A/N:Hello, my name is still King, okay, beer stimulates writing, seriously. I am telling you, it does, and I don't own Death Note.
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Alternative Gods
I: Hephaestus
"Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity."
CH04: Cybersex
He looked so real.
So real in fact, that when Light chanted "so real, so real, so real" in his mind fast enough, the words "so real" merged and started sounding "surreal" instead of what they were meant to be.
The flawless, pale skin looked artificially smooth in the glow of the bar, then the streetlights, so fake in fact that Light was afraid of taking Ryuzaki outside into the spitting rain, in case he short-circuited or something.
"Are you cold?" Light said as he watched Ryuzaki drag his feet through puddles as he walked next to him. "Here, take my jacket."
Ryuzaki politely refused.
"I have already accepted Light-kun's invitation into a hotel room, and despite the talking and only the talking that we shall be doing in this hotel room, I still find this rather awkward," Ryuzaki explained.
The fact that the hotel clerk knew Light and gave him an unsettling wink as they checked in did not help to put Ryuzaki at ease. At all.
Nevertheless, suddenly indifferent to Light's raised eyebrow, he chose to hop onto the bed and sit on top the pillows with his knees drawn protectively to his chest. The weird position looked so ridiculous that if it wasn't for the long and bony typist fingers Ryuzaki had, Light would have had hard time convincing himself the man before him was a genius hacker or possibly an AI, and not a hermit who lived in a cave.
To show no mercy, Light planted himself on the other end of the bed, far enough from Ryuzaki to keep him comfortable.
The tired, dark circles underneath the distant and politely bored black eyes made Ryuzaki look like he had never slept at all in his entire life, and Light made a point not to stare too much, although the man didn't seem to mind. What he found out more important was the red, thick line across the blanket – some cheep designer's attempt to be fancy no doubt, but the line ran across the bed and between them.
Ryuzaki silently instated the red strip as a line that should not be crossed, and Light temporarily agreed to oblige.
The man looked like he would run if Light was to spook him, and considering Light ultimately wanted sex, and Ryuzaki had no intention of giving it to him, spooking the man so early would be stupid.
"So Ryuzaki," Light humored him, "what did you want to talk to me about?"
"I think Light-kun should stop killing criminals."
"Short and straight to the point," Light quipped louder than necessary - all the initial excitement of actually meeting Ryuzaki in flesh that he kept bottled up for good twenty minutes suddenly exploded out of him. "I love it!"
Amused, Ryuzaki did a very unenthusiastic clap to accompany the outburst.
Light chuckled and smiled charmingly.
"I already explained it to you. Or you didn't get it..?"
"Oh no," Ryuzaki droned, "I understood what Light-kun meant, however I would like to reinstate my caution. Nothing good comes from playing God."
"That's what you came to talk to me about, really?" Light himself was surprised how quickly he dismissed him. "And nothing good, are you sure about that? Last night, a civil judge died. A judge who for years would give underage mothers custody of their children only if these girls would let him fuck them in every hole they had. Nothing good came out of it? You sure?"
"It indeed may have been good for the world; I have not doubted Light-kun's good intentions."
"Then why should I stop killing criminals?"
"It is bad for Light-kun's character."
"What," Light laughed again, "you care about my character? I assure you, my character is very noble."
"Yes, I have not doubted Light-kun's present state of character, either. I will tell Light-kun one truth, and this truth is partly the reason I have come to see him. When people play Gods, nothing good comes from it. Eventually, their character and all their good will and all their noble intent – it all erodes away."
"I will not stop wanting to punish criminals, if that's what-"
"No-no, Light-kun. Nothing like that." Ryuzaki comically shook his head and his black locks tossed around and eventually came to a stop in the exact disarray they were before. "In the end, all that will be left of human God is his Godly Wrath. Nothing more. This is why I think Light-kun should stop killing criminals before he even started."
"Hmm. You really thought this out, haven't you? You want to play God with me, Ryuzaki?"
"My stance in this is not relevant to the discussion at hand."
And suddenly, it hit Light.
Ryuzaki's height.
Slouched or hugging his knees, or sitting on his feet, Ryuzaki was shorter than Light is stature, but if he were to stand up straight, Light imagined he would not be his little Ryuzaki.
He would be Light's height.
And then the idea of Ryuzaki playing God in Light's kingdom…
"You're not God, Ryuzaki. Whatever you are and whatever your little L file is, even if you're both the same thing. Even if you're executing criminals for me… I'm the one with the plan and the imitative. Not you."
Ryuzaki raised his hands in front of himself, trying to stop the emotional outburst with a physical gesture.
