I don't own Death Note or any of the quotes I use at the start of a drabble. Not being sued would make my day! ^_^

A/N: TYVM Rizera, mangaluver34, padsy and Tails-Coyote-Carnivore for reviewing; also xxBlueBird for Alerting!

Let us all take a moment to praise the Internet gods for dA. Inspiration flourishes there. Oh, and..beware the semi-crack. Just saying. XD

Noodle

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"All my best friends are metalheads." –Less Than Jake

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The Wammy's Kids had something like a pool party. Once.

The idea was E's fault. E was a skinny, long-legged orphan with a love of all things water. One year she appealed to Quillish Wammy himself and begged him to take them to a pool because their childhoods would be so deprived otherwise (let it be known that E was strange, even by House standards).

Quillish announced that he was taking a much-deserved vacation and left poor Roger to deal with the inevitable mess. And Roger, ever the jaded subordinate, caved.

E immediately told everyone she came across of her success; as a result, by the end of the day Roger had nearly 50 kids prepared to tag along.

There were several problems with the excursion that the older man could see, number one being the migraine that would almost certainly manifest itself.

Number two was the fact that none of the children had swimsuits.

And number three was the fact that it was the middle of autumn, and E had vehemently refused to even consider going to an indoor pool because "It just wasn't the same."

A B and L, being the oldest, were given the task of getting the rest of the poolgoers in and out of a swimsuit shop as quickly and painlessly as possible, while Roger made arrangements with a recreational center to temporarily re-open their outdoor pool. Only at the last possible second-as in, when children were actually cannonballing into the water-did it occur to Roger that he had no idea which kids, if any, could actually swim.

Well. At least there was lifeguard equipment nearby?

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Things went relatively well for a while.

Linda sat on a sun chair and scribbled frantically in her sketchbook.

A insisted that he was allergic to water and fairly ran when a few troublemakers tried to splash him.

B, who was probably cackling away inside of his demented little mind, took great pleasure in swimming silently underwater and popping up into unsuspecting faces.

Matt floated lazily on his back for most of the venture, his hair pooling around him like some rare red jellyfish; while Mello squirted everyone within range using a water pistol he'd managed to sneak out of the store.

L merely poked at the water with his fingers; when asked why he didn't get in, he answered that he couldn't swim. Suggestions that he use a water noodle (several of which the pool staff had generously provided) were met with an icy stare and the cynical statement: "You expect me to entrust my life to something called a 'water noodle'?"

Near slipped underwater for long periods of time, convincing many people several times that he had actually drowned, and leading half the House population to believe he was part fish by the day's end.

Roger, sitting in a chair at the edge of the pool, swallowed unhealthy amounts of aspirin and fretted over how many kids would have to drown before no amount of bribes could keep the House from being shut down.

And this was what passed for 'relatively well'.

Then came the havoc, which Roger had seen coming from a mile away; he just didn't know what form it would take.

Nobody was quite sure who started it, although later inspection narrowed the suspects down to B, E and Near (yes, Near-it's always the quiet ones). All we can be sure of is that A was the first victim.

Five kids climbed out of the pool without warning and headed straight for A, who was spread out on a towel in the shadiest spot he could reach and had his eyes closed, the poor sucker. They picked him up by his arms and legs and, gleefully ignoring his pleas for release, dumped him unceremoniously into the water.

A resurfaced a few seconds later (with the help of a few more sympathetic children-A was one of the unlucky who couldn't swim at all), wincing at the cold and glaring at his attackers (who, by this point, were in hysterics).

This success emboldened the marauders, who turned their viciously gleaming eyes next to the spaced-out, hapless Roger.

Quietly, painstakingly, they crept up behind their cantankerous caretaker. A grinning Mello mouthed the signal: 'Three..two…one!'

And they shoved Roger, chair and all, into the pool.

The results were mixed. Some kids bolted back to the car without even grabbing a towel, such was their fear of retribution (even if they hadn't done anything). Most of the witnesses laughed, but sobered as the old man's head broke through the water's surface.

The little group of actual perpetrators, however, were laughing so hard that tears were pouring from their eyes, and the sight of a soaked and livid Roger only made their sides split further.

In fact, such was their mirth that they didn't even notice Roger was climbing from the pool until he was directly in front of them.

Oh, the results were not pretty. Not one iota.

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The group known as the Soakers were not seen again for several weeks.

Quillish Wammy eventually returned and thanked heaven that he had saved his vacation time for all those years.

A, as it turned out, actually did have an allergic reaction to the pool water, and had to be hospitalized. B visited A every day (after he himself was released from punishment) to bring him get-well cards and to laugh at him.

47 Wammy's Kids came down with pneumonia due to their swimming outside in 32-degree weather, turning the House into an ICU full of germs and running noses for weeks on end.

Roger, after two failed petitions to have E removed from the premises altogether, settled for buying more aspirin and resolving never, never to bring his charges within 100 feet of a swimming pool for the rest of his natural life.

[:Finis

A/N: Ah, poor Roger, he suffers so. XD