A/N: And so, the story continues. What will this new installment bring for us today? Hopefully some entertainment for all of you and some more reviews for me. Yaaay! Anyway, all silliness aside, let's get this chapter rolling.

Disclaimer: Yeah, not mine, yada yada. There's no time for a disclaimer. I've got writing to do!

Warnings: None for this chapter.

Chapter 6

The Birth of Kira Part 3

The next day

8:45 a.m.

In the middle of philosophy class, Light Yagami was thinking about the Death Note and the state of the world again. He hadn't slept a great deal the night before. He had tossed and turned, thinking and analyzing, rethinking and re-analyzing. He replayed the events of the previous day in his mind over and over, marveling at the power the Death Note held and the fact that it was his to control.

"Someone has to do it, so why not me?" he continually wondered. "Even if it means sacrificing my own mind and soul it's worth it...because the world can't go on like this."

At the same time, Crystal was sitting a few desks away from Light, chewing on the thumbnail of her recently injured and bandaged hand. Her adoptive parents had really wailed on her about running off the way she did, even grounded her for a week, (which meant no cashews for seven whole days!)

If that weren't bad enough, she knew somebody in this school had her notebook and that he (or she) had used it to kill two people already. Plus, while she knew the person who had the notebook was most likely a student at Daikoku Private Academy that also attended cram school on Wednesday nights, she didn't know where to go from there. She had successfully narrowed down her search as far as numbers, but as far as who the culprit could actually be, she was stumped and without many options to figure this problem out. She could always search through school records, but her father had expressly asked her not to draw attention to herself. If she ended up getting caught while trying to find information on students through illegal means, her whole livelihood could be thrown in jeopardy.

As smart as Crystal knew she was, she also realized that she'd been a complete idiot. Why on Earth did she wait until yesterday to figure out she wanted to destroy all the Death Notes? She should have just destroyed hers to begin with and be done with it. At least then she could be an innocent bystander and wouldn't be wracked with guilt because two people were dead. For heaven's sake, she shouldn't have remembered anything about the Death Note anyhow. It belonged to someone else now. She shouldn't remember a thing!

So why did she?

That question was the most irritating of them all, mostly because it was the one question she simply could not answer no matter how many times she thought over it. This whole thing was a giant cup of insanity.

While Crystal continued to berate herself and scheme out ways to get information on who had her notebook, Light stared down at the open Death Note beneath his philosophy textbook.

"I wonder, what if someone else had picked up this notebook?"

Crystal bit down harder on her thumbnail. "What kind of person picked up my notebook? Based on who's been killed so far..."

"Is there anyone other than me who'd be willing to eliminate the vermin in the world?"

"...This person must have a very strong sense of justice. That would explain the targets of the killings." Crystal mused, completely unaware that the person she was looking for was in the same room with her.

Outside the window the sun was beginning to peek through the dark clouds. It shined through the glass, illuminating the blank page of the Death Note resting on Light's desk.

"If I don't do it," Light thought, "then who will? That's just it! There's no one!"

Crystal laid her hand back down on the desk. "The person who has my notebook is using it in a way that's eerily similar..."

Light's lips quivered slightly as rays of sunlight bounced off his skin. "But I can do it. In fact, I'm the only one who can."

"...To how I would have used the notebook. No, it's exactly the same. In their place...if not for fear holding me back...I would have..."

"I'll do it. Using the Death Note..."

"Back then, I wanted to..."

"I'll..."

Cyrstal Makano and Light Yagami both lifted their gazes toward the front of the room where Mr. Tomoshi stood. He was about to pick a student to read the next few passages in the textbook. No doubt he would pick one of them.

"Change the world."

That evening marked the beginning and the end of many things.

For Light Yagami it was the beginning of a new world. Immediately upon returning home he turned on his computer as well as the TV. Then, opening the Death Note, he began to write names of the criminals he pulled up on his computer screen as well as the ones that appeared on the television.