Just how far from the real world did this man live…?
"I also think Light-kun communicates with me on a very personal level, a level inappropriate for only knowing me for four days. I also may be a police spy, investigating Light-kun for the killings. Despite us being… friends."
"I like you," Light smiled charmingly again making it clear what he meant by that, and Ryuzaki cringed.
"A lot more than I am comfortable with, I am afraid," he looked around the room absently.
"So what are you using for your hackings?"
"A file," Ryuzaki evaded.
"Can a person be a file?" Light hinted at his own deluded theories that would later make no sense even to himself, and wondering what he would do if Ryuzaki actually confessed.
"Persons are not files, Light-kun."
"Well then, can there be a person and a file that are identical?"
"That would make a file a person, and there cannot be two identical persons, Light-kun. And if there are, they will not last; one will always deviate from another and they would no-longer be identical, and one of the copies has to simply perish before it starts being different, or else it will no-longer be the same person."
Light heard it – a distant plea from somewhere deep within Ryuzaki's words. A plea for understanding, a plea for someone -for anyone - to convince him that he was wrong, to convince him otherwise, because being so indisputably right for some reason scared Ryuzaki on some disturbing level.
But within the context, the information given was so scarce that Light had no way of understanding just what the hell Ryuzaki had planned.
And when much later, Light would finally understand what L was trying to tell him that night, it would be too late.
But at that moment, Light could do nothing.
The person sitting lamely on the motel bed was still Ryuzaki and not "L. Something" as far as Light was concerned. And Light sat across a hideous red blanket pattern from him that visually separated them, but Ryuzaki was there, and he was within Light's reach, and Light reached out touch him instead of saying the things Ryuzaki crawled out of his lair in hopes of hearing.
And as soon as Light's fingertips brushed against the smooth curve of the pale cheek, the expression of sentimentality vanished from Ryuzaki's face, and the bored appearance of someone from an entirely different universe returned.
Ryuzaki threw Light's hand away and began getting up.
"Never you mind," he shrugged apathetically. "I think I am quite done here."
But as swiftly as it came out of nowhere, Light's hand darted across the red blanket pattern again and hooked two fingers into one of Ryuzaki's belt-loops and yanked hard enough to make the man lose his balance and send him falling forward. With a well-aimed swipe of a hand around a slim, bony waist, Ryuzaki was successfully caught with his sharp nose only an inch away from Light's.
Gotcha.
The round, black eyes that were actually as black as the silky hair of the man who had them, rounded to almost impossible largeness.
"Oh no, Light-k…un." Light closed the distance between them, and Ryuzaki mouthed that last syllable down Light's throat. The soft but chapped lips tasted sweet, Light thought, much like he expected, take the scratching sensation. Sweet, cool, pleasant – but not moving at all in response, and through half-lidded eyes Light watched Ryuzaki's own black and surprised eyes dart left, then right, then left again as he kissed him.
But he wasn't pushing Light away, more like delicately nudging them apart so when Light stopped at his own convenience, Ryuzaki's apathy towards the kiss would be clear, and in theory, Light would back off.
Strategies, strategies.
Light allowed his fingers to dance under Ryuzaki's smooth chin and let his tongue flicker along the lips, and when Ryuzaki gave him no welcome, he pinched the delicate jaw-line between his forefinger and a thumb, pulled on it, and slid his tongue deep into the moist, cool and ridiculously sweet mouth.
It was like everything Light absolutely hated about kissing people was defined by one abnormal man. Defined, almost sharp teeth, smooth gums and cheeks that felt almost like plastic, coolness instead of warmth, and of course that overwhelming taste of sugar that was almost poisonous. All of it was just so obnoxious that Light only wanted more.
But it was then when Ryuzaki felt things went out of his control, and with strategies abandoned, he physically pried their bodies apart with surprising strength, and their mouths came apart with a wet smooch.
"Alright, Light-kun. Enough of that."
Light held onto the thin waist.
"Come on, just give it a shot."
"I am afraid Light-kun will be the only one giving it a shot," Ryuzaki droned, pointedly staring at the small but prominent bulge that already started to form in Light's pants; Light was excited. Ryuzaki was not.
At all.
"Ryuzaki, listen. I know what I'm doing here-"
"-all too well, Light-kun. I know, and I admit my initial doubts about working with Light-kun specifically are coming true all too soon-"
"-you'll like this, I promise-"
"-and I promise I do not feel even the slightest of attractions to men-"
And then Light leaped at Ryuzaki's mouth again, and Ryuzaki pushed him away again, even harder this time, but the taste that was so good and artificial at the same time, it drove Light absolutely insane.
