nightelf37: Thanks to a certain application that is no longer available on Google Play, I am able to 'rescue' this fanfic from oblivion. Well, sort of. The actual fanfic still exists, but it is under a heavy rewrite. I asked Scientist's Thesis, the original writer of this fic, and whose real name happens to be Pedro, for permission to publish the original version, and I got his thumbs-up. And because the application doesn't track chapter names, there will be no chapter names.

Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing here. Death Note is by Tsugumi Ohba, and this fic belongs to Scientist's Thesis/Pedro. Now, may I present...

Rationalising Death


TW: Attempted rape, premeditated murder


Author's Notes: The noted intelligences of Light, L, Mello and Near are mostly informed abilities. What if they weren't, though?


A/N 2: If you're arriving now, welcome! I'd like to ask you to review this, as there's no other way for me to receive any feedback and improve. So whether you love it or hate it, please do take five minutes of your time if you can to expose your thoughts, even if they have already been voiced by other people there! That way I can know which aspects are the most salient in my readers' minds so that I can work on writing better. Thanks!


3:37PM. November 27, 2003. Tokyo, Japan.

Yagami Light, a high school student of 17, was sitting bored in class when the event that would culminate in a complete revolution of the world happened.

This world is rotten, he thought, as he stared out the window. He was propped on his elbows, holding his head and waiting for the sensei to finish her lecture. Dirty, broken. Light's mind was wandering, as usual. The sensei mostly didn't mind - he was the prodigy - but he couldn't help but be grim during these moments.

The way he saw it, the world was a pretty awful place. Corrupt politicians, cruel criminals, evil CEOs and even day-to-day evil acts made it that way, but everyday stupidity ensured it would stay like that. Nobody could make even a simple utility calculation. The only saving grace was that this was as true for the villains as for the heroes.

That train of thought never really left his mind. Not when he was studying, not when he was reading, eating, showering, training. He wished, and dreamt, and wished more. He wanted... a world of peace. A utopia, perhaps with him being the advisor of the overlord - not the overlord himself, of course, he didn't like political positions. Unless no one else was fit to step in. But he preferred being in the back, behind the curtains.

What's that...? Suddenly there was a small, dark rectangle on the grass outside. A notebook...? He could've sworn it hadn't been there a minute ago.

A while later, the class bell rang. He quickly packed and left the classroom. However, he hung back and waited to see if anyone would claim ownership of the mysterious black notebook. No one did. He picked it up.

On the cover, the words "Death Note" were written in a stylized font. Nothing else. He opened the notebook, and the first page was also black, with what looked like a set of instructions.

THIS IS A SHINIGAMI NOTEBOOK, the first sentence read.

Shinigami... a god of death? He kept reading.

THE HUMAN WHOSE NAME IS WRITTEN ON THIS NOTEBOOK SHALL DIE.

This is sick. Why do people like this crap? This is worse than those chain letters... Still, he was curious. He put the notebook in his bag and headed home. The whole time, though, he was thinking about the notebook. Who would write a notebook like that? Why?

And one insidious, barely audible voice in his head said, And what could we do with such power?


4:19PM.

He arrived home, removed his shoes and greeted his mother, who was in the kitchen. Then he quickly scrambled to his room, locking the door behind him as he did so. That wasn't usual for him, but this was an unusual situation. He calmly slid the notebook from his backpack and put it on his desk.

THIS NOTEBOOK WILL NOT TAKE EFFECT UNLESS THE WRITER HAS THE PERSON'S FACE IN THEIR MIND WHEN WRITING HIS/HER NAME. THEREFORE, PEOPLE SHARING THE SAME NAME WILL NOT BE AFFECTED.

IF THE CAUSE OF DEATH IS WRITTEN WITHIN 40 SECONDS OF WRITING THE PERSON'S NAME, IT WILL HAPPEN.

IF THE CAUSE OF DEATH IS NOT SPECIFIED, THE PERSON WILL SIMPLY DIE OF A HEART ATTACK.

AFTER WRITING THE CAUSE OF DEATH, DETAILS OF THE DEATH SHOULD BE WRITTEN IN THE NEXT 6 MINUTES AND 40 SECONDS.

