February 26th, 2032, 9:00 PM
Construction Site
Ahh, such a beautiful night.
Jeremy Price sighed as he stood over on the top floor of a building in construction. He touched his scarred face out of habit before he donned his expressionless mask. He sighed heavily in his mask before looking out into the distance to see something. He recognized the color.
"Police sirens? Huh, interesting." He begins jumping from his toes like he was gearing up for a fight. As he's bouncing, he checks the gear in his vest. "Grenades, check. Pistols, check. C4 detonator, check." He stops bouncing and pulls out his walkie-talkie.
"Price to Valdez."
A voice responded, "Go for Valdez."
"It seems the police have arrived as scheduled by our client." He focuses heavily on the dozen police vehicles that pull up to the construction site. "Based on what our client said, it will be a simple police raid. Bulletproof vests, heavily artillery, but no helicopters."
"We can deal with this shit. Remember Ecuador?"
Price smiled. "Hell yeah, we made fish food out of those rebels. Now, let's make sushi out of these Japanese coppers."
Bottom of Construction Site
Kudo pulled out of the car and drew his pistol, making sure it was loaded with a full magazine before cocking it.
"Remember, the KIA Killer is inside along with heavy artillery," Kudo reminded. "Keep a low profile."
The KIA Killer pulled out of Kudo's passenger seat and slammed the door dramatically. "Snipers on station?"
Kudo called in the snipers and they confirmed they were in position.
Soma, Hayate, and Yamane climbed out of the backseat and cocked their pistols.
Soma wiped the sweat underneath the bangs of his red hair and exhaled deeply.
"Stay calm, Soma," Hayate scolded.
"We're about to raid an unfinished building in construction with ex-military," Soma said quickly. "It's not going to be like Daichi Nagasawa; we're dealing with professionals."
"Then you should've stayed home."
Soma shook his head. "No, I'm ready." Then he looked up at the top floor of the building in construction, towering twenty floors.
"Then shut up and put on your helmet."
Soma nodded before reaching over to another officer and grabbing a helmet and putting it on. He made the camera was activated before he taps Hayate on the shoulder.
Kudo nodded. "Strike team, infiltrate."
A strike team that arrived thirty minutes prior began infiltrating the building so they could determine if the rest of the police force could infiltrate. Once they got the go-ahead on the walkie, Kudo, Soma, Hayate, Yamane, and twenty other officers began their raid on the empty building.
The first floor had construction equipment littered around including a cement mixer, girders, and cinderblocks stacked to make a wall.
They turned on their flashlight and those with submachine guns lead the way. They found the stairs and started climbing.
The KIA Killer stood in the center of the infiltration squad and ejected the magazine in his pistol and pulling the slide back until it locked into place like a gun out of bullets
"Nice submachine guns you got there."
The officers aimed their guns towards the first set of stairs where the voice was coming from.
"Police-issued Heckler & Koch MP5A3 submachine guns. Nice. I would be lying if I said I wished I had a gun like that but I'm in a happy, healthy relationship with my M249 SAW."
The officers rushed up the stairs and sweep the second floor, finding nobody.
"I make sure to remain faithful to her. I'm not allowed to touch her beautiful, amazing body unless I demonstrate I know how to properly dance with her. Right now, she's feeling thirsty."
The officers sweep the second floor, no sign of anybody speaking.
"If my lady is thirsty, I must be a gentleman and quench her thirst and she has a very specific taste."
They heard the sound of a gun cocking.
Kudo quickly shouted, "GET DOWN!"
A spray of bullets from the wall blasted the officers, nearly tearing them to shreds. Three of them fell over dead while others laid on the ground, bleeding.
Kudo took aim and fired in the direction the bullets continued to flail from and since he could see the muzzle flash, he wasn't shooting blindly in the dark. He took aim and a gunshot went off, causing the trail of bullets to cease.
The shot didn't come from his gun because he didn't feel the recoil and looked at Soma laying on the ground to his left, smoking leaving his barrel.
Soma, Kudo thought. Excellent shooting.
"Wow! You should be on our team, sport."
Still laying on the floor, the officers aimed their submachine guns in the direction of the new voice.
"Redhead, you just took out Valdez with a single headshot."
A spray of shells from a shotgun blasted an officer in the face as they were coming up the stairs. They heard the pumping of the shotgun and quickly rolled on the floor.
A second shotgun blast fired off and hit one of the rolling officers in the neck.
"That's thirty-seven on my kill count!" The unseen man pumped the shotgun once more. "You know the best about a Remington Modell 1100? It works best for long-range, mid-range, and short-ranged attacks!"
Soma opened fired once again and the firing of the shotgun ceased.
