Chapter 4

Author's Note: Just a quick announcement. Some of you might have noticed that I that I have added a second genre to this story. Before it was only "Suspense", but I just added "Romance" yesterday. But don't worry, people, no intimate relationships between man and woman, I'd never use that sort of thing in my stories, poems, etc. Not that I'm particularly conservative or mind that other people do it, I'm simply to shy to write about it myself. And by the way, I'm updating as fast as I can, because now that school is started again I also have homework and dish washing and other stuff to attend, so it'll take a little longer for the updates to come in the future.

Everything was burning. Flames the size of houses surrounding everything, coloring the clouds a bright sort of red, as though the very sky was dripping blood, fueling the fires of doomsday.

Buildings were falling down everywhere you would look. The asphalt was boiling hot, everywhere people where screaming in agony as they ran in blind panic on their burned feet. Children had fled into the poor shelters that was left: Roofs, which had collapsed, black and ashy trees. A little boy, no more than five years old, sat kneeling by his mother, who was bleeding from a wound no one could see, silent tears trickling down his cheeks as her hand slowly caressed his swollen face in a last dying act of love. Then her arm fell down, giving up, and the boy was abandoned, staring sobbingly at his mother's dead body.

Light backed away from the horrible scene. Everywhere around him his perfect world was crumbling away into dust of chaos. He just wanted to turn around and run until he collapsed from exhaustion.

Suddenly someone appeared in front of him. He felt a jolt of surprise in his stomach, he would have gasped but for some reason his voice would not obey him. He fell backwards and landed on the ground, but it did not burn him.

A tall, black, blurry silhouette was standing silently in front of him. He did not know who it was, could not make out anything to reveal the persons identity, but still he felt he knew him.

"You did this!" Light yelled shrilly, his voice working now, eyes widening in fear and rage. "You've destroyed the world!" He knew it was true, that he was now in front of Clemens's boss.

The silhouette seemed to consider whether or not he had actually destroyed anything, his back rounding in a very familiar way as he approached Light who panicky crawled away from the figure.

"Stop!" Light ordered, but the person did not seem to care what he said. He was very thin.

"Stay away from me!" Light lifted his hands to protect his face from the blow he knew would come.

But the other man just drew a notebook out from under his T-shit, scratching his leg with his one bare foot and taking a ball pen out of his pocket.

The Death Note gleamed in the red light as L opened it, and set the pen to he paper.

Light screamed.

L started laughing. Slowly he made the pen dance over one empty page as though he had all the time in the world. Light knew what he was writing.

But then the laughter changed, it was hoarse and raw, chuckling and not at all fitting, but still it seemed too very familiar. Light screamed once again as he knew that he would die, the laughter of L that was not L's roaring treacherously in his ears…

Light sat up in his bed, his breathing fast and shallow as though he just ran a mile. He looked wildly around the room, his heart pounding rapidly as though it was desperate, ice cold sweat had soaked him and his cushions.

The bedroom was dark, no flames, no bleeding or screaming people anywhere, just his bed, his drawer, desk and closet. It was still raining as though he had just made dinner plans with Adéle. Yes. Adéle. It was just a dream. L was dead, and he would be dead forever. Just a silly nightmare. How stup…

"'Morning."

Light turned his head in a fright as a lightning bolt from the storm outside lit up the room and the face of Ryuk.

The human breathed a sigh of relief. "Hello, Ryuk."

"Hey, there, what's up? Bad dream?"

Light smiled. "That's none of your business."

The Shinigami chuckled and drew an apple from the paper bag he had been carrying.

"So, Ryuk, what do I owe the honor?" Light asked calmly as he poured himself some water from the glass pitcher on the bedside table.

"I was bored."

"Bored?" Light froze. Oh, no…

"Yeah. So bored in fact, that I didn't even think the apples were worth staying here for anymore."

Light felt how his upper lip started sweating. No! He had known this time would come all along, but…

"Really?" Light sounded cheerful, but he felt panic starting to spread. "That doesn't sound like you, Ryuk."

"Nah, but when you've been stuck here with nothing to do for three years but eating apples, you kinda get bored."

"I see. So you want to go back to the Shinigami Realm?"

"Well, yeah, that's what I thought about doing. But to do it, I'd have to kill you first. Not that it'd be a problem, I was actually just lifting my pen to write your name during that morning-speech of yours, you know, to get the last bit of fun out of this trip."

Light's teeth gritted. That damn Shinigami… It was not enough to just kill him, no, Light would have to be humiliated first, having a heart-attack in front of his people. However, he felt the tension loosen up, hearing the Ryuk using past tense when he spoke of his plans.