This is completely insane. Who would think of this?

His bedroom was tidy and organized. The bed, always neatly made, was by the wall on the right with a bookshelf on each side. The desk that held the death note also supported a computer and a small TV screen. Light flopped himself onto the cushion.

Death if you write the name... Insane... Inhuman...

And before Light could suppress the thought: And bears testing.

He quickly dismissed it as the random ramblings of his head. How was the notebook even supposed to work in the first place? Magic? That strained credulity beyond possibility. It was just some prank. On whom, though... was another matter. And what, exactly, would anyone accomplish with this?

If I had made this notebook as a prank... what would've been my objective?

The first answer that sprang to mind would be to prove that people are selfish and would murder anyone who inconvenienced them. But Light thought that was probably just his regular train of thought catching up with him. In fact, there was a surprise: since he picked up the notebook at school, he hadn't yet had a single thought of how humans were inefficient at being moral. Not directly, anyway. Interesting.

He spent ten minutes chewing on his lips until he gave up, sat on his desk chair and stared at the notebook. Tentatively, he opened it and flipped past the first page. All other pages were just regular notebook pages. He picked a pen and... waited. That would be murder, if it worked.

Don't be silly, his common sense said. Such things don't exist. It couldn't possibly work. You'll just write someone's name, nothing will happen, and then tomorrow someone will come to you and ask for the notebook, and then they'll point at you and say you're a horrible person. "You actually wrote a name in this!"

Another part of his mind was telling him to test it.

Why am I even taking this seriously? This is insane.

Well, his practical (and curious) side said, it obviously can't work, can it? It's just a prank. So you might as well. But you shouldn't write someone who's close to you there. Also, why would you want to kill a close person?

Yes, that's obvious, his common sense replied. Light watched this internal struggle with some fascination and wondered why he was actually even considering it. But in case you've forgotten, killing is bad. We'd have to find someone whose death wouldn't matter.

No, Practical answered. We have to find someone whose death would result in a net positive change in society's expected utility.

That doesn't make sense, said a part of him that was grudgingly becoming convinced. How would killing anyone result in that?

Oh, you've worked that out already, Test It answered. In fact, in the deep dark corners of your mind you have figured out many things that could make your utopia work. And amongst them is the simple fact that some people would make the world a better place if they were dead. Criminals, for instance. Murderers, serial killers, rapists. People who only make other people's lives miserable, who take and destroy other lives, people whose impact on the world will never be good.

No one had anything to say about that in his mind. So he just thought. And thought. And kept thinking. It was true. He routinely pictured scenarios with people he found in the news where they somehow died and the world became a better place. One by one. All of those people.

Suppose I want to actually test this notebook, Light thought, while remarking that he'd never felt so divided in his mind as right this moment. Where do I fin-

The TV, the practical side answered as soon as Light turned on the small monitor beside his computer. He had just been thinking about checking the news, hadn't he?

"The murderer who indiscriminately killed 6 people yesterday in Shinjuku's Hanka District is still locked up in the preschool with the teacher and 7 children as hostages."

Bingo.

"The police suspects Otoharada Kurou, 42, unemployed. Last night, Otoharada was..."

Do I think this piece of news will last for more than 6 minutes 40 seconds? No, obviously not... So... heart attack it is.

He felt... strange. Tingly, almost. Suddenly it didn't look so unthinkable, so impossible. Something in his mind was justifying it: the guy had already killed six people and had another eight caught as hostages, seven of whom are children. There is no way the world was better with this man alive. His pen reached for the paper. He fixed the picture of the man on the TV in his mind. He wrote the name. Immediately, he looked at his watch. He couldn't understand why, but he actually expected it to work.

...37, 38, 39, 40 seconds.

Light looked at the TV. The announcer was about to change subject. Light sighed, somewhat relieved and disappointed at the same time, and was about to turn it off, when...

"Oh! The hostages are coming out! Seems like everyone is fine! And now the police is storming the school! Have they made the arrest?"

Im... possible... Light's eyes widened slowly, and he started sweating. That couldn't be true. He kept watching. The police got in, and some time passed. They finally got out... with no one. No suspect.

"According to the hostages, the suspect just collapsed. The..."

