Chapter 1 - LIGHT
Light Yagami was walking through a back alley, heading towards home. He had brown hair down the side of his face, and was wearing a dark jacket. He had come from college, but had taken a scenic route home through the park. It was beginning to get dark, and the alley he was walking through had high walls, making it seem even murkier.
Light had always believed strongly in justice, and wanted to become a police officer, as soon as he had left college. He did not believe that criminals deserved any justice, and believed that they should have retribution. He had seen the statistics once when he had hacked in to his father, the chief of Police's, computer, and could not believe how many criminals got off at trial.
As he passed a skip on his right, something caught his eye, a small, dusty box lying on the ground. It was the size of a watch box. There was nobody around, and he could not imagine that it had been purposefully left there, so he reached over and picked it up. It was soggy from the rain that had been pouring earlier, and was a dark black colour. Engraved in to the front of the book were two words.
"DEATH CARDS"
Initially, they would make sense separately, but not together, so Light was puzzled. He was about to look inside, but instead heard his own watch beep, marking that it was six O'clock, and that he should really be at home by now. Without thinking, he pocketed the box, and began jogging so that he would get home before dinner.
Later, he stepped in to his room, after being nagged again by his mother for arriving late for dinner, and eating the meal in question. He sat down on his bed, and felt a weight against his leg inside his pocket. Retrieving the box, he once more asked himself about the mysterious contents.
He sat at his desk, and pushed his door shut, opening the box and emptying its filling on to the table next to his keyboard. On to it fell about forty pieces of card, and another piece of paper, which had been tightly folded.
He unfolded the paper, and began to read it. It was written in the same handwriting as the engraving on the box, and there were numerous pages of information. Light began reading aloud, but not loud enough to let his family know what he was doing, which was fortunate, as by the time he had finished the first line, he was certain that it was something he would not repeat again.
"The human whose name is said after victory by these cards will die."
He laughed, and dismissed it as a joke, tossing the paper aside. He deemed it a prank by small children, as he now recognized the pieces of card as those used in the popular children's card game, duel monsters.
He turned on his television, watching from his computer chair happily, as the ruse had cheered him up significantly. He switched channels to the news, and watched as a live broadcast about a criminal going to trial aired. He was familiar with the criminal's lawyer's name, and was certain that the man would be free to walk the streets.
Subconsciously, his eyes flicked to the cards on the desk, and he smiled. It would be worth a try. He did not think for a second that it would work, but that was where he was wrong.
He rummaged through a box of his old things, and located the deck that he had used when he was younger, placing it opposite himself. He quickly scanned through the rulebook, though the game rapidly returned to him, as if it were only a day since he had first played it.
He began playing the game with himself, making sure that the deck he had used when he was a child lost; something that would once have made him upset, but now gave him a vague flicker of a smile as he won with the new deck.
"Yatsu Ligama!" Light proclaimed, sarcastically.
He turned to the television broadcast, and the criminal was still sitting in his seat, unharmed. Five seconds. He sniggered to himself, and picked up the cards, throwing his back in to the box he had removed them from. Fifteen seconds. He returned to his desk and put the 'Death cards' back in their case. Twenty seconds. It clearly was a prank. Twenty-five seconds. He tossed the box over his shoulder in to the bin behind him, as they were not treasured artefacts of a childhood so long passed. Thirty seconds. He had perfected the throw for tossing incorrect college work, and was glad to see that it also worked for boxes. Thirty-Five seconds. He turned from the television, putting up his feet, and closing his eyes to relax. Which was a shame, as he would have loved to have seen what was about to happen on the screen.
Because he was relaxing in his chair, he did not see the man sitting in the defendant's booth behind him on the screen collapse, clutching his chest. However, he did hear a groan, and then the clatter and snapping of the press and their cameras.
As this sound reached his ears, he spun on his chair, his eyes snapping open in an instant. He heard a reporter stating that the defendant had suffered a sudden heart attack, and was now collapsed on the floor. A medic was attempting to resuscitate him, but was failing, and the man was now dead.
Light's jaw had dropped, and his eyes were as wide as the smile he would later get from doing the same thing as he had just done. But for now, he was horrified. However, more than anything else, he was stunned in pure disbelief. Had he been able to kill a criminal with the simple-mindedness of a children's card game?
If so, his boring life had just gotten interesting. If so, he could remove the scum of criminals from the streets. If so, he could become a god. So he set to work sneaking in to his father's room, hacking in to the computer system which was like a second-home to him, and making a list of the criminals who had escaped the hands of justice.
After doing so, he took a closer look at the piece of paper that had come with the cards, which he had scooped out of the bin as soon as he had discovered their awesome power. The text below gave a more detailed definition of the cards' powers, and he looked through silently, not wanting to alert his family after what had just happened.
"After 40 seconds have passed from the victory, the victim will die from a heart attack, unless the victor states below a different cause of death."
Light observed the back of the instructions, and saw a vast mass of free paper. He left the rest of the instructions for another time, and set about preparing his cards for another bout and another tragic death for a criminal who had managed to slip under the hands of persecution. There was no doubt about it; Light Yagami was no longer a bored, ambitioned college student, he was a God.