Title: Anonymous

Rating: pretty tame?

Disclaimer: Actually, I do own the narrator of the story, plus some other characters I made up. Sadly, all the more interesting ones (Kira, L, Kira, L...) do not belong to me.

Summary: An outsider's perspective on Kira's new world…or, she hadn't noticed when, exactly, they started saying "Kira" with admiration instead of fear and disgust.

"So kawaii!" They all squealed, and she played with the edges of her pleated skirt self-consciously. Oh well…not everyone started modeling at 15 or got to be on TV or could look so good all the time. Still, she thought, Misa-Misa deserved it. She couldn't imagine what it was like to lose your parents when you were just a kid.

One of the other girls leaned over her to reach the keyboard.

"I'll show you something Saiyuki showed me yesterday."

A new page all black with some strange design in the middle popped up, and they all leaned in to see.

"Ki-ra? Oh, don't tell me you're one of his fans…"

"Shut up! The city feels so much safer with him around—"

"Please. Besides, I heard he just kills prisoners, so they were already locked up!"

"Well, they were on death row anyway, so good riddance!"

"You just like him cause Tokashiro-sensei talked about it in class today."

"NO! He's getting rid of criminals instead of waiting for the government to do it! And—"

"Kira is a serial killer, nothing more." The fourth girl in their group spoke with conviction, then hit the back button on the page. "And L will catch him and give him the fair trial that everyone deserves." She paused to let her point sink in, then they quickly followed suit.

"Aw, you're such a good person Kagome!"

"Yeah, L's the greatest detective in the world! Who needs Kira?"

"What happened to 'the city feels so much safer' huh? Make up your mind!"

She smiled and joined them on speculating when L would make his first move, how many people Kira would kill before he was caught, would they talk about it on the news tonight…Sometimes the police did seem too slow and too stupid, more than that Saiyuki, even. Still just killing criminals instead of catching them seemed a little easy.

That night, L brilliantly outmaneuvered Kira and tracked him to Kanto. Kira killed a man on TV without touching him. Her mother actually screamed when she saw Lind L. Taylor fall out of his chair, and her father had dropped a cup. The next day at school, everyone talked about what happened, but no one laughed. When she got back home and found her mother still watching the news, she wondered just who—Kira or L—had outsmarted the other.

Final exams for that term came and went, results pending. They all went out to a new café to celebrate. Kagome hadn't joined them, preferring to focus on her studies, as usual.

Kira killed his 200th victim. The news anchor tentatively announced that crime rates in Honshu had dropped nearly 15%, 40% in Kanto. After that the rest of the news was a quick blurb: unemployment was down, a follow-up on the bus hijacking, another teen voting poll—then it was over. They'd spent the whole hour talking about Kira; Saiyuki had told her at lunch that they were going to launch a whole new special on the case next week.

Her cram school was cancelled that day. She'd wanted to visit a new café, but everyone insisted on rushing back home. When she did the same, she found the front door unlocked. Alarmed, she dropped her bag and rushed into the living room, only to find every comfortable spot occupied by family and neighbors who didn't have a TV. Apparently, her workaholic parents had clocked out early.

Demegawa was a loud and chubby man, and she instantly disliked him. She had turned around to say so but didn't when she saw everyone's faces: rapt and as sweaty as the man's. She'd never really thought about what she said before she said it before, but then again, cram school had never been cancelled before either, or her parents miss a minute of overtime. She wasn't quite sure she liked all the new changes, but it was still all very exciting.

One of the neighbors died. Rumor was that it had been a heart attack. He'd been crouching on the floor between his wife and her father every week for the "Kira Special" for the last six months, so she thought that that at least called for some flowers. The white chrysanthemums had cost almost enough to make her reconsider.

When she was two floors down from her apartment, she got off the stairs and five…six…seven… sixth floor, #608. After knocking on the door several times, she decided to just leave the bouquet by the door for them to find later. She leaned closer and heard a shuffling on the other side, then the distinct feeling that she was being observed through the peephole.