Light immediately turned the TV off, closed his notebook, put it in the first desk drawer and sat on his bed, agape and shocked. His whole body shivered and his face looked pale. Someone watching him from the outside would probably conclude he was severely ill. His vision was swimming and he almost didn't hear his mother calling from downstairs.

"Light-kun! It's time for dinner!"

"Coming, mother!" he replied mechanically. His mind was still trying to compute the implications and failing.

Okay, let's try to calm down and rationally analyze this. Maybe it was just a coincidence...

Yes, sure, it could've been a coincidence. But you have to admit that the prior probability that a random 42-year-old man will have a heart attack at any given moment is pretty low. More than that, though, the hypothesis that there is a correlation between writing the man's name and his death is no longer negligible.

I need to test it again.

And one tiny voice in the background said, But that's murder.

Test It promptly replied: It's not bad to kill someone who deserves to die. The tiny voice didn't answer.

He thought he was rather calmer than he should be, and then he realized his hands were shaking so badly he couldn't actually reach the desk drawer and grab the notebook again. He closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, steadied himself, and opened them again, reaching for the drawer once more.

"Light!"

"Just a minute!" Damnit. Still, what were the odds?

We can, in fact, estimate that...

Shut up, I wasn't serious.


8:28AM. November 28, 2003.

For the first time since he started watching the news when he was little, Light wasn't thinking just passively about how to make the world a better place. How to teach people to be moral. He was, in fact, thinking about action. About what he could actually do.

The next day, his mind wandered. But that wasn't unusual. He was, however, paying much more attention to the world around himself.

Do we really want to test it more? We already have what could be called pretty definitive evidence...

Verify, that tingly part he called Test It replied as he walked into his classroom. It could have been just a coincidence. He saw some boy being bullied, and his annoyance with the state of the world once again grew. But of course, the bullies weren't actually doing anything worthy of a death sentence - yet.

"The money is his," Light said with a bored monotone to the bullies. They looked at him, outraged at being called out, but then their faces went a little bit pale for a second before they turned on the acting again and mumbled something about "not needing the money anyway." When his back was to them, Light chuckled to himself. Being the smartest kid in the class with a reputation for being badass (pretty undeserved, to be honest, he hadn't actually ever done anything) plus being the son of a police officer could help...

His thoughts stopped on their tracks.

He was the son of a police officer. That was a very small detail that had escaped him, probably because most of the time it was just that: a small detail. A piece of background information. He kicked himself mentally as he sat down with his eternally bored look.

Okay, this was information we hadn't integrated into our model, Practical said. How does it change our position?

Well, Test It replied, not much. But we'll have to be careful with this notebook. I suggest we remove the first page, the one with the instructions, ASAP. We should burn the page removed, too, not leave it in some trash can. Further, it'd be better if we removed every sheet we filled and did the sa-

Hold on, his moral side spoke up. You're actually thinking of filling a whole sheet?!

Ummm...

That's beyond the point, interrupted Practical. We have just found new information. If we just pretend to include it and then carefully justify why we're going to do the same thing anyway, we might as well just give up collecting information and do whatever we like.

But there really isn't much of a change, explained Common Sense. Removing those pages was a good idea anyway, and we'd probably have thought of it sooner or later. Other than that, if we're careless enough that the fact that we're the son of a police officer starts mattering we've already lost.

His internal monologue (or dialogue?) was interrupted by a piece of chalk hitting his forehead and his teacher asking him to pay attention to class.

"Ah- sorry, sensei!" he replied, and promptly shifted his thoughts to a more class-welcoming pattern.


4:02PM.

After class he decided he'd go for a walk and maybe buy some manga. He needed some time to think.

We're removing the instructions page from the notebook. What else? Practical asked.

Well, the cover itself is pretty awful. I say we remove that, too. And maybe we cross out the name of yesterday's guy. And today's person, Test It replied. Light made a mental note about that. This part he'd labelled Test It was way too eager to do what would generally be considered bad.

But was it, really? Hadn't he thought, his whole life, that humanity was almost hopeless? And now he had a tool for Hope. He chewed on these thoughts as he entered the small shop and his second victim showed up.

