Light Yagami tapped his pen against the side of his desk, bit the inside of his cheek, and looked back and forth between the Death Note and the television set.

He'd been writing down names ever since he'd finished his homework (so far he thought he'd gotten to somewhere around a hundred and twenty, though he'd really lost count) but something had made him pause before continuing.

He had come to the profile of a burglar, one who had murdered two people during a botched robbery. Their two daughters had witnessed it, and he was currently watching one of them on TV.

She was . . . incredibly annoying.

She constantly referred to herself in the third person, as "Misa-Misa", as she ran around with a vapid smile on her face trying to advertise a product, bouncing around like she'd ingested too much sugar (or drugs).

All in all, it didn't make him want to buy it. Instead, he actually found himself unconsciously lowering the pen to the paper, intending to write down the name 'Misa Amane'.

He stopped himself at the last minute.

"Gimme an apple," Ryuk was moaning from his spot on the ceiling. He was contorted oddly, his legs looping through his arms and around his head. It looked painful. "Apple . . . apple, apple . . ."

Huffing in annoyance, he picked an apple up off the side of his desk and threw it at Ryuk, who somehow managed to catch it between his teeth. He devoured it in two bites and gradually straightened into a normal position, sliding down the wall to hover by his shoulder.

"Ah, the agony of withdrawal is almost worth it when you get to satisfy your craving with a big, juicy apple . . . but, you know, I don't really like this new kind you've been getting as well as the old ones. They're less crunchy, less . . . apple-y. Go back to that other brand. Or, you know, I saw this advertisement for these things called 'apple fries' the other day. Can you believe it? Apple fries! And I also heard of this thing called 'apple pie'—"

"Misa-Misa!" she squealed, her voice piercing even through the television speakers.

Light cringed.

Ryuk paused in his apple-obsessed ramblings. "Something wrong?"

He shook his head. "Not really . . . it's just . . . for some reason, I'm very hesitant to write this name down. I have this horrible feeling that if I do . . . something terrible will happen. Something so very terrible . . . that death might even be a release."

"Misa-Misa!"

He shuddered.

Ryuk stared at him unblinkingly with his bulging red eyes. "Why do you think that?"

He shook his head slowly. "If I write the name down, I'll be punishing the man who killed her parents." He jerked his head at the TV. "It would just be another Kira related death, she would never know I had anything to do with it. But for some reason, I have this vision in my head of her hugging me and calling me her 'Light-kun'."

"Misa-Misa!"

Ryuk shuddered.

Light nodded in agreement, his eyes wide and his mind made up. Picking up the remote control, he turned the TV off and then quickly clicked on the link to different criminal profile.

The murderer of Misa Amane's parents would not, he decided, be punished by Kira. Ever. Not so long as that horrifying image was burnt into his mind.

And thus, Death Note was saved.

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Author's Note: There's usually one character in every series I hate with a passion, and in Death Note it happens to be Misa Amane. She's just so . . . ANNOYING! Ugh.

Sorry to all you Misa fans.

Anna