No one noticed the man in the ragged suit standing on the sidewalk. Cars passed by without slowing. Pedestrians walked right by him and never so much as glanced up. Finally, he began to walk toward the small appartment building across the street.

He walked up the steps onto the front porch of the building and opened the mailbox to appartment C. He reached into his pocket with one, long-nailed hand and produced a black notebook. He slipped the notebook into the mailbox and closed it.


The Department of Homeland Security had issued a "red alert" for the coming week. This was due to the fact that the coming Thursday was going to be the sixth anniversary of the death of Light Yagami, or Kira as he was known to the world. Even years after Kira's reign ended, fanatical worshipers of his brand of absolute justice carried out killings in his name. These killings increased in number, visciousness, and randomness in the weeks around the anniversary of Kira's death.

Henry Watson despised these Kira cults. Not because they revered Kira - Kira had tried to teach the world to be good to one another - but because they had perverted their faith into an excuse for cold-blooded murder. Henry didn't think Kira would have approved of their actions. In fact, he felt certain that Kira would have killed them all for corrupting his legacy so.

Henry grew up in the world that Kira controlled. Kira's absolute justice had instilled certain values in Henry that he still guided his life by to this day. He was honest, he worked hard, he was a good man. When his wife died last year, the victim of a seventeen-year-old drunk driver, Henry had screamed for absolute justice. The boy was tried as a minor and sentanced to spend the next two years in juvinile detention, then he would be free...free to run down someone else's loved ones.

"Kira would have killed you, you little bastard!" Henry had screamed at the sentencing. When his family couldn't calm him, the baliff escorted him out of the courtroom.

Henry arrived home at the small appartment building he now occupied. He collected his mail and opened the door to appartment C. He didn't see the man in the ragged suit across the street, watching and smiling as he went inside.


Henry dropped something from the mail - it slipped out and fell on the floor. He picked it up and dropped it on the table. He got a soda out of the fridge, sat down, and started going through the rest of the mail. Bills, bills, bills. Never-ending. Finally, he put down the rest of the mail and turned his attention to the thing he'd dropped. It was a plain, black notebook. He thumbed through the pages: empty.

Weird, he thought. The only words he found were on the first page.

DEATH NOTE

HOW TO USE IT

The person whose name is written in this note shall die.

This note will not take effect unless the writer has the person's face in their mind when writing his/her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected.

If the cause of death is written within 40 seconds of writing the person's name, it will happen. If the cause of death is not specified, the person will simply die of a heart attack.

After writing the cause of death, details of the death should be written within the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

Really weird, Henry thought. Probably some handout from those Kira fanatics. I remember hearing rumors that Kira killed using some kind of magic notebook.

"Morons," he said as he tossed the notebook into the trash can.


This is part one of an ongoing DEATH NOTE fanfic I have in mind. Please Read & Review!

-RP