I do not own Death or it's characters nor do I make a profit from publishing this story.

Kikiyomi wasn't like all the other seventeen year-olds in the world, he noticed. She always had some sort of mask on. When she was with her 'friends' she was cheerful and spirited, not like her at all. When she was around her family and adults she was quiet and reserved.

He had noticed after a week of trailing her that she had a defined sort of justice. She would step in the middle of fights and even jumped a guy who was robbing an old woman. Kikiyomi had been badly injured in the struggle between her and the robber, and had been hospitalized soon after.

That's where he was when he had introduced himself to her. No-one could see him, this he knew for sure, so he fazed through the walls of the hospital and into Kikiyomi's room. There she was, battered and bruised but alive. She had long silky black hair which was currently being held in a loose ponytail. Her skin was pale but her cool and calculating brown eyes shone brightly from the suns rays that entered her room.

He knew how the process worked, how he could allow her to see him. He reached into a side bag and grabbed one of the many notebooks he stored in there. He walked to her side and laid the book in her lap and took a step back.

She was clearly startled by the sudden weight in her lap and looked down, finding the black covered notebook he had put there. She picked it up slowly, clearly unsure of how it had gotten there.

She gasped softly when he came into her sight. She didn't scream like he had expected, instead she stood up out of her bed and walked towards him while studying him thoroughly. She never touched him, just circled him, inspecting his curious appearance.

"Wha...What are you? Who are you?" she asked him quietly.

"I am Azazul the Shinigami," he replied in his deep voice, "creator of the Death Notes. Including the one you are currently holding."

Kikiyomi looked down at the book in her hands. "A Death Note?" she inquired while peering up at him through her dark lashes. "A note book of death." He said calmly. "You write a persons name in it while imagining their face and 40 seconds later they die of a heart attack. Though this is the quickest and most favoured use of the note, there are other ways to kill people with it, but I'll explain them to you later." Azazul gently placed one of his bony hands on her shoulder and turned her around, leading her back to the hospital bed.

When she was settled she took a better look at the Shinigami. His face was long and narrow, his skin stark white. His eyes were strange to her, the irises were a light purple while the part that was supposed to be white, was instead black, making them stand out. He had no eyebrows, instead the muscle and skin above his eyes were pulled together in the center making him frown. His nose looked unfinished, seemingly having no cartilage to elongate it from the bone. Beneath this he had thick black lips that were pulled down into a deep set frown, one that looked to be permanent.

His hair was a dull black that didn't reflect the light in the room. His unruly bangs framed his face. From the bangs of his hair upwards it would get shorter till at the very back of his head the strands were too short to do anything with. Random pieces of hair stuck out at odd angles giving him the illusion of having bed hair.

His posture was slightly hunched, the shoulders just slightly curving forward. Both his arms and legs were unnaturally long, his arms possibly being the length of his body. His hands were bony and pale and were larger than normal with a sharp purple nail at the end of each finger.

His clothing was unusual. He seemed to be wearing and open trench coat that had tears at the bottom, but from around his neck down to his waist line the skin seemed to be sown to the coat. Spiky feathers encircled the collar of the coat as well as both of his wrists. His pants were made of the same material as his coat. The came to an end at his ankles where they were tucked into long, scuffed, black leather shoes.

The only item Azazul carried was a greenish-brown shoulder bag. It was very plain, she thought, compared to the rest of his appearance.

"So...Ezaezul was it?" She asked him, not really knowing how to say it. "Not quite," he said. "it's pronounced Azazul...Ah-Zah-Zool. Don't worry though, many Shinigami can't even say it properly. Although they aren't exactly the brightest bunch in our realm."

"Ok, so Azazul?" He gave her a small nod. "Why did you make the Death Note? Isn't it just useless killing?" She didn't like the idea of the notebook, it sounded like something not meant for this world.

"I created the Death Note solely on the selfish goal to live longer. When a Shinigami uses the notebook to kill a human before their time, how ever long they should have had left is added to that Shinigami's life span. I had created it for me alone but our king wanted it for the whole population to take pleasure in, and you can't say no to the king."

"So why are you here? Shouldn't you be in your world or realm or whatever it is?" She asked him, waving her hands around in the air as if to emphasize some point she had failed to point out.

Azazul sat down at the end of her bed and stared out the empty window. He reached over to her discarded food tray and grabbed the lone green apple that sat upon it.

