Title: It's Kara, not Kira
Summary: Light, who's back as a Shinigami, is training his sister's daughter to become another Kira. Problem is, Kara, a punk who grew up resenting the world around her, might have other plans.
Exit Light. Enter Night. Take my hand, off to never neverland! Kara shook her dyed black hair wildly as she played her part of the Apocalyptica cover on her ebony black cello, running the lyrics through her mind as she did so. For the moment, her rapidly swirling head was completely lost in the music.
An hour later, she wobbled out of the bar, and when she stopped just outside the door and leaned heavily on her eerily decorated cello case. Performing without the vocalist just wasn't right, even if that's what Apocalyptica, the musical ancestor of her band, Night Goddess, did. But soon, they would be short two members instead of just one, as she was scheduled to fly back to Japan as soon as the graduation ceremony was over.
"Kara! Kara!" The shouts greeted her and while her face smiled, she inwardly groaned. How many times did she have to tell these people that one of the nicest things they could do was address her as Yagami the way her friends did.
"Kara-bearah!
Got no bettah
Cuz she's Kara
K-A-R-A
Kara! Kara!
Kara-bearah!
That's our sista
Sweet songs Kara!
K-A-R-A
Kara! Kara!
Kara-bearah…" the mass of white and pink clad cheerleaders shouted in unison. They even brought their pom-poms and everything. God, how would Night Goddess ever establish a reputation as a heavy metal band with these preps around? Her right hand fell with her sinking heart into her purse, fumbling until her spindly fingers wrapped around a cigarette and a lighter. She slowly inhaled as her mind raced, asking for explanations of the crowd's presence. Janet, the Academy's soon to be valedictorian, was pleased to see that the vast majority of the top 25 was Asian, but once stated in completely unambiguous terms that she would eliminate the punkish face from the ranks. When they failed to destroy her grades, they started targeting her band. First, it was a few attempts to convince them to switch out of metal and another one to get Kara to quit smoking. When that failed, the gang went more extreme.
Her slender, gloved fingers dove back into the spiked purse for a second cigarette.
"Shit," she cursed when she found the entire rest of the pack gone. She kept her fake smile as she forced her way through the crowd in the direction of the dorms. Once they were out of hearing range, she snickered, "Cheerleaders. That the best you can do, Janet? But I gotta admit, that football dude that you sent with them's pretty hot."
She dashed off into her dorm room. For the night, her side contained nothing but two suitcases and a bed. She hurriedly unzipped one of the cases and fumbled until she found another pack of cigarettes. The panic from the run home and the desire for the nicotine that built up during the performance was getting less and less bearable with each passing second. The girl with the obviously dyed black hair hastefully left the building before finding a bench to sink into.
She did not want to go back to Japan, to her mother, yet. To the house fraught with argument and strife with a somewhat mentally deranged woman. Why couldn't Mom be satisfied with what Kara's already gotten? A 3.9 gpa, a perfect SAT score, a full scholarship? A full scholarship that did her no good as it didn't pay for any college-related work done before the fall, which meant that they would not help her get a place and take summer classes, which meant she had no place to stay, which, in turn, meant she had no choice but to return to Japan. Damn… Mom'd probably get so angry that she'd first yell and then become despondent again. Why couldn't Mom just be happy instead of nitpicking over her not appearing like a model student? Just like… Just like Janet! She smoked away her thought with one cigarette after another until the rings of smoke all disappeared into the night.
Tokyo Airport
A tall, slender girl stood, with one small bag slung over her shoulders and two more suitcases in tow. Both the pin-covered jacket and the random band tanktop that hid under it barely covered her waist and she supposed that she could do without the jacket if Saiyu Yagami was not guaranteed to throw a fit over the newly acquired tattoo on her arm. Just a bit under the tank was the heavily studded belt that appeared to hold the ripped jeans in their place above the rather expensive boots. In all, she was clad completely in black with traces of red and the top, even the head, matched the rest of the body, with the tips of the individual hair strands hinting at an unnatural red while the rest of it was dyed black from the original brown. A silver stud decorated the corner of her mouth, matching its counterparts on the nose and on the eyebrow. Her wild hair was cropped just enough to reveal five earrings, one of which was a skull, dangling from her right ear and two hanging from the left. All in all, to the Japanese people around her, she was an American freak.
