A/N: Written for the Green Room 2015 (Rlt), challenge #12 – colliding dimensions, and for the diversity writing challenge, d82 - write a crossover. And the perfect time to sample my most recent watch.
Different Ways to Vengeance
There are many stories, split amongst many threads and many worlds in which they intersect in different ways and create a confluence of tales: the past, present and future of that world. And there is a different combination in every world. Sometimes it's a subtle thing: Yagami Raito does not cross paths with Shibuimaru Takuo and his gang and the woman they had trapped between them and so the woman does not avoid the tragedy begetting her. But in those worlds she appears in Kira's church to plead vengeance on her attacker. Or it's a world without the Death Note, but there is Hell Correspondence instead and the Hell Girl is who she turns to for her revenge. Or it's a world where neither of those two powers exist and driven mad she finally takes matters into her own hands. But no matter the outcome, the method, Shibuimaru Takuo makes his last mistake in attacking her and his fate does not change.
Sometimes, the small change shifts the flow of the entire story. For example, someone else might pick up the Death Note before Yagami Raito and so there is no Kira but a simple mass murderer that vanishes into the stream of time. Or perhaps Enma Ai is the one who picks up the Death Note, and as such the Hell Correspondence simply becomes a means by which she adds names to the book, and the world isn't any the wiser.
In this world, however, Yagami Raito does pick up the Death Note. That is not the defining feature. In fact, one might say there is no one defining feature. It is the conglomeration that is unique, because in no other world in which Yagami Raito picks up the Death Note does the Hell Correspondence exist.
At first, there is no consequence. Raito experiments with the Note. He kills Otoharada Kuro on live television, then Shibuimaru Takuo before his last victim crosses the path of no return. Criminals listed by the police database in japan were killed, and a few more each time. Meanwhile, Enma Ai continues her own duty of responding to the cries sent through to her from Hell Correspondence: killing the names that appeared and making contracts with their senders and the police chase two unrelated sets of unexplainable deaths.
But what changes is that Kira's cult dies before it forms, because it is redundant: Hell Correspondence already exists, and it is easier. Of course, it is no safer. The Death Note holds no cost for the one requesting the death except the weight of guilt but humans are ignorant. They don't know the true stories, and they don't realise they pay a price for their vengeance they don't need to pay. Enma Ai is aware but it doesn't affect her duties so she says nothing to them. It is only the same lines to fulfil that vengeance: 'Oh pitiful shadow lost in the darkness…' But she watches Yagami Raito as well, because he is another pitiful soul in the shadows and vengeance for him will one day be called for.
Oh, people do call for vengeance against Kira. They write that petty title in the text book when the clock strikes midnight and Hell Correspondence is open for requests in that tiny window of time. But Kira is not a person's name, and so Enma Ai is not obliged to act on it. Nor is she obliged to give the name. No-one asks her, but even if they did, her job is only to take contracts for vengeance and row the pitiful lost souls past the gate of Hell.
So Kira's cult never takes off, and Kira's criminal list shrinks to almost a hindrance. Amane Misa doesn't need to wait for Kira to kill her parents' murderer. She stays up late and pleads for her vengeance through Hell Correspondence until Enma Ai gives her the doll with the string, and bids her pull the string and enter the covenant if she is willing to give up her passage to Heaven for her vengeance.
That part of Amane Misa's fate does not change, for in writing in the Death Note she also gives up her passage to Heaven in most and some can even argue that she gives up that right when she steps off the Tokyo Tower of her own violation to her death and a world wherein none of those things occur is very rare. Also, like the woman victim of Shibuimaru Takuo, in most those worlds where there is no Death Note and no Hell Correspondence, Amane Misa takes the vengeance of her parents into her own hand.
But sometimes she is fortunate enough to see the doors of Heaven, when there is no Gelus to watch over her and kill the stalker who cuts the numbers of her life down to single digits. In those worlds she dies when the man stabs her. Most cases she has already taken a contract with Hell Girl, and so she is whisked to Hell, or she has taken matters into her own hands and the blood she's spilt has dragged her through the doors. But sometimes, just sometimes, she has not and she dies free of sin and is whisked away to Heaven instead. It's one in less than a hundred worlds, as far as the odds go.
