Rummaging through the untidy stack of cash, Light said, "We're still two million dollars short, Dark."
"Yeah, yeah, Light." Dark said lightly," You're not the one who has to sprout wings, steal heavily guarded works of brilliant art, and…" he added coyly, "charm the hearts of fair maidens."
Leaning back into his chair, Light, with long brown hair that was cast with careless grace over his eyes, braced himself for their daily banter dispute.
"First of all, you don't grow wings. Your faithful if not rather clingy furball attaches on to you. That is not 'sprouting wings'- he is becoming wings You, however, are unchanged. Those paintings of old, nondescript artists now turned precious? They are not prodigious masterpieces. However much you pretend to despise it, come on, we all know how much you actually relish making the front page each time you go and take an object…though I do admire your gall to conspire with me. Also…" Light trailed off mysteriously, "Since when have you gained Riku's heart?" He stole a glance at the slightly defeated Dark, to watch how he would take the next piece of insult. "Ahh! So you mean to say that Riku is now classified as a fair maiden? And, are you seeing double? Last time I checked, Risa was one and Riku was still lovingly dubbing you 'pervert'. Are you sure she deserves the pure and innocent heart of the Legendary Phantom Thief? I'm sorry," Light said with hidden satisfaction of seeing the red bloom onto Dark's pale skin, " did I say something wrong? Anyhow, one look at that little bouncy girl is enough to make me hurl! Stop talking about her like some love sick puppy- you keep it up and it is guaranteed that your flying cape will be graced and covered with the presence of the puke of Kira."
Regaining his composure (which slipped to an embarrassing level during his verbal lashing) and adding forced cheeriness, Dark replied: " Excuse me. I prefer that you do not insinuate false ideas. You are looking somewhat nervous. Afraid that I'll bring up DEAR Misa again?" Catching Light's unawares, Dark continued more confidently. "I'm sure she'd be shocked to find her noble serial killer consorting with MY sort!"
Knowing that Dark had him, Light resorted to a very cheap and, well, rather entertaining practice.
"Dark!" he hollered suddenly, "what ever you do, don't think about Riku!"
Dark's slender, (and uncharacteristically enraptured) face held a dreamy look on them, and his whole essence seemed to give off a reverberation of light. Several moments later, a slightly dazed Daisuke with a ruffled hairdo and groggy eyes appeared in place of Dark.
"My!" announced a suddenly happy Light," What a pleasant surprise! However did you change back? Your brother and I were having a nice, cozy conversation!"
"Save your breath, Light." muttered a still weak Daisuke. "I can hear perfectly inside, you know, He's not my brother, either. More like my great-great-great grandfather's double or something. Too bad you can't make him deflate his ego by threatening to kill him…He technically doesn't exist. Wait…" calculated Daisuke," if he died, well, I'd probably die too. So that suggestion wasn't very smart of me. Anyways," Daisuke brightly broke off from his tangent, "what are you going to use all that money for?" He eyed Light suspiciously. "Not another of those taking-over-the-world-and-you-can't-stop-me things?"
"Eh," stalled Light, "nothing much…" he trailed off in a manner that declared that he was going to let the subject drop. Apparently that didn't work because Daisuke was cleverly reminding him that, at any moment, he could turn back into Dark and let his other self pester Light.
"If you're so persistent…" grumbled Light, "fine. We need to resurrect a human. The materials needed are way to expensive and risky to get by my eliminating people."
"Ha! You call killing 'eliminating' people? Where is your sense of right and wrong?" questioned a queasy Daisuke.
"Gone." blandly replied Light." Wasn't born with it. Besides," he flashed Daisuke his trademark winning smile, "I would never have gotten my trusty Notebook here had I been cursed with benevolence. Ryuk picked me for a reason, you know."
"Right…who's so important for you to spend millions of dollars reviving? Let me guess, a millionaire of the past? A king? Or a nobleman, perhaps? A genius? Or, no, a GIRL?"
"Yep." Grinned Light. "We're bringing Risa back."
"Risa? How?" inquired an exasperated Daisuke. "She isn't dead--!" As soon as Risa was mentioned, the Dark inside began transforming back.
"Mission accomplished," murmured a smug Light under his breath.
Dark emerged once again and flipped his long, rather tattered suit out of the way to sit down on the bed.
"That was a nasty trick," he said quietly, "and you know it."
"Ah! What can I say?" Light grinned and clapped his hands together. "We're known as the Diabolic Duo at school, so shouldn't it make sense that we are evil to each other once in a while? Anyways, I'm a bit tired of what 'they' dub us. It's getting bothersome."
'They' were the girls at their college. All were in frenzy idolization of the two cool new freshmen, Dark and Light. 'They' giggle because the two guy's names are direct contrasts of one another, and in their appearance, attitude, and character, they also varied greatly. Light was the one people considered brilliant. With those gleaming eyes and easy smile that his strange hair complemented, he was a target for lots of flirty girls. (One girl confessed to a local tabloid that she'd secretly counted how many times Light's hair slid and covered his eyes for the duration of two months.) Slender and tall, he'd act all the gentleman while around his fans. On the other hand, Dark was attractive in the naughty boy way. Though some slightly skeptical girls had asked him whether he himself thought that he resembled the infamous Phantom Thief, he denied with a winning, crooked grin that quelled all other impulse of further questioning. Normally found shrouded with expensive looking black apparel, goody goody girls who usually look down on the 'creepy gothic guys' are nevertheless drawn to the hottie with such a lithe body and devious personality. Frankly, they are amazed at the similarity of their new idol and the legendary robber. Still, despite all those differences, the two most desired guys at To-oh College hang out together. Rumors think that was the sole reason the two were inseparable, but the two knew otherwise.
