So I have been gone for a long time. I wish I had like a really good reason, but the only reason I have is that I just couldn't because of school. My study is literally screenwriting, which means writing series, short film, full length movies. Basically I am just always writing. Which makes writing in my free time feel… strange or something. Like, if I have a deadline for six scripts, am I really going to waste my writing energy for my other stories? No, I don't. So I didn't write anything outside of school stuff for two months. Now most of my deadlines have been met, though I am nowhere near finished, especially since I have just been refusing to do a certain assignment, so that professor's definitely going to kill me. But I digress.

Also, funny story; I don't know how Shinigami work. I mean, we got all the rules to the Death Note, but the writers never bothered to explain all thing Shinigami. So if I make a mistake on Shinigami-territory, please don't be mad. My research skills only help me so far and sometimes you just gotta fill the gaps. And sometimes, you just gotta throw all rules out of the window because this is a free country and you can do whatever the hell you want.

Anyway. This is Death note, not the complain-zone, so let's get this chapter started!

*I don't own Death Note or anything relating to its characters and/or storylines. I only own my original characters and original storylines.

XxX

17. All the Death Notes in the world

There was a very easy test to determine which of the Death Notes belonged to Arma. She just had to give all the notes to a human who could not see her and determine which note the human had to touch before he could.

It was easy, harmless. Right until the moment this human had to write his own name down so that Arma could regain her note.

She could feel it in her old, weathered, dusty bones. She was slipping, dying. Not like Shinigami who broke the law, or Shinigami that lengthened a human's lifespan. She wasn't turning into dust. She was dying. Dying was much slower, much more traitorous, much more painful. Much more hateful.

Frankly, she had wanted Allison to do it, but since she could see her, there was not much to go on there. She wished another Shinigami could pay for this, but that also did not seem like an option. She could literally pick anyone but the people she actually wanted to do it to.

The Mishima-guy, Neo Kira, was send away in an FBI van. Arma wasn't interested enough to pay attention, but she assumed L had a hand in that. L, who had disappeared and not yet returned. Perhaps would never return. Arma knew too little about the human heart to guess its future decisions and choices.

Allison had been taken by one of the dark blue vans, too, but she seemed to get a moderately fairer treatment. They seemed to be taking care of her leg well, not that she really noticed. She was too focused on the little Near-boy and A-girl. She was too focused on the lover she lost, even if she believed it was only temporary. She also seemed to be troubled by her Shinigami eyes, blinking in and out of the red vision that showed her names and numbers she'd rather not see.

Arma wondered what that was like, caring so much that you would rather not know, that you would be better off not knowing.

She wondered what it would be like to have control of all the Death Notes the way the Shinigami King did. To reign over Death like the ultimate master. It seemed horrid, in her eyes. If she could survive without writing even one name down, she would be content.

She picked a young boy. Nineteen, maybe twenty. He looked innocent, but she wasn't a judge. She wasn't a divine force righting wrongs with the ones she killed. Shinigami weren't made to do such things. The allowed him to choose his own death. He did not seem thankful.

Arma felt no comfort in regaining her Death Note. Nor did she feel thankful towards the people who claimed to have helped her. Instead, she took all the Notes and hid them inside the world. Maybe someone would find them one day. Maybe a new Kira would rise. Once, not too long ago, she might have been against it, but humans… Humans were a mess. And it did not matter much to her anymore.

She didn't want to go home. But she didn't want to stay either. Maybe she should've let things be and died. A pile of ash amongst the bones of horrid creatures.

To lengthen her lifespan once more, she wrote down hundreds and hundreds of names. Before leaving, she wrote down one more. And then she vanished.

XxX

I think people thought I was in some state of permanent shock.

I was hospitalised, taken by the FBI, hospitalised by the FBI. For a while, I thought L had a hand in it, but it didn't seem likely.

It was then that they told me around the world people were dying of heart attacks. It was when that they told me they were monitoring everyone who was ever a Task Force member. All but one, for L could not be found. I hoped he and Watari got away safely. I hoped that at least that much was done.

I asked more questions, but they weren't really answered. Confusion and miscommunication had made all of us a suspect. I took no joy in being one, nor in being locked up, but it was better that they acted strict and kept people save than making mistakes.

The people that were dying were random. Maybe it was just some Shinigami's, maybe not. Ico was gone, too, but she did tell me she was leaving before she went. The Shinigami King had called on her. I was wondering if he would be angry at her, since she had no Death Notes to give back to him. What Arma had done with them and where they were now, were mysteries for another time.

My phone had been taken. No surprise, really, but it would have helped to fight against the boredom. I started singing songs while walking through the room they had given me. A room with a separate, small bathroom met a bath and a gigantic mirror, reminding me how much I did not like looking at myself. The light was off and green and I realised after a few days that the windows I had were false, projecting fake images of a day and night sky.

