A/N: Thanks to those people who reviewed/faved/alerted this story, if you're reading this you're one of those few wonderful people who motivated me to write more of this!

Here's Chapter 2, which for some reason I had real difficulty getting started on. I guess I'm impatient to get to the stuff with Beyond, and I haven't thought so much about the early stuff. Also Ryuk is really difficult to write...

Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note...

Ryuk was undecided on his thoughts on Natrat. One side of him thought it was amusing. Another part, a soft voiced and highly outspoken part, (since who would have thought there was more than one aspect to his personality?), told him he should be feeling guilty, after all the other was highly likely to get into some form of trouble due to his latest obsession, which was Ryuk's fault. He attempted to silence that voice by shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head slightly. Surely Natrat wasn't stupid enough to take this too far? So long as he was only watching and not interfering he would be fine. Besides sitting here worrying about that guy was too much effort, so he might as well just go visit him, so that that pesky inner voice of his would shut up on seeing nothing was wrong.

He knew where to find the shinigami; of course, he would be located exactly where he had been for the last month and a half, fixed in place at the observation holes, watching his beloved human. So that was the first place Ryuk looked, and he was very surprised to find no trace of the guy, apart from faint imprints in the sand, not yet wiped out by the wind, from where he'd practically ingrained himself into the scenery to sit and watch. Ryuk was puzzled by this development, and briefly considered the possibility that Natrat had got bored and given up on watching the human realm. He didn't consider this likely, since Natrat's attention span was much greater than his and he'd seemed very sincere about his latest pastime.

He flew off to scan a few other areas of the shinigami realm which he considered likely places for a shinigami of Natrat's type to have travelled to. He had no luck until he spotted the small form of Jealous talking to Rem. He knew Jealous was a friend of Natrat's and had taken to spending several hours each day with the other at the observation pool. Ryuk didn't exactly approve of this, Jealous was a very impressionable shinigami and he didn't want the guy to get any stupid ideas. But if anyone round here knew where the absent shinigami was, it would be him. Ryuk landed a short distance from the other two, and approached warily, since Rem could hardly be described as his biggest fan.

"Uh, hey guys," he started. Rem glared at him and said nothing, Jealous however turned to look at him, an expression of anguish stamped across his mismatched features. "What's up with you Jealous? You seen that idiot Natrat anywhere?"

If anything Rem's expression worsened and Jealous spared her a nervous glance before answering Ryuk. "I'm worried about him, Ryuk. He said some crazy stuff when I saw him yesterday, about needing to help that woman he's been watching, and I haven't seen him since. I'm afraid that he might have gone to the human realm."

"That can't be good." muttered Ryuk.

"You do realize that this is entirely your fault." Rem scolded. "If you hadn't told him that woman was acting strangely, he would never have found out and developed this insane obsession of his." Ryuk shifted uneasily under the glare of the white shinigami. "And don't try to tell me you didn't, because I already got the full story from Jealous and he's considerably more honest than you are."

"I didn't mean him to. I just thought it was funny and wanted to share, ain't that right Jealous?"

"I guess you didn't mean any harm." said Jealous quietly.

"He never does," snapped Rem, "and yet it always seems to end in trouble. Ryuk, if you weren't so incompetent and I thought you could manage it, I'd throw you down into the human realm to bring him back. I'd go, but I haven't the faintest idea where he would have gone, because I've been trying to avoid getting involved. You know the name of the human he's stalking so you can go find her in the viewing holes. If he's following her you can keep an eye on him from there. I don't think he'll drop his Death Note, that's practically equal to suicide, and he doesn't have a second, so he can't stay down there too long. He should be back in a couple of days. If you don't, I'll find out a way to cut off your apple supply for good."

Ryuk looked at Rem with abject horror. "You wouldn't!"

"I would. I don't care about your stupid withdrawals. I'll be elsewhere, avoiding you."

Ryuk stood with his mouth hanging wide open for several long seconds, as if weighing up actually doing something for someone else against the possibility of being cut off from his beloved apples for an indeterminate period of time. Eventually he closed his mouth and nodded at Rem with a pained expression. "Ok, I'll do it."

"Jealous will go with you to keep an eye on you."

"What? You don't trust me?"

"…" both Rem and Jealous stared at the grinning shinigami with identical expressions. "No I really don't," said Rem. "Now go and find him. I've got something important to do, so I'll come find you later."

She flew off, not sparing a backwards glance at the other two, who after a few moments of awkward silence, flew off in the other direction.

Ryuk stared down into the fuzzy vision of the human realm that lay before him in confusion. It should have been showing him the image of Natrat's human, but no matter how hard he focused, the image wouldn't clear and show Ryuk what was happening.

"Her name was Beatrice Boeingfield right? I'm not remembering it wrong?"

