Basic Info and History
Slightly trimmed and/or reworked from how it was submitted, mostly because I edit obsessively to tidy and clarify. I marked the significant changes with brackets.
Name/Handle: ellie
Is English your native language?: Yes
Series: Death Note
Series' Medium: Manga and anime. There's also a novel. I'm using manga canon.
Character you're applying for: Mihael "Mello" Keehl
Character's role in their canon: He's technically a secondary antagonist, stepping in after the protagonist disposes of the main rival. However, given that Death Note's protagonist is the bad guy, Mello's on the side of the white hats, though his own is rather dark grey. His reckless actions at the end of the series allow his side to win. He's chaotic good, in that his goal is ultimately good, but he's more than willing to do bad things to reach it.
Character's age: 19
Character's gender: Male
Character’s “Real Name”: Michael Kurtz
Have you played the game/watched the movie or anime/read the book or comic, etc. that your character hails from?: I've watched the entire series twice, and the important second arc episodes more than that. I've also read the manga through twice (again, the second arc more than that), and I've read the novel.
Please give us a detailed personal history of your character:
There’s almost no canon information given about Mello’s early life, except that he's an orphan, nor are there many canon details about his activities between leaving Wammy’s House in December 2004 and his reappearance in the manga storyline in 2009. The following includes my theories, educated guesses, and outright invention to fill in the blanks.
Mello was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, to parents who were not equipped, financially or mentally, for a genius child. He doesn't remember his parents very well. They were Roman Catholic, and raised him in the faith. His father was mostly absent, and his mother doted on him, but didn't have the education or money to give him many advantages. He could read by the time he was three, and had a very active imagination, but seemed destined for a life of insufficient challenges.
His parents were killed in a car accident when Mello was four, and he went to a state-run orphanage, where he failed to fit in rather spectacularly, picking fights and generally venting his anger about his parents’ deaths. He had a chip on his shoulder, even if he couldn't understand the reasons. Part of it was survivor's guilt, and part of it was being aware that he was smarter than the rest of the children there, and even some of the staff. When the children were given aptitude tests, the Wammy’s House staff became aware of Mello’s exceptional scores through their information network, and Roger Ruvie came to take him to Winchester, England, before he was five.
Wammy's House was founded by Quillsh Wammy, an inventor who started orphanages all over the world. The one in Winchester was dedicated to the purpose of grooming a successor to L, the greatest detective in the world. L was a mysterious figure: he didn't show his face or reveal his real name, and was known both for never failing to solve a case and for only taking cases he found interesting. He was singlehandedly the equivalent of several law-enforcement agencies (or so Mello claims in the novel); his very existence was a deterrent to criminals. The Wammy's House kids were given aliases, and they took extremely advanced classes in addition to a usual school curriculum.
Mello was the second-best student at the House, after a younger boy, Near. The competition was intense, and became the focus of Mello's life for about the next ten years. He was driven and passionate, and pushed himself to his mental and physical limits, but was never able to overtake his rival. Though his goal of being named L’s successor was the most important thing in his life, he was still a social boy, and formed a close friendship with Matt, the number-three student.
When Mello was around twelve, L spoke to some of the children though a computer, answering their questions. Mello and Near didn't ask anything; Near later said L selected the two of them as the frontrunners for his job after this, because they both had "a nasty look in their eyes." L explained to the children that his job didn't allow for any sentimentality, nor did he consider himself a champion of justice. He was in it for the intellectual challenge. This attitude disillusioned many of the children, but it was one Mello could respect.
More important than the Q&A session was the one time Mello met L in person, which would have been when he was thirteen or so. L told him the stories of some of his most famous cases, in particular the one involving Beyond Birthday, one of the first potential successors to L. This meeting cemented Mello's admiration of L on a personal level, and made him more determined than ever to win in the end.
In late 2003, Kira emerged in Japan, and L traveled there to investigate the case. His involvement was lengthy and complicated, but I'm confining most of the discussion here to what Mello is likely to have observed and known while it was underway. Most people knew only that Kira (so called from the Japanese pronunciation of "killer") was systematically killing the worst criminals throughout the world, and that his methods appeared to be supernatural: he could cause heart attacks without being present. L called Kira out on Japanese TV, using a decoy to prove that Kira was in Japan, that he could kill from a distance, and that he was unable to kill someone whose name and face he didn't know. The broadcast was limited to the Tokyo area, so the kids wouldn't have seen it live, but it seems likely some of them would have seen the video afterwards.
A second person with Kira's power appeared a few months later, but this one only needed to see someone's face to kill them. This Kira communicated with the media via videotapes sent to a major Japanese television station, and seemed determined to join forces with the first. From an outsider's perspective, things then settled into a pattern of criminals continuing to be killed and minimal apparent police activity.
On December 5, 2004, Roger told Mello and Near that L was dead, and everything changed.
Mello was distraught at the news that L had been killed by Kira. Since L hadn't been able to choose a successor, Roger suggested that Mello and Near work together, but Mello found this unthinkable. He said Near could be L's successor, and left the House that same day, determined to forge his own path. (It's possible, even likely, that Mello didn't fully intend to leave, and spoke recklessly, but then didn't feel he could back down.)