"Get up!" Hayate ordered.
The officers complied without hesitation.
The gunfire came from all over the room, firing at the officers in all directions. Had they not been wearing bulletproof vests, they would've been cut down to torn pieces of meat. The officers retaliated and fire off in the direction of the gunfire, snipers providing cover fire.
"Hahaha," the KIA Killer laughed, still on the second floor with two other officers. "Now this is a party."
One of the officers that stayed behind with him was the NPA lieutenant and he looked at the KIA Killer with a grimaced expression.
"'Party'? Our men are getting killed out there you fucking psycho."
'Psycho' laughed. "I know and I'm eager to see who will win." He holds up his empty gun high in the air like he was directing a plane to a gate.
BANG!
A single gunshot echoing throughout the building and the NPA lieutenant and the officer standing beside him collapsed, a single bullet entering the lieutenant in the back before exiting and hitting the second soldier in the heart.
'Psycho laughed, his voice hidden by the sounds of the gunshot. "This is so amusing."
Upstairs, the officers managed to advance to the next floor with few casualties from both sides but neither side was making much progress. When they reached the third floor, a Mia Merc jumped out from behind a wall and threw a hatchet at an officer and it lodged into his throat. When the team returned fired, the hatchet merc dived into a hole in the ground.
A second merc armed with a scythe jumped up from behind a cement mixer hidden by the stairs and sliced an officer across the throat. He was about to get shot by the officer standing behind the first one but a third merc armed with two bats intervened. The merc hit the officer in the hand with a short wooden baseball bat before hitting him across the sternum with a baseball bat fitted with nails.
Yamane ran for cover when a bullet lodged into the wall beside him and hid behind a cement mixer. He peeked out and saw a Mia merc standing behind girders standing vertically. He aimed and shot the merc in the head.
A fourth merc charged for Yamane, armed with a screwdriver. Yamane saw him coming and aimed. The screwdriver merc slid across the floor before Yamane could fire and passed Yamane's legs, allowing him to stab Yamane in the calf.
Yamane gasped in pain and nearly lost his balance when the screwdriver merc wrestled him over the gun.
Hayate was shot in the shoulder by a small firearm and was spared from death only because of the strap to his bulletproof vest. Immediately following getting shot in the shoulder, a fifth merc charged from the darkness and does a flying front kick with both feet on Hayate.
Hayate lands on his back with the wind knocked out of him while the fifth merc kips up and kicks Hayate in the groin.
Kudo charges forward, holstering his pistol before aiming his submachine gun, and fires at any Mia Merc he spots.
He halts charging near a cart with janitorial equipment and suddenly loses balance.
There was a sixth merc hiding behind the janitor's cart and he swept Kudo off his feet with a Capoeira technique known as Corta-Capim before taking out the two officers behind Kudo with an Aú sem Mão kick.
Soma shot the Capoeirista. The Mia Merc staggered back and clutched his wounded shoulder before drawing his gun. He was shot in the head before he got a chance to use it.
Soma turned his gun over to the Mia merc wrestling with Yamane. The screwdriver merc is shot in the back of the shoulder and allows Yamane to punch his attacker in the jaw before pulling the trigger and hitting the screwdriver merc in the face.
The flying kick merc was kicking Hayate in the face before doing a spinning backflip kick on Hayate's stomach. He backhanded the officer before stealing his gun from him and pointing it at his head.
The police sniper stationed on a warehouse's rooftop took aim at the flying kick merc and fired. He missed his target by a whole foot when he felt a machete pierce him in the back and throw him off the ravine he was stationed on.
"Didn't think we scoped you out the place and all possible vantage points for snipers?" the backstabbing merc asked sarcastically. "How pathetic."
The flying kick merc pointed the gun at Hayate's knee and fired. Hayate screamed in pain and reached for the gun. The flying kick merc held the gun away as far possible before aiming it at Hayate's head and-
The backstab merc had been ambushed by another sniper posted on the same vantage point. He was shoved off of the ravine but reached out and grabbed the second sniper and stabbed him in the gut that was unprotected with body armor. The sniper fired his rifle into the backstab merc's stomach and pushed him off the roof. He quickly set up his rifle, took aim, and-
BANG!
His forehead exploded with blood and went down.
Hayate flinched and blinked away blood that got in his eyes... blood that didn't belong to him. He wiped the blood away and shoved the dead body off of him and retrieved his gun. He crawled as far back as he could and pressed his back to the wall, helpless to do anything but listen to the sounds of gunfire around him.
Kudo picked himself and ran for the next set of stairs, charging forward after cocking his submachine gun, Soma and a handful of officers following him.
"Let's get reaaaaddy to roast some pigs!"