It still didn't open, so she leaned the flowers against the doorframe.

One of the older couples from her floor passed by on the hallway. She froze, still crouching down, hand still on the foil-wrapped stems. They looked at the flowers, then up at her, then back to the flowers. They stared, something oddly accusing in their gaze.

She let go, paused for a moment, then walked quickly to the other end and turned back towards the stairs. Just before she got out of earshot though, she heard two sets of footsteps approach, then the ruffle of the flowers petals and crinkling of foil. She doubled back, only to find the bouquet stamped into the rug and the hall empty.

When she made it back to the apartment, she found out that she had to give up her cell phone and her allowance for two weeks, apparently, for "bothering" their neighbors. The next time she passed by that couple in the hallway, they all gravitated to the walls, then drifted back once they had passed. The wife whispered something to her husband.

One of the upperclassmen at her school jumped off the roof when the practice exam results came in that spring. There had been lots of flowers, mostly chrysanthemums, all white and snowy on the ground, most scattering across the school entrance when the breeze picked up. Her parents bought a bouquet before school started so she could bring it over to the memorial.

When she spotted two of her friends, they all grouped together and drifted away from the crowd. One of them had a laptop, and before long many of the mourners crowded behind them to check the news.

1500 FBI agents are being sent to Japan to aid in the so-called Kira case—

One of the boys behind her snorted and they all began muttering amongst themselves.

"—just keep out of it—you think that—no way, if Kira hasn't been caught by now this won't change anything—but L—on the Kira special they said—maybe they'll talk about it toni—can I come o—see it tonight—but Kira will—criminals—24 percent drop, they said—catch Kira—Kira can—Kira—Kira—Kira Kira Kira Kira Kira…"

It took her a second to realize that the chanting was coming from just beyond the school's gates. A group of thirty or so, all dressed in the long, white robes that Demegawa was sporting nowadays. They stepped on the blossoms that happened across their path and waved banners. The school crowd drifted away from the memorial, two or three broke away to pick up a sign and join them. Three of the boys behind her—she couldn't remember their names—did the same.

I AM KIRA. IF THIS VIDEO IS BEING AIRED ON APRIL 18TH, AT EXACTLY 5:59 P.M. AS I REQUESTED, THEN THE TIME NOW IS 5:59. 47, 4, 49…PLEASE CHANGE THE CHANNEL TO TAIYO TV. THE NEWS ANCHOR MR. KAZUHIKO HIBIMA WILL DIE OF A HEART ATTACK AT EXACTLY 6 O'CLOCK.

Her mother didn't scream when the TV anchor collapsed at his desk, though his co-anchor did. When it happened again, her mother did scream, yelled for her father to come in and see this.

THIS IS PUNISHMENT.

She shivered. She fell into a chair like the words had come out of the screen and pushed her down. Her parents did the same, but leaned forward in anticipation of something, maybe for someone else to die.

I INTEND TO CREATE A NEW WORLD.

Somehow, Kira just wasn't as…wordy as she imagined. His message was very simple, though she didn't quite understand what the new world was supposed to be like, or how it was much different from the way it was right now.

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO NOW IS BE PATIENT.

The broadcast cut off not longer afterwards. They all sat frozen, then her parents rushed out the door for an impromptu bloc meeting. Her cell phone rang until her mechanized voice mail answered it for her, and for a moment she thought that Kira spoke out of her phone with that voice.

Long into the night, she lay awake and listened to the voices outside creep into her room. Naturally, she couldn't stop thinking about the broadcast, the darkness behind her eyelids turning into a big bold KIRA over and over again. The letters were so familiar, like L, she knew, but L didn't kill people just like that on his broadcasts. Just offered them up as sacrifices, and now it was KIRA and not L on the screen. L promised that he would destroy KIRA but he hadn't and KIRA promised to change the world and he had because nothing like this had ever happened before and everything felt different.

