Author's Note: Hello there. I am Vicious Ventriloquist. I've always been a fan of LxOC, so I decided to give this story a try. It is somewhat post-apocalyptic, so be warned.

I took liberties with the identities of almost all of the canon characters, except for L, who is still a detective (and Watari). Also, this is set in Los Angeles, and is somewhat of a re-imagining of the BB murder cases.

There will be lemon(s) eventually, so stay tuned for that.

Warnings for this chapter: Violence, profanity, angst. It will get worse as time goes on.

Chapter 1: The Filter on the Shelf

Where is Hell? You can argue all day about whether or not it exists, and further still if you bring up the topic of what it's like there. Some think it's hot; fire and brimstone and all that jazz. You've heard it before.

Others believe that it's cold and unforgiving, a wasteland of painful memories and past sufferings.

And still others will swear that Hell is simply Earth itself, wrapped up in a nice, clean, unthreatening package. The last one is probably closest to the truth.

Or, at least, it used to be. I have my own thoughts about that, if you'd care to hear them.

The sun was setting over the horizon. The temperature had begun to drop rapidly, becoming less humid and smothering. Even so the young girl still felt too hot in her thick coat as she watched the blazing star disappear from her backyard. The natural beauty of it astounded her, and her large dark eyes popped wide with wonder.

A few feet behind the child stood a bespectacled man with a goatee. His full head of hair was barely beginning to gray around the edges, the once-brown color fading into a pleasant peppered hue. As he watched the young girl, the early signs of crow's feet deepened with the slow upward quirk of his lips.

"Daddy," the girl said, "why does the sun go away every day?"

The man cleared his throat. "Ah, that's because he has somewhere else to be. Even stars need to rest sometimes."

"But why?" the girl whined, craning her neck to stare at her father. "That sounds like a lie."

With a heavy sigh, the man knelt beside his daughter and placed a calloused hand on her shoulder. "If the sun stayed with us all the time, we would all burn up eventually."

The child's eyes nearly burst out of her skull. "Really?" she gasped in shock. This elicited a small chuckle from the man.

"Really, Lana. The sun helps sustain life, but if there were too much of it we couldn't survive."

Lana thought about it for a moment, then huffed and crossed her arms over her chest in a display of petulant childishness. "Well, I don't care if I survive or not. I'd rather burn up with it!"

"Do you really?"

"Well...yeah, if it meant I'd never have to go to bed."

"You shouldn't say things like that." Her father's voice took on a stern tone, though the playful edge was still present. "Would you really want to die for something like that? Even if it meant you'd never see us again?"

After thinking on it for a moment, the girl shook her head timidly. Her father's eyes softened, and they both looked back to the sinking sun; it was nearly dark now, the only current light source being the moon and stars. The man spoke again.

"There's nothing more important to me in this world than you and your mother, Lana. No matter what happens, I know you'll push through it." He ruffled her hair playfully. "You're a survivor, eh?"

Survivor…

The current scene twitched suddenly, as if it were an old film reel on a broken projector.

Heat. Wetness. The pungent metallic odor of blood was palpable, violating her nose—her own blood. Or was it her father's blood?

"Now, Lana! Go!"

The sound of something sharp cutting into flesh penetrated her ears.

"He's dead, sweetheart…"

"Survive, Lana! Just survive!"

Heavy, labored breathing made her vision shake as she saw a small figure splayed on the floor.

The sudden quiet that followed had never been more welcome.

The woman shot straight up out of her cot, beads of sweat sliding lazily off of her chest and forehead. Her dark hair clung strangely to the back of her neck; she felt sticky, constricted, and faintly sick.

Another dream? No, a memory. That was all she had left to dream about anyway. That particular one had been especially old—she was fairly certain she had only been about five years old at the time. She hadn't dreamt about that conversation in years. When everything had first gone south, it had bothered her nearly every sleepless night for months. After a while, it had stopped.

So why was she suddenly dreaming about it now? She didn't want to dredge up any negative feelings about this right now—not ever. She quickly cast all thoughts of her late father from her mind.

Catching her ragged breath, the woman threw off her scant bed sheets, surveying the darkened room. It was empty, based on what she could make out from the top layer of a set of bunk beds. The other bunks in the room were empty; her roommates had evidently all gone downstairs before her.