"Well," he started as he took a bite out of the apple, his serrated teeth cutting through it with ease. "I am in the human realm to stop a rogue Shinigami who came here to retrieve a dropped Death Note but is now causing havoc with the one known as Kira."

He stopped for a few seconds but as she opened her mouth to speak he continued. "I am in this room because I have been watching you for the past week and I have deduced that you would be able to help me greatly." Kikiyomi tried once again to speak but Azazul placed an apple crumb covered finger against her lips, signaling her to listen.

"I wish to give you ownership to this Death Note," he held up the notebook she had been holding only moments earlier, "and I want you to help me do two things. One, stop Kira. This is the least important in my view but it must be done for the sake of this world. And two, return the Shinigami back to our realm. Basically if Kira dies, the Shinigami will leave of his own free will. Any objections?"

"So let me get this straight," she moved her hands in front of her like she was straightening out her gown. "you want me to kill, to catch a killer? Isn't that a bit counterproductive." A small chuckle escaped his mouth while his stayed in it's frowning position.

"I do not wish for you to kill anyone but Kira, but sadly, I cannot tell you who you can and cannot kill. Shinigami rules." She looked at the notebook thoughtfully before grabbing it out if Azazul's hands and opening it in her lap. Reaching over to her bedside table she grabbed a black fountain pen, her favorite.

After licking the tip of the pen -it wasn't necessary, just habit.- she put the pen against the first page wrotethe name 'Machiko Kyouko' on the first line. Kikiyomi gave him back the notebook then laid herself down on the bed. Azazul opened the cover and read the first line. "Who, may I ask, is Machiko Kyouko?" A small smile crossed her face as she crossed her arms behind her head.

"Machiko is my mother." A look of understanding crossed his scowling face. While he had been watching the girl he had noticed how her parents had treated her. Her mother treated her like a slave, making Kikiyomi clean the house from tile to roof. The only time she wasn't cleaning was when she was at school. Her father beat her constantly and left many nasty bruises over her arms and back.

Her mother had always had heart problems; he had visited the medical records prior to visiting Kikiyomi. Machiko had already suffered from two heart attacks, so no one would think it strange if she died from one.

"So you accept, I presume?" He asked her, already knowing the answer. "Of course." She replied, like he was asking if the world was round.

"So...When do we start?" she asked him excitedly. For someone who hates Kira, he thought, she sure was enthusiastic about killing people. "As soon as your out of this hospital." He said. "I know the exact whereabouts of Kira and his Shinigami so we can get started straight away."

"Time to get better." She finished.

Now they had to wait.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The funeral for her mother was dark and depressing, for the others any way. Kikiyomi just placed on her ever present mask while she shed her forced tears. After all, a daughter had to cry at their own mother's funeral. It wouldn't look right if she didn't.

Her father was a mess. He couldn't form proper sentences and he was too distraught to even beat her, which was probably his favorite pass time, in her opinion.

She would have said that she felt sorry for him, but she didn't. He had been hitting her since she was four, and thirteen years of endless beating tended to turn a person.

After the funeral had come to an end she had left, not caring for the happenings at her mothers wake. She went to the library with a few notebooks from home. It would be less suspicious if she wrote in the Death Note while studying.

"Are we going to start now, Kikiyomi?" She chanced a glance behind her at the goth-like Shinigami. "Tomorrow Azazul, right now we must dispose of my father."

While she had been in the hospital Azazul ran the rules of the Death Note by her, making sure she knew all of the rules and regulations. Even some unknown ones that he had 'conveniently' forgotten to tell the King; like how a Shinigami could be seen by animals and infants. Some insane people as well, depending how lost their mind was. And that the Death Note couldn't truly be destroyed. If someone tried to destroy it, the book would just return to this Shinigami possessing it at the time.

In the library, Kikiyomi had chosen to sit at a table closest to reference section. Although it was partly a guise so she could kill her father, she really did need to study. She was to college soon and she was sure the entrance exam to the one she had chosen was going to be difficult.

The college she had chosen specialized in different types of doctoring, like pediatricians, therapists and chiropractors. All through high school she had barely passed every subject except for her elective psychology, which she had aced every year. She always had a knack at reading people while they remained clueless to her real thoughts.

She cracked open her books and textbooks, choosing to place most of her attention on the civil war journal-for history, one of her worst subjects-, sadly it was in English-the worst subject that she was taking.

After an hour of poorly translating only a paragraph of the text she had given up. She would study later, with an 'English-Japanese, Japanese-English' dictionary at her disposal. She closed the journal and opened up another textbook at random, not taking any notice to it's contents.