A Mia merc wearing a welder's helmet took out a zippo and used it to light up the end of an M2 flamethrower. He doused the officers coming up the stairs in flames, Soma among them.
Kudo took aim at the flamethrower merc and was about to fire when sparks lit upon his gun and made him drop it. He stumbled back in confusion until he realized that a chain belonging to a chainsaw-wielding merc had cut through his submachine gun.
Before he could react, the chainsaw merc quickly spins around and does a backflip to Kudo's stomach, and knocks him down the stairs. The chainsaw merc revved up his weapon before leaping all the way down the steps, landing with his combat boots near Kudo's head.
The chainsaw merc grabbed Kudo by the back of the head and threw him to the nearest wall and held the chainsaw inches away from Kudo's visored face.
Kudo's eyes go wide when he looks the chainsaw merc in the eyes framed by a heavily disfiguring scarred face completed with a smile. "How could you do this?" Kudo snapped. "How could you kill people for money?"
The chainsaw merc's smiled vanished and he turned off the chainsaw.
"Why not?"
Despite the continued gunfire, his voice carried over Kudo's thoughts without hesitation.
"Why did you join the police force?" He looked over his shoulder at Hayate and Yamane open firing at his comrades. He turns back to Kudo, waiting patiently for an answer. "Because you believe in a sense of justice?" he supplied.
"Believe I believe in doing what's right," Kudo answered.
"So you have a justifiable reason for joining the police force." The chainsaw merc laughed as if he found his answer, which he did. "There are a bunch of reasons to sign up for any job in this world. Primarily, it's about money and making sure you're financially set for the future or what-have-you. When you think about it, a job can be just as amoral as a mercenary. You can join the police force for whatever reason given and at its core, a job itself is amoral. You can join the police force for money or for doing right just as much as you can be a teacher for the money or to teach kids. Hell, you can even become a farmer for money or just to hang around cows. Ya see, being a mercenary is a lot like that. You can have a job where you act as a bodyguard, a soldier, a reporter, for whatever reason given but at our core at the MIA Mercenaries, we accept that we are in this job for an amoral reason and we don't try to sugarcoat or justify why we have this job. In a way, that makes us the most honest workers on this battlefield."
The chainsaw merc revved up his weapon and held it high above his head and gave out a battle cry as he lunged for his target.
The Top Floor
'Psycho' laughed softly as he was hoisted to the top floor by a harness Price lowered for him. Once he was on the top floor, he patted Price on the shoulders and looked at him with a smile.
"Jeremy," 'Psycho' began, "I haven't had this much fun since I started this serial killer business and I've never had a true friend since my dog died."
"You're paying us to be your friend," Price pointed out.
"And that's why it's so cherishable; you're like me in every perspective."
"If you ask me, that seems like mild desperation."
"Desperation, never."
He looked up towards the sky, gazing upon the full moon with a smile.
"Life is so interesting when the lights go out in the sky."
Price nodded. "I'll say." Price looked over the edge and at the vantage point that his spotters pointed out before. He pulls out his walkie-talkie. "Morgan, Shaw, Hale, did you take out all snipers?"
He waited several seconds for a reply before one came through.
"Hale here, affirmative. There were six snipers but we- AHHH!"
Price pushed the transmission button. "Hale, come in. HALE!"
"Hea-" Hale spoke before his voice drowned out in gargles.
Price quickly switched channels. "Shaw? Come in, Shaw."
The voice on the other end belonged to a man whose last breath was a dying one.
"Morgan, you better not be dead."
"Hea-" Morgan gagged, "-ack"
All three lines went silent. Price tried calling them again but no one answered.
'Psycho's' eyes and hair turned green.
Sudden, inexplicable mercenaries dying? And that last word Morgan said: 'Hea-ack'. If I didn't know better, I would say that Morgan was trying to tell Price that he was suffering from a heart attack.
He narrowed his eyes.
So, Kira's here indeed.
Price looked at 'Psycho'. "Orders sir?"
"Kira is here," he answered quickly, "and he's killed Morgan, Shaw, and Leah."
"But," Price panicked as he removed his expressionless mask, "shouldn't their burned faces work as an effective countermeasure to Kira's eyes?"
He shook his head. "Negative, blocking one's face with a physical object is the only way to protect one's identity. Looks like you guys are burning your faces for nothing." He laughed. "Sucks to be you."
Price growled and touched his disfigured face. "All for nothing." He rubbed his fingers over his scars, feeling every inch of his burned skin. "My beautiful face... all for nothing."