" So, you," started Dark, " are a brilliant mass murderer—"
"Oh, cut it with the drama! Actually, I'm a mastermind with different principles to the other 98 of the population. But," he waved his free hand as in impatience to Dark's general direction, "by all means go on!"
"…while, I, on the other hand, am a charming, dashing, handsome.." (Hey, everyone gets a little carried away at times!) "angel of the night. My abilities are unlimited, and my love unstoppable."
The egotistical speech made a queer sound be emitted from the highly amused Light. It was an undistinguishable cross between a guffaw and a snicker. Very discomposing to the popular Yagami.
Choosing wisely to ignore the little snortle episode, Dark continued: "It's about time we got new blood into our system. Sadly, we won't be the Diabolic Duo anymore. Perhaps we could be titled the 'something' Triplets or Trio? Of course, replace the something with the desired word or catch phrase…" Dark quietly rolled of possible names off his tongue.
"I know. We've agreed to this before. Now," Light pulled out two photographs. "which one should we bring back?"
Before Light could explain each person's repertoire, Dark skillfully flicked the photo containing an old, shriveled man up into the air, and swiftly brought his wings forward to slice it. The scissoring effect cut the picture into a multitude of different pieces.
"And that rational outburst was for what exactly?" Demanded Light, gathering up the picture's remnants.
"Didn't like the looks of that fat old bugger." Dark said easily, and with some disdain. He sniffed in distaste, as if the picture contained some unpalatable prospect which he could not accept. "Now that one, he looks promising!"
The photo Dark was pointing to contained a young man of clear nobility. Though undoubtedly Caucasian, his unique features and immobile eyes seemed to be alive with strong will. Scattered, fine raven black hair enveloped a learned face, yet something sinister clung to his wiry frame. The picture revealed as much.
"Nice choice. He's well, was, Cain Hargreaves. In that particular shot, he was 20 or so. Descended from the prestigious Hargreaves. The same ones that the little kids read about in history books. He had a knack for solving cases, and bloody scenes seemed to follow him." Light recited as if in memory, "Our dear friend Cain appears to have a rather malevolent past. Cain treasured, above everything else, his half sister, Mary Weather, and they have a profile together still, at the Scotland Yard, and I managed to coax my friend there into sending me their file—"
'Trust Light to bribe government officials,' thought Dark.
After Dark perused the file handed to him, a pleased expression was seen on his face, and he knew the choice couldn't be easily regretted.
"We'll take him!" Dark exclaimed resolutely.
"Thanks to you, Captain Obvious, we can't exactly choose the other one in the mutilated picture, now can we?"
Dark decided to reply to the rhetorical question.
"Why can't we?"
"In olden days, people believed that pictures could capture souls." Light fumbled with the picture absently and explained." They weren't completely wrong, as we know, superstitions, at one time or another, had to be based off of facts. First pictures of people do in fact capture bits of them for eternity. Since you destroyed the only known picture of a qualifying king, we can't use him."
Relenting, Light added, "Cain should be pleasing."
"I hope he is! To bring back two people dead for over a century together is very costly. Think of the amount of paintings I had to steal! Most of them weren't even from the Hikaris either. It's been nice having Satoshi Hiwakari off my case, though. Wait…why exactly do we have to bring back two?"
Light sighed wearily. "The Death Note tells me that the revival functions best if the closest companion of the deceased is reborn too. According to this file from the Yard—"
A folder containing a musky picture and several transcripts made it's way over to Dark's long hands. Picking up the blurry photograph, Dark, with abnormally acute eyes which were used to prowl the silences of the night, could make out some features. The first was the unmistakable face of a more solemn Cain.
Besides him, smiling an ethereal smile, was a young girl with a pale face. Her hair hung like wisps of shimmers- it had a seemingly magical effect on Dark while it was juxtaposed against the grainy backdrop. A small, candy mouth smiled innocently below two frozen liquid eyes. Although she was bit a child and probably could only reach Cain's chest height, she was very pretty, even by today's warped standards.
Tearing his gaze off of Mary Weather, Dark asked again the purpose of 'dragging back an archaic snob'.
"I'm delighted to, partner. We need a new source of funds, a cynical planner, and a person with great physical ability. Not to mention he has to be relatively handsome at that, or we can't maintain our reputations at school. He'll also serve in our Great Purpose."
"How will you be sure he will help us? When are you going to establish the certainty of the Great Purpose anyways?" asked Dark.
"Do it before Daisuke gets impatient and demands his body back." He added boredly.
"Course they will. If they don't , death threats are always efficient. Wait," he mused, "If the girl is a hostage for us…Cain will practically be rendered helpless!"
"Right." Grinned Light as he shoo-ed Dark away. "Ryuk will gather the materials needed, and construct the resurrection scene. In the meantime, let your kid live a little," Light indicated to Daisuke. "Go steal a painting or two. Besides preparing the bringing back the two people… I've got some sacrificing to do."
