Quillish Whammy's grip tightened on his rifle, and he tried to convince himself that no matter how wonderful the sights on it were, it would be wrong to practice them on this piece of filth. Instead, he watched from dense bush on a nearby hill as a man struck a woman across her face. Scum.

Quillish had an empathy problem. He'd grown up poor, in a small town that was mostly bypassed by the war. Still, he remembered from when he was very small, the worn and thin men in their funny looking hats that sought refuge in any empty rooms in town they could. Jews were, at the time, a dangerous thing to be.

"Then why do we hide them, mama?" She'd looked down at him, warm brown eyes tired and face streaked with flour.

"Because they are human, sohn, and so are we."

"Oh." He'd said, absorbing the lesson solemnly until she laughed at him and said,

"You're too young to think such heavy thoughts. My little thinker. Here, take some bread and go bother your brother instead."

Mama's little thinker didn't stop thinking when he got older. He liked to dream of ideas that would make things simpler. Quillish would sit and sketch, while the other children played, elaborate plans for a Utopia, down to plumbing and traffic management.

Because he wanted to be happy, and he figured all the other humans might like that, as well.

Meanwhile, Hitler's forces were growing in number. Not only were there Nazis to watch out for, but also the vigilantes who fancied themselves Nazis. Jews, gays, even mama, with her hair too black, and her eyes too slanted. And brother, who everyone said looked just like his mama.

Quillish—who was the spitting image of his father—stayed at a neighbors when they did it.

For a while, he didn't touch his drawings. Those other people, the ones his mama had told him were humans just like him, were monsters. Why build a Utopia when at any moment, one group could rise up and decide their shoe size was superior, and condemn others for theirs?

It was an angry young man who migrated to Canada, to escape the worst of it. For his cynical curmudgeonly attitude, they called him the "Young old man" in their foreign tongue, and looked at him with a mixture of pity and fear. Except for Anabelle.

Anabelle was maybe six years old when she first started sneaking into his backyard, to play with the flowers in the back of his cheap and lopsided house. He ignored her, so long as she didn't trample them. As she grew bolder, she started to jump over and around the vegetables, like she was playing hopscotch. He kept a sharp eye on her feet. He couldn't really afford to buy food, and it was a terrible thing to be hungry, for the son of a baker. She never once stepped on one. Bolder still, she stretched up to play with the little buckets hanging on strings in lines over his garden.

"What are these for?"

"Hmph. You wouldn't understand if I told you."

"Tell me, mister! Ohpleaseohpleaseohplease…"

"When it rains, it holds the water, and tips it in later."

"How does it tip it in?"

"I told you you wouldn't understand."

"Show me!" He'd found a rusty old can with holes poked into the bottom and simulated rain into one of the swaying, weighted buckets.

"Wow! You must be the smartest man in the whole world! That's amazing! I wish we had vegetables. Mama says they don't grow well."

"That's nonsense. They grow fine if you water them plenty."

"Water is for drinking."

"That's nonsense too." He wiggled the can. "I don't have any problems."

"Will you make one for me?"

Just like that, Quillish took up his old plans. Suddenly, he was designing again, this time with an eye on reducing the effects of poverty. And it worked. Within five years, his work was international. Within fifteen, 60 percent of rural development in third world countries had Whammy's stamp on it in one way or another, usually under the name Ana's Help. Mama would have been proud.

But it was impersonal. He wanted to put his hands on the machines, again. He wanted to hold cups of oatmeal to the lips of starving children. Anabelle, fancying herself grown at almost twenty put her hands on her hips and said,

"You have an overdeveloped maternal instinct."

"Huh?"

"You need kids. Go settle down and make some babies." Quillish, never one for following directions, opened up an orphanage. It was intended for general use, but the children didn't satisfy his need to micromanage. Six orphanages later, not one of the institutions had needed his support past the first year. Except for one child, in orphanage number four. Anana, with a name close to Ana's, and eyes just like his mothers. And a genius like his. He provided her with tutors, materials, and plenty of encouragement. Four years later, she returned to her village in Ethiopia and led a cultural revolution.

Orphanage number seven was the first one he registered under his own name, instead of the series of psuedonyms he'd build up to avoid becoming a political figure. Whammy's house was very exclusive, and ridiculously selective in the children it allowed. Within two years it was filled. So many special children with no place else to go, and one child more special than all the rest of them.