Switching the Death Note with the book she been previously translating with, she began writing. Paragraphs and paragraphs of her fathers soon-to-come demise.

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A week after her mothers death, Kikiyomi's father had committed suicide. According to Sakura TV he had been under stress at work and the news of his wife's death had pushed him

over the edge. He had travelled to the nearest warehouse and sliced his neck from ear to ear. What they didn't mention was what he did before he had killed himself, or they just didn't know.

While watching the broadcast, Kikiyomi had opened up her Death Note and read the new paragraph:

Hikari Kyouko

Two days from now will buy life insurance of a large amount.

Will travel to a warehouse on the outskirts of his home town.

Will kill himself with any available materials.

She laughed loudly in her room, Azazul watching from his perched position on the ceiling. She would be coming into some money very soon.

Azazul made a pointed cough to catch her attention. "Now?" He asked her impatiently. "Yes." She replied. "Now we start."

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------She watched the school from a distance. The clock on her phone said that it was twenty-eight past three. Two minutes exactly before classes ended. Two minutes later the bell went and swarms of middle and senior school kids came rushing through the front door.

Azazul was silently beside her, studying the kids as they passed. He hated kids, he'd told her one day. To him kids were vermin. 'Insufferable little bastards' was the term he had used. He said he didn't hate all kids, he'd been watching her since she was seven, up in the Shinigami world. He said that she seemed very calculating when she was young, taking in everything that happened around her.

He tapped her on the shoulder as the last person came out of the building. He pointed at the senior as he walked with purpose in his step towards the front of the school grounds. He had

burgundy colored hair and wore brown dress pants with a long sleeved white button up and tie. Hanging from his shoulder was a bag much like the one Azazul carried. But he was just a student. Surely he couldn't be Kira.

"How do you know it's him, Azazul?" She asked incredulously. "It has to be a mistake, he's just a kid." "It's him." He said. "I can see the Shinigami behind him."

"Okay Azazul. Time for action." Tucking her Death Note into her backpack, she began jogging in his direction.

The boy didn't know what was happening until it was too late. As he looked to his left, a person came crashing into him and leaving him winded. The contents of both his and her bags scattered across the ground before them, a black notebook included. She climbed off of him and reached for the notebook and picking it up, reading the words that stretched across the cover; Death Note. She discretely looked up to see his Shinigami with a large grin plastered across his face.

"I am so sorry." She said, while secretly switching the book with her own. " I left something back in class and I was in a rush and-oh...here." She gave him her Death Note and watched for his reaction. A quiet gasp escaped his lips as he looked up into the eyes of her Shinigami.

Azazul just stared right back.

"Another one?" The boy asked himself. He looked back at Kikiyomi. "You're not in love with me too, are you?"

She stood up and looked at him like he was insane, then spat at his feet. "Don't flatter yourself. I'm just a loyal follower of Kira. Which, sadly, is you. I'm a bit disappointed actually."

He too stood up and looked her down. He towered over her, probably two heads taller than her. "What's so disappointing?" He asked. He'd never had a girl say that to him. All the other girls drooled over him. This girl should be no different, and if she was, he would change her mind. She could become a handy ally.

"Well firstly I thought you'd be older. Older men are more appealing. Secondly you dress like a twit. And thirdly, I didn't think Kira was gay, not that I have anything against them." Behind the boy, his Shinigami was laughing. Obviously he was amused with this comment. She watched the boy widen his eyes at her comment. 'Gay?, he thought, I am not gay.'

"What on earth makes you think I'm gay?" He asked her angrily, his ego had just dropped a few levels. "Well..." She started. "Your hair's perfectly cropped and groomed and your clothes are perfectly pressed. Even your tie is done perfectly. Everything about you screams gay." She finished. She knew very well that he wasn't gay. She just loved people's reactions when she says it.

She looked at his Shinigami to see him watching Azazul, and after further inspection found that Azazul was watching him right back. "Ryuuk." Azazul said simply. "Hey Azazul." The Shinigami, Ryuuk, replied.

The boy back to Ryuuk. "Ryuuk, how do you know this Shinigami?" Ryuuk started laughing nervously. "What do you mean? There aren't that many Shinigami in our realm, it's quite easy to know each other."

The boy raised an eyebrow at the Shinigami. "How?" He asked again, clearly becoming impatient.

"Well Light...He's sort of my brother."

A/N: My first Death Note fic.....I love Azazul.....hes a bit selfish though

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