Death Note, Vol. 2, Chapter 15 – “Phone Call”

* Part 7 of 9 of Vol. 2 – “Confluence” *

Welcome to Manga Cum Loudly Presents: Death Note, Vol. 2, Chapter 15: “Phone Call”! In the previous installment, Raito spends some time trying to schmooze Not-Shouko into giving him her identification. What finally ends up working is lying about being a member of the Kira investigation team and asking her to join. “We need someone like you,” he says sociopathically before collecting her card and immediately writing suicide stuff in the Death Note.

She started walking away vaguely after that. Will she kill thyself? Or will I kill mine own self before I slog through another chapter of this shit? You decide… or.. I’ll decide, rather.

Death Note, Vol. 2, Ch. 15
Written by: Tsugumi Ohba
Illustrated by: Takeshi Obata
“Phone Call”

“Hate cell phones. The world is simpler without them.” This is what the cover says, showing L’s vacant deer-in-the-headlights face. Am I supposed to like this guy yet? I hate this guy. The world is simpler without him.

At the VICIOUS CRIMINAL SERIAL MURDERS SPECIAL INVESTIGATION FORCE room of the NATIONAL SECURITY POLICE STATION, a single man sits angrily at his desk while the phones are going off like haywire on all the other empty desks. “It’s so unfair to leave me here by myself,” he thinks, ears sticking out like a monkey, cigarette hanging down.

One at a time, he pulls the phone cord out of each and sits back down with a demeanor of well-earned satisfaction… but then his own phone rings and he just about jumps out of his seat, he does! “Good afternoon. This is the Vicious Criminal Serial Murders Special Investigation Force.”

Sweet hopping Jesus, man. Get a shorter name. Start going by the acronym. GOOD AFTERNOON, THIS IS VCSMSIF!” Rolls right off the tongue.

“U…um…” stutters the voice on the other end. “I was wondering if I might be Kira, so I called in.” Hahaha, what the fuck? Who is this guy? Does he want a lethal injection? Bread and water? Conjugal visits?

It depends. Mulder and Scully alien-chasing FBI? Or, like, Robert Hansenn espionage to help Russia FBI?

This guy on the phone was watching the news, thought “this bastard is better off dead”, then he died! Sounds like some of that good Kira action. But no, the detective assures the caller that he is not Kira. “Are you sure? What am I supposed to do? If you don’t arrest me, more people will die!”

Well, son, go to your local Police Station full of Fat Cops and turn your ass in. They’ll probably shoot you dead on the spot like the Idiot Fat Cops that they undoubtedly are! So don’t worry!

Agent Monkey Ears is tired of all these anxious people thinking they’re Kira. It’s like, 99.9% of people on the planet are fantasizing about strangling someone right now. Honest to god that’s a real statistic that I discovered in the cavernous, murky depths of somebody’s butthole!

The next guy who calls has some clues if Agent Monkey Ears wants to listen. Sure, he’s all ears. All monkey ears. But it sounds like a bunch of hooey. A waste of time. This guy’s alone in the office, he should just start playing with himself. Yeah… yeah, just like that… yeah… yeah, keep going…

The Fine Gents are having another get-together in L’s hotel room. This wide-eyed fentanyl-addicted mentally hyper loser has amassed a collection of security tapes relevant to the FBI deaths from Detective Dipshit #3. Every single one is accounted for: footage of Knick Staek’s, Raye Penber’s, and Nicola Nasberg’s heart attacks. That’s right, you heard me. Footage of red-blooded American everyman Knick Staek.

I had to give a whole lotta back alley handjobs to get these. Some didn’t even want them, but I insisted.

L asks for all the Raye Penber footage. It will be extra crazy to Raito there, won’t it? Won’t it, Raito’s Dad? Mr. Raito’s Dad, sir? Your son was spending A LOT of time with this grown man before he died. It will be extra crazy to see him ten feet away from the guy while he kicked the bucket.

They all watch the footage at the subway station where Penber goes GLUG and then dies. Snuffed out like a candle in the wind. A real sad state of affairs. How embarrassing for this dead complete idiot. “There’s something very strange about this,” comments L. Let’s take a look at some really boring facts!

Penber boarded at 3:13pm and died after stepping off the train at 4:43pm. If my math is correct, that’s 100 hours.

Penber received all the information about his fellow FBI agents at 3:21pm while on the train.

HMMMM… HMMM… MHHMHMHMHM…

EUREKA! Check out this fucking, cunting shit: Penber was holding an envelope before he boarded the train! Look over here. *points to screen with penis* He’s holding onto it. He didn’t have an envelope when he died! He never left the train! Envelope! The envelope is the key! Kira must have wanted the key! I mean, the envelope. Perhaps it was full of consecutively marked $1 dollar bills, extra crisp! Kira loves his ones crispy. And h–

Yes…yes, I see… I see it now. His legs… they appear to be on the left… hrrmmm… and the train appears to be on the right… wow…

“It would be pretty interesting if he was looking at Kira himself,” L comments with his spiky Sonic the Hedgehog hair.

…but that would be Crazy Bones! Kira can be far away to kill! He doesn’t need to be close enough to have his dick sucked to kill a dude, right? I mean, that sounds fun of course, but–

HEY! Maybe that’s what Kira wants us to think. Maybe he wants us to think that he thinks he’s not going to want us to think that he thinks we think that he doesn’t need to be close. Aha, my friend. A wise opponent.