L was an oddity to begin with. His name, for one thing, was a mystery, except for the letter which he introduced himself by. He, also, expressed a deep empathy hidden in his willingness to correct any perceived injustices he found, and disguised by his apparent apathy towards others.

L, the little boy with no name, became a name spoken around the world. He did impossible things. Quillish never grew tired of his favorite little charge. And all was well.

Until Kira. The charming little psychopath had ruined so many things. He upset the balance. Little L proved he wasn't so little anymore, over a series of security videos that, while watching, Whammy decided he was too old to blush at, but certainly was not too old to gasp and hurriedly click out of.

Luckily, he'd died. Er, that is, a great tragedy took the misguided genius. Hey, he was dead; Quillish could afford to be gracious.

Of course, the conniving bastard had the audacity to return from the dead, and waltz back into L's life. And when he'd argued, bringing up every decision he'd ever made in L's best interests, his little boy had politely promised to take his words into consideration, and sent him to the other side of the world to retrieve information on Americans. This was Aiber work. Wedy work. Watari's job was next to L, where he could see the change he was responsible for, spreading over the world. But he went, because his first job was to assist L, the only one who would ever always need him. Probably.

Pushing down his Quillish side, Watari turned away from the scene of domestic abuse at the neighbors, and used the scope of his rifle to spy on the couple just going out for some sort of event. Privately, Quillish thought it was a little soon to be going out when their son had just died, but ignoring that thought as well, he waited for the car to leave, and broke in immediately. He needed as much time as possible, to find and copy the birth certificate and reassemble the burglar system before the couple returned.

"We have an associate collecting their information at the moment." Said L, his thumb already making it's slow, but steady way back up to his mouth.

"Most of the information should be on file. There're forms we can send in to have the American government send the rest. I know the bureaucracy is a bitch, but it'd still be here within the week."

"Out of all the deaths, three of them were illegal immigrants to America in the first place. Original documentation would be with the parents, if it existed at all."

"Then you might as well send in for the forms. You'll never get the parents to give them up, and as a French investigation, you can't force Americans to comply with our demands."

"I'm sure our associate will work something out."

"Your associate must be very good."

"Of course. We all work under L."

"Uh-huh." Delia took the statement as a reminder, and sat down in between L and Light, turning her back to strategically display more of her bony chest to L, while excluding Light with her back.

"Your job must be very interesting. I bet you get girls all over you, all the time." L looked at her seriously, and nibbled along the edge of his thumb. More than once, he'd been attacked by girls, which—strictly speaking—meant they'd been all over him, and made it a technical truth if he wanted to discourage her from believing that he would be seducible because of his inexperience. Actually, come to think of it, that had been Light's tactic, as well. Was he walking around, beaming out SEDUCE ME! waves or did he just have the unfortunate luck of running into the types of people who considered that a valid tactic? He realized he'd been quiet for too long.

"No, not really."

"Oh, reeeally?" she purred. "But you're sooo cute." She reached out a finger, presumably to stroke his face, or even brave the seemingly impenetrable fortress of his hair, but before she reached him, her wrist was caught in mid-air by Light.

"He's gay." It was with an impressive lack of any sort of shame whatsoever that she immediately and obviously turned towards Light, rubbing herself into where their skin touched.

"How about you?" Light retracted his hand and regarded it with faint disgust.

"I'm not interested." Marie Alice snorted something that sounded suspiciously like

"slut."

It was true that the irritation on Delia's face reflected more of the kind of disappointment a businessman might make after losing a deal than the disappointment of a broken heart. Neither the psychopath nor the sociopath in the room empathized.

A/N: Chapter ten! Yaaaayyy…

So anyways, now that we've hit this milestone, I bet you feel an overpowering urge to review me. No really, I can tell you're just burning to hit that button and write something meaningful. I accept traditional reviews, as well as reviews in prose, haikus, interpretive dances, and baked goods, mailed to me.

Or really just anything. I'm probably gonna wait to update this until I get a few reviews, because even though I'm working on this again, and I'm willing to put in the time, I just…feel like no one is actually reading this anymore. If you're still there, drop me a note, please. If all of you drop me a note, and I end up with enough to make me make the wow face, then I'll write a chapter that's 5,000 words long, instead of my admittedly short 1-2,000 word ones. How's that for incentive?

I'm not entirely sure if that qualifies as whoring for reviews, but if it is, I'm feeling a distinct lack of shame in my actions.