She was picked up for school the next morning by a group of her friends and some other people who she didn't know. They all had armbands, and they brought one for her too. Apparently, she'd missed the founding of the school's first official Kira Association. She'd thought that new clubs took at least 3 months to be approved by the teachers, but apparently that wasn't true anymore.

When they got to school, everyone else had the same band on their arm. She'd thought that Kagome was wearing one too, but when Saiyuki snatched her arm and twisted it up, it was still her old "homeroom representative" band, the one she wore every day. Saiyuki had tried to rip it off, but Kagome pulled away and went back inside.

The Kira Association was meeting three times a week now instead of just once. All they did was make signs and fold new armbands out of construction paper for new members, plus a red one for Kagome. It didn't always go on her arm; other times, it went on her desk, sometimes her head. Kagome always threw it into the trash after, and then some of the boys in the Association emptied the trash can on her and it ended up on her head again.

A while ago, she thought about mentioning it to the teachers. Not Tokashiro-sensei, who went to every meeting, but maybe one of the other teachers, the ones who still assigned homework that didn't mention Kira. Somehow, Saiyuki guessed what she was up to and told her to lay off. She hadn't been told where the KA meetings for the next week were, so she used the extra time to do her homework. It got all 0's from Tokashiro-sensei, who was now grading her, apparently.

Her parents hadn't been happy, insisting that she needed tutoring from some of the other people in her class.

The week after that, she went to all the meetings, rushed through her homework and got perfect scores on everything. Her parents both smiled when she told them, smiled more when Tokashiro-sensei gave her the Homeroom Representative band and she put it on her arm, just below the Kira one. She'd thought that it looked a little stupid at first, but Saiyuki was wearing them too, so then it wasn't stupid at all.

Kagome wasn't wearing anything on her arm.

She hadn't seen Misa-Misa in the teen model magazines for a while now. Then again, she'd missed the last 4 issues because it was getting harder and harder to get them. After school she was expected as the new co-Homeroom Representative to walk students to the KA meetings after dark, though it wasn't really that dark, and Saiyuki and her new boyfriend liked to walk home with her.

It wasn't…bad exactly, and she was doing better than ever in her classes, but she missed the way everything used to be. When Kagome still hung out with them instead of hiding in the library or wherever KA members weren't that day, when Tokashiro-sensei was just that cute new teacher everyone had a crush on, when everyone wasn't so serious. When Kira wasn't around, she thought, but didn't say.

The three stopped at her block, and the other two paused expectantly.

There was just silence. She'd thought she was a third wheel, but it seemed like something worse now, though she didn't quite understand it.

"Can we come up? We could watch the Kira Special together…"

Whatever it was, she wasn't getting involved. Maybe they were fighting…? But they were both looking at her, not to avoid looking at each other, but looking at her. So she lied. Broken TV, parents not home yet, whatever it was that she said, it worked, and she let herself in quietly.

After 8 flights of stairs, she walked into a darkened apartment and went to her room after watching the Kira Special. Two hours later, her parents came back from a floor meeting talking loudly about a new building crime watch they'd just set up. The sound of their voices went directly from the front door to their bedroom, then the lights went out again. They were gone again when she woke up and got herself ready for school alone.

Well, not alone. Saiyuki and her boyfriend were waiting outside.

His name was Masao. It was Saiyuki and Masao who escorted her to and from school. She couldn't figure out if they were friends or more or nothing at all. Before Kira she never would have hung around with a guy like him, what with the way he watched her all the time, but now Kira was here and that had changed. Maybe things would be different in the After Kira, assuming there was one.

She had to learn his name anyway, because she had just realized that the only people she had spoken to for the last two weeks had been him and Saiyuki. All the others seemed to mysteriously disappear when she entered the room, or averted their eyes when she managed to trap them in a corner somewhere. Kagome was nowhere to be found. It didn't help that Saiyuki was always hovering over her shoulder, so that she hardly ever got a moment to herself.