His eyes, once a creamy brown color, seemed to transition into a blood-red as he wrote name after name on the pages. He wasted no time by going downstairs to eat dinner that night, nor did he sleep. Instead he continued to incessantly write names, even into the wee hours of the next morning.

His life as Light Yagami, the perfect student, son, and brother had all slipped away. No one else would know it, but he knew that the phase of his life where he simply lived through the motions was no more. Now his life had purpose and meaning and he would see his new mission through to the end, no matter the cost.

Light Yagami was slowly being born into something completely new.

For Crystal Makano it was the beginning to the end of life as she knew it.

But at first it started off as one giant headache.

School had been a complete nightmare for her that day with detention only adding salt to her mental wounds. Because of said detention she was home at six o'clock again. Normally, that meant she could collapse on the couch and relax, but on this night it meant she had to help cook and wash all the dishes by herself after dinner before going straight to her bedroom to finish her homework, all without even the slightest taste of cashews.

Being grounded definitely sucked big time.

Especially since her cashew withdrawals had started earlier than normal. The headache had already come, increasing in intensity with every minute that passed. Eventually the pain became unbearable for her to deal with. She had a fairly high tolerance for pain, so to say that meant the headache was driving her off the walls.

Crystal tucked herself into bed early that night, hoping some sleep would help with the awful pounding in her head, but it only got worse as the night wore on, hindering her from sleeping soundly and even then she was plagued with horribly realistic nightmares filled with horrifying looking creatures that resembled Shinigami. Having seen one before, she wasn't really afraid of the sight of them, but the massive amount of Shinigami she saw would have freaked anyone out, especially when given the bleak setting depicted within her dreams.

She saw other things in her dreams that night, things she didn't even try to decipher due to the pain wracking through her brain.

When Crystal woke up, she mentally counted how many dreams she clearly remembered.

"Twenty-seven," she thought, alarmed by the quantity of dreams and the fact that her head was still beating itself into a coma of pain. Spots clouded her vision as she stood, her body swaying along with the spots. With another groan of pain she forced herself to sit back down on the bed.

"Why couldn't it have been Saturday," she mumbled, burying her head into a pillow. "Why did it have to be Friday, huh? Why!? Why!?"

Crystal's only saving grace was that it wasn't Monday. That really would have killed her.

But whether it be Monday or Friday didn't really matter. The point being, she had to go to school with a migraine to end all migraines. As much as she wanted to, she couldn't begin to come up with a plan to find out who the owner of her notebook was with the headache hindering her deductive reasoning...actually, her reasoning skills in general were falling into an abyss of madness.

"Ryuk...the shinigami that gave me the stupid notebook must have a vodo doll of me or something," Crystal thought, silently chuckling in hysteria as Mr. Tomoshi continued to talk. "He's using a pin to stab the back and sides of my head over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over..."

Crystal shook her head to stop herself. Going into a mile-long mental rant was no way to deal with the situation at hand. She just needed to grin and bear it. That's what L would do...well, he wouldn't grin, but he'd bear the pain without complaint. In fact, no one would even know he was in pain to begin with. She had to do the same now.

With that thought in mind, Crystal straightened up in her chair, grinned, and pretended the pounding in her head didn't exist. Within the next two hours, the pain ebbed away somewhat. She was able to act moderately normal, smiling and laughing at her acquaintances with only a little extra effort. To add salt to the cashew of victory, Crystal had started on a plan to obtain the information she needed to figure out who had stolen her Death Note.

Unfortunately, when detention started, the headache returned, though part of it was because she had gotten her results from the nationwide exams. Light Yagami had beaten her, by one point no less. Yet another slam to her pride this week.

And while she was in detention hiding her unspeakable agony from the eyes of the principal watching her, Light Yagami was writing names in the Death Note in the comfort of his bedroom. He didn't stay up all night writing down names this time. Unfortunately he was still up late because a Shinigami finally decided to visit.

