The story mainly follows two highly gifted boys, namely Mello and Matt, from the UK on their quest to catch a mysterious mass murderer with supernatural powers.

1998 - Eight year old Matt is living with his single dad Chris in Salisbury, getting sent from school to school, as he’s having behavioural troubles, not following class, being a class clown, falling behind. After getting a tip from a kind stranger Chris poured his heart out to at a bar and coming home to Matt having done all of Chris’ taxes unprompted, Chris takes Matt to a boarding school for special needs kids “Wammy’s House”. After an initial IQ test, it turns out Matt is highly gifted and gets accepted to the new school in Winchester where he spends an uneventful first year until Mello also enrolls at the school.

1999 - Nine year old Mello is having similar problems but a whole different familial situation. His family are croatian immigrants living in Chichester and he’s the middle child of three, Jakov being his older brother and Ana his younger sister and his mum Ivanka being the sole provider and his dad Nikola being absent most of the time. The three siblings hate each other. Mello is a smartass and a know-it-all and is unable to maintain friendships. A tip from an observant teacher leads him to take an IQ-test, with him also testing for highly giftedness, and apply to Wammy’s House as well.

Wammy‘s House is a special boarding school for "twice exceptional“ children, located in Winchester. They specialise in the education of intellectually gifted children with learning difficulties that are not able to fully unfold their capacities in a traditional school environment due to mental disorders such as Autism or ADHD. It‘s a really small school, and probably the only one of this kind in the whole UK (?), with a capacity of approx. 60 students and 20 teachers.

There’s a little game the school plays with the students: The Name Game. Every kid gets assigned an easy to read, easy to speak alias upon registration and the kids consider it losing the game if their real name gets out to any of the other students. Some kids don’t care, but most of them take this very seriously. Mello and Matt are the character’s aliases.

A former student has become one of world most famous detectives but keeps his identity hidden. He’s only known as “L”. He has a special interest in finding and supporting equally gifted people as himself and provides special education with criminological focus for kids who scored 150 or higher in their initial IQ test.

Upon enrolling at Wammy’s, Mello gets assigned to be Matt’s roommate. Mello is an incredibly ambitious and hardworking kid with a massive inferiority complex while Matt is a very laid back techsavvy chatterbox, plagued by ADHD. They both have a hard time making friends. Both tested over 150 at their IQ test and so did another boy about their age: Near. He’s pretty much the stereotype of a special needs kid. Albinistic, autistic, highly gifted, solitary, eccentric. He’s even too strange for the rest of the kids there and despite his age, he’s considered the best student.

Mello projects his entire insecurities and hatred on Near, seeing him as his nemesis, feeling the overwhelming urge to surpass him. Near never seems to be working for his success, while Mello puts his everything into his work and still falling just behind in line after Near.

Mello and Matt befriend, finding a peer in each other who’s willing to tolerate the own shitty behaviour and even better: finding the other worthwhile. Much to the dismay of the teachers, they become an inseperable duo, causing mayhem where they go.

2003, Japan - A top performing kind gentle also gifted teenager “Light” (that’s the real name of the character, I’m not joking) finds a mysterious notebook, the “Death Note”, able to kill any person from any distance by writing their name in the book while imaging their face. If not further specified, the victim will die of a heart attack. He tries it out, finds it working, develops a god complex over his newfound powers and starts eliminating criminals worldwide to cleanse the world from evil and become the god of a new “better” world. The mysterious heart attacks on criminals quickly gains media attention and people begin talking about the evil-smiting entity as “Kira”.

The world’s most famous detective L quickly picks up the battle in catching this new mass murderer with the strange god-like powers and publicly declares war on Kira worldwide. The kids at Wammy’s follow the events unfolding with massive interest. Some of the 150+ kids, especially Near, Mello and Matt start theorising and sleuthing on their own (with Near on his own and Mello and Matt being a team, as always), cheering L on and maybe even hoping to beat L to catching Kira first.

L starts working with the Japanese police and can quickly pinpoint Light (conveniently the son of the chief of the police) to being Kira but having no proof for it. An intellectual cat-and-mouse game between L and Light stretches over a year with Light trying to find out L’s real name to write him in his Death Note and L trying to prove Light is Kira, until it ultimately ends with L being killed by Light. Before his demise, L is able to send a message about his impending death to the current principle of Wammy’s House.

2004, UK - Near and Mello are informed about L’s passing, as they have been the students with the best grades and showed most ambition in the Kira case and L’s work. The principle pleas for them to work together as a new “L” and put an end to the terror of Kira. Blinded by his hatred for Near, Mello declines and in his teenage melodramatism declares he’ll be hunting Kira on his own, leaving Near as the official successor to L.

L’s death hits Mello pretty hard, as he’d been idolising him, wanting to one day get the same recognition. Being offered to share the position with his arch-enemy is like a kick in the guts for him. Him and Matt run away from Wammy’s that night, starting their journey to Japan to investigate. Near, in his new role as the new L, tries to stop them for their own wellbeing but loses their track somewhere in Europe. The two runaways end up in the USA and after hitchhiking their way to the westcoast, get stranded in Los Angeles with Matt being sick and having little to no money left.

2005, USA - Their original quest of catching Kira quickly makes way to them simply trying to get by somehow, as they’re 15 year olds stranded in a foreign country. They go from homeless to sleeping in abandoned cars to stealing to working underpaid in some rundown diners to running drugs to affording to stay in cheap motels to finally managing to live in their very first, admittedly pretty shitty, apartment. It’s a massive accomplishment for them.

2008, USA - Mello never lost sight of his original goal to catch Kira, he even specified it to catching Kira before Near does, but he’s not made any significant progress in the last three years and he’s getting desperate. Kira has become an international phenomenon, feared by most, cheered on by many, sending anonymous messages to the world, blackmailing political figures, pressuring for new laws for lesser identity protection of prison inmates, demanding public broadcasting of images and names of criminals for him to smite. The worldwide crime rates have dropped significantly since Kira started acting and a large chunk of crime syndicates have been wiped out. Those remaining have a good sense of identity protection and working under the radar.