I once asked the person who brought me food for the remote control for the window. He didn't seem to like the joke.

But I did start singing. In the bath, on the bed, on the table. Standing and sitting and laying. I sang every song that I knew, every lyric that I had forgotten, while doing strange yoga posses and push ups. Maybe that's why they seemed to believe I had gotten mad. Boredom will do that to you.

It was hard counting the days when the sun outside your window wasn't real, but I think I had been locked up for ten days when they let me out. Only ten days. But it felt longer, lasting, the world more changed than it normally would in ten days.

I had expected no one to pick me up. Perhaps Watari. I was surprised when it was A. A, who had been taken in as well. But she and Near were there, on the other side of the gate, and I came out. "I don't understand," I admitted as they took me to their car and started driving as if nothing happened.

"Mishima," A said, "he had woven a story, made every single member of the Task Force an accomplice. It took L days to solve the case, especially from a distance."

A distance. "Where is he now and… where are we now?"

"America!" sang A loudly, "and where L is? No idea. That is a mystery, as always. He is kind of like Where is Wally in that way."

"Oh yeah," Near responded cynically, "especially the glasses and the hat, it's truly uncanny."

"Ass," was A's reply.

"I'm sorry," I said, "but I'm confused. If you follow no orders from L, how did you know to pick me up?"

From behind the stirring wheel, A rolled her eyes. "Sweetheart, we are hackers, liars, detectives and geniuses. I really don't understand why you have problem grasping the concept."

"I am not going through the trouble of missing L again," I complained, "or looking for him."

"Then don't, "A replied with a shrug. "Maybe he'll find you for a change."

XxX

I went with Near and A despite better judgement. They had already gone back to work, their own headquarters nothing more than a cellar in a basement of a house they bought outside of Tokyo. The basement wasn't much, the house wasn't much, but it had a more homely feeling than any other L-related institution I had been to, even the orphanage.

I hoped that, as long as I was with them, my past friendship with Near could be restored. Once I had figured out how much had changed since we were… friends. We had been friends once. Not by his choice, I'd imagine, but we had been. That had to count for something, otherwise, I wouldn't know what to do with myself.

He was sitting in the basement. I was used to him puzzling, or playing, but he was reading through files and making phone calls. He seemed to have aged more than time itself had. I was starting the wonder whose fault that was. "Are you busy?" I asked.

"I'm working," he responded.

"Is that a 'yes' or a 'no'?" I shot back.

A shrug. He started twirling a strand of hair around his finger.

I smiled. "You still do that with your hair." I found that fact surprisingly soothing.

He stopped abruptly. "What did you want?"

"To… talk," I said, since I had really not much else to offer. Spending time with Ryuzaki didn't exactly advance your social skills. It was actually, usually, a really big step backwards, since you had to be social with him in a different sort of way, a different sort of thinking. Maybe that counted for Near, too, but I had lost the grasp to how I used to be social with him. I assumed I was just myself, but I remember wanting to be close to him on purpose, though I couldn't recall the reason why.

He turned. There were chairs down here, but he was sitting on the ground. I suppose that wasn't so surprising. Old habits die hard. "About…?" He sounded scared, almost.

I crossed my arms. "You seem to have some sort of problem with me for a while now. Care to tell me what the problem is?"

He turned away again, clearly still not a fan of eye-contact. "Problem? I don't think I am the one with the problem. I understand there were things that I did that did not align with your morals, but… there are things you do that don't agree with mine. I wasn't pry, I am aware, but to just… send me away seems a childish decisions."

"What? You were hurt by that?" I asked jokingly. Then frowned as I noticed he was not denying my statement. "Wait. Really?"

Near shook his head sharply. "No. Why should I? The world is blowing up with Death Notes, what I do is not deemed good enough, but clearly you have time to mess around with the one detective you do agree with. How quaint."

A short laugh escaped my throat before I could try to keep it in. "What? Are you saying you think me irresponsible now?"

"Perhaps," he agreed.

I wasn't sure what to tell him. I could barely remember the original reason I had been mad at him in the first place. The only thing now making me angry was his… angsty behaviour. "You're the one that risked the lives of the Task Force, Near. That was not me, nor Ryuzaki. Your doing. We are not playing pretend. We are not playing chess. These are human lives. That was the only reason I was upset."

"You think I don't know that?" Near asked. "You think L doesn't know that? You have to play the game to win the game, Olivia. You should have learned that by now. Or not. I guess you have accepted being L's sidekick more readily than I'd expected. I guess you do not mind staying in the shadows."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Near."

"You aren't doing anything," he said, "you're just moving along. That's not how any of this works. This if not a task to be handled, this is a battlefield. Call it chess, I don't care, because treating this like chess is exactly how one would win."