"Hey, lady, wanna come hang out with us?" Light took note of the voice and the tone which had followed the sound of a few bikes arriving. He got in and chose a specific section of the manga shelves, not bothering to look at what section it was. He just wanted to be facing the window as the thugs - there was more than one - harassed a young girl outside. The one whose voice he had noted had shoulder-length dirty blond hair and was wearing shades, bright gold jewelry and a biker jacket.

"Whoa, Taku-san is going after a hottie!" Light heard through the door he'd strategically left slightly open to his left.

"Shibumaru Takuo, they call me Shibutaku," the man said, pointing a thumb to himself with a smug grin. "Hehe... go out with me, lady."

Do it. You already have inform-

Shut up. He's just harassing a girl with words, Light replied while the other three thugs cheered on their "leader." That's not deserving of death.

Is anything...? His moral side spoke up again in a whisper that was promptly ignored by the rest of him.

He opened a random manga and put his notebook in it, pretending to read it while he watched and waited.

"Come on, hottie, come with us!"

"No!" the girl said and tried getting away with no success.

"Hehehe... you better do what Taku said! He doesn't take no for an answer!" One of the nondescript thugs howled at that. Light's left eyebrow twitched, and his impassiveness became a frown when the "leader" tried to put a hand under the girl's coat.

That's it, Light thought as he quickly wrote the name he'd heard with 4 different possible spellings, always with the face of the thug in his mind. The cause of death has to be specific enough to cover a tiny prior, he thought and looked around casually, glancing at both sides of the street.

Empty.

Run over by a truck, he wrote beside each instance of the guy's name.

Then he waited. That tingling sensation was there again. His hands once more were shaking. Not with anticipation, not with fear, not with shock. With rage.

Okay, maybe just a little bit of anticipation.

Are you sure you want to kill an innocent person? Moral asked.

He's not innocent, Test It answered. He's actually trying to rape that girl.

Does that make him deserve to die?

Yes. This time, all other parts of Light agreed with Test It. Rape could sometimes be worse to the psychological development of a person than going to war. Some people never recovered, never managed to regain a regular life again. He could absolutely destroy this girl's life. But he wouldn't. Not anymore.

"Let go of me!" the girl said, and exactly five minutes after Light wrote the third variation of the name, she managed to get a hold of her purse and grabbed a can of pepper spray, pointing it at Takuo's face and looking defiant.

Takuo barked at that and tapped his shades. "You think this is going to work?" All four of them laughed, and Light heard the sound of a truck in the distance.

Six minutes. He was no longer pretending to read his manga. He watched and waited, sweating again.

Suddenly, as if inspired by some divine providence, the girl turned around and used the spray on one of the other thugs, one who wasn't wearing shades, and kicked Takuo's knee, who yelped and let go in surprise. She ran.

"AAAH! THAT BITCH!" said the one who was hit by the spray.

"SHE'S GETTING AWAY! GO GET HER!" said another one, and Takuo immediately climbed onto his bike.

Six minutes, thirty-five seconds. "You slut! I'll get you!" He kicked the bike into gear and accelerated.

Six minutes, thirty-eight seconds. The truck was finally visible.

Six minutes, thirty-nine seconds. "TAKU! LOOK OUT!"

Six minutes, forty seconds. The front of the truck hit the bike, killing the thug on impact.

Light's vision started to swim again, and he felt faint. He kept watching the scene in shock as people who heard the accident started to gather. The girl was long gone, and the other thugs started cursing and quickly left, too. Light followed suit.


4:31PM.

The death note is real.

The death note is real.

The death note is real.

That's all that went through his mind as he scrambled to his house, and when he was near enough, he slowed down as more coherent thoughts started to form.

I've killed two people...

He walked into an alley and threw up. His stomach was still churning, and he felt chills going through his body, as if he had a fever. His breath was coming in fast, ragged pieces, and his whole body was shaking as he propped himself against the wall.

What have I done? How can this be real? This part of him didn't seem to have a name. It was just raw feeling. He stared at the floor, trying not to fall. Everything he believed was false...

There must be some other explanation!

You know there isn't, the guy he used to call Test It said. But now... maybe he should call him Death. It was the death note, and you know it.

