A/N

Disclaimer: I do not own death note or any of the characters.

Light P.O.V.

Light Yagami was a student like any other. Of course, aside from his perfect grades, his unmarred attendance record, his spotless disciplinary file, and the obvious favoritism from every single teacher in his school. Even the ones he never had.

Other than that, Light was pretty much above average in every aspect of his life. Despite being generally popular and well liked by everyone, he had only two friends he could describe as remotely close; though, neither one of them were exactly what he would describe as "on his level." Not that Light found himself bothered by this fact. The majority of his peers were immature and unsophisticated, and he preferred as minimal interaction as possible. Not that he didn't enjoy the company of his friends, but even the two of them could be a bit... much... after a while.

Overall, despite his aggressive study habits, his burgeoning future as a detective in the NPA, and his general popularity, Light Yagami was inherently, unquenchably, mind numbingly... bored.

Until.

Light's day had started off just as any other: he had woken up, grabbed a quick breakfast, waved goodbye to his mother and sister, and was able to make it to school 10 minutes ahead of schedule. Same as always.

As he hurried toward the main entrance to the school building, he caught sight of a black leather-bound notebook lying abandoned on the grass. He frowned, wondering who could be so oblivious as to drop an entire notebook and not notice.

He checked his watch, nine minutes until the beginning of class. His curiosity getting the better of him, he bent to pick up the stray notebook, examining the cover as he did so. There wasn't anything particularly remarkable about it, not even a title. Light frowned, flipping through its pages; it seemed odd that there wasn't a single word written anywhere in the book despite there being only three months until the end of the school year.

Sighing, he flipped the notebook to the inside cover, hoping to find the name of the person to which the notebook belonged. Before he could check however, Light heard a cough from directly in front of him.

Light startled slightly, nearly dropping the notebook in surprise. The guy had been silent in his approach, and if he hadn't coughed Light wasn't sure he would have noticed him as quickly as he had.

Slowly, Light blinked as his mind registered the appearance of possibly the most bizarre person he had ever seen: raven black hair that looked as though it had never seen a brush hung over his deathly pale face. His eyes both seemed bruised, as though he were either a chronic insomniac or had picked a fight with a martial artist. Despite this, his grey eyes were piercing and watchful. He would have looked rather menacing if not for the baggy white shirt and faded blue jeans that looked about two sizes too big on him.

"I-I'm sorry, is this yours?" Light stuttered a bit, still trying to get over the fact that he wasn't wearing shoes, but quickly regained his composure.

"Yes actually." he said in a rather deep monotonous tone. Plucking the notebook from Light's hands between his pointer finger and thumb as though it were filthy, he opened it to the inside cover and pointed to a name scrawled in the lower right hand corner in messy handwriting.

"I'm Ryuzaki." He stated, still pointing to the name rather unnecessarily.

"I see that," Light turned on his best First Impression smile, "you must be new here, I'm L-"

"LIIGHT!" He was cut off by a whiny all-too-familiar voice. Light turned to see Misa Amane racing toward them, waving enthusiastically as though she thought he wouldn't see her. How on earth she was able to run in those high heeled boots would forever escape his reasoning. Her cute blonde pigtails coupled with a stylish gothic Lolita look and a bubbly personality led to nearly every boy, and some girls, drooling after her wherever she went. Sadly she decided to practically stalk- *ahem* - flirt with the only person who wasn't head over heels for her.

"Oh, hi Misa," Light greeted her, bracing himself for the inevitable hug-tackle that nearly knocked him over. "I was just introducing myself to -" He turned to the spot Ryuzaki had been standing a moment earlier. Glancing around perplexedly, Light managed to catch sight of a head of messy black hair as it disappeared into the crowd of tired looking teenagers trudging into the building.

"Hm? To who?" Misa looked around in confusion, "haha... umm Light? I think you need more sleep" she giggled, still clinging to Light's arm.

"Yes Light," came a cold voice to their left, "maybe you should get to bed a bit earlier."

Oh wonderful, Light thought to himself, today's going to be that sort of day. He groaned inwardly as he glanced over to greet Kiyomi Takada. She was the complete opposite of Misa: cold and stoic, with short black hair and a holier than thou attitude. In contrast to Misa's bad girl look, Kiyomi wore more proper attire, grey skirts and blouses as if she were about to attend an interview. The two of them were complete polar opposites aside from one thing; their obsession - *ahem* - interest in Light.

If they weren't best friends Light was sure they'd have torn one another to shreds long ago. In fact, he still wondered how their friendship worked so well, especially since whenever they weren't gossiping or hanging out together, they were fighting over him.

"Ughhh, butt out Takada! How would you possibly know Light's sleep schedule!?" Misa stuck her tongue out at Kiyomi while maintaining her death-grip on Light's arm, which by that time was beginning to go numb.

"Oh Misa," Kiyomi pursed her lips in a patronizing manner "you could at least try to act a bit more mature... Don't you think Light?" she fluttered her eyelashes at him.

Great, Light thought sarcastically as Misa opened her mouth to retaliate, here we go again...

Ryuzaki P.O.V.