It were the sleepless delusions, he figured, but sugar_tea16, there, so close to Light that Light could smell the sugar and the tea on his breath, so delicate, so odd and appealing and just god-damn pretty in a very unrealistic way that Light wanted him as much as he wanted to know how he hacked government establishments and left no trace behind.
And there he was, sitting, sulking, puffing out his cheeks in discontent, living in a different world, and denying Light everything Light wanted so, so bad.
Light licked his lips in anticipation.
"Are you real at all, Ryuzaki?" he asked, guessing the man's insecurities.
And he hit a bulls-eye, because the black eyes narrowed into liquid slits, black as oil.
"Are you here, with me, or are you somewhere else, hmm? In an entirely different world, jumping around the net like you were born there?"
"What?"
"If I touch you… can I touch you?"
"You may not-"
"Or what? Will you disappear, will something change?" Light murmured in a delicious, low voice, and it sent a pleasant jolt down his growing erection when he saw that Ryuzaki was subconsciously leaning towards him. All it took – a weakness. An insecurity, a hook, something to lure them all in with – and Ryuzaki seemed just so difficult, so inaccessible, and yet there he was before, laying it all out like a map.
And it were these insecurities that they both shared; was Ryuzaki real? Or was that cool plastic and almost fake smoothness really fake and plastic?
Was it just a shell, a cold artificial body with a program running it? It was deluded, this way of thinking, but-
"…and if I were to take off your clothes," Light continued when Ryuzaki crawled to him like a bee to a jar of leaking honey. His hands circled around the silky waist that he had found underneath the white shirt when he slid them there and Ryuzaki didn't even notice. Light tugged it up, slowly, the back of his hand sliding along the slight curve of the stomach, the sharp ribs and the delicate little nipples as he rolled the shirt over Ryuzaki's head, "if you were naked completely, all of you for me to see… would I find a breathing person made out of flesh and blood and sweet skin… or a plastic and silicon shell… hmm?"
Ryuzaki was his.
He melted into Light's arms like cotton candy on a hot day; by the time his skinny upper body was bare and the little nipples started perking and turning pink, Ryuzaki was sitting like a hypnotized cowgirl in Light's lap, and his sweet mouth was wide open for Light to taste.
The sugary tongue was slippery and slow, but it moved against Light's when he pushed it deep into the barely-warm mouth. His back with wonderful spine bumps that were as sharp as the rips proved to be a pleasant slide for his wondering arm, and it eventually passed the last of the vertebra and squeezed one of the round cheeks underneath the rough, blue denim.
Light licked the chapped lips and dove in with more energy when Ryuzaki blinked in confusion.
The hand on his ass must have woken him up; it was too early for that.
But Light was excited.
He played with pink nipples that stood out against the otherwise pale chest. Still soft, Light pinched one and rolled it between his fingers until the little nub turned red and very sore and Ryuzaki made a sound in the back of his throat.
They broke apart, and a thin string of saliva stretched between the tip of the sweet tongue and Light's lip, and the smell of his own arousal made Light grab the bony shoulders and push the dazed man into the pillows.
He had handcuffs – all officers should have handcuffs at all times, and Ryuzaki didn't notice the click of metal against the headboard and his own wrist.
With his clothed legs spread wide, and with Light's knees firmly between them, with one hand restrained and not even knowing about it, Ryuzaki couldn't look more vulnerable. Light didn't nudge his member with his knee because the thought it rude, and almost unwillingly, he released a sore nipple he was still squeezing and pinching and palmed Ryuzaki's crotch instead.
He felt the beginnings of an erection there.
He didn't ask for approval or permission of any kind when he started scraping his teeth along the neck that tasted sweet too, but Ryuzaki gave him one anyway.
"Light-kun will be –very – careful."
Very good.
Straight men were always quite a challenge, but oh were his efforts rewarded when Light would slide into a tight passage that was so naive about the sensation, and unsure what to do with an intrusion that it would convulse and push against and almost suck Light right in.
Mmm.
Oh, Ryuzaki.
He would be so hot, so tight, so dry, so surprised at how impossibly stretched out he actually was around Light's member, that he would scream, yelp and bite his own tongue and pretend he was fine as Light would ram into him over and over, and while feeling like he was being spit in two from the inside, Ryuzaki would moan, moan for Light…
And still it irked him; it nudged and nudged and bled in the back of his mind that this man, this thing - it could be a thing. But the flesh – the flesh underneath hi s fingertips and lips, it felt so cool and smooth, and real, but was it? Ryuzaki's mouth tasted like molten sugar, like mint, and Light shoved his tongue as deep as he could to find an imperfection, a flaw – anything human in that damp and ridiculously sweet mouth.