"The way I see it, Price, there are two ways for you to die. The first way is you die by Kira and suffer a heart attack or you can die fighting. You have control over the last moments in your life. You may have burned yourself into an ugly monster but now's your shot at redemption. Die fighting and go out on your terms or have Kira kill you in a useless attempt at hiding your identity from him."
"My money," Price sneered.
"Don't worry, you'll still be paid handsomely."
"I want my money redirected into my children's savings. I want my wife to be covered for the rest of her life."
'Psycho' shrugs. "Not a problem."
"And I want to make sure there's nothing of me to bury. If I can't have an open casket with my burned face then I don't want a funeral at all."
'Psycho' saluted him. "Yes sir, Jeremy Price, sir."
Price pulled out his combat dagger and began racing down the stairs to join his comrades in battle.
'Psycho' pulled out the bowie knife tucked in the holster of his chest.
"Did you hear all of that, Knight?" he asked as he donned his wolf mask.
'Psycho' turned around and watched a shadowy figure emerge from behind a pillar. This shadowy figure none other than...
"Every word," Knight nodded with a mischievous smile on his face.
"You killed my three snipers." 'Psycho' held the bowie knife up and pointed it at Knight. "I remember something in the Kira files I swiped. Something about... Shinigami eyes giving you the ability to see a person's name by looking at their face."
"Spot-on," Knight cheered.
"What's my name?" He spun the knife in his hand. "I'm curious."
"You're nameless."
'Psycho's' smile grew wider behind his mask. "That means I'm immune to your Death Note."
Knight pulled out his original Death Note which was tucked in the back of his pants. "You mean this?" He waved the notebook in front of his face.
'Psycho' eyed the weapon with interest. "So that's the tool used by a god of death."
"Expecting something more magical, fantasy-like?"
He nodded.
Knight shook his head. "Simplicity." He opens to a blank page and takes out a pencil.
"If you can't kill me," 'Psycho' began, "then what's the point of using your notebook?"
"I'm going to kill off the rest of the MIA Mercenaries," he said simply and started writing.
'Psycho's' smile never left him. "Now that's what I'm talking about; you deduced the identities of my cohorts."
"Amoral human beings indeed and they're all going to die."
'Psycho' shrugged with a heavy sigh. "So I guess that's your answer."
Knight looked at him and knew immediately what he was talking about. "Oh yes."
"I thought that we could have an ever-lasting battle between killers," 'Psycho' said with mock sadness. "I thought that we would be forever battling to see who is the better serial killer. Don't you want to escape your boring life? Don't you want a battle of wits to go down in history? Something to keep you entertained?"
Knight nodded resolutely. "Yes," he spoke in a soft, controlled manner. "I want nothing more than to be entertained in my boring life."
"Then why do you want to kill me?"
Knight focused on 'Psycho' in the eyes before speaking. "Proving that I'm a better serial killer is not my idea of fun I realized after battling you. My idea of fun is killing people who think they're better than me." He points his pencil at 'Psycho' in the same way his opponent was pointing his bowie knife at him. "I've killed police detectives with a notebook and Shinigami of their own. I've killed the Nameless Keiri, the Faceless Keiri, and I got their Shinigami sentenced to death in the realm above us. I've eliminated everyone in the Wammy's House to stop predecessors of L from being shaped."
He points off into the distance, looking past 'Psycho' with his eyes settling in a warehouse.
The Yellowbox Warehouse, Knight thought. It ends where it begins. Or in my case, it begins where it ends.
"I've killed L's successor and everybody involved with the original Kira in that warehouse."
'Psycho' looks at the warehouse with keen interest.
"Compared to all of them..." Knight let his sentence linger, "you are small-time, KIA Killer."
'Psycho' looks at Knight with his lips pulled back in a sneer.
"You claim that you wish not to kill me because there is nothing else for you to kill once the living god of this earth is dead but that's not true." He holds up his notebook once more. "This notebook belonged to a grim reaper living in another realm. The original Kira managed to kill the world's greatest detective and a god of death. You are small-time."
'Psycho' growled.
"You are nothing compared to the people who have killed the world's detective and a supernatural being from another realm."
"You fucker!"
"The only reason I decided to take you on is not that you're small-time but it's because you think you're a big dog with a bite when you're just a small dog with bark."
"One. More. Word..." 'Psycho' hissed with every syllable.
"And let's not forget the fact you lack a name. Would you feel this much confident if you had a name for me to write down? You think you're so tough because you lack a name."
"KNIGHT!"
"Even without writing your name down, it is still your destiny to die. I'm going to put you down..." Knight laughed hysterically before finishing his sentence, "like you put down your best friend."
'Psycho' lunged for Knight.
AN: Only two chapters left. Leave a review and tell me what you think, it would be much appreciated.