Junk, bill, condolence card, junk...hold on, what's this?

There's a parcel wrapped in brown paper, about the size of a paperback book. It's addressed, in unfamiliar handwriting, to Mr Robert Brown. 

It’s…. Probably not a bomb package? If it was gift wrapped he would actually suspect Joker or Riddler bullshit. Brown paper is too nondescript to be insane costumed freak bullshit, probably, and he hasn’t made any major enemies in his henchwork.

He’s still careful opening it, using a long handled knife to open the paper. 

There are two things in the parcel. Neither of them is a bomb.

One is a handwritten note on thick, textured paper, in the same writing as the address. 

Bobby,

My condolences on the passing of your grandfather. John was a good man, and a dear friend. For the sake of that friendship, I thought you should have this. I hope it will prove useful to you.

It is unsigned. 

The only other thing in the parcel is a slim notebook with black covers. It's a softcover, perfect bound, and has the words "Death Note" on the front in white in a kooky-looking font. There are no other markings on the outside: no author, no barcode, nothing. 

Okay…. That’s a kinda edgy title for a book, and it’s supposed to be useful? With a title like that, is this a list of people to kill? He was pretty tough but not like… a trained killer or anything. You’d want to give a kill list to Deathstroke or something, not him.

Only his close family or very old family friends still called him Bobby, and usually not in public either, so… it was probably legit? Weird that they didn’t say who they were though. But Grandpa John had a LOT of old friends, and some pretty weird ones too, Robert remembers a ton of people visiting the house when he was very young to meet up with grandpa when he was still healthy. There are literally dozens and dozens of people who Robert doesn’t remember well who would still know to call him Bobby.

Let’s open the book then, see what’s up.

It appears to be a blank, lined notebook. On the inside cover is more writing in the same white text as the title. 

How To Use

1. The person whose name is written in this book shall die. 

2. The death will not take effect unless the writer has the person's face in mind when writing the name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected. 

3. If the cause of death is written within 40 seconds of writing the name, it will happen. Otherwise, the victim wil die of a heart attack. 

4. After writing the cause of death, details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds. If you want to change the details of death, you can do so during this time limit by drawing two straight lines through the original text and writing in a correction. 

5. You cannot change the time of death, however soon it may be. 

6. You may also write the cause and/or details of death prior to filling in the name of the individual. Be sure to insert the name in front of the written cause of death. You have 19 days to fill in a name.

7. Multiple names can be written for the same cause and details of death so long as they are written within 40 seconds of each other. 

8. The conditions of death will not be realised if they are physically impossible or would require someone to act against their basic nature. 

9. If the cause of death is possible but the situation is not, only the cause of death will take effect for that victim. If both are impossible, that victim will die of a heart attack. 

10. The Death Note can only operate within 23 days. Thus, the time of death cannot be more than 23 days after writing the name. 

11. The Death Note will have no effect on someone who has less than 12 minutes left to live. 

12. The Death Note will have no effect on someone if their name is misspelled four times. 

13. Erasing a name written in this book, or destroying the book, cannot prevent the death from occurring. 

He would blow this off as a prank…. But like… the Justice Society literally had a sorcerer supreme, and there was that one halloween where everyone in a neighbourhood was stuck singing improvised musical numbers. The government blamed drugs but how would drugs synchronise the songs! Robert was too experienced with crazy bullshit to completely disbelieve claims of magic out of hand.

Who could he write down that definitely deserved to die and would be an easy test name to verify… The governor Okay he was a malicious little scumbag who’s policies got people killed, but probably he didn’t deserve to die, just life in jail and getting his balls kicked.

Grogan, the police commissioner that was before Gordon. That fucker killed a loooooot of people in custody. He remembers Grandpa John talking about the literal protection racket Grogan ran under commissioner Loeb. If you didn’t pay up then your store mysteriously had an unsolved case of arson.

Robert writes down Peter Grogan’s name in the Death Note, remembering what his face looked like the last time he was on some shitty pundit show talking about how they should arrest the homeless. Cause of death… shooting himself. Details…. Goes on a drunken rampage in the streets waving one of his guns around until he accidentally shoots himself once someone pulls out a phone or camera to record.

That seems like a fitting end to Petey Grogan. The fuck literally had torture blacksites in under his term as commissioner and he got away with it. 

Robert doesn’t reaaaaly think this book is real though, he is half writing down the name for a sense of petty vindictive catharsis more than actually trying to test it. He turns on the news just in case

At least 40 people have been killed in an explosion at a wedding in Afghanistan. Teams have started arriving in South Africa for the soccer world championship. Ethnic tensions are heating up in Qurac. The Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup. Superman saved Metropolis from another supervillain attack and rescued a kitty from a tree. The weather this week will be overcast, but the air pollution index is low (at least by Gotham standards). A Gotham business mogul is tearing down some low-income housing to build a new stadium. 