The handcuff around the bony arm suddenly rattled, but Light nibbled the skin and squeezed his free hand between the firm flesh of Ryuzaki's navel and the rough fabric of his jeans. Half-aroused, by awoken fear Light supposed, Ryuzaki's member was half-hard and real in against the palm of his hand.
A leg under his own jerked in protest.
"If I fuck you really deep, Ryuzaki," Light mused in a low whisper against Ryuzaki's earlobe. He dipped his tongue into the curve and received a shudder, "would I feel a heartbeat inside of you?"
Would there be a heartbeat? Or would he find only stiff and tender coolness if he was to shove into Ryuzaki that very moment?
Swiftly, his hand circled around the base of the member that was just beginning to stiffen, he brushed a thumb across the soft sack and his fingers dove between the cheeks. Ryuzaki kicked the air in vain until Light found a tender, tight passage he immediately massaged with the fingertip that found it, and as Light did, the man under him jerked so hard that he almost managed to throw Light off.
"Get off," Ryuzaki finally hissed, his voice coming back to him. "I do not like this at all."
For some displaced reason of entitlement that appeared out of nowhere, Light did no such thing. Suddenly, he felt like he had the power and the right to do whatever he wanted with his Ryuzaki. Two of his fingers, or maybe three – Light could even tell what he was doing at that point, pushed so hard against the tight hole that the raw and dry passage convulsed, tightened, but eventually gave in, and Ryuzaki screamed a pained sound, and suddenly Light's fingers felt pleasant and very dry warmth.
"Oh hell," Light whispered as he tried to stretch the impossible tightness out by scissoring against the dry walls, and pushing inside right up to his knuckles.
He curved his fingers and played with the stiff inner passage so roughly that Ryuzaki had to move his lower body around the unwelcome penetration, trying to ease the stretch. He was hissing and gagging around his own saliva. But Light wanted in; he wanted to impale that sore and trembling tunnel so badly that when he noticed a leg wrap around his arm, it was too late.
With a mighty twist that felt like it pulled his arm out of its socket, and a swift kick to his face that followed, his fingers and mouth that settled quite comfortably inside of various parts of Ryuzaki's body were ripped right out and Light came tumbling to the floor with a dull crush.
Ryuzaki wasted no moments. With his hand now free, he fished a pin, or a paperclip out of his jeans' pocket and picked the lock of the handcuff with such speed that when Light was just about to get up and wipe the blood off his chin, Ryuzaki already wiped his own mouth and leaped at Light instead or running away.
Light found himself on his stomach, under Ryuzaki with a knee lodged into the beginning of his spine. He realized Ryuzaki was in a ready position to snap his neck.
"Never," Ryuzaki leaned low and hissed into his ear. "Never ever ever."
"Heh," Light spat blood, "we'll see abo-gah!"
"No! You will never touch me again – ever! Do. You. Understand?"
Light said nothing and enjoyed the moldy scent of the motel carpet as it gave his face a thorough carpet burn and gave him wisdom.
"Answer me!"
What the fucking hell was he thinking?
He was never violent – he coaxed and convinced and seduced. Coerced, perhaps – but never physically forced himself on anyone.
"You're right," he said quietly, sealing his thoughts with words. "I shouldn't have done that."
"Not good enough!"
"Then what's good enough? I can't take it back, so what do you want me to do!"
The man pulled his hair hard enough for Light to actually hear it being ripped out, and the pressure on the base of his skull became so tense that he expected a to hear a loud snap and see nothing but blackness.
Ryuzaki groaned, threw him against the floor and jumped away. When Light finally crawled his way into a sitting position, he found the man with angry black hair and equally black and angry eyes staring him from atop of the hotel bed. Hovering over Light like that, he looked like a predator.
He didn't retreat, instead he sought Light out half-way in the battlefield, met him, challenged him.
Light sat on the floor not far from where he had fallen, crossed his legs and looked Ryuzaki over.
Angry, no, furious, with black eyes narrowed into liquid oil slits and messy hair that was spiky at some areas and flat in others. The blue, worn jeans were barely holding onto the narrow hips. Naked, bony chest, flat stomach, sharp shoulders.
"You have no idea how much I want you," Light said.
"Well, Light-kun should say hello to his own hand. I already knew you were sexually coercive, but I agreed to this with at least a degree of consideration in mind."
