Disclaimer: "Death Note" is owned by Tsugumi Ohba

Shinigami World

It has been many years since the notorious Kira was caught and killed. But despite that, the shinigamis haven't been fairing much better. With one man killing so many people, using one of their own Death Notes, it left little room for the shinigamis to kill others in order to prolong their own lives, so they died. So there were only a few left, and what once a barren wasteland filled with shinigamis playing games, is now a wasteland with few still left.

One of these shinigamis found a skull. Which in itself wasn't that unusual, but he recognized the skull in question. He knew the individual to whom it once belonged.

"I already thought this is what the world would look like now." he said, "Light... you almost became a god over us too."

He threw the skull away. He waited for it to fall down. He froze once he didn't hear it fall.

"Huh? There's usually a crack when that happens."

"You mean like this?!" a voice spoke, followed by a loud crunch.

The shinigami turned to look. Before him stood someone, wearing a long black coat, whose face seemed to be crying on one side and laughing on the other. He looked human, but the shinigami knew he wasn't. If he was, he'd see his name and date of death appear above his head. Neither were visible. The shinigami spotted white dust on the man's left hand, as well as the remains of that skull on the ground, just underneath his hand.

"You just cracked that skull!" the shinigami said.

The man frowned: "I thought I'd taken Captain Obvious's heart two worlds ago."

"Captain who?" the shinigami replied, "Wait. Did you just say "two worlds ago"?"

"Yes." the man replied, "But as I've noticed, the people around here seem to be concerned about just the one world."

"It's just one we discovered by chance." the shinigami explained, "We later found out we can use the lives of the people in that world to prolong our own."

"So you have." the man replied, "Tell me, how do you shinigamis reproduce?"

"That's easy!" the shinigami exclaimed, "We just... we just..."

He seemed to need some time to think about it.

The man grinned: "You've forgotten, haven't you?"

Before the shinigami can reply, the man continued: "I don't blame you. You've been around for how long? Hundreds of years? Thousands? Dozens of thousands? You'd forget little details like those. And who would need it? If you can live forever, why would you even think of creating offspring, so something of you would survive even after you're gone."

"Did you just come here to make fun of us?!" the shinigami was starting to lose patience.

"Far from it." the man replied, "I came to give you a way out of your predicament."

"We don't need it!" the shinigami replied, "We don't need your help!"

"Actually, you'd be helping me." the man said.

"Why would I want to?" the shinigami asked.

"Who said I need you to want to?" the man answered.

The shinigami didn't know what to make of this man. That was when he heard a strange noise. Something was happening behind him. He turned to look. What he witnessed then made little sense, even in a world like this. Shadows were crawling over the wasteland, and one by one they started to materialize. Even this shinigami knew that shadows are usually made when light shines onto objects, but these shadows seemed to be the very objects themselves. And when they materialized, they became bug-like things, of roughly the same size as the man this shinigami has been talking to. Even stranger was the fact that parts of their bodies were mechanized.

"Interesting." the shinigami said.

"Changed your mind already?" the man said, "You disappoint me."

The shinigami chuckled: "I was beginning to fear that I'd return to a boring life here again. But you just made it interesting."

"Did I now?" the man replied, "Great. So we have a willing candidate now."

This, the shinigami didn't understand: "Candidate? For what?"

"Take him!" the man ordered, and the mecha-shadows attacked the shinigami.

The shinigami did what he could to fend them off, but these mecha-shadows were too strong. Even if he managed to take one down... the results varied. Either he destroys their shadow part, but the machine parts keep fighting until their shadow parts are destroyed. Or he destroys their machine parts, so only the shadows remain. While they were easy to defeat when they're just shadows, by then he'd have too little strength left to do any more battle. It didn't take long before he was overrun, and consumed by these mecha-shadows.

The man, meanwhile, split himself up into two entities. One who laughed, the other who cried.

"How touching." the crying one said, "How our hard work is paying off."

"Yes." the laughing one agreed, "And since this world has very few inhabitants, we'd have taken it over in no time at all. We can finally set up a base camp."

"Pity..." the crying one whined, "... that we only have a few random hearts taken."

"You're right." the laughing one replied, "Just random hearts make no real army. We'll just let the Heartless continue raiding this world, while we look for a decent army."

"Agreed." the crying one said, upon which the two became one entity again.

THE END