A/N: I hereby bestow this one-shot upon TheCatchingLightAlchemist in commemoration of both her birthday and the anniversary of Kira's downfall, which will also triple as a prize for being the 100th reviewer for my other fic, These Three Kings. Happy birthday, enjoy, and congratulations! ^_^
Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note.
Inspired by TCLA's "The events that happen on that day please me to no end."
Viva la Vida, Kira
The Special Provision for Kira arrived at the Yellow Box Warehouse in three separate cars. Gevanni had come in all the way from Kyoto and Lidner had just finished dropping off Misa Amane at the Teito Hotel, which had left Commander Rester with the inevitable duty of escorting their leader, as usual.
"Is the mask really necessary, Near?"
The white-haired genius sighed from behind the plastic replica of his idol's face, which had five tiny holes drilled accordingly into the eyes, nostrils and lips. "Yes, Commander Rester. It is for insurance. I am confident that neither the second L nor X-Kira know my face. I would like to keep it that way until we are safely inside the warehouse."
Rester looked dubious. "Alright then, but be careful when stepping out of the car. It's been raining non-stop for the last thirty minutes."
They parked at the side of the abandoned building. The first thing Near did when he climbed out of the car was step into a large puddle.
"Damn it," Near said sullenly. "I should've worn shoes."
Near then ordered his subordinate to carry him the rest of the way. Rester complied, lifting his superior up and tossing him over his shoulder like he would with a baby. Unfortunately, the veteran agent never actually had any real experience with children before, and Near ended up soaring out of his arms. The pajama-clad teenager hit the ground. Hard.
Thirteen finger puppets spilled out of his pockets and rolled onto the pavement.
"WAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Commander Rester hurriedly rushed to Near's side, prepared to check for any signs of a concussion. He attempted to remove the L-mask, but Near swatted his hand away. "Are you alright?"
"I assure you, I am fine," came the muffled response. "I apologize for my outburst."
Against his better judgment, Rester nodded and resumed walking, with Near trotting beside him, evidently forgetting about the puddles dirtying up his pristine white socks.
"I win, Near!"
Light Yagami's mouth was twitching with suppressed laughter. He had outsmarted that L wannabe! He mentally hummed along to the epic original soundtrack playing somewhere in the undistinguishable background, courtesy of Hirano and Taniuchi.
Near creepily returned the smile.
The two groups – the Japanese Task Force and the SPK – waited and waited, but…
…nothing happened.
"We're not dead!" Matsuda shouted, staring at his fingers in awe as though he had fully expected them to rot and drop off his hand. "It's already been about a minute and we're not dead!"
Light was rendered speechless.
"I've been telling you that nobody would die," Near drawled.
"Why? Why won't they die?" Mikami shrieked. "God, I did as you told me!"
"Because you've been had, thanks to me," Gevanni said triumphantly. But no one cared. Everyone was too busy watching Mikami, who was having extreme face convulsions. For a fleeting moment, his dark brown eyes even flashed a ruby-scarlet-crimson-garnet-vermilion color, thus breaking Death Note: How to Use It Rule LXIII. Artistic license is that wonderful.
"Arrest him!" Near ordered.
Rester and Gevanni pounced on the Japanese prosecutor. Mikami dropped the fake notebook to the floor as Gevanni clamped a pair of handcuffs around his wrists.
"NUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!"
"Gevanni, the notebook," Near prompted, and the SPK agent obediently handed him the forged copy. Near held up the notebook with relish. "The first four names are unmistakably the real names of the SPK members, and the only name that is missing from this list is Light Yagami. Mikami called you God. This proves it."
"You're setting me up!" Light boomed, assuming a very defensive although attractive spread-legged stance. "A trap! This is a trap!"
Somewhere up in heaven, down in hell or nowhere in Mu, Mello and Matt giggled fondly.
Back among the lowly mortals, Aizawa clapped a hand on Light's shoulder. "It's too late. Near wins. Your gloat was as good of a confession as any."
Matsuda fell to his knees in shock, trembling and sweating and undergoing a massive personality transformation that would in minutes make him one of the biggest BAMFs to have ever walked the earth.
Mogi lumbered forward to handcuff Light, who promptly knocked the shackles away and scrambled for the nearest wall.
"Stop it!" Light thundered, and to everyone's surprise, Mogi obliged and backed off, apparently recognizing it as an opening for a grand final monologue, which always and absolutely trumps the importance of immediate arrest and incarceration.