"Did I hurt you?"
Light knew he did, and he knew that if he was still in a delicious position of dominance, he wouldn't be asking this, instead he would have been ramming into his Ryuzaki, and Ryuzaki would have just began to relax and quiet down under him.
Yes, this man was special. There would be no way to fully talk him into anything, Light realized, not like the others, and Light knew that he would have to force the man to understand to whose he was, and for whom he should scream.
Instead, Light did his best to look regretful; this failed sex was clearly Ryuzaki's first time with a man, Ryuzaki was very reluctant about it to begin with, and Light just managed to make it very bad. Overall, it was best to say nothing at all that would make Light's chances ever worse, but he just couldn't help himself.
'Did I hurt you' wasn't the exact thing he wanted to ask.
He glanced at his hand, and much to his relief or disappointment – he couldn't tell which – he saw a smeared streak of dark red along his fingers.
Blood.
"Are you bleeding?" Light heard himself purr.
Ryuzaki still said nothing, and with dignity Light found surprising, the man with wild black hair slid from the bed and dragged himself lazily towards the door. He walked past Light like he forgot all about Light and his pathetic existence altogether.
It was the suggestion that Light was the one who was pathetic out of the two that did it.
"So you are bleeding. I knew it; you're just a sad, miserable human being. Nothing more than that."
It felt like for a moment, Ryuzaki slowed his step as if wanted to say something, but before Light recognized it as a retaliation pause Ryuzaki changed his mind and didn't bother with the reply.
"Next time I see you … I'll screw you senseless, I promise," Light vowed, and it wasn't meant to be a threat.
"You will not," Ryuzaki threw at him and shut the door.
'I will not' what?
'I will not' screw you, or 'I will not' see you again?
Frustrated even more than he was before he saw Ryuzaki slouching over a Red Russians at a bar, Light picked up his cellphone and hit call-return.
"Teru?" and without bothering with as much as a 'hello', Light cut to the chase and recited his hotel address. "And you know what? Wear a white shirt and some jeans."
Ryuzaki expressively ignored Light's heart-felt virtual apologies throughout the week.
He would not reply to Light's e-mails, and to check that Ryuzaki wasn't dead or anything, Light hacked into sugar_tea16 hotmail account and found that each of his letters was opened upon arrival, and ignored. What made Ryuzaki's boycott even more demonstrative in its nature was Light's IM status: every morning Ryuzaki would dutifully sign onto the IM, request a voice call, and give his best silent treatment once Light accepted, thus parading around with clear discontent in his pants.
With this, Ryuzaki sought to prove a strictly business relationship between them, Light thought. Or maybe he was just being difficult, and although on some level Light understood that attempted rape was no joking matter, and the silent treatment was the peak of the iceberg of things Ryuzaki would do to him in retribution, disgust and hatred, the gravity of the deed just failed the click in Light's mind.
So when Ryuzaki's metallic and scrambled voice finally echoed in Light's room just as he was getting ready for work one morning after ten days of silence, Light nearly dropped his sock when his eyes went rolling.
"Well, good morning to you to!" Light said as if he was expecting this all week.
"Yotsuba server is about to experience another hacking attack as the rumor of Kira possessing the L spread. I suggest Light-san," Ryuzaki paused at the honorific to stress that he and Light were no-longer on friendly terms, "watches the behavior of the accessed file closely, if he wants to see any light to the situation. This is all."
"What, wait, wait. I thought the L file was already gone."
"Light-san should search for the M file directory."
"…Ryuzaki," Light sighed skeptically, already considering the chances of this being another set-up, "in two weeks, I wouldn't hear anything about a stolen N file, would I?"
"No," Ryuzaki droned. "The N file has been sold to the United States of America."
"Oh," Light rolled his eyes. "Well then, how about an O file? Like, O, as in O for 'Originality'?"
But Ryuzaki said nothing else.
The executions of the criminals that were stalled for over ten days because of Ryuzaki's sulking and Light's unwillingness to piss off the man further spontaneously resumed after Ryuzaki broke his silent protest.
Over the first hour of Light's work day, reports of a hundred or so criminals the names and pictures of whom piled up in the folder on Light's netbook came rushing in; the media found the electrical fires and malfunctioning elevators "suspicious" after the twelfth death within the hour, and by the time the bodycount topped one hundred, every single TV station had a coverage on one death or another.
Ryuzaki really, really needed his help, Light figured.
The internet chatter on the massacre in the name of justice was overwhelming to the point where search engines were causing unintentional DDoS on smaller sites.
