Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note (though if you do and would like to lend it to me, than it would be most appreciated), nor do I own 'I'm a Fake' by The Used.

xxxxx

"…I'm alive, and I swear I'm the cleanest I have ever been…"

Broken, she stood there. She stood, her eyes wide with infinite horror and despair as she stared down at him, unmoving in the arms of the boy.

No sound penetrated her, even though she could vaguely see the moving of the lips of those around her.

It was silent agony.

Her huge eyes were fixated on his face, watching with helplessness as his own slowly fluttered closed.

Him, the monster, the bakemono, held him in his arms, shaking. Shaking with silent laughter. His victory.

Still silently laughing, he turned his malicious eyes to her, and she knew that he had won.

And then she screamed.

Every day was the same.

It was all so predictable; the almost instant transition of one moment to the next, the shift of minutes unfolding into hours, the muted but constant ticking away of time.

Every day, she would awake at the crack of dawn with the chill of knowing she would face another twenty-four hours of the same thing she had been doing for the past seventeen years.

She would open the door to the same bedroom she had always stayed in, stare around the hallway that led to the long-since empty room of her parents, and then go downstairs and eat something—always the same.

She would leave for school, learn the same things that they had been teaching for decades, and then return home to the empty house once again.

Things used to be different.

She used to pray, pray to God that He would send her a way out of her circle, or perhaps an angel to accompany her, to make it easier to exist.

He has yet to send her a reply.

It was because of that, this one small wish that remained unfulfilled, that she no longer believed that God existed. Perhaps he did at one time, when the world he had created was still young and easy to manipulate, but now… Now that the world could function on it's own, now that he was no longer needed to guide them, he had lost interest and disappeared.

That much, she was sure of.

The world was rotten. It was completely, hopelessly rotten.

God had lost interest, and he had abandoned her. But she was okay with this. She didn't need him.

She didn't need anybody.

Every day was the same.

It was as if it was mirrored, or perhaps some unseen being was playing one simple day of her life over and over again. Her life was stuck in rewind.

Rewind and repeat.

Rewind and repeat.

Rewind and repeat.

As Sakura stepped into the warmth of the bar she waitresses at, she was greeted by the welcoming shouts of the other workers and the locals who came around just for the waitresses—but mainly they came for Nori, the extravagantly beautiful one of the four.

Most of the waitresses that worked here were beautiful. Sakura often wondered why she had been hired—she was plain as could be. Plain, plain, plain. That was how she saw herself. Nariko Sakura—or Momochi Koyana, as she was called while working here (she was underage, after all)—was undeniably hideous in comparison to the other three waitresses.

"--killed and injured six people yesterday in downtown Shinjuku remains cordoned inside a nursery school with eight hostages: young children and their teachers." The small TV was turned on to the news, and Sakura turned to scowl at it, still standing in the doorway.

Rotten. Simply rotten.

Innocence does not exist. Innocence is something that fades.

When you live in the modern day world, you see many sighs, but all of the wrong ones. You hear many things, but all of the wrong words.

What is the world coming to?

"The police are currently trying to negotiate the release of the hostages."

Pathetic. Truly pathetic.

Negotiation never works. Compromise is something that hasn't been really capable for ages now.

They always find loopholes.

When will it all stop?

"Wait! There's movement!"

A flare of hope?

"The hostages are coming out!"

Her eyes widened at the sight framed within the TV screen. Children rushed from the building, screaming and crying.

"Everyone's out! The police are rushing in!"

She watched the over-excited reported, her jaw on the verge of falling to the floor.

It couldn't be happening… Could it be?

"Will they be able to arrest—?"

Sakura softly damned the TV's bad quality as a blur of white and gray came over the screen. A moment later, it returned and she caught the reporter's scream:

…"is dead!"

She became still, a statue standing there among the crowd.

"The police are expressing that they have not shot him."

Surely, they must have… How else…?

"Could he have committed suicide?"

No… he wouldn't have just…

"According to the hostages, he just collapsed!"