Yes... he knew it. That didn't make it any less terrifying.

He tried to assimilate that and couldn't. In his hands there was an artifact so powerful it could modify the state of the world in order to cause the death of anyone he wished. He could... he could... Hmm... what else could he do? What were the limits of that? And why was he feeling like that? He knew the world was now a slightly better place because he'd murdered those two.

No. It's not murder. It's justice.

Why was that happening, then? But he knew the answer. No matter what his verbal, conscious side said about it, his raw lizard brain still existed and still reacted the way it was supposed to react to taking two human beings' lives.

I have to... to go home.


4:50PM.

And he did. He got home. And he had dinner as if nothing had happened, though he ate more than he usually did. Then he went to his room and immediately ripped off the death note's cover, back, instruction page and first page just for good measure. No one could know.

He stripped and went to the shower. He let the hot water wash over him, his mind completely blank. Until it wasn't.

We killed two men.

We cold bloodily killed two men.

We took their lives.

We murdered them.

We're murderers.

We're monsters.

No, Death replied. We're not. They were monsters. They were the rot of this world.

Do you think Takuo deserved to die? Some unnamed part of him asked.

Yes. Don't you? He was going to rape that girl. What do you think he deserved? Death replied. Is the world a worse place, now that he's gone?

No one answered.

What's the price, though? Another part finally spoke up. Our sanity? Our mind?

Is it such a high price to pay? For the betterment of the world? Do you think our mind isn't a fair, even cheap price? Do you really believe, O Master of Morality, that losing our mind while at the same time making the world a better place for everyone else isn't worth it? Are you as selfish as everyone else?

But it's all we have, Practical said. It's all we are. If we give it up, who are we? And how could we go on, without it?

Do we need to give it up, though? You've always said you wanted to change the world. To make it a place worth living. Here's your chance. Are you going to throw it away?

Again, no answer for a while.

Would you trust anyone else with this? Death continued, softly, his voice tempting. Just think in utilitarian terms. Sure, killing is bad... but those people deserved it. The world is a better place without them. Do you know anyone else who would use these powers... for good? Unselfishly? You're thinking it right now. You were thinking it. You were thinking of unselfishly sacrificing our mind for the greater good.

Do you think anyone could be a better shinigami than you?


4:16PM. December 3, 2003.

Five days later, Light got home from school and went to his room, locking his door behind himself as he was wont to do in the past few days. He grabbed a nondescript white notebook from his backpack and opened it. There were two pages missing, looking like they had been ripped off. On the first remaining page, there were two names followed by the words "heart attack," same date and different times. They were an hour apart and in two different languages. The date and time of the second one would happen in four minutes. He booted his computer, switched to the virtual machine and opened a nice little text document with many more names and locations on it.

That was when the actual shinigami showed up.

"Curious," a voice behind Light said, and he screamed and fell off his chair. The voice laughed.

"Light? Are you okay?" Light's mother's voice was heard from downstairs.

"Yes! It's just one of those online scare games!"

"Why are you so surprised? I'm the owner of the death note, shinigami Ryuk. Seems like you've realized that ain't no normal notebook." The creature that said those words looked like... a seven feet tall punk clown, to be quite descriptive. Its face was white, it wore leather and there was skull-themed jewelry here and there, including a huge belt and one golden skull earring. Its mouth was painted with what looked like the Joker's finest quality lipstick and the slightly open smile showed razor-sharp teeth. Its hair was pitch black and it had a somewhat hunched posture. The most salient feature, however, were his enormous red eyes that seemed to see through your soul.

Light slowly calmed himself down with deep breaths, and stood up. "I'd thought it was a metaphor for the user, but apparently it's not. So shinigami are real, eh? It's a pleasure to meet you, Ryuk."

The shinigami looked at bit uneasy at the matter-of-fact tone of Light and his speedy recovery of the shock. "Ehh... the pleasure is mine?"

"I am Yagami Light. I have a few questions for you."

"Oh?" Ryuk's facial expression should be unreadable - very few muscles actually moved -, but Light could identify curiosity and amusement on its face nonetheless.

Careful...

"What happens to me, now?"

"What?"

