Effect
Chapter 2: Starting Over
Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note. Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata do. Oh, and I don't own the OC Matt Dave. Duwee Davis II does.
Months passed since Soichiro's death, and Matsuda was now in a very difficult situation. Light was proven to be Kira, and N turned out to be a child detective, the successor of L, Near. The Task Force was in the warehouse they had arranged to meet N in, and when they had arrived, he wore a mask that made him look like L. After Light's accusations, saying that Near was unfit to wear his mask, Light was unaware that Near knew of his plan. He not only knew that Teru Mikami was outside the door, writing names in a fake Death Note, but Near knew Light was indeed Kira. Matsuda stood by, waiting with the other members of the task force.
Near stated nothing but the facts. Light was Kira, even a child would know that after listening to Near. Near even looked like a child, wearing his white pajamas.
"Near," Light said after a while, walking over to face one of the walls. "Here's some food for thought. That notebook you have, and the one that Aizawa brought from the Japanese Task Force Headquarters. Are they both real?"
Near sat down, crouched like the way L would sit, scrutinized these statements.
"If you truly want to defeat Kira, as well as test the notebook that Aizawa's carrying, I guess you're gonna have to write down either my name," Light said, shrugging his shoulders. "Or Mikami's." Near stared at him blankly, while Light opened up the secret piece of the Note in his watch. "It's the only way too see if it's real." The secret compartment opened, and Light drew a pen from his pocket. "OR FAKE!"
"He's hidden a piece of the notebook in his watch!" Rester yelled, and Matsuda reacted quickly. All of the rage, the betrayal, all the negative emotion that Light had uncovered by being a traitor to his own father and the Task Force was expressed as Matsuda reached for his gun holster and shot Light in blind fury.
"Graah!" Light yelled, grasping his hand. He panted as the blood dripped from his hand, then laughed slightly. "MATSUDA! YOU IDIOT!" Light yelled, his head turned up at the sky. "WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE SHOOTING AT! DON'T SCREW WITH ME!"
Matsuda readied his gun once again, shakily aiming at Light. "What was it all for then? W-what about your dad, what the hell did he die for?!" his voice was a bit shaky; he was trying to take all of this in.
"My dad," Light said, letting loose a deranged sort of chuckle. "You mean Soichiro Yagami. That's right Matsuda, in this world all those earnest people like him who fight for justice always lose! You want a world like that where people like him are always made to lose? I know you understand, so kill the others! SHOOT THEM!"
Light stood there, glaring at Matsuda, whose eyes began to run with hot tears of rage.
"You led your own father to his death, and now that he's gone you call him a fool?!" Matsuda yelled, still pointing his gun at Light. Light's blood dripped onto the floor at a steady rate, the time between the drops being as consistent as the ticks on a clock. Drip, drip, drip. Then, the deranged young man brought his finger to the piece of note, trying to scribble down the rest of Near's name in his own blood.
"His blood!" Someone yelled, but Matsuda had already reacted once again. He shot Light again, four more times.
"AAAAH!" Light yelled, falling into a puddle.
"I'll kill him. I'LL KILL HIM!" Matsuda said, walking to the puddle Light had fallen in. He readied the gun yet again and aimed for Light's head. "HE HAS TO DIE!" he yelled, firing the shot.
Everything went silent for a while. Light eyes widened, staring at the hole in the ground where Matsuda's bullet hit.
"…" Matsuda gasped for air, realizing what he'd almost done, thankful to Aizawa, Mogi and Ide for pulling him back. Mikami sat by staring at the man who he believed was god.
"…Damn you, what the hell is this?" Light said, trying to stand and failing. Mikami's face filled with disbelief as he came to the realization he'd been tricked, stupid enough to be sucked in to a man claiming to be god's selfish plans. "…Mikami! What are you waiting for?! …Write down their names! Write 'em down! AAAACK! Kill them now!" Light collapsed in a heap of guttural noises and pained sounds. Mikami shuddered.
"With a fake notebook?" Mikami said, he too collapsing in a heap.
"It's finally over, isn't it?" Rester said, turning to Near.
"Yes." Near said, watching over the event.
"Where are you, Misa?" Light gasped.
"She's not here." Aizawa said.
"Where's Takada?!"
"Dead." Aizawa said.
Light suddenly turned to Ryuk, seeing him just floating there, observing the scene as Near had. "Ryuk! You can kill them off!"
"Light-kun," Ryuk said, grabbing his Death Note from its holder. "If you're relying on me, then you're hopeless. Remember how I said I'd be the one writing your name in my Note? Well, I decided that if you went to jail, you couldn't be Kira anymore. Moreover, since Nate over there will probably burn the Notes, I won't have any more fun with you anymore. With you dead, I can go back to the Shinigami realm and waste away for a few hundred more years. Good bye, Light-kun." The Shinigami grabbed his pencil and began writing down Light's name.
"Stop him!" Someone said, and bullets phased through Ryuk, unable to do anything.
"I'm a Shinigami." Ryuk said, putting the Note back in its holder and waiting.