So that is the infamous Light Yagami. L thought to himself as he carefully navigated the school hallway, not even trying to suppress the smirk he wore. He'd been informed upon arrival that morning, by the principal no less, that he was to be given a tour of the school by the "top ranking, most studious student to ever walk these halls."

Hurray for him.

The way the headmaster had spoken, it became apparent that Light Yagami was considered as somewhat of a god in this school. Academically of course.

Despite only attending for investigatory purposes, L couldn't resist introducing himself to Mr. Perfect, if only to determine whether he lived up to his god-like reputation. In his - professional - opinion Light was fairly handsome, in a sheltered genius sort of way, and was nice enough to introduce himself to the strange new student.

We'll see in a few minutes. L thought, contemplating the tour he was to be given in approximately... 7 minutes. Glancing through one of the hall windows, L looked back in time to see Light being assaulted by Miss Misa Amane, the teenage model he had read about in the case file.

Misa Amane... he thought as he continued to his classroom. She was pretty, and stunningly so, though judging by her social media personas, she was too enthusiastic, and downright stupid, for his taste.

L was not looking forward to the prospect of getting close to her, but sadly it was required. Despite being under the guise of the quirky new student Ryuzaki, in actuality he was the quirky world famous detective known as L. He solved impossible cases, and placed criminals behind bars, all while hiding his true identity behind a screen.

On certain low profile cases such as this one however, he preferred to go undercover himself, if only to escape the unending boredom he seemed to be perpetually plagued with. This particular case was so low profile he normally wouldn't have even taken it, if he had not been asked to by an old associate. Aiber had been concerned for the safety of his daughter when a series of student killings had started up at her school, and L couldn't resist the idea of going undercover. If only for a few weeks.

Of course Ryuzaki didn't know the particulars, such as which of his, now, fellow students was Aiber's daughter, or even her name; though, after all these years L felt that he owed it to Aiber to protect her. Plus he didn't have any other cases at the time. And he had grown rather bored of sitting around at the orphanage while his successors were in class. Nothing like a good serial killer to lift his morale.

He arrived at the classroom just in time as the first bell rang, not wanting to be there longer than he had to. Silently, he handed his new student notice to the teacher and proceeded to stand rather awkwardly at the front of the classroom just as a slightly rumpled looking Light walked into the room. Right behind him came Misa Amane along with another girl who seemed to be ignoring Misa.

"Ah Mr. Yagami," said the teacher, Mr. Obata, if he remembered correctly. "You and Mr. Ryuzaki are excused from class today as you are to show him around the school."

Light glanced at him with a look of recognition, "Of course. Hello again Ryuzaki, if you'll follow me," he gestured graciously to the door "and try not to slip off this time." he said with a smile as a show of good-naturedness.

"As long as you can keep up, we shouldn't have a problem." L replied, speeding up his pace to walk ahead of Light. In response he too quickened his pace so that he was leading the way down the hall.

Hmm... L's eyes narrowed. Childishness? Or simply a strong sense of authority... he pondered this for a few seconds. Either way Light still seemed arrogant, what with his perpetual good-naturedness - an obvious ploy for approval - and the way he held himself, as though he were better than everyone else and he knew it. Plus the fact that he wore a tie to high school.

"My name is Light Yagami," he was saying "as you probably already know."

"Yes" L muttered, putting on his best Bored-Out-of-My-Mind expression. Light frowned, but began pointing out classrooms and naming various academic programs and extracurricular activities the school had to offer.

"This room on the right is-"

"Mr. Juuzo, first year biology laboratory." L cut him off. As part of the case he had already memorized every room, class, and teacher at the school. The only point of being on this tour was to keep up his appearance as a regular student.

"I see you've managed to memorize the layout of the building." he said raising his eyebrow as if to say 'why are you even on this tour?'

"How do you know, Light-kun?" He added the 'kun' to the end of his name to test his reaction.

"Well if you're in my grade, then the logical assumption would be that you are not in any first year classes," he replied, frowning slightly at the presumptive honorific, "with that in mind you wouldn't have any reason to know which teacher is for first year biology, let alone which room he's in." he finished with a rather haughty air as though he expected to be praised.

This was the point at which L began to think of Light as a pompous prick. The rest of the tour consisted of them maintaining civil appearances while secretly finding ways to casually offend each other. It was rather entertaining for L to study the way Light's facade cracked whenever he managed to hit home with an insult.

All too soon, the midday bell rang and Light left L at his locker, sarcastically assuring L that he trusted him to find his way to the lunch hall.

L smirked at Light Yagami's retreating figure, taking pride in the fact that he could cause someone as composed as Light to break character.

As L opened his locker his phone chimed with an incoming text from Watari, his makeshift guardian who accompanied him on cases.

'Ryuzaki, I trust everything is going well? - W'

Yes. L thought to himself, chewing contemplatively at his thumbnail. This case should prove to be very interesting.

A/N

So if you noticed, I've switched the writing from first to third person and I've improved some of the diction. I hope you all liked it!

As always I love to hear your thoughts so please favorite/follow/review!

Good Memories and Nightmares

- MDL