(brief continuation - more soon)
No human who uses the Death note may go to heaven or hell – that is, when they die, humans who used the death note become shinigami.
There is at the body's disposal a variety of sensory receptors, all comprised of axonal nerve endings specialized in one way or another. These range from tactile mechanoreceptors to visual photoreceptors to pain-sensitive nocioceptors; the Death Note works not by means of one but rather a combination of two types of sensory receptors, these being olfactory chemoreceptors together with vascular baroreceptors. While the baroreceptors – which sense variation in blood pressure – dominate here, chemoreceptors exert a subtle but fundamental effect in the sense that, both evolutionarily and neurologically, olfaction is the sense most closely associated with emotional memory.
This is what happens now, and this is what sends Light ever so subtly into a panic when, upon slipping unto the floor, his hand triggers the lever and latch of a secret compartment in his watch, revealing a seemingly innocuous but nevertheless potent slip of paper which, like practically everything else in the universe, is a source of airborne particles. And, like everything else incompletely sealed away, it hasn't entirely prevented the outward diffusion of said particles – particularly not now that its compartment has been opened entirely.
This, of course, is unknown to Light, L, and most likely anyone and everyone who has ever used the Death Note, but the effect is nevertheless real and potent. Light hasn't touched the paper yet, but he stares down at it in curious alarm. Frighteningly, it almost seems right to him that a slip of paper should be so deliberately hidden away in his watch.
"Ryuuzaki," his voice is hoarse and broken as he pulls himself, naked and wet, from inbetween L's arms, "now. Do it now."
L rises to his knees, and before Light's next words come forth, he has the boy's wrists bound together behind his back.
"Listen closely," Light breathes, "It's true that I'm Kira. And Misa Amane is the second Kira. You have to arrest us both. Separately."
He bites his own lips hard enough to draw blood. L doesn't hesitate, and within seconds he has Light bound and cuffed and, as Light asks next,
"And blindfold me so I can't see. This is especially true for Misa. She can see the names."
Naked as the day he was born, L leads Light, cuffed and bound, back to the cell from which he was released only a week or so before.
"Is there anything else you remember?" L asks, having definitely noticed the open watch compartment but not yet sure whether to take it away quite yet.
Light thinks. "Not so much that I remember as what I can figure out."
"Then you don't remember how you killed them?"
Silence. Of course, L does not believe everything Light tells him, but it's more convincing than anything else he's said because it's in accurate accordance with L's previous deductions, and he plans to give it time. Besides, it was hardly conceivable that deliberately asking to be placed under arrest and surveillance without chance to communicate would help Light and Misa execute some secret plan. L is going to think about this.
The last thing Light says before the beginning of a long silence is cryptic and intriguing:
"If you write it four times," Light murmrs, and L thinks he would be looking directly at him were he not blindfolded, "and you write it wrong--then it's rendered useless."
Rem, of course, is very unhappy, and when at last Light's skin comes in direct contact with the slip of paper in his watch, he understands that there is out there a death God very upset with him and very close to bringing him to an even earlier execution than he is about to receive.
It is Misa, however, whose memory is deliberately restored by virtue of this death God, herself, who asks Rem to spare Light.
They are both now facing the death penalty regardless, and head cocked oddly against one arm, L gazes absently into Light's cell, aware of a change that had taken place and not exactly sure what and how.
(To be continued)