Chapter 3: Errors

Anyone walking along the road near the Sugarcube Corner would have seen just Fluttershy carrying a cupcake as big as her head and walking alone, but in reality she was carrying a cupcake as big as her head and walking with Dymari the shinigami. She refused to let him hold it or even touch it until they were back at her house, and Dymari was not liking it. He was twitchy with anticipation and was yelling again.

"WHEN ARE WE GETTING THERE? CAN'T WE FLY? WHAT? DID YOU SAY SOMETHING?" Dymari yelled, his head being filled with voices as a sort of withdrawal symptom from the cupcakes he used to eat once a week. One interesting fact that many of the shinigami had learned is that once a shinigami finds a favorite food, it'll start eating lots of it After eating it a lot, though, it starts to need it. They suffer from withdrawal symptoms, like morphine addict trying to quit the juice, or a certain shinigami who was hungry for cupcakes.

"Son of a..." Fluttershy said, getting impatient. "Please just calm down. I need to hear things."

"WHAT? I SAW YOU LIPS MOVE. WHAT DID YOU SAY? FLY THERE? OKAY!" Dymari said, beginning to fly there without any sort of agreement from Fluttershy on his choice.

"Well... At least it's peaceful." Fluttershy muttered, used to talking to him quietly. She was stopped on the street by her friend Rarity, an elegant white pony with a purple mane.

"Fluttershy, my darling, we have a spa date planned in just an hour!" Rarity said. "You didn't forget, did you?"

"Oh, um, of course not. I was just taking this home... I'll meet you there, if that's okay with you." Fluttershy said, keeping up her usual shy appearance. She had been too confident with Twilight.

"Well, alright then. I'll see you there! Remember, it's in one hour." Rarity said. "Please don't be late again. I looked like a fool."

"Oh, okay. I'm really sorry, I didn't know what time it was..." Fluttershy said. A few weeks ago she had been a half hour late and Rarity, being polite, sat there waiting. She reminded her of it every spa day. "I'll be there."

The two ponies trotted off in their own directions with Fluttershy feeling, for one of the forst times in a while, excited for something. The Note had stressed her and the tension hadn't gone away. A spa day was exactly what she needed.

"So, you're going to soak in mud with cucumbers on your eyes?" Dymari asked, confused. "That seems like it will make you even dirtier."

"You have to have skin to understand." Fluttershy said. She looked at Dymari and could tell that she hit a soft spot. He was a skeleton, but facial expressions were still there. The bones changed like skin would, and she could plainly see that he was hurt, deeply.

"Just because I'm a shinigami doesn't mean that I don't have feelings." he said. "I was ridiculed back at my world for not having skin. 'Boners', they called us, using the human word as an insult. There are only a few skinless shinigamis, and we're all made fun of. I thought at least you would be nice enough to not mention it."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know." she said. "I... I had no clue. Please, don't make a big deal out of this."

Dymari just sat on the floor facing away from her. He was motionless, even to the slightest twitch.

"I'll... I'll just go." Fluttershy said. She waited for a reply, but received none. She just sighed and walked out the door carrying her saddlebag. She had been carrying it with her more and more lately.

As she walked to the spa, she thought about the yesterday's killing of Gilda. The Death Note said that any pony whose name was written would die, but Gilda wasn't a pony. How did that work? Was it because she was shaped enough like a pony? Was it because she was just that bad of a pony, or rather, Griffon? she wasn't just a bully, she had assaulted many defenseless ponies before but scared the jury into letting her go free.

She thought about this until she ran into a wall. She looked up and saw that it was the spa, right beside the door. She walked in and was instantly greeted by Rarity.

"Right on time! Come, let's start the hot towels so we can loosen up for the massages." Rarity said. Fluttershy breathed a sigh of relief. She was looking forward to every second of this.

At least the princess was kind enough not to ask about the sunglasses. Note Pad thought to himself as he sat in his armchair sipping a cup of coffee. Drinking coffee reminded him of an incident not long ago involving a coffee machine exploding. The police were frantic, and he just found it hilarious.

He never removed his sunglasses under any circumstances whatsoever, for anypony at any time. Nightmare Moon could threaten eternal night unless he took off his sunglasses, and he still wouldn't.

Still, he thought about the murders. They had ruled out any poisons in the autopsies, and both times the murders were inexplicable. There were only a few things in common. All of the criminals were in Alcatrot Prison, and not anywhere else. that was important. It meant that the killer was in the general area, most likely in a populated area like Canterlot or Cloudsdale.

All of them also happened around the same time, both in the late evening. This meant that the killer was either busy during the day, or they wanted to leave some sort of message with the ties they killed. The former was most likely.

This left him the evidence necessary to see that the killer was in the tri-city area, and was a pony that had no time to kill during the day. He needed more evidence to be sure, but he headed up to Canterlot anyways to report his thoughts.

"That's true... So, what do we do now? Do we send out a search party to find ponies up late at night?" Shining Armor asked.

"That would be futile. He have to wait until more killings take place." Not Pad explained. "Until we get more evidence as a reference, we can't do anything. It's just too vague for any sort of real conclusion."