It was so funny that Light had to choke down small bursts of laughter. What he found even more amusing was his squad. Virtually everyone on the Cybercrimes floor was tracking the chatter and going insane trying to figure out who the hell was messing with the electical boards.
Well, almost everyone on the Cybercrimes floor. Everyone but Light was going insane with it; Light was quite content to have nothing to do with the mayhem. He calmly sipped his coffee and pretended to follow "very important" terrorist cell whispers on the Yotsuba hacking case.
And then, over the course of under five minutes, it spread like a disease.
Kira was doing it.
Kira was killing criminals.
Kira, Kira, Kira, Kira, KiraKiraKiraKira.
Light pursed his lips in disgust when a news anchor "received a report" that a hacker called Kira may be responsible for this.
Shit.
Ryuzaki wouldn't.
"Hey, guys!" Light called out from his small office. If it was legitimately Kira, the "report" would have come from Light's own division. "Is it true? Is it really Kira?"
"Yup," someone finally filled Light in, "it's Kira alright. Got his signatures all over this thing."
Oh shit.
Light's knuckles trebled and he froze in his plush chair. How dare that little shit- If he set him up-
"Well, can you see him at least?" Light shouted, concerned and innocent.
Instead of a helpful reply from someone useful, a Touta Matsuda practically ran into Light's office.
"Light-kun, you won't believe it. We can't trace him. At all. It's definitely Kira, it's all of his hacks, but it's like Yotsuba all over again. Nothing in, nothing out, no traffic, not as much as an IP redirector," Matsuda read from a piece of paper he was clutching.
"Huh," said Light, not sure if he should be relieved. Matsuda wasn't even from Cybercrimes, Matsuda was an officer supervisor. Matsuda had no idea what he just said. "Who told you this?"
"People," he said, excitedly. "I can't help at all, so I'm just passing messages. It's really crazy out there. But it's fine in here… hey Light-kun, mind if I wait it out in here? So… how's your sister?"
To make the bad day even worse, someone triggered a Yotsuba security beacon, and Light finally closed the illegal spectator window on the Yotsuba traffic and opened up a legal one since if there was a threat it was now allowed.
Ryuzaki was right.
The hacker weaseled carefully around the Yotsuba security, and the flashy way he defeated the very first mutation string that tried to mess with his scripts made Light blink and do a double take.
What the hell did Matt want there?
It didn't look like Matt wanted much. He had no download redirectors; all he was doing was looking around, searching for something.
/m
Light watched as Matt proceeded. He viewed the directory, aimlessly tired to access random files and had access denied every time.
The way Matt was doing this was idiotic.
He got into the directory within forty minutes, but it came at a heavy price that disabled everything he could do. He sacrificed his downloading and watching capabilities, and even his own security. Though Matt remained untraceable to the best of his ability, if anyone was to see him online, they could easily fry him and his hard-drive – hell, Light was even tempted to do it himself, and it wasn't like Matt could do anything but stare at a huge M file in wonder.
But when Matt's behavior couldn't get any stupider, the loser exceeded all Light's expectations.
Matt (very uselessly) fired (the most useless) virus (Light had ever seen) into the root of the M directory, thereby raising a dozen red flags.
Light saw the red flags go up, but they went up silently because something – and it wasn't Matt – blocked the alerts like they were never triggered, and there was nobody on the server but Matt and Light.
And then, gloriously, the M file got up and left, by itself, without triggering anything at all, and Matt froze, stunned where he was, tracing just where the hell a file that big could upload itself to, and so did Light.
But the thing fired millions and millions redirection packets everywhere, and Light almost got himself DDoS'ed trying to track at least a fraction of them, and the speed something so enormous was uploading itself was ridiculous.
And as the last bytes disappeared from the server, Matt stil stood in the middle of an empty directory, doing nothing at all.
And then like a delayed reaction of a frozen Explorer window, suddenly, Matt started running, he ran fast without bothering to hide or maneuver around the security, he ran, tripping the alarms on his way out like a blind tank.
What the hell-
And then Matt went offline.
Okay.
Light scratched his nose and filed a report.
---
Matt and Kira were not on good terms at all, and their war pacts against each other could only be interrupted by brief 'speaking terms' interludes that were always short-lived. While Light could never get any closer to Matt's location than the entire British Isle, finding Matt on the net was never difficult.
And it always dawned on Light just how ashamed he was to have that disgrace for a mortal internet enemy whenever he found Matt in compromising situations, and this was no exception.
Matt was having a heated and very serious argument with a twelve-year old over the proper uses of Call of Duty map glitches.
Because internet discussions were serious business.