Kira had gone away for two weeks. At least, that was what she'd heard. Weirdly, even though she had somehow become the new VP of the KA, she could never find any more information about Kira that wasn't about another rally or an appearance by Demegawa.

But something was up, because Masao and the other boys had gone after Kagome today during class instead of just after school. Apparently it was her fault, though she was pretty sure that Kagome hadn't publicized her views against Kira. Not lately, anyway.

When it had started, she'd stood up, caught Saiyuki's eye, and sat down again. She glanced at Masao though, and he stopped after that, letting Kagome stagger to her feet and make her way back to her desk.

She was the VP, after all.

Kira was back. He was a little different though—everyone who died was rich, or a big name somewhere. It seemed a little coincidental that they would all happen to be criminals, so she thought that maybe Kira had lowered his standards a bit.

Despite this, things just seemed to get worse for Kagome. Even the bystanders who didn't say anything during KA meetings—and she took notes on that for Saiyuki—were starting to join in. She'd heard that a group had gone to her apartment one night and…done something. Kagome hadn't shown up to school for three days after and she couldn't get a straight answer out of anyone.

She'd even considered asking Tokashiro-sensei about it after class. Class meaning a tape of the previous week's Kira Special, so that no one ever got the chance to miss one.

Kagome was on the sixth floor, by a shattered window, arms spread. The crowd surrounded her and was dwarfed by her. The low sun shone through her, and red light came through her eyes.

That was how she imagined it, anyway. By the time she got there, the crowd was still in the room, but she was already on the ground.

Saiyuki and Masao stood at the head of the crowd, by the broken window. Masao's band was torn a little.

She had passed Tokashiro-sensei by the doorway, where he stood guard against prying eyes. His smile turned into a sort of grimace when the angle changed, and he stared down the hall towards the teachers' lounge. Once she got inside, the crowd parted before her.

She walked up to the window, poked her head through, looked down. After a second, she pulled out her cell phone to call the police.

Saiyuki and Masao glanced at each other and, together, reached out to pull it away from her. She looked them in the eye and pushed their hands away, catching the other girl's charm bracelet on her finger. She made the call.

Saiyuki started crying, and Masao glanced around helplessly for support before slumping down. The crowd slowly drifted away. She heard a dial tone on the other end of the line.

She had a revelation.

Kira didn't really kill people; he just…destroyed things. Made everything so confusing it seemed like he'd changed the world for the better when all he'd done was make people think that that was what they had wanted in the first place.

And she thought, then, that Kira was wrong. Not just wrong like his ideas didn't make any sense, but wrong as in evil, because that kind of power could only come from something evil. But there wasn't anything anybody could do about it now, because even if he wasn't a god everybody thought he was and that made him so. L was L because everyone knew that he was the greatest detective in the world, but they also knew that he had defied Kira, and Kira was Kira because he killed everyone who defied him, so the only way anything would make any sense would be that Kira should kill L, but L should solve the case first.

Whoever he was, whoever they both were, she felt sorry for them.

She walked home alone after that, went up to her room and locked herself in, didn't go back to school for a week.

There were no missed messages on her phone after that, and everyone ignored her when she finally did get back to class. She'd heard about the car chase on the freeway, how the policemen wore dark masks and their suspect slumped and fell to his knees moments after being dragged out of a flashy red car.

She'd noticed—after a couple weeks' effort-when L started sounding different in his broadcasts.

But other things happened too. Moving her things out of her parents' apartment. Studying for exams. Festivals in the park where people dressed in more than one color. University. It wasn't To-Oh or anywhere special, but she felt like it was.

She'd thought about going abroad, maybe to America. Then again, if she had been one of the first to see the start of Kira because she was in Japan, then maybe if she stayed then she would get to see it end, too.