Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note, sadly. It would be, as I would normally put it, utterly wicked, if I did but nope, I don't.

Prologue

The fire was blazing and there was no stopping it. How it had started, the family would never know, nor would they have enough time, as mothers and fathers tried to get their children out.

Now, this family wasn't a normal one with a simple mother, a simple father, nor a simple son and daughter. Simplicity was just out of the question.

No, this was the entire family, with mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, cousins, children and that one Grandmother who was above them all. This was not a normal family with their dark secrets and strange traditions. They were not normal in one bit.

But how had the fire started? The family, as far as concerned as they were, had no targets and lived in a secluded area in Japan. So where had the fire come from?

Time was running out, and they all knew they had to get out of the house. It was a difficult thing to do, since there were at least more than ten children. Six of them were younger than twelve but older that five, there were two newborns and three had been around the age of 15. So with all of the commotion caused by the fire, it was difficult to search for some kids that had been hiding.

That is why some had not survived.

It was difficult for the younger kids to understand what was happening. They have never truly been exposed to the concept of death, and that even the people you love most, could be gone the next day. The older kids had to hold back a couple of children who had tried to run for their parents, who had ran back inside. "Okaasan! Okaasan!" One of them, only six years of age, had escaped the grasp of his older sister as he ran back inside for his mother. "Otouto!" His 12-year-old sister ran inside after him.

They never did get back out.

Finally, one of the mother's came out. But it did not take long for her to collapse. She had been badly burned, and from what it seemed, her chances of survival was close to none. As the children rushed towards her, tears all flooding their eyes and pouring down their faces, they noticed something in her grasp. Upon closer inspection, they saw what it was.

It was the books.

There were six books. The kids may have been naive about the outside world, but they knew exactly what those books did. Those books were murderous and dangerous, and the children were never allowed to touch them. Still, they knew of the shinigami that was the owner of the notebook. They knew almost all of the rules of the notebook (according to their parents. Even if the parents had not wanted to children to see a shinigami, they had no qualms about telling their children in a blunt fashion on what the book did.) The children knew that if they left the book, it would be found, or perhaps burned in the fire. If it was found, someone could use the book for their own greedy needs. And if it was burned, most likely six more fully functioning notebooks will come falling down from the Shinigami Realm. So that is why the children had to protect the books. That is why the children had to take them.

Only six children remained from the starting eleven. That meant a notebook for each one of them. The children all knew that by touching the notebooks, they had claimed ownership and would see their shinigami, and by touching each others notebooks, they would see the shinigami their family member's shinigami. That is why they all to touch the books. As soon as they all touched each other's notebooks, they ran. They knew they had no hope for their home, for it had started to collapse. They had to get out of the area, as the trees would soon start to catch on fire.

As the children ran, their shinigami had appeared. They had been already present in the house, and the children were aware of the death gods' existence, though they could not see or hear them before today. The shinigami had known what had happened, and so followed the children silently.

And that is what the children did. They ran out of the burning house. They ran out of the soon to be burning forest. They ran away from their near deaths. And they ran. And they ran. And they ran. They were on the run for a month, not knowing where they were heading. Their clothes tattered, faces dirty; they were all sickly pale and skinny from the lack of food (they would have to look for scraps of food and steal). All they had was their notebooks and each other. They were searching for food one day, when they were discovered and taken to an orphanage. Within the next year, of the remaining six children, two had been adopted. The last four were taken to an orphanage in Winchester, England. Their intellectual level was quite high, and so they were taken to an orphanage for gifted children called Wammy's House. After being evaluated to see if the four children would stay, (they had to take a complicated test, in which they all finished with flying colors in no time) it was deemed that they now had a position at Wammy's House.

Now, as stated before, the children had a strange tradition, which went up to the roots of their great ancestors and traveled down to their generation.

The tradition being: none of them had a name. Ever since their family first acquired the notebooks long ago and made it their duty to stop more notebooks from falling onto the Earth, it was thought better to not give a child a name at birth. If the name was never officially stated for a child's first year of life, then the child has no real name. Usually when the child came of age, he or she would call himself or herself what ever they chose to be called. But most of the time, the family member would address each other using formal or humble honorifics ( for mother, otouto for younger brother.)

That is why the remaining four children gave themselves a name. The eldest was a thirteen-year-old girl. She gave herself the name Hid, as in short for 'hidden'. She had long, pitch-black hair with long bangs that was close to covering her dark brown eyes. She was given the letter H. The second eldest was Unkno, which was short for 'unknown'. He was eight years old, with brown hair that reached the nape of his neck and light brown eyes. He was given the letter U. The last two children were twins. The older twin was a boy with semi curly hair that was grown to the nape of his neck and stuck out in odd places. He had gray eyes, which was strange for him and his sister, since the rest of the family had brown eyes. He decided to call himself Name, due to lack of inspiration for actually thinking of a name. He was given the letter N. And finally, the youngest of them all, Name's twin sister, gave herself the name Nona, which was short for 'no name'. She had very long, semi curly brown hair that stuck out in all places like her brothers, that seems to be getting lighter with each passing day. She also had gray eyes, but she knew, just like all her family members knew, that she was going blind. Nona, who had been given the letter NN, had the degenerative eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa. She knew that she had at least ten more years until she goes blind, so she would make the best of it.

So there, the strange family that seemed to void all simplicity in their life for the nameless, orphaned children carried notebooks that can kill someone with a name and a face, that was owned by a shinigami, and not to mention one of them will go blind.

Yes, this is the story of unsimple lifestyle with a family with strange secrets. Surprisingly, this is the only beginning.