We’re back to dumb deductions again that are turning out to be correct for reasons that give Raito too much credit. All sorts of “he scoped out every existing security camera on every train station, hidden or otherwise”. Meanwhile, speak of the Devil Himself, Raito and his mentally-challenged invisible companion are poring over the notebook. “You’ve been up late four nights in a row writing in the Death Note,” observes Ryuuku. Raito tells him to cork it.

Something we can all agree on!

“Hey, is it possible to set the dates for certain people’s deaths?” the kid asks the Shinigami while he goes through the phone book writing names one at a time! Heh heh. Ryuuku doesn’t answer right away, and Raito calls him useless. “Gods of death don’t do that. We mostly just write instant deaths. So technically… maybe.”

Yeah. Useless. Ryuuku, always ever so curious, asks why Raito is postdating deaths. Like he’s writing death checks! Death checks his butt can’t cash! “Basically, if I was suddenly hospitalized, the deaths keep going. It keeps people from thinking ‘the deaths stopped coming when Chief Yagami’s son was hospitalized’.”

Really? This kid is planning a hospitalization? Are we having a baby?! And I wasn’t invited to the gender reveal party?? (it was Raito’s own gender-reveal. He wore a trench coat to the event)

Even is Ryukku is like “how absolutely fucked up is that”. I can’t help but think of how huge of a hole this kid dug for himself. He can’t possibly be enjoying this. Every waking moment of his existence is all about the Death Note and covering his ass. He could be playing basketball or hanging out with friends or having sex like a normal 17-year-old, but instead he’s anticipating his own hospitalization. Something went wrong here along the way.

“Now to take care of the computer problem,” Raito says, moving onto the next asinine task. Chief Dad has no new data in his computer since January 1st, meaning something drastic has changed in the investigation. L must be behind this! That shrimpy weirdo. Also that one woman whom Raito sent to the suicide forest, she must be involved as well. Grrrr! “That woman should have killed herself on the 3rd. Today’s the 5th. I’m still safe, proving that she should have done what the Death Note said.”

THERE’S GOING TO BE A TWIST HERE. Instead of killing herself, she’ll prove to be more lively than ever! Impervious to the Death Note! Magic! A sorceress! God herself! A Shinigami? Hitler!

OK, retracing steps. Yuri, the girl Raito asked out on a date to the amusement park, is going to keep the date a secret per Raito’s request (yeah right). So everything’s good there. Penber is dead. Misora Naomi killed herself (yeah right). That covers everyone who knew he was on the bus that day. Now he needs to hide the cover of the Death Note because it says “DEATH NOTE” on it in huge fucking letters.

Also, he starts sewing up his wallet. You know. For reasons.

One of these days, this Death God is going to slap the living shit out of this kid.

“I didn’t think you would be good at sewing,” says the Shinigami. “You must be popular with the ladies.”

“That has nothing to do with this,” Raito snaps. “I’m popular because I’m smart.”

Pffft, this kid isn’t popular. Nobody likes him and he’ll find out in Chapter 45 that all the kids have been filling his locker with poop on a daily basis.

Back at L’s Cozy Hotel Room, he instructs two agents to investigate Penber’s death, and one agent to investigate the other 11 FBI agents’ deaths! Very proportional! The detectives all respond importantly: “yeah!”, “right!”, “I’m on it!”, “you can count on me!”, “wowiw zowie!”, “jeepers creepers!”, “sock it to me!”

Watari is pounding away on his laptop writing Unabomber-style manifestos when his phone rings. He’s got a sweet-ass ringtone that goes “BI BI BI”. A man named Usada wants to talk to L. He is Misora Naomi’s father, and L recognizes the name. Former FBI agent, kicked ass at it. Anyway, she’s missing! Look into it, L, you fuckface.

L holds the phone like a snot-filled tissue. He keeps making bug-eyed faces like he’s pooping out a cactus. Usada says Naomi’s cell phone has been turned off since at least December 28th.

L asks his crack team if it’s possible to locate cell phones that are off. “Ray Penber and his fiancée came to Japan and stayed at the same hotel. A day after Raye died, Naomi disappeared…”

“She must have been devastated by Raye’s death… Maybe…” pipes in Detective Brain Genius #1.

“Suicide…” pipes in some other nerd.

One of these days, this Death God is going to slap the living shit out of THIS kid, too.

L doesn’t think so. This lady is too strong of will for suicide! She looks suicide in the face and says she’ll kill it first! No no no, something is amiss here. “She’d go after Kira on her own instead,” he surmises. Hmm… maybe Kira already knows about Naomi? Maybe he got to her?

He spends another page going over old information. I’m getting tired of the L show.

“Everyone, please investigate all the people Penber was following ever since Kira began his experiments on December 19th,” he instructs, as if it’s a simple task. Like you can just twiddle your fingers in the air. None of these people have proven to be even a little competent in my eyes.

Anyway, one of them should be Kira. Shake a leg. “Penber was investigating your families. Even though Penber’s report said that families were not suspicious, in every family that Penber investigated… please install hidden cameras and electronic bugs in all of their homes.”

Ha, what the fuck. I’m imagine Chief Wiggum Yagami going in someone’s home like “I’M THE BUG EXTERMINATOR” and the whole family sees him screwing in a fucking 7-Eleven security camera that whirrs when it moves.

The detectives all yell at L; telling him that such nonsense is illegal in Japan! They don’t care if L is King Shit, it just cannot be done!

L says to do it anyway, bitches.

Yagami further furrows his already-furrowed brow. “Who was Penber investigating at the time?”

“Sub-Chief Kitamura’s family and Chief Yagami’s family. Please install cameras and electronic bugs in these two households.”