impossible!'
L's mind denied the truth his eyes were presenting him with as an involuntary gasp escaped him and his body instinctively pressed back into the seat of the helicopter. That horrible apparition; the sickly white figure towering over the struggling new captive. This changed everything.
His vast expanse of knowledge had just been proved lacking and the shock left him feeling hollow, temporarily unable to act. The anxious words of his suspect went unnoticed, L's eyes remaining fixed on the monster, the...shinigami before him. However, the focus of his wide pupils was soon redirected as the impatient teen sat beside him slid the innocent looking notebook from his lax fingers, pulling it into his own.
He screamed, and L knew what that scream meant instinctively. it shook him out of his shock-induced daze and brought him crashing back into reality as he watched his suspect, his first friend, die. The innocent curiosity in Raito's eyes faded away, to be replaced by a sinister gleam of determination that sent a shiver running down L's spine and made him feel slightly sick. In the space of a few seconds the young man he had grown to care for was gone forever and L turned his head away lest the sudden pangs of grief show in his eyes.
It was over.
He fixed his gaze again on the scene playing out in front of him.
"We have to check these names and times against those of Kira's victims."
L didn't respond. He stared through the glass and forced his eyes wider. He refused to look into the eyes of the dead man who spoke in such affected tones.
As Kira's discarded pawn collapsed in agony upon the wet tarmac; anxious, anonymous officers crowding around his writhing form; L's blank gaze was focused on the passive face of the shinigami. He was no longer afraid of it. It was simply a new factor now assimilated into his reality, albeit an unpredictably fluctuating variable in his predictions. In all ways that mattered it was simply another pawn. It was the chess player that mattered.
'Why should I be afraid?'
After all, the real monster was sat right beside him.