"But, as you can see, I didn't do it. Because just as I set that pen to the paper, the sniper started shooting. So I figured there just might be a little fun left in you. After all, the Shinigami Realm is no better than the Human World."

Light drank his water.

There was just a little time left to get rid of the Shinigami.

Will's shoes were dragging noisily across the asphalt as he walked down the streets of Tokyo. It was stranger to him than when he had arrived for the first time, all the concrete was being removed to make room for more beautiful buildings in a Victorian kind of style. Will was not really sure whether he liked this or not.

His thin, black hair was hidden under an old school men's hat, one you would see business-men on Wall Street wearing in the fifties. He wore regular, blue jeans and black leather boots. Normally he would wear sneakers, but boots were more practical since you could hide a Baby Browning pistol in the leg. He was very fond of loose, bright colored shirts, but Kira and therefor the police did not really approve of people looking different in public – so Will had covered his lime green shirt with a black coat.

As Will grew up, he had always been told by his mother (when she was not hospitalized on the closed ward) that he had beautiful, blue eyes like his father. Will had never known his real father, he had left when Will was five. Instead he was stuck with a stinking, abusive stepfather, who liked nothing more than beating his stepson whenever he was angry. Will still had a scar over his left ribs, and his nose would never be quite straight again.

And when his mother died when he was fifteen, Will saw no reason in stay home in New York and ran away several times, although he was always returned to the stepfather a couple of hours later.

So when he finally turned eighteen three years ago, Will went to the bank and got his savings, started his tiny car and went to Britain. He did not really know why Britain, it was just the first thing that crossed his mind.

That road trip was one of the best times in his entire life. No adults telling him what to do, what to eat, when to sleep, just him and all of England and the starry skies.

But when he was up around Oxford, one late night he ran into a girl around his own age, bruised, bleeding, confused and terrified. He took her under his wing and calmed her down, and after a few days she told him that he could call her A.

She insisted upon leaving Britain and going to Japan, and since Will had no where better to go, he followed. They sneaked on board a ship and traveled as blind passengers all the way to Japan. On the way the girl realized that he was neither Kira nor a follower of his, in fact that he actually resented him, and she told him her whole story. She was on the run from Kira because he had burned down the orphanage she had lived in, that her name was Adéle Segan and that she was going to Japan to start resistance against Kira to avenge one of her dear friends, who Kira had killed.

That sounded fair enough to Will since he had always liked weapons, and he assumed that resisting Kira would have something to do with them. Ever since he was a child he would watch everything about them in TV, and for that getting beaten up by his stepfather, and use his pocket money on posters and plastic guns. He even got himself a Browning, his all time favorite, when he was twelve, although it was quickly discovered when he nearly shut a kitten down from a tree, and confiscated.

Will sighed and lit a cigarette. Those were times. He remembered how he had been thrilled when Adéle promised him a lot of guns, although he did not get them until two years later, after they had frequented bars and night clubs to secretly recruit troops. It had taken quite a while even for someone to take them seriously, but in the end they had quite more then a handful of people. Will had especially taken a liking to George Clemens, and Irishman, who used to be a sniper of the British army before it was dissolved by Kira. He was an expert on rifles and pistols.

It had taken them another year to plan this first attempt to have Mikami killed, and it had always been George who would lighten everything up when the men thought it took too long with the plan. Adéle would never say anything, she barely even talked when she was planning, just muttering incomprehensible in French to herself, doing her reckoning.

Will sighed once again and sucked strength from his cigarette as he reached a great place with Kira's statue in the middle. It was completely deserted. He had just gotten reasonings that George had been captured, interrogated but had remained silent, and then he was murdered by Kira himself with a heart-attack. And as though that was not bad enough, it had turned out that that Mikami-character was still alive, and that Kira now knew that there were resistance against him. That would make Adéle's job a lot harder.

He stopped in front of the Kira statue, it handsome face looking contemptuously own upon him with it's gray, stone cold eyes. He felt all his dislike gathering in the chest, all the hatred, and thought for a moment about drawing his pistol, go in there and kill Mikami himself. But he knew that he would not do it. After all, he was not that stupid.

Instead he spit out the fag end with a lump of greasy snot, which landed in Kira's left eye, stickily running down his cheek and into his mouth like a tear of celebral matter. Will turned away with his face twisted in anger, walking back the way he came from. Before sticking his hands in his pockets, he drew a single tear off his cheek, a tear he did not know excisted.