"I killed a bunch of people, but I'm not a shinigami. Is there any punishment? Do I become a shinigami?"

"Huh? What do you mean? I won't do anything to you."

That seemed to catch Light by surprise, though not too much. "Not... do anything?"

"Once the death note lands in the human world, it belongs to that world. It's now yours."

That gave Light pause. "Interesting. I see."

"If you don't want it, give it to someone else. But if you do that, I'll erase your memories concerning the death note. Also, you won't be able to see me." As the strange creature - who had wings, now Light noticed, leathery feathery wings - explained that, it opened the window and flew to the top of a streetlight. "Because you and only you touched the notebook, you and only you can see and hear me. The death note is the bond that ties the human Yagami Light and the shinigami Ryuk together. For as long as you are alive or want the notebook, you will have it and retain your memories and your ability to see me."

Bond... Fascinating. Light decided to hold off judgment until he had more information, since it seemed to be so forthcoming.

"So... there's no consequence whatsoever to what I'm doing?"

"Oh, well... there's the stress and fear this provokes in a human, suspiciously lacking in you. And also, when you die..." He flew back inside. "I'll write your name on my notebook. And you won't go to either Heaven nor Hell."

"Oh. So Heaven and Hell exist, then?"

Ryuk seemed taken aback. "What?"

"Well, it's one thing to accept the veracity of a killer notebook, but it's a whole other thing to claim there is an afterlife. So you're saying that everyone I kill goes to an afterlife but I won't? And how is that afterlife? Can you tell me?"

Ryuk's eyes were somehow wider. "I... can't. It's against the... the rules." Light marked that behavior as highly suspicious and worthy of further investigation, but changed the subject.

"So, do all death notes come with instructions? You're shinigami, shouldn't you know this already? And why was this death note here? Shouldn't it be with you in... in... Heaven or Hell or wherever it is shinigami live?"

The shinigami looked increasingly surprised and even (Light suspected) pleased. Light still found it very mysterious that he could identify Ryuk's facial expressions with only minute changes in specific locations and suspected maybe he was in fact projecting what he expected to see there. He took note of that, also. "Well... ah... you see," the creature started, and changed its posture. Now, somehow, it started to look menacing, as if the shadows around it had shifted or something. Light was unfazed. "I wrote the instructions in English and dropped the notebook here... because I was bored," it explained. "This may sound weird coming from a shinigami but... I just didn't feel alive. Being a shinigami these days is so boring. We're either sleeping or gambling. You write a few human names in the death note and they laugh at you for working so hard. Killing humans from the shinigami world isn't fun at all. And writing shinigami names in the notebook doesn't do anything. So I figured it'd be more fun to be down here."

There were multiple shinigami. Got it. "Do shinigami..." Then Light realized what time it was and quickly turned around, picking the first name from his list and writing it on the nondescript notebook that was open on his desk, choosing a time of death exactly an hour after the previous one. The shinigami, who was floating without moving his wings, peeked over his shoulder.

"What's that?" it asked. Light turned to look at Ryuk again, relieved he didn't miss his window.

"It's your notebook. Don't you recognize it?"

The shinigami grabbed it without asking and looked at the three names written, the lack of instructions and cover. "What did you do to my notebook?!" Its voice, so calm and steady before, was now loud and angry, almost heavy, and for the first time Light felt threatened. Here was a (probably) thousands of years old supernatural creature angry with him. But he held his pose.

"Well, I couldn't just go around with a dark notebook called 'Death Note' and instructions on how to kill people plus a bunch of names of dead people in it, could I? Especially given my dad's a police officer, that would be too suspicious."

"Ah..." Ryuk sounded as if it hadn't thought of that before. "But there's only three names..."

"Yes, of course, I also removed the pages with the other names. It would be just stupid to leave them here, too. I burned them. Speaking of which," and Light snatched the notebook from an astounded shinigami's hands and used his pen to cross out the two other names many times until they were impossible to read. "Always cover your tracks."

The shinigami's eyes got a bit wider at him, but Light felt he could sense frank admiration there. "Pages? So you already filled pages with this?"