"I'll have to send a letter to Twilight about this." Celestia said, using magic to lift her quill and scroll. "She could keep watch in the area for us, and make sure nopony in Ponyville is being too suspicious."

As she wrote, Note Pad and Shining Armor talked further about how they should react to the murders. Unbeknownst to all in the room, a somewhat depressed shinigami was watching them.

Dymari watched as the two "Detectives", Note Pad and the Armor guy bickered about what to do in the towns. He wasn't interested in the least. All he could think about was Fluttershy killing Gilda. Something was off about it, but he couldn't quite put his bony finger on it. He left the palace to steal a cupcake, then it hit him: Gilda wasn't a pony. she shouldn't have been killed. Why did it kill her if she wasn't a pony? He flew quickly back to their house (he had begun to think of it as his house as well) and looked around. He searched drawers and cabinets until he found the Death Note tucked away under a flap in a cupboard. It was hidden in a rush, but unless you were looking for it, you wouldn't find it.

He opened it up and looked at the instructions. They were the same as he had written them, but that didn't prove anything. He focused in on the book using a technique he had developed when he first got the note. HE looked through the rules and saw that, in editing he had made a huge error; anything sentient, shinigamis excluded, could be killed by this Death Note.

He didn't care too much, but he couldn't do anything about it even if he wanted- all of his equipment was back home and he was stuck here. He contemplated just killing her with his real Death Note, but something held him back. He knew it wasn't compassion, but he couldn't tell what it was, so he simply brushed it off to the side and waited until Fluttershy arrived at home so he could talk to her, both about the note and about the news he heard.

"Thank's for another great spa day, Rarity!" Fluttershy said to her friend as she left. "I really needed it!"

"Not a problem. Just try not to get so worked up again." Rarity said. "You were simply rock hard with tension!"

"Yeah, Angel's been a real rascal lately. I've been working hard on keeping under control." Fluttershy said. This wasn't true. Angel was into the Everfree Forest visiting relatives (or so she thought), so she hadn't even seen him in a few weeks.

She trotted quickly home to make sure her Death Note was still in place and safe, but stopped at the Sugarcube Corner. She felt bad for what she had said to Dymari, and wanted to make it up to him, and knew just how. She went in and got the biggest cupcake available, even bigger than the one they had gotten before. It was a cupcake that was big enough to actually be considered a cake.

She wobbled home under its weight and burst through the door, dropping it on the table. Somehow, she had managed to keep it balanced and got all the way home. Dymari floated quickly over with surprise in his glowing lights that were eyes.

"Is this for me?" Dymari asked. Fluttershy just nodded and went over to the chair where the Death Note lay open to the front cover. Dymari simply dove his head into the cupcakes, eating it in a frenzy of hunger.

"Where you reading this?" Fluttershy asked. She turned around and saw Dymari sitting at the table, the cupcake completely gone.

Where does the food go? she thought to herself.

"Aaaanyways... why were you reading the Death Note?" She asked Dymari.

"Oh, yeah. I have some stuff to tell you." he said. "Sit down."

"Sit down?" she asked. "Is it huge news?"

Dymari shook his head and she just sat in the chair she got the note off of.

"The princess and Note Pad know that Kira, you, is in this general area and that you're doing your killings at night. I'm not helping oyu kill or giving anyone's name, so that's okay for me to say." Dymari said.

"I'll just kill Note Pad. Problem solved." Fluttershy said, getting her pen from her saddlebag.

"That's another thing I realized: You can't kill Note Pad- You haven't seen his full face. He always has on sunglasses." Dymari explained.

"That could be a problem." Fluttershy said, lowering the note.

"One last thing, I messed up when editing the Death Note, and it appears you can kill any creature that's considered sentient, except for shinigamis." Dymari said. "However, I did some research and it turns out that Princess Celestia is immortal. You can't kill her."

"So... Hey, that explains how I killed Gilda!" Fluttershy said. "I think it may have been a bit too gruesome of a kill, but she deserved it."

"I still have to start killing again." Fluttershy said. "I learned from gossip that there's another prison across Equestria, near Las Pegasus."

"Well, did you-"

"AND I stopped by the library and found prison records of notorious living criminals, both in prison and out of it. It's the most recent edition." Fluttershy continued. "I don't know why Twilight likes these books, but I know why I do!"

"Okay, then. Cleaning time?" Dymari said.

"Cleaning time."

Hey there, SmilingShadowS here. I know this chapter is shorter than the last one, but I plan on making each one a little bit longer after this point. Another thing, I f anypony reading this knows the best time to post an update, would you kindly (Bioshock reference :D) let me know when it is? Thanks. Also, I realized I haven't thanked all of you who followed and favorited and reviewed my story. Thanks a bundle, guys!

And today's song was Near's theme, as this was mostly a "Detective" chapter. If you haven't heard it, you should listen to it! All of the music from Death Note is brilliantly composed, and this is one of my favorites from the show and in general. Anyways,

HERE COMES TOM!

Just kidding.

The pony who only cares a little bit, SmilingShadowS