What time is it? she thought tiredly. Her sore eyes flitted to the wooden shelf, which protruded from the wall a few inches above her cot. On it perched an old Brita filter; it had originally been designed so that the top half gradually dripped water into the lower one. The lower portion was marked with twenty-four lines, one for each hour, according to how much the meniscus of the water rose every sixty minutes. A perfect makeshift clock, given the fact that technology—particularly electricity—was scarce these days. Every day, the water from the bottom half was re-poured into the top, though every now and then more had to be added to account for evaporation. It wasn't entirely wasteful, though—the water she used was always dirty and unfit for human consumption. This in turn helped to make the design more convenient. On top of the filter itself, there was also a fine layer of mud and silt, which slowed the progress of the liquid. As a result, less water had to be used to count each hour.

But at the moment, the woman's attention was more drawn to the water level than to the distinctly brown hue of the liquid.

"For fuck's sake," she rasped out angrily. Catapulting off of the bunk and landing on her bare feet, the woman narrowly missed knocking her head on the other bunk; the room itself wasn't very big, and had only a small, partially boarded up window. Five o'clock and it's still dark as all Hell, she thought, pacing to a dilapidated cabinet near the narrow doorway. She pulled it open, looking for her own shelf. It was marked with her middle name: Emerson. Here, that's all she was. A name—and it wasn't even her first name. Her full name—before all of the country was condemned to become a hellish pit—had been Lana Emerson Turk.

But that hardly mattered anymore.

With a resigned sigh, Lana grabbed a bundle of dark cloth from her shelf. She threw the black wife beater on over her sports bra, leaving on the tattered gray sweatpants she was already wearing. She didn't much care what she looked like. No one else did.

Lana swiftly slipped on a pair of sandals before flinging open the door and emerging into an equally dark hallway. She made a sharp turn right and kept walking to the very end of the hallway, to the bathroom. The way Lana saw it, it was little more than a stained tiled room with a mirror, off-white bathtub, and toilet that had long since stopped working. In all honesty, Lana thought it gave off the appearance of a place where someone might harvest your kidney. The only thing it was good for was a minute amount of personal hygiene—in other words, dressing or draining the occasional wound. The tub, Lana knew from experience, could hold a good amount of blood.

She stood in front of the mirror, her hands and eyes firmly attached to the sink. Slowly, she lifted her eyes to bring herself to stare into her own reflection.

The left side of her face wasn't inherently bad-looking—tanned, smooth skin, accentuated by thin red lips and a dark brown eye that looked as if it had no pupil. Her nose was perfectly straight, with only a faint scar as a testament to its once-broken state. Her sharp cheekbones and strong jaw were framed by straight, dark hair. Average. Normal. But the right side of her face…that was the side that made people do a double take, and cringe when they realized that no, they weren't hallucinating, there was no trick of the light.

The long, crooked scar started at the skin below Lana's right eye, on the far side of her cheek. From there, it went all the way through her eye and up to her eyebrow, leaving a grotesque trail behind in its wake. The affected eye was perpetually swollen, mangled, and very nearly blind—Lana only ever saw dark blobs through it. Where the scar cut through it, the iris was broken, with a cloudy film over it that had long since taken the place of the bloody mess it once was. And, shockingly enough, it wasn't dark like her left eye. It was blue—pale blue, almost to the point of beauty were it not for the swollen, pink skin and prominent scar around it.

It was, as someone had once delicately confessed to her, "Fuckin' gross."

The rest of her body, at least, was far above average, and that wasn't just her being conceited. Her muscles were toned and obvious, but not overly bulky. She was thin and lithe in appearance, of normal height, but her stomach was tight and showed her abdominal muscles somewhat when she flexed. Lana had spent more than half of her life training in various martial arts. She had to make a living somehow, after all, and this had ended up serving her well in the long run. With options being as limited as they were in a post-civilized society, people generally had to do unsavory things in order to survive.

Cage fighting was just one of those things. After all, Lana had found, in a world where death and uncertainty were at every corner, people would still live for two things: sex and violence. In times of fear and crisis, the most basic compulsions of humanity always won out over logic and reason. Lana understood that very well: that was how she lived.

Of course, she didn't have to savor it. Depression and a hideous amount of anger seemed, at times, to overwhelm her, especially when she fought. She was able to let go of all her mind-numbing terror of the world, and instead focus nothing but rage on the person across from her. How many arms had she broken? How many faces and knuckles had she fractured and bloodied—even her own? How much of her own humanity had she lost?

The only thing she could take comfort in was the fact that she had never actually killed anyone.

With one last grimace at the mirror, Lana exited the bathroom to start another day.

"Give me the bottle."

"If you don't get outta my face I'll smash your goddamn teeth in—"

A resounding smash greeted Lana as she entered the crowded kitchen, broken glass tinkling as it rained down around her feet. Thank God I wore shoes today.

