Welcome to Manga Cum Loudly Presents: Death Note, Vol. 2, Chapter 13: “Countdown”! In the previous installment, Raye Penber’s fiancée, who had remained nameless until now (her name is Shouko), visits the police station with the intention of giving them everything she has so far speculated and narrowed down about the Kira case. Raito spends some time talking to her, and wouldn’t you know it, she has everything figured out! Everything, right down to the last detail, is correct from her speculations. The only thing she doesn’t know is Kira’s identity.

Raito, once again, faces an obstacle! But it doesn’t matter. A dead woman can’t blab.

Death Note, Vol. 2, Ch. 13
Written by: Tsugumi Ohba
Illustrated by: Takeshi Obata
“God”

lol, nice cover. “USING INTELLIGENCE” … “TO DISCERN”. That’s arguable.

“No matter how she came up with the information, everything she deducted is true. I MUST GET RID OF HER,” Raito cries and whines. Panics. It’s like, let’s just blow up the Death Note. Just send it flying like a frisbee and then skeet shoot the shit out of it. How’s that for an idea? The no one will ever find you, you little piss-pants.

Back in the previous chapter, when Raito was talking to Shouko in the police station he did his best to hide his face from the police cameras so that no one could read his lips. As if anyone watching the cameras in the security office was going to read lips at all. They were reading the M’s on their M&M’s with much concentration and focus! But at least it’s one less thing to worry about I GUESS. I’d still launch that thing like a frisbee.

Raito spends a good two pages stalking the poor woman as she walks away. When noticed, she doesn’t spray him with some of her pepper spray with 16,000,000 Scoville units. That would rule, but she doesn’t. And I’ll always hate her for that.

“I’m thinking about what you said earlier,” Raito tells her creepily. “I think we should investigate what you said as soon as possible to solve this case.”

Ok, don’t leave it up to the people getting paid to sort of do that already, son. Shouko is taken aback by his sudden interest! She fumbles for her 2-liter can of pepper spray, but then thinks better of it.

“Have you told anybody else what you’ve told me?” Raito asks, and who was she going to tell? Her mailman? Her milkman? Her cobbler? Her glass blower?

Go hoho yourself, Krampus.

Raito pulls out some notepaper, and looks suspiciously like death notepaper! He starts pretending to take down some information, like what day the hijacking occurred, but here’s what he’s really writing:

“Maki Shouko. Suicide. 2004, January 1st, 1:15pm. A place only she knows. Somewhere hidden and secluded. The body should be difficult to discover. All clues point to suicide. Within the next 48 hours.”

Hot damn! Raito’s gonna send her ass to the Japanese Suicide Forest! How very trite. They’re going to smell this one 75 miles away, or my name isn’t… *checks blog header* …Tom Writesaboutstuff.

“She’s pretty smart, so she should hide herself well,” Raito muses as his pointy friend “ho ho ho ho ho ho ho”s behind him. “Your laughter is stranger than normal, Ryuuku. Do you find something especially funny?”

This is what it sounds like when a Shinigami has a stroke, kiddo. They look like the Joker with a broom up the ol’ butt chute and pretend to be Demonic Santa. He doesn’t tell the kid what’s so funny. He probably fucked something up in the note and there will be a big loophole where Shouko throws a ninja star through Raito’s eyeball before shouting “SUICIDE”, pressing the side of Raito’s head against the side of her own head, and passing a shotgun bullet through both in succession! Surprise! Ho ho ho ho ho!

We wouldn’t want that. We wouldn’t want her to miss her “GO DIE!!” appointment.

Shouko chit-chats with Raito for a little bit longer. She wants to let the investigation team know in person what she has figured out all by her lonesome. ESPECIALLY after hearing what Raito had to say (whatever that was, I fucking forgot and don’t care). When they start walking again, Raito all but licks his lips deliciously. Very very interested in how this woman plans to commit suicide in ten seconds. Maybe she’ll drop a toaster in her bathtub! No, argh, she’s not even close to her bathtub! Well, I’m fresh out of ideas.

“We’ll definitely catch Kira,” Shouko says while the kid’s mind is filled with thought balloons of “?!” and “??!?” and “?”. It’s already way past 1:15! It’s, like, 1:17! Why isn’t this woman’s brains smeared all over his shirt and pants?! This is an outrage of the highest magnitude! A 9.7 on the Outrage Richter Scale!

“Weird, why isn’t she doing anything?” Raito asks himself with mere puzzlement instead of the OUTRAGE I crave. “I’ve made a criminal hang himself before… He did what I wrote, so I know the method works…”

We see a dramatic panel of the handwritten word “suicide” with some kind of hypodermic needle in front of it. Like an afterschool special that warns against the dangers of both suicide AND hypodermic needles. That was a good one.

Raito looks like his puppy was punted off a bridge. This woman isn’t dead and she’s going to tell his dad everything. Everything. Daddy Yagami is going to send his son to the gulag to eat rats. This is an OUTRAGE! I just–

“HO HO. HO HO HO.”

And then there’s this pasty clown laughing at him ever since he put pen to paper. Is there nitrous oxide in the air? He wrote down her name, and then he starting ho-ing, and then…

Wait a minute. Her name? That’s the ticket! It must not be the real name! Some other woman is suiciding right now as we speak, drowning herself in a bucket of SpaghettiOs in the secluded, dusty closet of a long-abandoned industrial building. What the hell is he going to do now? “That’s right. Ryuuku can see people’s names with his eyes. That’s why he was laughing!”

