrap Light as Kira later on. Of course, Light’s leet planning skills seemed to give him the one up, there, as he had Teru Mikami make a switch of his own. Mikami was to switch his death note for a fake -- and to mail a few pieces of the real one to Kira's public spokeswoman, Takada Kiyomi. He was to act as though he was writing names in the fake book, and in reality he'd be sending his lists to Takada via email every night. The real thing was stashed in his safe deposit box at the bank. However, as a result of information leaked to Mello through Hal Lidner, an agent of the SPK, Mello kidnapped Takada. Mikami moved to kill the kidnapped Takada with his real Death Note, since she'd become a liability, and Near’s agent found the trip to the bank odd, considering Mikami's typically anal schedule. So, the agent followed him and got into the safe deposit box, thus uncovering the real notebook and nullifying Light’s play. Near then pulled the switcheroo with the actual notebook.
And Mikami popped up at Daikoku Wharf on their scheduled confrontation day with that conveniently untested fake notebook. When Mikami scribbled everybody’s names in the fake book, as planned, Light started gloating out a confession, Near started rubbing incriminating evidence in his face … and that’s all she wrote. Or at least, that’s all Near knows she wrote, because at that point he ended up here. Sans the real Death Note -- it was lying on the floor in front of him, last he remembers.
personality:
Don’t let the impish build and the baby-face fool you. His final growth spurt has been a little slow in the coming, but Near shed his childish naïveté long before puberty was even an issue.
Frankly put, he’s an arrogant, phlegmatic and amoral individual with little concern for anything other than furthering his own goals. And most things that aren’t expressly related to the furthering of those goals, he disregards - the vast majority of people, for example. He’s exceedingly dispassionate towards others (… here you could take as example his fleeting reaction to the deaths of the members of the SPK - momentary loss of manual dexterity and a quick sulk). He very rarely shows much of an emotional reaction toward someone unless he’s intellectually engaged by that person- and even in these instances, his displays are fairly diffused. When he isn’t hot on the trail of an interesting forensic tidbit or taunting a particularly adept adversary, he seems to have a very dry personality, usually deadpan, wry and to-the-point. And on the off occasion that he is emotive, he’s typically not sincere - instead, he’s cheeky and sardonic, and vaguely sadistically so.
Needless to say, he’s generally not considered the most likable of fellows.
Now, he’s certainly not ignorant of social convention and courtesy, nor is he unaware of the functions of human emotions and their behavioral implications. In canon, he uses his understanding of such things to predict the actions of numerous subjects, including Amane Misa, Takada Kiyomi, Mikami Teru and Mihael Keehl. However, his interpersonal skills are sorely lacking at their very best. For example, he sees no problem with facing away from a person to whom he’s speaking, nor with focusing his immediate attention on something else (a toy, for example) during conversation. In fact, he seems to have an outright aversion to eye-contact. He also sprawls across the floor in the presence of others, knocks toys together, builds fortresses of dice or cards mid-speech, spits casual insults with nonchalance - and generally freely exercises his slew of obsessive quirks while shamelessly defying polite, sociable manners as a rule (aside from the stilted ‘please’ and ‘thank-you’ he offers dutiful subordinates). Since he can’t but realize he’s violating social codes, we can only conclude that he must not care a lick about them.
It’s very unlikely his many oddities are merely affectations put on to con others. For one thing, he’s just as fixatedly quirky on his own as he is with others around ( … maybe more so, considering those giant towers he was building in Ch. 109). Also, even during certain situations in which it is detrimental to his credibility to conduct himself in his typical manner - his business meeting with the president of the United States, for example --, he acts and dresses typically, anyway. He doesn’t adapt himself to his situation - in fact, he seems utterly unwilling to or incapable of doing so - and since a one-size-fits all approach to surreptitious mannerisms would be a brash (and thus uncharacteristic) approach, I’m inclined to say his general weirdness is genuine. I’m also inclined to say he’d have difficulty acting otherwise, if the need arose.
Not only is he naturally inclined toward odd behaviors, he also sees participation in social propriety rituals as unnecessary. Because, whether or not he’s fully conscious of this fact, he views himself as a sort of puppeteer, apart from others, and above. Socially stilted and emotionally withdrawn as he is, most of the people with whom he interacts are subordinates, so he’s used to ordering others around - and he shows visible shock and sulkiness in canon when someone refuses to do what he says. He’s also used to being able to predict what others are thinking, and he doesn’t have any qualms about unapologetically using that fact to his advantage. When he does choose to play along socially and affect politeness, it’s more often than not intentionally ironic, taunting and tongue-in-cheek - his interactions with L-Kira, for example. He has others he can ask to muddle through that sort of pesky, gratuitous BS for him when it’s truly necessary. Actually, he’s come to rely on his assistants as a given, thus he’s effectively crippled without underlings to conduct face-to-face business for him.
Oh, and I briefly mentioned Near's penchant for subtle sadism, earlier -- but it warrants a little elaboration. L said that he was childish because he hated to lose; Near is all the more so because he not only hates to lose, but he also loves playing with his opponents along the way. He's often shown smirking - or grinning maniacally, even - when he's gotten something right or when he's giving opponents grief. He also makes extremely subtle incendiary comments to Mello during their confrontation - presumably to urge along his competitiveness. Anyway, point is, not only is he pretty good at it (from afar, at least), Near also enjoys playing with people.