Two women stood in the open space between the grimy counter and grill, a pool of amber liquid spreading at their feet. It looked to Lana like they had been fighting over a half-empty tequila bottle, and she wasn't surprised when she saw who they were. Takada was obviously the one who yelled first; she tended to clash frequently with the others, a fact which was no secret to anyone there. Her tall, lean body and snide smirks practically screamed uppity, and she wasn't above packing heat. She had even stabbed one of her opponents in the bicep in a recent bout—but the second woman was the closest thing Lana had to a friend in this hellhole.

Her name was Itzel Shankman: a short, stocky woman. Although she was an alcoholic in her own right (and a smoker to boot), she tended not to pick fights with people unless they had messed with her first—as Takada was now doing.

As Lana watched, Itzel's eyes turned deadly, her nose scrunching up in fury.

"You fucking cheat. I should finish you!"

"As if you would." Takada reached out with one finger and pushed Itzel away from her. Though she clearly hadn't used much strength, Lana's fingers itched to dig themselves into the other woman's throat. She held herself stock-still; if there was one rule among the fighters, it was this: You do not fight anyone else's battles.

So Lana sat down at the circular wood table near the door, which was currently occupied by three other women—and watched Itzel explode. Faster than a snap of the fingers, Itzel grabbed Takada's shoulders, smashing their faces together in a vicious head butt that caused scarlet blood to come spurting out of Takada's nose. A faint crack could be heard as the woman's head snapped back, and a growl emanated from her throat. Her eyes betrayed a modicum of shock; it was rare to see anyone, even Itzel, push back against her. "You—"

Just as the two were about to go at it again, a deadly silken voice, as smooth as honey, cut through the chaos. "Ladies, please! You should save that hostility for the actual fights, don't you think?"

A man stepped into the room, prim and proper in a dress suit. His hair was golden brown, as were his eyes. Everything about him was gorgeous, almost Athenian. Light Yagami. The so-called proprietor of the cage-fighting ring was also the most beautiful person in a hundred-mile radius.

And he nearly made Lana's blood boil. He continued talking.

"Now, Piper, why don't you go reset Takada's nose? We wouldn't want her to look anything but flawless before she fights tonight." A blonde woman stood up from the table and led Takada out of the kitchen. Light's soft, smiling demeanor quickly diminished as his eyes focused in on Itzel. "Shankman, we've talked about this how many times?"

"Can't quite remember, Yagami," Itzel tilted her head upwards, a prideful gleam in her eyes. "May've been drunk more than a couple of times you talked to me." Lana resisted the urge to guffaw, instead opting to bite down on her knuckles.

Light's lips pulled back into a deceptive smile. "Well, then, allow me to reiterate." He stepped all the way up to Itzel, his gaze piercing into hers. She refused to move an inch. "You. Don't. Break. Her. Nose. Before. A. Fight. I give you a place to sleep and a steady source of income, but you have to follow my rules. That was the agreement. I understand that the two of you don't like each other, but you continually insist on aggravating her. If you mess up like this one more time, then I'm afraid it will be over between us."

And with that, Light's well-polished figure (God knows how he kept that up) swept out of the kitchen, leaving Lana with no doubt that he meant what he said. Her veins turned icy for a moment; when Light said he was going to end it with someone…he usually meant it literally.

Itzel gave a grunt and shook her head after he was gone, pulling a cigarette out from within her knappy hair. She sauntered over to the table, and sat down next to Lana. Pulling an old matchbook and a bag of peanuts out of the waistband of her loose shorts, she looked around the table at the other girls before shaking her head again and lighting her cigarette. "Fucker," she said, blowing a cloud of smoke in Light's previous direction. "That bitch deserved it."

"'Course she did," Lana yawned, stretching her arms up to the ceiling before bringing them to rest behind her head. "But you know he doesn't want her face all jacked up. You know she's telling him what the other girls say about him behind his back, whether or not she thinks they'll turn against him. How many of us have disappeared after being fingered by her? The only reason you haven't is because all the others would turn against him. Everyone likes you."

"Yeah, you better watch out," one of the other girls said in a low voice.

"What do I care?"

After a few seconds, Itzel and the two others stood up.

"Hey Emerson, you gonna come with us? Might as well get all washed up before the sun comes out to say fuck you. And here." The large woman slid the bag of peanuts to her across the table. "You didn't eat anything."