Ryuk wasn't expecting Light to be holding the notebook. He thought the previous owner had simply lost it and just went crazy killing people. That alone piqued the interest of the bored Shinigami, but something about Light and his ideal to make a perfect world, ruling as a god over it, was far more entertaining and appealing. Almost as appealing as the juicy apples Light's mother had brought to her son earlier.

Oh yeah, he was definitely in for some fun this time around.

Four days later

Tuesday

11:15 a.m.

"I don't know how much more of this I can take," Crystal thought, her left eye visibly twitching as she continued to force a smile on her face. English was her favorite subject, but even the reading of Macbeth couldn't distract her from the endless pounding in her head. At times the pain lessened, like it had just a few minutes ago, but it never went away.

"It's been going on like this since Thursday night. This can't just be a withdrawal from not having cashews. The symptoms have never been this severe...then again I've never gone this long without having cashews either." She groaned inwardly before picking up her pencil to scribble a drawing in her spiral notebook. "No, my earlier assumption is much more plausible than the prospect of slowly dying of cashew withdrawal. The possibility of such a thing is under two percent."

Mrs. Yomanito pointed over to a male student while asking him to read the next few lines for Macbeth. She pointed over to a female student on the other side of the room a few seconds afterward to read the part of Lady Macbeth.

Crystal was barely paying attention, but her ears were sharp enough to pick out some of the murmured lines the male student was speaking. She flipped the page in her textbook, recognizing the line instantly. She had read through the play a few times before.

"Perhaps this isn't the best time to contemplate the reason for these bothersome headaches," she mused, erasing the small cartoon drawings on the corner of the page she was writing on. "A better idea would be to finish formulating my plan to gain the information necessary to find the idiot holding on to my notebook."

Little did Crystal know...

Light Yagami's gaze glowered down at the English textbook, his brown eyes skimming over the lines being read while taking a moment to write a name in the Death Note. Ryuk, invisible to everyone but the brunette, was hovering next to his desk. He stared out the window, loudly complaining that he was bored out of his skull. Light ignored the Shinigami, concentrating on his work with the Death Note.

Still, there was something bothering him.

His gaze darted towards Crystal.

Crystal, unbeknownst to Light's stare, frantically wrote in her spiral notebook. She could visualize the perfect plan to get into the permanent records held in the main office without being detected.

"I'll have to disable the cameras in the building first," she thought, writing the first step to her plan in French just in case Mrs. Yomanito noticed her lack of attention and decided to make an example out of her. She was just about to write step two of her brilliant plan when a shockwave of intense pain wracked through her head.

Crystal immediately dropped her pencil on her notebook, her right hand forming a fist involuntarily. Seconds later she made a show of nonchalantly rubbing her fingers through her hair, though if she were to be honest she felt like she could tear all of it out. Outwardly she continued to grin, inwardly fighting with all her might not to scream. She was already biting down on her tongue to keep her from doing so.

No one else would have noticed anything off, even if they had stared straight at her.

However, Light Yagami, sitting diagonally behind her, had noticed a strange pattern in her behavior in the last few days of classes with her.

Well, her behaviour was always strange, but lately she'd been especially peculiar.

"Ever since the night she was attacked she's been tense," he noted inwardly, studying the back of her head with avid interest. "Of course, such a thing is normal. After all, she would have been raped if I hadn't stopped Takuo by using the Death Note. Even so, the tension she's exuding isn't present when she's around any of the male students, not even the ones that are clearly eyeing her up and down while she's present. Given the circumstances, for her not to even bat an eyelash of annoyance towards them is strange."

Light glanced at the Death Note laying underneath his textbook for a moment.

"She isn't tense because of what happened the other night," he thought, his gaze returning to her. "She's visibly in pain and has been since Friday, but she's trying to hide it."