Ironically, Near’s glaring personality faults are also a great asset - they’re what allow him the immense emotional and intellectual objectivity he shows in his strategic judgments and in his assessments of situations. Because he’s so withdrawn and egotistical, he’s able to evaluate or manipulate others without compassion or chagrin getting in his way. He’s also capable of watching from behind the scenes as dramatic and deadly situations unfold - without being compelled by a sense of empathy or duty to act before he’s ready. This isn’t to say that Near is devoid of emotion or compassion - of course he isn’t, no one is. One of his greatest motivations truly is an emotional desire to defend the mythos L created (so that he can take it for himself. But. Regardless). He’s also capable of forming (albeit ineffectual) abstract affinities for other people - he genuinely likes Mello, for instance. And in his defense, he also shows outward reticence toward making decisions that endanger the lives of his subordinates, and he acknowledges their bravery when they put themselves on the line - thanks them, etc.
Nonetheless, he’s generally as un-sentimental as they come, and he relies more heavily upon concrete factual evidence than he does anything else. It's very rare, unheard of, that he lets personal concerns muddy his interpretation of the facts. When something is proven true either by straight fact or by process of elimination, Near doesn't doubt it because it seems it "shouldn't" or "couldn't" be. Neither does he let his opinion of a person interfere with his anticipation of his or her probable course of action as dictated by logical or statistical behavioral analysis - of course, it's not often that such things conflict, anyway, but if they did, Near would go with the overarching tangible evidence instead of allowing affinity or distaste to override reason.
Near’s a cautious individual. He likes to sit back and evaluate a situation before moving on it - and invariably, when he does make a move, it’s through a proxy. Perhaps this penchant for prudence stems from his upbringing: Wammy’s House was a highly competitive environment, and one in which a single mistake could render all prior achievements void. It was so for a reason, of course - the high pressure atmosphere mimicked the conditions under which L worked. Near ‘s natural talent insured that he was always Number 1, so he never felt compelled to brandish or rebel in order to prove himself- only to maintain what he’d already proven. Instead of cracking under the strain like some of his predecessors, Near learned the value of caution and stoic perseverance. But regardless of how he came into his fear, it seems Near is more frightened of slipping up and losing the status he’s accrued than he is anything else. Thus, he likes to have his plans completely thought through, fact-checked and fool proofed before he even considers making his first move. For this reason, he's set on working at his own (slow) pace, and becomes annoyed when pushed to make a move when he doesn’t feel that he’s properly prepared.
Some would call him overly-cautious, wary to the point that he lacks initiative - and he's aware that there’s probably more than a little merit to the accusation ... but he isn’t willing to risk making a stupid mistake when he can avoid the possibility by taking his time and fact-checking (or allowing someone else to make a move and test the waters, for him). He shows a severe distaste toward a posteriori justification - so, he’s reticent to experiment or to make a move without solid evidence supporting his choices. Near is very set in his ways, when it comes to this. He’s often difficult to work with because he's rarely willing to compromise and make a move if he doesn't see his plans as complete and ready for action.
Also of note is the fact that Near thinks and speaks of criminal investigations in the terms of a game - and one in which all spoils will fall to either one side or the other, in the end. He’s able to refer to the outcomes of his investigative efforts in the nonchalant terms of "wins" or a "losses" because those outcomes have hardly any more moral significance to him than would the denouement of a game of, say, Tic-Tac-Toe. Or Hangman, for dramatics. Their only real significance is the little tick-marked scores they accrue for him under his name. He values end results - they either make or break the efforts used to attain them. Obviously, this means motive and - to an extent - method don’t matter. It also means that failure is an absolute which nullifies any gains made along the way. Near’s reaction to L's death illustrates his views toward failure all too well: "If you can't win the game, if you can't solve the puzzle ... then you're just a loser."
Closer to L’s initial outlook than perhaps any of the other would-be successors, Near gravitates toward detective work because it’s a very complicated set of challenges set up within a defined rule set - which just so happens to be the laws of the criminal justice system. But he doesn’t care about ‘justice’ or laws; he cares about the challenge, about winning. About surpassing L by succeeding where he failed. So, while he places a pretty high importance to keeping the fundamental rules of his game relatively static (must have concrete proof, etc. - because that’s how L did things and he couldn’t technically ‘beat’ L if he started playing an entirely different game), he’s more than willing to violate certain laws regarding civil liberties and whatnot in order to get ahead. He’s also willing to engage in “dirty” tactics, so long as they get him results.
why do you feel this character would be appropriate to the setting?
Near thrives on psychological and intellectual drama - and he obviously comes from a fandom with horror elements, so I think he’d be right at home in Anatole. That said, it’s true he doesn’t have a spontaneous bone in his body, and he’s accustomed to having other people do his dirty work for him - so, I think thrusting him into a place like this where he’ll be forced to improvise, think on his feet, and actually deal with others will be a fun play.
Anything else? Nope.