Lana felt one corner of her mouth turn slightly upwards as she stood up to go with them, slipping the bag into her pocket. They headed outside through the kitchen's side door, pausing only to grab four surgical masks to cover their noses and mouths.

As they stepped outside, a gust of warm air blew Lana's hair away from her face. It couldn't have been later than six o'clock—just another ghastly summer day in Los Angeles, Lana thought bitterly. The four women emerged onto an old cracked sidewalk, littered with old chunks of cobbled cement, urine, and blood. As they walked, the morning clouds overhead loomed ominously, the remnants of sunlight barely poking through the dark expanse. The streets were empty, the buildings mostly boarded up with wooden planks—people were most likely squatting in there. Anyone who could be seen outside was either unconscious, dead, or drugged out to the point of looking dead. Lana even saw one corpse as they wandered past an old trashcan.

It was an old man, with receding gray hair that left exposed the old wrinkled skin and tan complexion. His eyes were open, still wide and red with fear. As Lana's eyes wandered downwards, she made out a dark crimson stain on his chest. His hands were flopped haphazardly over it, as if still trying to staunch the bleeding. A stab wound. Lana felt her own eye throb for a moment before forcing herself to look away. There was no point in feeling guilty—it was probably just a mugging gone wrong anyway. Either that, or one of the crazies had gotten him.

Gradually, the presence of buildings became less and less common until eventually the only thing that the women could see was a nearby body of water some distance off the side of the road. It was an old lake; the only source of bath water around here that anyone had, since the old city reservoirs were still being used for drinking water. Lana herself wouldn't consider the lake clean by a long shot—the water was murky and smelled vaguely of sewage. But it was a far better alternative than using fresh water and dying of dehydration. If Lana had to choose between smelling like crap or dying of thirst, she'd go for the smelly snatch any day of the week. At least it rinsed the grime off of her.

She would never put it in her hair, though. She had dry shampoo for that back in her room.

Lana removed her clothes and placed them on the ground beside the lake, putting the package of peanuts on top. She stuck one toe into the cool water, and was about to go in further when she felt a rough tap on her shoulder. Turning around, the young woman caught a glimpse of Itzel smiling crookedly at her through the mask, pulling a bar of soap out of her removed shorts and handing it to the taller girl. "For you, girly. Picked it up three days ago from some guy back home." The woman tossed two other bars to the others, who both gave hearty whoops as they ditched their torn garments. Lana's mouth fell open in surprise.

"Itzel…what the hell? What did you trade for this?" Lana felt her throat constrict, and a small smile tugged at her mouth.

"Just a cup of water. I still got some left over."

Lana's eyes narrowed. "Itzel…you shouldn't be giving away water like that. Especially for other people—"

"Look, girl, I'm just doin' you a favor. The other two are happy." The two girls were busy lathering their bodies with the soap bars, looking as happy as if it were Christmas morning.

"Yeah, but I give a shit about you, Itzel. I don't want you to run out of water."

"I'm givin' you the damn soap because of what you did for me." Lana flinched, and Itzel's voice softened. "I wanna pay you back one day…but you just care too much."

"Wouldn't be me if I didn't."

The other woman smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "No…no, you wouldn't."

Snapping out of whatever mood she was in, she gave Lana a quick punch to her shoulder. "Now hurry the fuck up. We gotta get back soon." She brushed past Lana, wading deeper into the water. "And wash out that eye with some clean water when you get back. That thing's fuckin' gross."

A laugh nearly wrenched its way out of Lana's throat in response to Itzel's familiar brusqueness. Looking down at the soap in her fingers, she felt a frown invade her face as she tore open the wrapper and let it fall from her hands. Actual bar soap was a rare treasure to come by these days; the only way one could get it was by taking it from an old abandoned shop (all of which had already been mostly cleared out after the first week) or trading something else for it whenever a wandering trader came by Waterfront. You could always tell who they were, too: they most always wore a cloth tied around their mouth and nose, and a gun hung loosely at their side as protection for the bag of necessities they carried on their backs. Lana sighed, redirecting her attention to the moment at hand.

Holding the floral bar tightly in her hand, she slowly rubbed the soap all over her arms, neck, and torso; she lifted up each of her legs and ran the suds all over herself, relishing in the feeling of finally being clean.

Lana closed her eyes, picturing herself in her old apartment; in a sterile bathroom instead of a dirty, diseased lake.

For the first time in a long while, the scarred woman pretended that she was normal.

This is, of course, somewhat confusing. But don't worry, I plan to put in flashbacks so that everyone knows what the hell happened. Bear with me.

Thank you for reading.

-Vicious Ventriloquist