So, in this world, Amane Misa has already taken her revenge with Hell Correspondence and therefore it is Enma Ai who has her undying loyalty and love until her death when it drags her down to Hell. So Yagami Raito does not obtain a second Kira. Amane Misa instead follows the Hell Girl with her Note: she creates her own website, this one with twenty-four hour access, and the news only just begins to spread when the website is tracked back to her and she is arrested.
L Lawliet is perhaps fortunate with that development, because he discovers the Death Note early and the Death Note without the additional rules Raito threw in as a contingency plan. And so L is able to learn all about the Death Note, and the Shinigami, and of the weaknesses that he might exploit to catch out Kira. Except Rem is in this world. Rem owns the Notebook Gelus left behind for Misa and Rem has come to love Misa as well. So Rem kills L, and the difference is that it has nothing at all to do with Yagami Raito, or Kira.
In the grand scheme of things, not much seems to have changed, except they have. L Lawliet's attention was stretched between the case of Hell Correspondence and the Hell Girl, and the case of Kira. He is quick to realise the two agencies are separate, though the imitation Hell Correspondence has a similarity to Kira's killing methods. He's smart enough to pick up the clues left behind by both to make a good guess of who Kira is – and he knows. He works it out very quickly, back when someone was hacking into the NPA database to extract the criminal names. Because there's really only one person who fits the bill: a student who can only kill in his time out of class until he works out how to stagger them with the Death Note's power.
He is so sure that he makes his one and only use of the Hell Correspondence site, because even without a cult growing behind him Yagami Raito is a genius at L's level and L finds himself unable to out-manouvre the other. He has plans – plans within plans – but it is not Kira that kills him and that puts a wrench in all but one of them.
In all honesty, the Hell Correspondence site was a contingency plan. One of many contingency plan but it is the only one against Kira that Enma Ai is able to fulfil, and she takes a doll with a red string to him. This is because he types in, quite deliberately, Yagami Raito and not Kira as the digital clock on the computer turns to midnight, and hits send before it changes to one minute past.
And when L asks her to prove he is Kira, she is able to do it. But he is still unable to create a trap with that knowledge to make the rest of the world believe before Amane Misa is caught as the copycat Hell Girl and Rem pens his name into her personal Death Note. But he still has the doll on him in that fourty second grace period and he pulls the red cord. Because he might be the greatest detective in the world and a legal adult, but he has more than enough blood on his hands to sentence him to Hell regardless, and, above and beyond that, he is a child at heart and hates to lose. So he pulls the cord and dies with the knowledge that, even if the whole world won't know that Yagami Raito is Kira, Kira will be dragged to Hell because of something that he, L Lawliet, had done. And Kira could not say the same, because he had played no role at all in L's demise.
And so Enma Ai and her companions immerse Raito in the nightmare that precedes Hell. And he is, as she expects, unremorseful – not even able to see what wrong he's done, what sin has led to vengeance being declared against him and eternal Hell the result. The mantra slips from her lips as she rows his restrained body to the gates of Hell and sends the boat through upon the waves.
She, of course, is doomed to stay outside the gate of Hell, so she does not pass through as well. And so it is that she watches L Lawliet's soul pass through as well, for he dies seconds after pulling the red thread and his contract with her is fulfilled the moment his vengeance is served.
And, with this, Kira and L and the copycat Hell Girl are all dealt with, because Quillish Wammy is still alive and still has Amane Misa in custody. To that end at least, Rem has wasted her life. Maybe in another world she chooses differently, and L survives and finds another way to unmask Kira. There are many stories after all, many combinations of the threads that make up worlds, and there are enough worlds so that every combination of those threads is played out and more – but those worlds haven't come into being yet, because this is the first in which the Death Note and Hell Correspondence and L all butt heads.