After about an hour, the local news station announces that they're hearing reports of a shooting outside a bar. No further details yet, but emergency services have been called to the scene. 

What was that business moguls name again? Just in case… haha just kidding. The Death Note surely isn’t real. But fuck that guy specifically. Gothams housing crisis was already one of the worst in the whole country. If not for Wayne foundation shelters a truly horrific amount of people would die on the streets every bitter Gotham winter.

Wait… a shooting? There were a ton of shootings in Gotham. But suddenly the possibility that the Death Note actually works feels VERY real. Robert checks the online news portals for Gotham city just in case they updated faster than the TV did.

Nothing yet. 

Over the next hour or so, more details trickle in. Peter Grogan was drinking at the bar and got into a heated argument with another patron. He was escorted out by security, where he proceeded to rant and rave and wave his gun around until he shot himself. He was pronounced dead on the scene by an ambulance crew and the body was identified by a police officer who used to work for him. 

A bystander's shaky, bad-quality cameraphone footage makes it onto the news. It cuts away before Grogan shoots himself; can't show that on TV. The full clip is on the internet within the hour. 

Fuck…. Fuck it’s real. The Death Note was real. 

Robert barely makes it to the toilet before he throws up. He’d… probably killed people before, in shootouts, but not like this. Not where he KNEW it was him that did it, and not where it was so easy, so effortless and clinical. Just a stroke of a pen and a man died. He was a monster of a person but he was still a person. He probably had a family too.

He puts the Death note in a drawer where he doesn’t have to see it, and then driven by guilt and morbid fascination watches the full video of Grogan’s death. A few times. Each time making himself violently ill. He almost feels better that it makes him feel bad, like its some kind of penance.

Eventually he can’t take the emotional self flagellation and turns off the TV and his phone. Just sitting in the dark until he eventually falls asleep in the early hours of the morning.

In the morning he feels… drained. But also a lot better about what he did. The man really was a monster, definitely a murderer, and his remaining political influence was spent on protecting cops who hurt people. Since the fucker worked for the police union these days.

If someone else had killed him, he’d celebrate and buy them a beer, so why should it be different if it was him? He knows deep down he is rationalising to make himself feel less bad… but like… Grogan was gone now, he could no longer hurt anyone anymore, and the people he hurt would get a tiny fraction of the justice they deserved. Just because he was emotionally coping didn’t make the arguments wrong.

Eventually he can’t help himself and takes the Death Note out of the kitchen drawer. First things first. He miss-spells his own name well over 4 times. Just in case.

Robret Borwn

Robbter Brown

Bob Orbwn

Bobbert Brown

Robby Bronw

Robbet Brown

Robber Bown

Brown Bobby

Boby Bown

Double and triple checking mentally that he would spell them wrong before writing them down. Doing a lot of variations of his name, extras in case the worst miss-spellings didn't count, and also including ones for bob just in case those were counted different somehow.

Now he should be safe from his own terrifying item of death.

What does he do with the terrifying item of death…. He can’t just… not use it, even if he still felt a little shaky after last time. A lot of people just needed killing, like if the Batman had permanently stopped the terrorist costumed freaks, both his parents and his grandpa would still be alive. No Joker Venom attacks to kill his parents, no Scarecrow fear toxins in the water to trigger a rare cancer that conventional treatment did nothing for in grandpa.

Speaking of the Joker…. Would it work if he just wrote down Joker? Does it need real names? Or just a name. It’s not like it costed him anything to try…

He writes down Joker, cause of death Joker Venom, details is that he does that thing where he hacks the TV signals to gloat to batman, and then huffs his own Joker venom until he dies.

Robert turns on the news just in case.

Racial violence in Kyrgyzstan. School shooting in Dakota City. Thunderstorm warning off the coast of Florida. 

If the Joker is planning on taking over the airwaves today, he's taking his time about it. 

So it has to be…. Their real name? That’s such an odd limitation. What if you changed your name, or got married? How is Robert gonna find married people who's maiden names he knows, that are worth killing, to test that. It sorta makes trope sense that there’s like… an annoying monkeys paw twist to the magical death artefact. But not logical sense.

Wait… school shooting? Has the suspect been identified? Is it ongoing? And like for real identified, not bullshit from blurry video and internet conspiracy sleuths claim they've found him identified.

If the school shooting is still happening… and they know who it is… he could stop it. All he needs is a name and picture.