Somewhere, from inside of me, I felt that there was some truth to what he was saying. "Because you won't care about sacrificing a few pawns?"

Near was shaking his head now, almost violently. "I am not going into this with you. This is not a discussion we need to have. I am just saying, you cannot change the game, since the game we play is the sort of game we need to win."

"And what if it's not a game, Near?" I asked. "What if none of this is?"

"Then I have no rules to hold onto," he admitting, his head hanging low. "And I wouldn't know what to do with myself."

And suddenly, I got it. Suddenly, I saw the young bow from the orphanage playing on the ground. With toys and puzzles. Things with rules and systems. Ways to lose and ways to succeed. If you held onto such a way of thinking and found situations where that didn't apply, wouldn't you go mad? "I am not mad at you, Near," I said, "I was upset. I can be upset, sometimes. And frankly, you were being an asshole. But that's okay. After all, there are no winners in such games."

A long, long silence rang between us. One that lasted so long that I was suspecting him to never chase it away. But when he did, he sounded breathless. "Thank you," was what he said.

I felt myself smiling wryly. "You're welcome."

XxX

"So like, you and L are a thing and stuff, but does his strange posture like, work in the bedroom?"

Frowning, I pushed A aside so that I could walk out of the basement door. "I really don't think this is a conversation we need to be having."

"Ah, but I want to know!"

We stopped when my phone rang. My phone hadn't rang. Ever. Not since I had gotten it back, anyway. And there were few people who had my number.

A was staring at me as I pulled the phone from my pocket. "Just a guess," she said, "that that's not a Shinigami calling you from beyond?"

"Definitely not," I said as I looked at the screen. Of course it was an anonymous caller. I answered. "Yes?" I said as A was practically hanging on my arm.

A relieved sigh that I instantly recognised. "You're alright," Watari said. "You are—She's alright!" he shouted to someone further away.

And I would be stupid not to who. "Is Ryuzaki there?"

"He—Yes, one moment." With a few cracks, the other side of the line was silent. I waited, and by that I meant I was currently actively trying to protect my phone from A's prying hands. I had already realised she got bored way more easily than you'd think.

"Allison," he said, his voice strangely husky. It came so suddenly, I jumped. "What happened?"

"What? With me? Uhm," that was such a good question. One had no one had bothered asking me yet. "Are you going to be mad at me if I say that I have absolutely no idea what happened Everything was kind of… strange. I mean, strange things are happening."

"Does Ico not know what happened either?" he asked, clearly not angry, but not calm either. There was on urgency to the questions he was asking.

"Hm, I don't know. I haven't seen her since the FBI took me in custody."

"The FBI took you in—Give me a moment, please," Ryuzaki stepped away from the phone. Only a few seconds later, Watari came back on. "I am so pleased to hear you are doing well," he said, "are you staying in a hotel right now?"

"No, I am with Near and A."

Silence once again. It seemed like I was giving all the wrong answers today. "I mean," I quickly added, "I had nowhere else to go. They helped. But… what's going on, what's the urgent situation?"

"People are dying," Watari said. "Randomly. All over the world. All heart attacks. Everyone keeps calling us, but there's no reason to believe it is any sort of Kira. Still—"

"It's definitely a Death Note." And as far as I knew, either Ico or Arma had all the Death Notes. Which meant that even if they went to look, they would find nothing. "How long as this been happening?"

"Since the day we left. Every day since then," Watari said. "It's not so many people that it cannot be easily put away from the radar, but it's enough that certain people are worried. We are worried. Kira is one think, a complete random murderer something else."

"How does he get the names?" I asked, frowning. A was frowning, too, probably hearing everything Watari was saying.

"Social media perhaps?"

I shook my head. "No." He tried to think. "The Death Notes were with the Shinigami if I remember correctly. It makes no sense for the notes to have fallen back into human hands."

"Not all monsters are human," Watari told me and I could tell that was something he had discussed before, with Ryuzaki. It probably was a thing Ryuzaki had said himself.

"Yeah, that's true, but why would—"

"Here's Ryuzaki back," Watari interrupted before handing the phone back to his boss.

"Can we meet?" he asked. "Soon. I want to meet soon. We need to find a way to contact Ico, or to know where she is."

"How? It's not like I have a hall pass for the Shinigami realm."

"You don't," Ryuzaki said, "but I might know someone who does."

XxX

I AM SORRY! Another cliff-hanger. And I don't know if I'll be able to update any time soon. Once again, so sorry about that, I am trying to be better, it's just a lot of writing I suddenly had to do. I also really want to respond to reviews and such, but there's still some reading I need to do for school and I don't want to end up not publishing this chapter today, so I will answer at a later time, perhaps next chapter?

I love you all, thank you for being patient and have a lovely Sunday! (or what's left of it, anyway…)

XxX