From the looks around her, it seemed that they could smell the smoke that surrounded her body like an aura from a mile away. She didn't care until her eyes met those of her mother, at which time she knew that there's nothing but trouble. Mom and Grandma would be civil enough in the airport, but there'd be no end to the chiding once they were home.
--
From outside the Yagami house, one could only hear two competing female voices.
"Kara, how much did you smoke on that plane?" The silhouette of the shorter person moved.
"Three."
"Are you trying to kill yourself with lung cancer?"
The words melted into each other into an incoherent mass of sounds for the next few minutes as the two women fought their verbal battles.
"How many guys have you really had? And what happened to that Mike guy that you've been dating? You seriously think you're old enough to have a boyfriend?" screamed the shorter person.
"Mom…"
"What happened? What really happened?"
"I dumped Bill because he wasn't popular. And Mike just was no fun! You want answers, Mom? Here's your answers!" With that, the taller figure disappeared from the window and dashed out the front door, slamming it shut.
"Bitch," she muttered. She lit up another cigarette as she paced down the sidewalk, stomping her frustration into the ground with each heavy step. She stopped when she noticed a bin full of books sitting just outside one of the local shops. Ninety percent off. [i]Looks like someone doesn't want books. Who can blame 'em?[/i] She was about to give a disgusted look and walk past when an ebony colored, leather-bound notebook at the top of the pile caught her eye.
"Death Note," she read out loud in English. Below the Roman letters were the same words written in Japanese. She walked over and picked it up, brushing off the dust as she curiously examined the cover. She turned it over to look on the backside for a price tag but found none. She walked in through the automatic doors and glanced around. "Looks interesting. May as well take it home, I guess."
"Ma'am, I'm sorry, but you can't smoke inside the store," said one of the cashiers.
"Fuck," she muttered as she chucked the cigarette butt in a random direction out the door. "How much is this?"
The short, chubby girl behind the counter examined the notebook's covers before making the conclusion. "You can have it for free. I don't think it's one of ours. Someone probably just dropped it there."
"Cool," Kara grinned.
--
It was eleven when Kara returned home. No doubt, she was in for another lecture tomorrow. The dark-haired girl tiptoed up the stairs, careful not to awaken her mother or grandmother. And because the rest of the family was asleep, she could not play her cello. She sat down at the desk of her modestly furnished room and sighed. No real music to be played from her fingers, no smoking, nothing good on TV… Her fingers itched for action.
And so she opened the notebook and began to read the beautifully handwritten sentenced inscribed in the inside cover. For every line of English, there was a more elaborate one written in Japanese. [i]Guess whoever wrote this is Japanese.[/i] She smiled and then slapped herself lightly. [i]Well, duh, Yagami, you're in Japan! Of course they speak better Japanese than English.[/i]
"The human whose name is written in this notebook shall die. Once you have written…" her voice was reduced to a mumble before she went silent altogether. A minute later, she closed the book and laughed, "I should've thought of that for a senior prank! I bet I could've sold this on ebay for enough to pay my rent for a month! Write a name down, think of a face, and the person dies? Not only dies but dies exactly as you describe the death? AND I'd have to write the cause and details of death in a minute? This is hilarious."
She picked up the phone and was about to dial Johanna's number, but then remembered that it's morning in America and weekday mornings for her bandmate meant work, which meant no answering phone calls. Shame. She didn't exactly consider the other girl a friend, as it's hard to call anybody a friend when no one stayed there constantly with her for more than a year, but the other girl would have gotten a kick out of that.
And so she sat in silence and stared blankly at the phone for the next five minutes. The notebook's funny, but it's most likely just a joke, right?
"Peter Eric Lenoir, I'm your hate when you want love," she grinned bitterly as she madly jotted down the name of the wretch that her mother never deserved.