Light logged in as anonymous just when Matt was saying something about a sweet spot behind a dumpster in some map where there always was a camper, no expectations.
Rule 34, wrote anonymous.
/b/ to anon, Matt wrote.
Anonymous: More like, /L/ or /M/.
smokin_pwnage: Rule 1 fail wtf.
Anonymous: No, seriously Mattykins. /M/ yeah?
Matt paused and presumably pulled up every firewall and IP redirector he had in his possession before writing:
smokin_pwnage: Lol anon, wanna cyber?
Anonymous: Sure.
A video call came and was accepted.
Light just blacked out his screen, and Matt had a bikini-model picture without the bikini as his, and their personalized voice scramblers weren't all that original either.
It was enough to have a decent conversation, in any case. Despite the temporary peace treaty Light himself initiated, he powered up an IP tracer and had it try to get a lock on Matt, and he was sure Matt did exactly the same.
"Kira-chaaaan," Matt dragged the syllable like a true fanboy who had no idea about proper Japanese pronunciations.
"Mattykins," Light greeted him curtly.
"Murdereeeer," Matt sang.
Should Light tell? Oh, but showing off was just so tempting, and this was Matt, and there didn't seem to be any harm in it…
"I am God, and they all deserved my wrath."
"Woah-woah man, seriously, it was you?" Matt said, seriously.
"Maybe."
"Oh. 'Kay. I knew you didn't have the balls, but whoever's doing it, they're good. I looked the shit up. Looks definitely like you, but it can't be you, you're not that good, sister."
Light bit his lip, but instead he said, "something else, Matt. Something more important."
"What?"
"Why the Yotsuba, of course."
Matt paused.
"What about Yotsuba?" he said suspiciously.
"Oh, you know. Their interior design, the AIs running around-"
Light heard a thud that was masked by the scrambler.
"AIs! I knew it I knew it, fuck me man I knew it!!" Matt cheered.
"What do you know?"
"Prolly as much as you do, but y'know, since we both think this shit is real…"
"Huh," Light mulled the thought over. So it wasn't just Light who was deluded at the delicious possibility of Artificial Intelligence. "It might as well be. I mean, the technology is definitely there…"
What Light had in mind were hacking AIs, programs, the ones that evolved around their purposes. It felt like a much more realistic, safer approach.
Matt however, liked to go overboard.
"And I was waiting for it all my life! Can you imagine, like DP Alpha-11 or EMH or, or, or even Ruk-"
"Matt, Matt," Light stopped him, "Star Trek. Didn't watch, don't care."
"You fag."
Light ignored Matt's Xbox uniform greeting.
Matt's M file was different.
When the L file disappeared, there was nobody on the server with it.
With M, Matt was on, and Matt left his traces all over it. And just when M sent itself off to a dark corner of the internet where Light couldn't find it, Matt went offline.
"So what do you think these LMN do, AIs or not?"
"Nothin'. They're people," Matt insisted stubbornly.
"How are files people?"
"Well, haven't you thought what all these letters stood for?"
"No, what?"
"Hot chick names! Like, L could be for Lexis, and M could be for Mercedes!--"
These are stripper names, Light thought.
"--and N could be for Nikki!"
"And O could be for Olga," Light finished for him passively.
"You're sucha fuckin' fag."
"Keep the Xbox lingo with your mom," Light told him. "What can you tell me about the M?"
"Why should I tell you jack about the M? Last time I told you shit, you carved a hole in my beautiful Vista-"
"You asked for it. You cost me four hours of my life when you took out my server-"
"That was 'cause you fucked with my WoW-"
"Alright, alright. My bad, Matt," Light decided to be the bigger man, because Matt most certainly wasn't. "Tell me about the M file and I'll share what I got on L."
After a little convincing, Matt bit.
"I don't know shit about the M file. I figured L was an AI, and you messed with it, obviously, and the L is messing with Kira now and killing people… in revenge yeah. And so the M would be an AI, too. Cool shit, you know? Fuck me if I'll ever even get enough space to download a quarter of it, so I just went and poked the M with a stick. So yeah."
"And then?"
"And then what?"
"What happened?"
"I don't know, some fuckin' retard chased me the fuck out of there, so I ran. I'm not getting caught for this shit, I didn't do nothin'."
"Matt. There was nobody after you."
"Yeah there was. How the fuck would you know, anyway."
"I was spectating, Matt. There was nobody in that server but you."
"Bullshit, the fuckin' bastard caught up with me and-"
Caught up with Matt?
"You talked to him?"
"Yea-"
"Metallic voice scrambler?