However, up until that moment he wasn't exactly sure of this nor did he care to know. The only reason he had kept any sort of tab on her was because she was the only person in school intelligent enough to match him on some level. He had seen her score on the nationwide exam. It was only one point below his. That in itself was very impressive in his eyes.

Of course, he hadn't been paying much attention to her...until about ten minutes ago.

The reason for this came down to one tiny thing that he nearly missed.

Ten minutes ago, to appease his boredom with the reading of Macbeth, Light had begun to write a few names of criminals he'd memorized in the Death Note.

Forty seconds after he wrote the first name in the notebook, Crystal raised her hand to the side of her head. The gesture itself was noncommittal, almost as if the boredom of the class was forcing her to play with the bangs of her hair to stop herself from yawning out loud.

The movement wasn't what caught his attention though, rather the very soft groan that slipped from her lips. When he heard the sound, he glanced up and saw the dead giveaway that something was very wrong.

The second she lowered her hand, it visibly shook. Briefly his eyes had traveled to her face. Since he was sitting at an angle behind her, he could see her face fairly well.

And what he saw almost made him gasp in disbelief.

Ryuk noticed Light's sudden interest in the girl, but he didn't say a thing or even give a hint that he knew anything. After all, he had his entertainment to think about. He wouldn't want the fun to end too soon.

Light laughed at himself, shaking his head slightly. "I get a supernatural notebook and suddenly I start seeing things. Her shaky state is probably just her suffering from a drug withdrawal again."

Without a second thought he wrote another name in the Death Note and without meaning to he glanced over at Crystal again. She reacted in the same way and once again he saw a flicker of something in her eyes.

Intent to figure out whether what he saw actually happened or not, he wrote another name in the Death Note, this time watching her very carefully. She didn't make any sounds, but her fingers were slightly shaking atop her desk. Her eyes changed again.

After doing this he waited for a while and didn't do anything. As the minutes passed, Crystal's rigid posture gradually relaxed, allowing her to slip into her usual slumped position at her desk. Seconds later she had picked up her pencil, jotting down notes in her spiral notebook.

All the while, Light stared down at his textbook. If looks could burn holes into the pages of a textbook, his gaze would have done the trick.

"Is the notebook actually effecting her somehow?" he wondered, deciding he should test it out one more time.

And when he did, Crystal reacted in the same way as before only this time the tremors in her hand were far more present. Small beads of sweat were gathering at her brow.

"Darn it," she thought, willing her breathing to stay normal. "It's getting worse. I can barely see straight. This definitely isn't helpful to the plan I'm trying to concoct and if something like this should happen while I'm trying to break into the permanent records I'll surely get caught."

"Makano-san."

Crystal slowly lifted her gaze to meet Mrs. Yomanito's. The teacher smiled in response before searching the room with her eyes.

"Ah, and Yagami-kun," she continued, her smile widening, "would both of you please continue where Obata-kun and Takahashi-san left off as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth?"

Crystal and Light both stood, holding up their textbooks near their faces. Thankfully for Crystal, Light's line was first.

"If we should fail?

Crystal flipped the page. "We fail! But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we'll not fail. When Duncan is asleep-whereto the rather shall his day's hard journey soundly invite him-his two chamberlains will I with wine and wassail so convince..." Crystal trailed off the words on the page were blurring together. She blinked, trying to right her sight again without causing suspicion to her teacher, but that proved to be impossible.

Mrs. Yomanito raised an eyebrow. "Makano-san? Is something the matter?"

"Oh, no...not at all, sorry," Crystal answered, her vision still swaying. She had memorized most of the play, so she didn't need the book. Still, she'd barely had the mental strength to formulate and speak that lie.

To add to the severity of the situation, Crystal was fairly certain she was seeing red again. Even with this happening, she began reciting from memory after setting the textbook down on her desk. She couldn't bear the weight of it anymore and besides that, she couldn't read it.

