a/n: hello, 2014! happy new year!
dedication: to fireworks.
disclaimer: i don't own anything.
summary: The Shinigami prince sits on his throne and watches the centuries pass by.
purgatory
one
His throne is won by blood and death and chaos in the aftermath of the Shinigami civil war.
There is distrust and resentment among all factions of the bloodthirsty death gods, the reapers of lore, the collectors of souls. In order to keep peace, the prince makes his first order.
Every Shinigami must carry a Death Note.
two
Of course, the first order is immediately followed by the second.
The human whose name is written in this note shall die.
third
The third order is more of an amendment than anything else and the prince is annoyed as his perfectly simple idea – a death god can only kill a human by writing its name in the book – evolves.
The human's face has to be pictured while writing the name.
Shinigami are deceitful creatures, after all, and only rules and orders will keep them in line. They seek to bend and twist and the prince has to be sure to draw in each loophole and close it tight.
four
Of course, humans only dying of heart attacks gets boring after a while and so the prince decrees an addition to the pitifully small list of rules.
Forty seconds is granted to specify the cause of death. If a cause of death is specified, a further six minutes and forty seconds is granted to write the particulars of the death. If a cause of death is not specified, the human will die of a heart attack.
Six minutes and forty seconds was how long it took for his most bloodthirsty underling to kill a human in the most gruesome method possible.
The prince shudders, and is glad that that particular method of torture is lost in the years gone by.
five
Of course, it could not have been that easy. A Shinigami dies in the tussle between the factions that still warred amongst each other, and his Death Note is lost in the human world.
The prince did not expect a human to pick it up, and expected even less for the human to use it.
Of course, the Shinigami enter the human world in force and the prince watches impassively as human blood soaks the ground as the death gods seek to reclaim their lost treasure.
More rules were in order.
The note will become the property of the human world once it lands in the human world. The human who picks up the note will be able to recognize the image and voice of the original Shinigami owner.
He really did not expect the destruction that followed.
six
His Shinigami, already lazy, took to dropping their notes in the human world and watching in glee as the humans began to slaughter each other, sending their world into a bloody catastrophe that hadn't been seen in human millennia.
The prince sighs and outlaws the casual dropping of notes.
If a Shinigami has only one note, they cannot send it into the human world.
It takes a few dismemberments and deaths but his oh-so-loyal subjects realize that he's serious. The mass murders stop.
seven
The prince is intrigued by the humans that use the Death Note and uses them to augment the Shinigami force that was drastically wiped out during their civil war.
The human who uses the note shall not go to Heaven or Hell.
eight
These human-Shinigami are clever, more clever by half then the original death gods, and the prince is fed up with the whole lot of them.
How many rules does he need to make?
The human who uses the Death Note shall be possessed by the original Shinigami owner. The human will be possessed within thirty-nine days of using the Death Note.
The prince watches his Shinigami wait until the thirty-ninth day – he had originally said thirteen, but that led to too many dead death gods – and scowls.
nine
After yet another complaint from the human-Shinigami, the prince wills his headache to go away and adds another change.
A god of death has no obligation to explain the rules of the note, unless asked.
He ignores the increased volume of their complaints and threatens to kill them all if they don't leave and grant him a few centuries' peace.
ten
The prince watches the Shinigami and pretends to ignore the black market for Shinigami eyes.
The truth is, his subjects are fascinated with human eyes and will generally strike a deal with humans for them. The current rate is Shinigami eyes in exchange for human eyes and half the human's existing lifespan.
The prince tries it, and finds that human eyes are quite the delicacy.
eleven
The prince gives up when a young human-Shinigami named Ryuk comes to tell him that his Death Note is in the human world. Yagami Light is dangerously unstable and within days of his possession, has already managed to become a mass murderer.
The prince watches Light, adding orders as Light finds loopholes, only relaxing when Light dies.
Ruling was never meant to be easy.
le fin
a/n: so, thoughts on 2013? on 2014? i have different people all telling me different things so what's your opinion on the new year?