He went to New York, where he fell in with minor criminals, at first simply making himself useful and observing, learning how to use guns and explosives and to operate as many vehicles as he could, and how to apply his knowledge of criminology and psychology to win people over and amass resources. Although he was still just a teenager, he became the mastermind for most of their schemes. He outgrew petty crime quickly. The Mafia offered Mello a wider variety of resources and personnel, and, like him, they had a vested interest in ridding the world of Kira. In the spring of 2008, he tracked down a rival of L.A. Mafia leader Rod Ross; to prove himself to Ross's group, he brought them their rival's head. Within eighteen months, Mello's intelligence, drive, and ruthlessness ensured that he rose quickly in their ranks, becoming Ross’s right-hand man and the go-to person for ideas and strategy, and investigating Kira in his spare time.
Meanwhile, the world in general was undergoing a gradual attitude shift toward being more pro-Kira. The internet became a major source of information on criminals. Though "L" was theoretically still on the case, Mello and Near both knew the person acting as L was a fake put in place by the NPA (the Japanese police).
By March 2009, Mello knew that the US government had created an anti-Kira group under Near (the SPK, or Special Provision for Kira), and was pursuing the notebook as well. With the help of a spy he'd placed within the SPK, he confirmed that the murder weapon was a notebook that killed anyone whose name was written in it, and that the Japanese police had one. He had also deduced the existence of a second notebook, in Kira's possession, and formulated a plan to obtain one for himself: kidnap Takimura, the director of the NPA, and trade the hostage for the notebook. His eventual goal was to get both notebooks. From Takimura, Mello learned that there were only three people working on the Kira task force under the new L.
Before the trade could be completed, Takimura hanged himself with his necktie, and Mello figured out that Kira must have killed him, and that Kira lacked the information necessary to take action against any of the Mafia members. Since Mello knew Soichiro Yagami was the senior member of the task force, he changed the plan to kidnapping his daughter Sayu, and set it into motion immediately.
Mello used Takimura's death to his advantage, telling the NPA that the Mafia had killed him and wouldn't hesitate to kill Sayu as well. Soichiro had no choice but to accept the new trade conditions and travel to LA. Mello thoroughly prepared for the trade, anticipating both the NPA's and SPK's moves. He arranged for Soichiro to come in on a flight whose crew had been replaced for the purpose, and used an underground facility for the exchange to keep from being visible via satellite. He also obtained an untraceable missile to launch the notebook away for later retrieval.
Once Mello's group had the notebook in hand, he ordered the killing of most of the SPK, including his spy, thus both eliminating a possible leak and depriving Near of personnel. He kept in contact with Soichiro, using the threat of still being able to kill Sayu with the notebook to coerce his cooperation, and tried to find out the identity of the new L and how Kira could kill with only a face, but Soichiro didn't give him any useful information.
After the notebook had been in the Mafia's possession for a little while, the shinigami who originally owned it, Sidoh, came looking for it. Mello easily intimidated Sidoh, and set him on guard duty after quizzing him for information. He learned that two of the rules written in this notebook were fake, and that humans could trade half their remaining lifespan for shinigami eyes, which allow the bearer to see a human's lifespan and the name needed to kill them. Mello and Ross forced one of the Mafia underlings, Jack Neylon, to make the trade for the eyes.
Mello also manipulated the US president to give him information on the SPK, access to satellite surveillance, funds, and weapons, by promising to hand over the second notebook to him once they killed Kira and got it. (This promise was almost certainly a lie.)
The SPK, NPA, and president worked together to find the Mafia hideout, but thanks to Sidoh and Neylon, Mello and Ross's group managed to kill all the members of the raiding party and escape. Mello concluded that the raid was a group effort, since no one of those entities had been able to track down the Mafia's location before.
Mello's plan was flawed because he hadn't yet learned that the first and second Kira were Light Yagami and Misa Amane, respectively. He also didn't know that after the failed first raid, Light used Misa's shinigami eyes to find out which Mafia member had ownership of the notebook, and controlled him to reveal their new location. Light also scheduled a time when every Mafia member whose name he could discover would die, and planned to launch an NPA raid on the hideout right after that happened. Light then took Misa's notebook, and sent the other, a third that Mello didn't know existed, to the NPA. Misa contacted the NPA posing as Kira to get their cooperation for the raid. Light planned for someone on the team to make the trade for the shinigami eyes, and anticipated that it would be Matsuda, but his father volunteered instead.
The raid proceeded, and Mello and the remaining Mafia men tried to escape and retain their notebook, but Soichiro reclaimed it, and everyone but Mello was killed. Mello detonated bombs he'd previously set up to destroy the exits. It came down to a face-to-face confrontation between him and Soichiro, with Soichiro threatening to write Mello's name in the notebook unless he surrendered. Soichiro hesitated, though, and one of the Mafia men who had been playing dead shot him. The rest of the NPA rushed in, and Mello, cornered and having lost the notebook and all his Mafia allies, detonated a second set of explosives to blow up the building. He then escaped.
He was badly burned in the explosion, but took almost no time to recover. He contacted Hal Lidner, the sole female member of the SPK, a day later. It's probable he laid low for a couple of days, presumably in a safe location known only to himself (the NPA tried to track him by looking for any doctor he might have gone to, but found nothing), and contacted Hal by phone. By November 19, 2009, Mello had traveled to New York and was hiding out in Lidner's bathroom, the only part of her apartment not under surveillance, because Near expected Mello to contact someone in the SPK (and, in fact, correctly predicted he'd choose Lidner).
Mello planned to make Lidner take him to the SPK headquarters so he could retrieve the photograph of him he knew Near had, but before he could, he was transported to Landel's.