You mean to tell me his name isn’t “Vanilla Ice”?!?

Yes, it was quite a chuckle! Ziggy comics ain’t got nothing on this! Very funny stuff!

“This woman. She’s been cautious from the start.”

Well, why wouldn’t she be? She’s got a bullseye on her back, and Kira keeps shooting blanks at it.

“That’s right! She believes that her husband died because he gave his name!”

Well done, Sparky. Rayemund Prenflbler wasn’t her husband, but close enough. You earned your cookie.

“Shit… it’ll be hard to ask for her real name when she told me her fake one…”

Yeah, good luck. Maybe you can sneak into her house and find her electric bill before she makes her way to the weird Sex Hotel where the orgy with L is currently happening. Happy New Year! But how will Raito avoid arousing suspicion when parts of his supple little body are already aroused? That’s too much arousal already!

Shouko, or whatever her name is. I’ll go back to calling her Faye. So Faye wants to head back to the Police Investigation Headquarters Building of Crime Stopping Initiatives (or the simple mnemonic device: PIHBCSI = Penguin in Hell Bury Cancer Sticks Inside…). Raito is like, fuck dude. Now everything I do might be hella suspicious. Gotta figure something out before I continue looking exponentially hella suspicious with each passing second.

Oh yeah, Raito promised in the previous chapter that he’d call his father for her. “I… what am I doing?” he asks himself after even considering calling his deadbeat dad. “My head is so messed up right now.”

Yeah, I’m really freaking out too, man. His beeper keeps beeping and oh man… oh man… why does he have a beeper in 2004? That’s the worst part of this whole ordeal.

Sure, what kind of force are you going to use? Pants-creaming force?

While Raito is contemplating pushing this woman to the ground in broad daylight or something just to get her driver’s license, Ryuuku keeps right on “ho ho ho”ing like this kid following this woman is the FUNNIEST GODDAMN THING ON THE PLANET!

This woman is too careful. All these cameras have seen them. She hasn’t even given her real name. How is he going to figure this one out? Hey, her ass looks tight has hell in those jeans. Come on, man, focus.

“Raito, we can switch eyes at any time,” Ryuuku reminds his hapless buddy, “all it takes is a few seconds.”

As you may remember from some chapter that I won’t link to because I don’t want to reread any of this old shit, having the ability to see through a Shinigami’s eyes allows one to know the name of the person right away. BUT, it cuts your lifespan in half. WHAT A PICKLE.

“Losing half my life for this woman? You must be joking,” Raito says. It’s his turn to start with the ho-ho-hos! “No, this exchange is never worth it.”

He’ll probably change his tune on Chapter 107. Instead of getting hit by that bus four days later, he’ll get hit by that bus two days later. End of book.

“Shouko” stops, turns around, and asks the kid if he still needs to go to the police station. She’ll be fine on her own, so get lost.

………………… okay.

We’d rather you hammer us than nail us! Hee hee hee. Ho ho ho.

Meanwhile, at Casa de L, whose real name I fucking forgot because who gives a hell shit, L is satisfied after a barrage of questions that no one in the room is actually Kira. He pensively chews on a fingernail while looking at them with his buggy, doleful, mascaraed eyes.

Oh yeah, Ryuuzaki. How could I forget? When asked how he had finally deduced this information, he answers cryptically with “I got a plan… it’s a test that none of you are aware of.”

How very reassuring, weirdo! Ryuuzki L Salamanca’s phone rings and he answers it. One detective is rather pissed because L told the rest of them to keep their cellphones OFF. The detective grits his teeth because he misses checking all those half-naked woman Twitter accounts and those tweets with the 156k likes that say something like “she don know what he don know ya know :CRYING-LAUGHING-EMOJI”.

It’s Watari. He’s going to join the party! He’s bringing the dip. I hope someone brought the chips! Or at least their own spoons.

GREAT SCOTT!

Watari shows up and he’s an old man. An old man who is friends with L. Like Doc Brown was friends with Marty McFly, and we all know how appropriate that was.

“You must be thinking ‘this old geezer is Watari?’” he addresses them geezerly, “Ryuuzaki has told you everything, correct? Ryuuzaki must really trust you all if he let you see my face.”

The detectives in the room are all making undignified “GUHH!!” faces.

Watari has a small case containing five badges on crushed velvet, purchased by L himself. Watari is instructed to pass them out; these will be your new badges. Throw out your old ones! Right in the garbage. NOW!

“Your name and position must be anonymous,” Watari explains, and then L chimes in to say it’s because Kira can kill those of whom he knows their names. Like WE DON’T ALREADY KNOW. THIS IS NOT NEW INFORMATION. STOP SAYING IT, IT’S BEEN 14 CHAPTERS. STOP IT.

Half are torn that they are to use fake badges. The other half are like “GUHH!! KIRA WILL KILL ME HE KNOWS MY NAME IS JIMMY SMITS!!”

Jimmy Smits wins out!

We end with Raito and the woman. He’s nervous. She’s five minutes from reaching the police station, and with her information she’ll blab everything. He’s a prime suspect! He’ll get the brig, and it won’t be one of those fun brigs. It’ll be one of those mean brigs with the mean people in it! He shudders to think.

HE’S UNDER THE GUN! NAME, NAME, WHAT’S HER NAME.

Final Thoughts

Just find a gun and shoot her in the neck, you dullard.