"Well, it was in fact only one page. At first, I thought it'd be better if I just randomly picked a time and place for each victim. If I concentrate all my victims in Kanto, it will soon become obvious that that's a pattern. But choosing random times during the day wouldn't be efficient; the gain isn't proportional to the work. Besides, I couldn't be bothered," he said, his tone a little bit condescending. "I kill one person per hour, and always from a randomly selected time zone in the globe. So the only pattern is temporal, and that wouldn't be enough to actually pinpoint with any accuracy the source. Someone from anywhere could be doing that, so I'm mostly safe."

The shinigami looked too astounded for words for a few seconds, and Light mentally patted himself on the back for this accomplishment: shock a supernatural being to silence. It slowly reached again for the notebook and stared at it. Meanwhile, Light erased from the word document the name he'd just written and grabbed one six-sided die and one four-sided die. He started throwing them and writing down the numbers he got when Ryuk said, "So you've killed 96 people so far."

"Actually, it's a hundred and five, I made a few tests before with some lowly criminals. After I confirmed the power of the notebook, I only needed to know a few more details."

"Criminals?" The shinigami put the notebook back, and Light continued throwing his dice.

"Yes. You see, Ryuk, this world's gotten rotten. Everyone is incredibly selfish, and even those who aren't are nowhere near being efficient at being good. Some people just destroy other people's lives on a whim, like it's no big deal. But with exclusively public information that can be - somewhat - easily found on the internet, I can start cleaning this mess. Of course," he explained, gesticulating with his hands, "I don't just write the name of anyone who pops on the news. I have to make sure they're actually guilty of those crimes and the world will be a better place without them. These are all people about whom I've researched", he pointed to the screen where the list of names and faces was still open, "and who I found to be... bad for society."

"And you put all causes of death as 'heart attack' even though the default is already that," the shinigami observed.

"Yes. If I don't put a cause of death after the name, I can't choose a time of death - I tested it -, and I needed that. Additionally, I don't want people to ignore this. I want them to notice. That's also one of the reasons why I left the temporal pattern. I want them to know I'm passing judgment. I want them to know there's an overlord. If you do evil, you will be punished. That way, no one will do evil anymore!" Light was grinning, and in fact looked a little manic. He hadn't noticed he'd stood up, but standing he was, and even Ryuk looked a little frightened... and very amused. "In fact, evil's just a cool phrase. But someone whose impact on humanity is negative... those deserve to die."

"So you'll be the only evil one left," Ryuk replied, getting more amused as time progressed.

"What are you talking about? I'm the savior," he explained. "I'm Japan's number 1 honor student. And I will be... the god of this world!" Then he started laughing, cackling, really. Until he stopped, and his laugh became more childish. "No, sorry, I'm just kidding. I just want to make the world a better place." He frowned a bit. "Killing is bad. No one should kill. But sometimes... sometimes it's the best thing to do. Batman's insane. Everyone thinks he's some sort of paragon of virtue because he refuses to kill the Joker, but what about all the unnamed, faceless people the Joker kills? They're all on Batman. Batman could stop all that. He could just kill the Joker. But he won't, and much more people are dead because of him.

"I'm not Batman," he explained with a smirk. "And I won't let all those Jokers get their way. I'll make the world better, unlike anything Batman has ever done for Gotham City."

Ryuk's smile widened somehow. Humans are so... interesting!

Then Light sat down and asked: "By the way, Ryuk, is there a god? Other than shinigami, that is?"


December 4, 2003. Interpol emergency council.

"That's more than a hundred just this week..."

"From all over the world, it seems!"

"Only criminals, incarcerated or just wanted."

"All of a heart attack..."

"These are only the ones we know, there must be many more!"

Someone, somehow, had access to the cameras of the meeting. He was wearing a plain white shirt and plain blue jeans, sitting on the wooden floor of an empty room except for the computer showing those images. So Interpol is finally acting... I won't be able to avoid helping the police on a case like this.


nightelf37: I have all ten chapters (as he didn't seem to create more before going with the rewrite), but I'm posting only the first for the time won't be regular. This fic will probably stay around until either of the following conditions are met: (a) Scientist's Thesis changes his mind about the whole thing, after which I'll do what he requests me to do, (b) this site orders me to take this down, after which I will do so.

See ya on Third!