She shook her head, sighing as she turned away from the TV.

She had no qualms in that belief. There was no God. It was good timing… that was all…

"Eh? Momochi-san, get your ass to work!"

Scowling slightly, Sakura turned when her boss shouted at her to get moving.

"Ah! Momochi-chan, konnichiwa!" Nori shouted, waving Sakura over.

She shrugged out of her black coat, revealing the same mildly revealing outfit that three other women in the place were wearing.

Sakura forced herself to smile, which wasn't hard, since she had been faking smiles left and right as of late, and bounded 'happily' over to where Nori-chan was talking animatedly with two men.

The excitement of being an illegal waitress at a bar had long since worn off for Nariko Sakura.

One of them men with Nori-chan had gone as far as to offer sixty yen for a lap dance from both girls.

'Momochi Koyana' had been promptly fired, since apparently, shoving a broken beer bottle down a man's throat "scared off business".

Of course, she had waited until fifteen minutes after his offer, when he tried to stuff his hand down her and Nori-chan's skirts at the same time.

She had left with a little token of gratitude—in other words, she robbed the poor soul of whatever money she could find in his pockets.

She was approximately forty thousand yen richer.

Hip-hip-hooray.

The flashing neon lights of the streets were beginning to annoy Sakura to no end as she weaved through the crowds, struggling to break through the groups of teens that were starting to form in front of the more popular hangouts.

She scowled—everyone was complaining because either they couldn't find their dates, or they had simply been stood-up.

It was pathetic.

Seeing no other way out of the traffic, Sakura turned a corner and darted hurriedly through a darkened alley, entering on the other side to see that this street was generally empty.

She smiled at her little "victory" and popped another piece of chocolate into her mouth.

And then the aggravating sound of motorcycles screeching to a halt alerted her, and she remembered that it was wise to walk on the crowded streets at night in comparison to the empty ones… where no one could see her… where anything could happen…

She was surrounded by men. Very, very, very ugly men.

"Ah, Taku-san, she's a hottie!"

Had she not been so frightened, Sakura would have snorted. Hottie? Were they fucking blind?

"My name is Shibuimaru Takou," A repulsive man donning shades and leather leaned forward, completely invading her personal bubble. With his gloved hands, he slid down his sunglasses, his eyes making evident trips up and down her body. "Shibutaku for short."

"I'm sorry," she said, rigid as they began to circle her. "I really must be going…"

"Hear that? She's sorry! How cute!"

Sakura scowled, and the next thing she knew that had her pinned against one another, a metal rod to her throat. She couldn't move at all.

"Oi! Take off her clothes!"

Hands reached down, tearing away at her belt and snapping open her jeans.

"Stop, please!"

They sniggered perversely, continuing to undo every last button and buckle that was on her clothing until one yank would send her shirt flying, one tug would send her pants falling…

Then there was the boy. He was her age, and undeniably handsome. He stood in perfect view of the scene, all attention diverted to a manga in which he seemed to be writing something. What was he doing? Why wasn't he helping?

He looked up suddenly, his eyes meeting with hers, and Sakura saw a look of someone she knew she should admire. His eyes were seemingly vacant, but there was something more within the depths. She focused on this to relieve the certain pain of what was coming.

Ambition, she realized, power. He was Inhuman.

He glanced down at his watch, and smiled slightly.

She can't explain what happened next. She simply couldn't.

Shibutaku collapsed, writhing in agony, and she instantly found herself breaking out into a run. She didn't look back, her feet pounding against the concrete as she darted away, as quickly as she could.

There was a sickening crunch, and she knew that someone had died, but still she didn't look back. She didn't think that she should—she didn't think that she could.

She didn't believe in God. He was gone. He was no more.

But now…

A new God has risen, she decided.

A new savior, a new angel sent to bring order back to Earth.

He shall bring a new era, a perfect world—a shining world…

A new God has risen.

Rewind, repeat…

No more.

"…Satisfied, in your eyes/ I'm the biggest fan I've got right now…"