"No, that was her name, I remember... why? Isn't it working?" queried Jealous.

"No it's not, and I don't know why. You have a go."

As Ryuk shuffled backwards away from his position at the edge of the pool, the smaller shinigami leant forwards and stared into the pool, focusing intently on the name, whilst picturing her face in his mind as vividly as he could. An image flickered momentarily, but it refused to come back. Jealous sat back and looked up at Ryuk.

"Why isn't it working?"

"I dunno. I mean it's the right name, and she's still alive, unless Natrat's completely messed up whatever it is he was trying to do. It should work, the only conditions are knowing the name and face, and them being alive. I don't understand at all, except that Rem's probably not gonna be too happy with me."

The pair sat in silence for a while, Ryuk pondering whether failing to find the human in question counted towards Rem's no-apple threat, whilst Jealous struggled to remember the exact circumstances behind Natrat's disappearance. He'd told Rem a little earlier, but to be honest he didn't remember what had happened in the human world very clearly.

"Do you think the fact that we can't find her might have something to with why he went? Like maybe he couldn't find her and went down to see if she was alright?" asked Ryuk.

Jealous shook his head. "He was watching her just fine when he said all that stuff yesterday, so that can't be it, and her lifespan had a while left so she's not dead. Maybe something happened to her and her face has changed?"

"You mean like in an accident? Maybe…" Ryuk paused. "What was it Rem went to do?"

"I think she went to talk to Nu."

"Ah," acknowledged Ryuk, before an uncomfortable silence settled over the two once more. Nu was the highest ranked shinigami apart from the old man, the shinigami king himself. Rem going to talk to her did not bode well.

Some hours later, Rem joined them at the pool looking worried. Ryuk warily inquired as to why she'd been to visit Nu straight away, before Rem found out they'd failed, and subsequently refused to speak to him.

"I talked to her about Natrat of course. I wanted to know if he's in trouble with the boss, and whether we'd get in trouble for getting involved."

"And?" asked Ryuk.

"It seems he hasn't technically broken any rules yet, so he's fine for now. But I'm still concerned about him. What's he been up to?"

"Not a clue, Rem, sorry." said Jealous.

"The pool won't show us what's going on. You're not gonna cut my apple supply off are you? We tried…" Ryuk trailed off as Rem sighed with disappointment. Ryuk relaxed as he realized that Rem was not going to shout at him for being incompetent.

"Well from what I've heard about the situation, that's not entirely unexpected."

"It's not?"

Rem gave the other two a bland look, wondering why, when they knew more about the situation than she did, merely by having actually talked to Natrat and seeing this human he was infatuated with, whilst she had only heard about it second hand, why couldn't they figure out why they couldn't find her. She knew she was more intelligent than either of them, but it surely wasn't that difficult to figure out since she came to the conclusion so quickly.

"What situation?" asked Ryuk, suddenly realizing that he didn't actually know what had happened to make Natrat go to the human world in the first place. Surely Jealous knew something, he'd been there at the time, and even if he hadn't been peering down into the human world, surely he'd heard Natrat say something. How else could Rem have figured whatever it was out?

Rem sniggered. Ryuk had been sitting here with Jealous for how long? And he hadn't bothered to find out why Natrat had gone to the human world? Honestly, she knew he wasn't the sharpest shinigami around, but this was reaching new lows of thoughtlessness on his part.

"She was seriously upset about something. I think she found out something about that guy she was always hanging about with." said Jealous. "Yeah, that was it. And she was thinking about not doing something as a result. But she didn't know what to do and she didn't have anyone she wanted to talk to about it. And then Natrat said that what good was he, sitting up here, knowing full well what was going on and not being able to do anything about it. And that she shouldn't not do whatever it was, and he wanted to help. He was very agitated."

"Do you think he'll have revealed himself to her?" asked Ryuk.

"Maybe…" said Jealous "I don't know…"

"Well that wouldn't be good for him or for her. Just imagine, she thinks she might getting some sort of angelic guidance and he turns up." Ryuk laughed. "How disappointing would that be? But seriously, I don't get why any of that means we can't find her."

"Me neither." muttered Jealous.

"Well, I'm not going to tell you. Consider it punishment." said Rem, turning her nose up at the other two smugly.

"What for!" exclaimed Jealous, shocked and disappointed by Rem's reluctance to share.

"For not trying to stop him going on your part. And Ryuk, for starting this display of absurdity in the first place. I hope Natrat will be back soon, and I'm sure he'll tell you then. Until then I'll leave you two to bask in your ignorance."

A/N: Well, I was going to write more, but it's more fun for me if I stop there and leave people to speculate. It's pretty obvious, at least from where I'm standing, but I don't know how well I portrayed it. But it's something that occured to me pretty early on in Death Note, about what would happen if... well, you'll either figure it out or you'll have to wait and see.