POV: Maria Anderson / Misa Amane
Misa Amane sits cross-legged on the floor of her room, the faint hum of the night pressing against her window. A notebook lies open before her, its pages a battlefield of precise lines and annotations, illuminated by the sterile glow of a desk lamp. Her baby blue pen dances across the paper with mechanical precision, each stroke a testament to a mind that never rests. The silence suits her—it's a rare reprieve from the cacophony of lesser intellects she navigates daily.
Genius, she muses, the word echoing in her mind like a detached observation. That's what they call me. Her lips twitch, not in amusement, but in faint disdain. A label whispered in hallways, printed in headlines, as if it encapsulates me. It doesn't. It's merely a symptom of their inability to comprehend. To them, she is an outlier, a statistical anomaly amid their predictable mediocrity. She doesn't dispute the assessment—it's accurate, if incomplete.
Her thoughts drift to November 19th, 1989, a date etched into her memory with cold clarity. She was barely past toddlerhood when she unraveled a cryptographic puzzle that had confounded experts—a problem so intricate it had been deemed unsolvable by the academic elite. She'd solved it in under an hour, her small hands scribbling a solution that was as elegant as it was irrefutable.
The news had erupted, cameras flashing, reporters clamoring for a soundbite from the "child prodigy." Her school, a microcosm of petty rivalries and childish chaos, had been equally dumbfounded—teachers and students alike staring at her as if she'd descended from another plane of existence. To Misa, it was trivial—a logical sequence to dissect, nothing more. Their shock was irrelevant; their praise, a distraction.
Now, years later, she sits with a different problem: the inevitability of her parents' deaths.
The data is clear, the timeline precise—a mugger, a few short years from now, will end their lives in a senseless act of violence. Irony, she thinks, her mind slicing through the sentiment others might cling to. The world takes what it wants, indiscriminately. A mugger, of all things—crude, inefficient, yet effective.
Her bitterness isn't the wailing, emotional kind others might indulge in. It's sharp, vindictive, a blade honed for a purpose not her own. For once, her rage burns on behalf of someone else—her parents—and the sensation is foreign, almost illogical. She catalogs it dispassionately: An aberration. A variable to monitor.
She knows the world is unfair—has always known it, even before this cursed foreknowledge settled into her bones. But this is different. This isn't abstract philosophy or statistical probability; it's a scheduled event, a fixed point she can't unsee. Maddening, she concedes, though her pulse remains steady. To possess the exact coordinates of loss and be powerless to shift them—yet.
Her mind churns, a machine processing inputs. Elementary school, with its sticky-fingered children and banal routines, is a minor irritation by comparison. She navigates it with calculated charm—smiles calibrated to disarm, actions designed to blend—yet she remains apart, a strategist among pawns. The other children are predictable equations; she solves them daily without effort. Their fondness for her is useful, nothing more.
Her parents are the exception, the only constants she permits herself to value. They see her—not the full scope of her mind, perhaps, but enough to love her without condition. That love is a rare datum she doesn't discard. But soon, they'll be gone, and the thought ignites a flicker of something she quickly suppresses.
Emotions are noise, she reminds herself. Focus on the problem.
She flips to a fresh page, her pen sketching a timeline of key events: her parents' death, the emergence of Kira, the machinations of Light Yagami. Each is a variable in a grand equation she intends to rewrite.
Light, she thinks, her eyes narrowing. A mind of rare caliber, yet fatally compromised by hubris. She's studied him, this boy who will become Kira, through the lens of her foresight. His intellect is undeniable—par with hers, perhaps—but his ego is a flaw she can exploit.
She has no intention of joining his crusade or falling into his orbit. He's a case study, a puzzle to observe from a distance, not a partner.
Fascinating, but irrelevant to my objectives.
Her goal is singular: to save her parents.
The mugger is an unknown quantity, but not unsolvable. She'll need data—patterns of crime, profiles of potential threats, a strategy to intervene without detection. The Death Note, that wretched artifact, looms on the horizon, but she dismisses it.
Let Light play god, she thinks. I'll play smarter.
She has no desire for supernatural crutches; her mind is weapon enough.
The future is a chessboard, and she's already plotting her opening moves.
Fate assumes compliance, she reasons, her pen pressing harder against the page. I reject that premise.
Her parents' deaths are scripted, but scripts can be edited. She'll bend probability, manipulate outcomes, and if necessary, break the rules of this twisted narrative entirely.
I am not a piece to be moved, she vows, her resolve crystallizing. I am the player.
Misa closes her notebook with a decisive snap, standing as the shadows shift around her.
The world may be rotten, its inhabitants oblivious or cruel, but she is neither. She is a genius—not their hollow label, but a force of logic and will.
And she will not lose.