Light watched her as she placed the book on the desk while reciting the rest of her lines. She gripped the edges of her desk in a vice grip when she finished. He immediately started reading through his.

"Bring forth men-children only," he started, still watching Crystal from the corner of his eye. "For thy undaunted mettle should compose nothing but males. Will it not be received, when we have mark'd with blood those sleepy two of his own chamber and used their very daggers,
that they have done't?"

Crystal glanced across the room as Light read. All she could see were numbers and names all hued in red. Everything was coated in red. She felt as if the world were bleeding around her. Perhaps the substance covered her but no one else could see it.

Oh good lord her deductive reasoning really was going down the drain.

"Not good," she thought, blinking to straighten her askew vision. "I'm hallucinating again."

The room had become increasingly hot while Light read his passage of lines. Crystal could barely manage the strain of trying to breathe normally at this point, but she continued to stand erect, putting all her energy into gripping the edges of her desk. She refused to let herself show signs of weakness without a fight. Her pride had taken enough beatings and she was not going to stand for anymore.

Unfortunately, all eyes were on her and despite her best efforts to keep herself steady, her vice grip on the desk and violently shaking arms made those efforts completely pointless. Even the most unobservant person would be able to tell that something was wrong.

Crystal didn't give into her body's protest for her to sit down when Light finished the lines. It was her turn. She could barely think straight with her head pounding and the world swaying in a void of red around her, but again, she refused to let herself be seen as weak. All she had to do was recite a few more lines from memory, then she could sit down again.

The pause before Crystal started reciting was short, but it carried with it a sense of finality and defiance in Light's eyes. Though visibly trembling from pain, she continued to stand with an a very weak smirk on her face.

"I don't get it," he thought, setting his textbook on his desk. "Why doesn't she just say that she isn't feeling well. Why would she continue to recite lines when it's obvious that she needs rest?" He narrowed his gaze on the smirk she sported. "No, I think I understand now. To her, admitting to a weakness means surrendering to it. That's why...even though she was nearly raped, she hasn't reacted to other perverts giving her those looks."

"Who dares receive it other," she said slowly, putting emotion into the words she was speaking, "As we shall make our griefs and clamour roar..." her voice trailed off for a few seconds. The next breath she took was a shaky one. Her body began to sway as she whispered the last line.

"...upon his death..."

In the next second Crystal's eyes rolled into the back of her head. Her knees buckled as she involuntarily took a slight step to the right of her desk.

While the rest of the room gasped in fright at Crystal's body falling backwards, Light instinctively sprinted into action without thinking, knocking over his chair in the process. Reaching out he wrapped his arms around Crystal's torso just as she was about to hit the hard tile floor. She fell back against him, totally unconscious.

The room went bonkers from there, with half the female students ready to kill Crystal, the male students yelling that Light always gets the good-looking girls, and Mrs. Yomanito screaming for the school nurse down the hall even though the infirmary was in the building next door.

And to make matters far more annoying than they had to be, Ryuk was laughing his emphysema laugh with so much vigor that Light could hardly formulate a coherent thought.

"Shut up Ryuk," Light whispered darkly. "This is not the time."

"Hahaha! I figured you were popular with the girls, but I didn't think girls literally fell in your lap just to get close to you. Ahahahaha!"

Light let out a soft sigh before gazing down at the unconscious girl in his arms.

"There's no use in denying it," he thought, narrowing his gaze. "The notebook is causing her condition, but how? And why?"

At that moment, Light got the distinct feeling that Crystal Makano, the infamous troublemaker, was going cause problems with his grand plan to rid the world of evil.

A/N: Oh yes Light, Crystal will cause problems indeed. Anyway, this ends another chapter! I'm really having fun with this one. I hope you guys are enjoying it so far too. Feel free to leave a review! Constructive criticism is welcome too! Also, if you guys notice any typos or random spelling mistakes, feel free to tell me. Thanks again for reading! Have a great day!