Near rubbed his temples before pulling out the real notebook from beneath his pajama shirt. As he explained to everyone on the Task Force about Gevanni's miraculous feat in excruciatingly redundant detail, Commander Rester noticed that he was growing paler and more albino by the second.
"I could see the Shinigami from the moment you entered this warehouse. Mr. Shinigami, nice to meet you. I'm Near."
Ryuk grinned at the crouching boy before him. "Hyuk hyuk! Nice hyuk to hyuk meet hyuk you! I'm hyuk Ryuk!" he declared, cackling wildly and excessively because everybody's trademarks and idiosyncrasies are unfailingly and infinitely overdone in the fanfiction world.
Near twirled a snowy curl around his finger, glanced up blankly and unemotionally, poked at one of his toy puppets and answered in a quiet monotone, "Ryuk, until today, I've always believed that Shinigami had skulls for faces and carried sickles."
"Near," Halle muttered behind the SPK leader, "that's racist."
"Hyuk. Well, there are ones like that, too. Hyuk hyuk hyuk."
"I looked through this notebook and found some pages that were clipped out." Near paused and touched his head tentatively. "Can it be that people die even if you write names on pages that have been cut out?"
Ryuk chuckled gleefully. "Yeah, they'll die."
"Even pieces are effective," Near mused. "I'm sure there must have been many uses for that. I can't even begin to think of how many people were killed and deceived because of that."
Light's pupils dilated at this. Cleverly and metaphorically fragmented images of Raye Penber, Naomi Misora, Kyosuke Higuchi and Kiyomi Takada flashed before his very eyes.
"Light Yagami," Near announced with finality, smirking widely.
Aizawa shook his head sadly, which would've been more pronounced if he still had that awesome afro.
"You."
Matsuda trembled.
"Are."
Ide did nothing, as he had the least number of lines of everybody during this entire showdown scene. What a pity.
"Kira!"
Light took this as a cue to launch into an impromptu speech filled with fancy words alluding to crime, justice and human nature. Near yawned loudly, interrupting the ranting maniac. Rester looked alarmed.
"How dare you!" Light cried, suddenly producing a pen out of thin air and scribbling away at something on his wrist.
"He's got a note hidden on him!" Rester bawled.
Near just sat there like an oversized albino baby.
A single gunshot rang out.
Matsuda had lunged forward, angling his pistol perfectly so that the bullet went piercing through Light's palm. The pen was sent skittering across the room, far out of reach. Guess the pen isn't mightier than the sword after all.
"You idiot! Baka!" Light screamed in an attempt to appeal to the throngs of otaku around the world. "Who do you think you're shooting, Matsuda? Damn you!"
Light continued to spew nonsense. Matsuda asserted his BAMFness by invoking Deputy Director Soichiro Yagami's name and firing a few more rounds into the younger man's chest, preventing Light from finishing writing Near's surname with his blood.
Light fell to the floor and flopped like a fish. He even tried to crawl to the nearest puddle (the roof was leaking).
"Bang!" Near randomly piped up.
Everyone whirled around and was astonished to see that Near had put on L's mask again, and that his white hair was badly stained with blood.
"What the hell?"
Commander Rester smacked himself in the forehead. Then he quickly did a facepalm, because those are a hundred times cooler. "Oh no! I dropped Near on his head on the way in. He must be suffering from a concussion."
"Near?" came a deep, soothing, husky voice. "Who's Near? I am L. I am also Eraldo Coil and Deneuve. That's D-E-N-E-U-V-E. It's French. But don't tell anyone. I'll give you this strawberry if you keep it a secret, okay?" A strawberry magically appeared in Near's palm.
Mogi grunted happily and grabbed the fruit, putting it in his pocket alongside the moldy strawberry from Episode 19.
Ryuk, who was rapidly becoming bored and was losing his patience, wrote down Light's name in his own notebook. He teleported and flapped away into the pinkening sunset, which was impossible as the Yellow Box Warehouse meeting was at one in the afternoon and it had been raining all day.
Light died.
Poor Light.
Mikami considered stabbing himself with his pen, but decided against it because it wasn't Ohba and Obata canon, but a really OOC invention of Madhouse and Tetsurō Araki.
Everyone was happy except for Sachiko, Sayu and Misa.
Then Near became L. For real this time.
Viva la vida, Kira. Viva la vida.
A/N: Good Lord. I know it was ridiculous, but I hope you liked it anyway. It was my first attempt at parody xD