"Yeah, how di-"
"Droned like a politician?"
"Oh hell no," Matt spat, "shrieked like a Barbie on steroids, cursed me out in like ten languages I think, made fun of my beautiful Vista. Hurt my feelings, totally."
"Drank tea?"
"Ate fuckin' chocolate."
Light rubbed the bridge of his nose and told Matt that both of them had two very serious problems on their hands.
And then his little netbook sang a cheerful ping as Ryuzaki requested a voice call.
Before accepting, Light wrote:
xXTennisXx: No names. Talking to Matt.
Sugar_tea16: Disconnect. Now.
Light didn't, and instead accepted Ryuzaki's invitation.
"What's up," he said.
"Holy shit, is that Japanese?" Matt said.
"Matt-kun, Kira-san," Ryuzaki greeted curtly before he switched to English. "Disconnect, both of you. Hide. Quickly now."
Light said "what," but Matt was already gone, and Ryuzaki manually enslaved both of his computers and Light watched him disable and block all internet Light had, successfully disconnecting himself, too.
He and Matt had a very big problem indeed, but Light never got to talk to Matt about it ever again because very suddenly after the incident, Matt disappeared, and the M file did too, and Light couldn't find either of them he met Matt in person, much later.
For the time being though, there was something else - there was a thing.
Manually just like Ryuzaki, it sliced through Light's security like his firewall was a brick of butter. Before Light disabled the internet from the CP and with the external switch, it was already downloaded, and as an offline program it was overwriting Light's OS, with text, manually, very quickly.
Light tried to trace it, but he just couldn't get a fix on where the hell it came from, or when. All he knew was that it was ready to pack every piece of data, back-up data, temporary data and surveillance data Light had and send it off to… the USA National Intelligence Database.
Oh no. No, no no no no, no you don't!
In truth, if Light's OS wasn't as sophisticated as he made it to be, he would have never noticed all of his files being copied.
So what the hell was the thing – a very sophisticated virus that ran on mutation strings, Light realized –what was it trying to do offline?
It was trying to re-enable the internet.
The wireless transmitter was off, but it – the offline thing that Light could do nothing about, it was trying to override the off switch and make the laptop and the netbook broadcast.
Shut them down?
No, no.
Light abandoned fighting with it, and instead grabbed a mechanical pencil. It was metal, it would do.
If he was found, if he was forced to go online, the Kira murders, the Kira himself, the illegal hackings, the everything, the thing would get it all.
How the hell did it find him!
With no choice left, Light stabbed his wireless Wi-Fi receivers with the metal tip of the pencil.
edit: O is a joke. There is no O. No O. I would never..!
A/N: -bulldozing… plot… forward- Gah! MOVE!
Light: I'd rather you didn't…
L: I'd rather Miss King did. Miss King, please get Light-kun in trouble.
A/N: Alright. In the next chapter, Light gets in trouble.
Light: Ack!
L: Thank you. Now please make me a God too so I can compete with Light-kun's corpulent ego.
A/N: 'Kay. In the next chapter, L is a God.
Light: That's not very fair...
L: Light-kun, when I'm done not being fair to you-
Light: I said I was sorry..!
A/N: (avoids confirming and denying 5a89s7af reviews asking if L is a "robot"… "robot"? That sounds so crude… and yet…)
But anyway, personally, I call that one of my most successful sex scenes ever. What do you guys think? Emotional mindfuck, or what? And what did you think of my O jokes...? Haha... ha? /fails
THANK YOU REVIEWER SHOUT-OUTS OF WHICH THERE ARE A RIDICULOUS MANY AND I LOVE YOU: merichuel, Viciada desde 2005, WinterLuvNaruto, Wolfess-Sanu, Jetta, secretskept, Soullessdoll, Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, sayuri2023, MistressColdblood, Ms Random Freak, ArtistOfLight, Anemone Kurosaki, Keyinei, DarkAngelJudas, blueandorangesky10, DNLover02, Nardaviel, Mina-Hikari, Thursday, PinkBlueDiamond, PaperMasque, Dex Jerkon, demonlifehealer, BloodyShinigami, ellan54, yellowrose87, Dottayy, SugarCoatedGenius, Seelenspiel, fan-fan31, IsobelAnis, and aquastreak243!!!
I don't even know… what to say… in thanks… other than posting chapters too quickly… and you guys are…
THANK YOU. I LOVE YOU.
OH WHAT IS THIS.
The Magic Button is evolving.
The Magic Button evolved to…
MAGIC TEXT BUTTON!
You know you reeeeaaally want to test it out. :D
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