"...reporting live on the active shooter situation at Ernest Hemingway High School in Dakota City, Indiana, where three children have already been injured. The gunman has been identified from CCTV as a Mr Rudy Bernard..."

A driver's licence photo flashes up on the screen, next to a still from CCTV footage of the school. He's white, mid-20s. 

Okay, that looks really rather seriously like the same guy, he is certain enough that he is fine risking it. He makes sure to only think of the face from the cctv as he writes the name though, just in case. So it gets the right guy.

Cause of death, accidental gun discharge into his gut. Fuck this guy, he doesn’t get a clean death. Shooting up a fucking school means you don’t get something quick.

On the screen, police enter the building. There are gunshots, then ambulances, then paramedics. 

Robert won't have to wait hours for confirmation that it worked this time. The gory details don't make it to the news, just that there was a confrontation with police in which the gunman was fatally shot. No word on whether he shot himself or whether it was one of the officers. (Although come to think of it, Robert didn't specify that either.) 

Holy shit, that just works. That was so easy, and now a school shooter can’t shoot any more kids or hold them hostage. The needing a name limitation is pretty limiting but… there’s a lot of terrible people who's names are known. Plenty of supervillains… and he's pretty sure the cause of death of the shooter will line up to what he wrote… wich has… very interesting implications.

As long as nobody catches on or sees a pattern in the kills, people won’t know they need to hide their names, so he can keep using the Death Note on the very worst people when it’s needed. He is going to have to be very careful with this…

Heck the ability to write the details of the death also is something he could use… he could have people rob themselves before they die and pick up the loot, he’s got discount lethal mind control now. 

He’s a little disappointed just writing down ‘Joker’ didn’t work though… if anyone needs to die it’s him. The freak killed his parents when he gassed a diner with Joker venom, and in the last almost decade of activity the Joker has caused more deaths than a bus-full of terrorist suicide bombers. Literally nobody else on earth deserves to die more.

The only person who needed to be death noted more is Hitler. And he's dead, unless you believe those conspiracy theories… He doesn’t think it’s at all likely…. But he writes down Adolf Hitler in the Death Note, just in case.

(Somewhere in Argentina, not that Robert has any way of knowing this, Adolf Hitler—a clone created in the 1940s, now chronologically almost 70 and physically almost 90—has a fatal heart attack.

At the same time, in a bunker in the Alps, not that Robert has any way of knowing this either, another Adolf Hitler does the same, this one physically 23 and chronologically 6. This probably foils some supervillain's no doubt dastardly plan.)

Robert… needs a plan. He needs to use this Death Note without anyone ever catching on. If he does this wrong people WILL get suspicious. Worse, it might attract Batman (and Justice League) attention. Batman doesn’t like vigilantes who kill, the hypocrite.

He has 2.8 million USD, an old house in Gotham, some contacts in the henchperson community, and a magical book that can kill anyone who's name and face he knows. What can he do with all that…

Actually, no. Before any plans, he needs to test the limits of the Death Notes death details control power. How elaborate can he make it? He needs to observe the limits of the control. And he needs to test it in ways that don’t get him caught…

You know what, it’s time to research targets. And NOT do it at home, that is how you get caught. Time to go to the Gotham central library. 

Robert does he usual preparations for walking Gotham City streets.

He grabs his gun, a big custom handgun from the Penguins arms trade, loaded with armor piercing rounds. Backup knife in his boot. Puts on his thick leather bomber jacket, that has some anti stab plates hidden inside it (you can just buy them online, a popular item in Gotham). He is lucky enough to own a small gas mask that he keeps in his jacket inner pocket, it was given out during a henchman job in the past and he’s kept it ever since, gas attacks of either poison or drugs were weirdly popular with supervillains so you never know when it will come in handy. Two phones, one hidden, always good to have a backup. Wallet. Keys. Water bottle (gotta stay hydrated).

That’s everything.

There’s no parking to be found anywhere in central Gotham so he takes his electric bicycle. Once he gets to the library there is a bit of a wait to use the computers but once one is finally free he hops onto Lex-find and looks up the arrest records for the last 5 years for inmates sent to Arkham Asylum. Seems like a safe enough search that will find him known villain names.

Current inmates at Arkham include the Joker (real name unknown), Scarecrow (Jonathan Crane), Mister Freeze (Victor Fries), and the Mad Hatter (Jervis Tetch). 

Other people who have been sent to Arkham in the past few years include Two-Face (Harvey Dent), Riddler (Edward Nygma), Harley Quinn (Harleen Quinzel), and Poison Ivy (Pamela Isley). All of those are currently at large except Riddler, who's been declared legally sane and is in Belle Reve Penitentiary in Louisiana, a federal prison for supervillains.