"NO! I-I… I don't want to… to die…" Light said, realizing his fate. How ironic, the tool he had used to "Change the world" was being used to end his reign. "I… I don't want to… die, please, Ryuk, don't!"
"I can't change what I've written." Ryuk said, smiling malevolently.
"I don't want to-" Light began, but he was cut off by his death.
Months later, Matsuda sat in his car, on lunch break with his partner, Matt Dave. They were debating over where to go for lunch, Dave wanting to go to a popular chicken-restaurant and Matsuda wanting to go to a sandwich shop. Matt Dave had recently come to Japan, having worked for the FBI for so long he decided that some sort of transfer was necessary. Matsuda adapted quickly to this change, and the two grew together slowly, but surely. When the two were assigned as partners, Matsuda was unsure, Dave being an immigrant and all. Especially since he was from America. Matsuda actually hated the pairing initially, but once he saw that Dave was dedicated to his job and actually a decent person, he lightened up a bit.
"Well, that chicken place is really unhealthy for you, y'know..." Matsuda said, unsure of how else to argue his point. This was true, but Matsuda knew it wasn't a very strong argument. Usually, when Dave wanted something, he got it.
"Honestly? I didn't realize that where we ate was so important. You're so controlling sometimes." Dave said, turning on the car.
The drive to the restaurant was full of more useless arguments, and when Dave said there was a chicken sandwich at the restaurant, Matsuda gave up. He was still a bit incensed, but less so. When they left from the chicken restaurant, they came back to headquarters, where Mogi, Ide, and Aizawa were waiting. Matsuda and Dave kept their distance with each other, their little lunch problem ringing in their minds.
"Has anything new come up?" Dave said, taking his place behind a desk.
"No, just the typical cases. Oh wait," Mogi said, looking through the collection of papers on his desk. "There have been a string of serial killings. The victims are mainly teachers, one being a... Masashi Fukuhara. A college professor, found dead in his regular lecture hall!"
"Masashi Fukuhara?" Matsuda said, having heard the name somewhere before. "Could I see that case file?" Matuda walked over to Mogi and grabbed the file, then started thumbing through the papers. As it turned out, he was one of Sayu's professors, from way back when she was able to attend lectures. Matsuda knew this only because one day, when he and Sachiko were cleaning out the attic, they came across a box of Sayu and Light's old school progress reports.
"Other than that," Aizawa said. "There's not really anything new, we're still after the lead about those serial arson cases."
"I'll take over that for now, the one I was following went cold." Dave said, starting up his computer.
"Thanks. Excuse me, Matsuda." Aizawa said.
"Hm?" Matsuda responded, looking up from the file.
"You want to work on that case? The rest of us have our hands tied." Aizawa said, running a hand through his small afro of hair.
"I suppose I'll take over."
"Thank you."
Matsuda walked to his desk and turned on the desktop computer. Once it booted up, he accessed the NPA files and found the case, searching through the lists of potential suspects and evidences. Masashi hadn't been the only person found dead at his desk. Two other teachers, one being a primary school teacher, the second being a secondary school teacher, were also found dead on their desks. All of the murders were committed on Thursdays, and there was a specific order to the killings. The primary school teacher had gone first, the secondary second, and so on. On the corpses, there was no obvious cause of death, but an autopsy revealed that they had each died of heart attacks.
As soon as Matsuda had gathered all the information, he couldn't help but relate these murders to the Kira killings. But the thing that set them apart from everything else was the fact that these people did no crime in their lifetimes. Matsuda looked back and back, over and over, but nothing ever came up. These teachers were kind of heart, why would anyone want to kill them? Searching his brain for things that could tie the deaths together, he came across the realization that the victims were all what the average human would consider elderly. Yes, they were all senior citizens, and they all had some sort of significant health problem, but none of them had heart problems. One had pancreatic cancer, one had skin cancer, and once had diabetes and arthritis. According to loved ones and family, these issues caused discomfort in daily life, to the point where they even wanted to die. So, they question that still stood was: what or who caused these deadly heart attacks?
When the work day had concluded, Matsuda got into his car and sat in it, thinking about the day's events. He'd mostly just worked on the case, occasionally getting up for a cup of coffee. The people working for homicide hadn't discovered any new leads, and there was nothing much to be done. The way things looked now, one would say that they were just unluckily stricken down by a needy shinigami. But Matsuda knew better. As he sat in his car, he pondered the existence of another Kira...
"Nah..." he said aloud as he keyed the ignition. Perhaps there was some sort of poison that caused a heart attack? Or maybe these were natural, and massively coincidental? Then, he thought about something his Criminology professor had once said. "In the world of Criminal justice, there are no coincidences."
Everything in the Criminology world had a cause. And every cause had an effect.
"Well, that should do it for today. Those were all of the suffering elderly teachers I could find for today. We'll work some more tomorrow, won't we?" A voice said, closing its Death Note.
"You bet." said the raspy voice of another, someone who wasn't human... But a Shinigami.
A/N: Likes? Dislikes? You see where I'm going with this? If you do, or even if you don't feel free to make predictions. Also, feel free to review. They make me happy! :D