Raito Yagami lay in the afternoon dimness of his apartment, staring at the ceiling. He had just returned from a full day at the University, and didn't yet have the energy or desire to do his homework. It would only take him a minute, but why do it now when he could wait a while? Sighing, the amber-haired boy flopped onto his side and reached for the remote on the side table. He switched the television on to the news and watched blankly as pictures of criminals proceeded across the screen.

Filth.

He hated them, this trash of humankind. Murderers, thieves, rapists… he hated them all. They hurt others and created more evil in the world. They made life harder for everybody and left a lingering fear in their wake. They didn't deserve to live.

That's why…

That's why for years, he had hunted them. From the first time he killed a criminal, it had been an obsession. Two years ago, he had been taking a shortcut home from school when he had come across a young man assaulting a woman in an alley. It had been horrible. She was crying and screaming for help, and the man was just leering at her, pushing up her skirt. Raito had seen red. He had run at the man and knocked him over. The woman had run away, but the man had fought back. He had punched Raito so many times, his vision had begun to blur and he had thought he was going to pass out. Then his hands had found their way to the man's throat and he had squeezed and squeezed, until the man had stopped punching, stopped moving, stopped anything.

Raito had lain in that alley for what felt like hours, just feeling the dead weight of the man on top of him. He had killed someone. He took the man's life away. He was wracked with guilt, crying until he had no more tears. Then he began to think harder about it, and he realized something.

That man was a criminal.

He had tried to rape an innocent woman. He might have even killed her afterwards. It was entirely possible that this wasn't his first crime. If Raito hadn't come along, it might not have been his last.

Raito began to feel better.

He had gone home, explained his bruises away, comforted his weeping mother, and went to his room to think. Finally, he had come to a decision. He hadn't done anything wrong. If he hadn't attacked the man, then the woman would have been hurt. If he hadn't killed the man, Raito himself would have been hurt. He couldn't have done anything else. Death was the only way to deal with criminals like that.

He had forgiven himself with cold, hard logic.

The next time, he had been walking past a club when he saw an older man pull a scantily dressed girl into his limo. She was struggling, and Raito had barely had time to hear the man say an address to his driver before the door had been slammed shut. He had called the police, and taken a taxi to the address he had heard. It was a posh hotel, and the police had already been there. The girl was sitting on the steps, a blanket around her, sobbing. It was too late. She had been taken into the hotel and raped. The hotel staff had assumed she was a prostitute, and the man had threatened to kill her if she struggled. The man had already been arrested. There was nothing else Raito could do, so he went home. A few weeks later, Raito's father had told the family that the man was very rich, and had paid to keep the case out of court. He was free, and the girl was pregnant. Raito was furious.

Days later, he had cornered the man in the bathroom of an expensive restaurant, strangled him, and escaped through the window he had entered by.

He had made a mistake that time.

The owner of the restaurant, Umiko Kaneda, was a pretty wealthy guy himself. He had been smoking an expensive imported cigarette when he had seen Raito exiting the small window of the bathroom. After the police had realized they had no evidence to go on, Umiko had tracked him down himself. He had blackmailed Raito, saying that if he didn't kill one of his crooked competitors, he would tell the police his true identity. A few days later, two more criminals were dead, the competitor… and Umiko. Soon, Raito had become a known assassin and had gone by the pseudonym Light to his clients.

The rest of the world had very different names for him. In Japan, he was known primarily as Kira. Strangely enough, he had gained support from the general public. Because Light refused to kill anyone except criminals, Kira became known as a sort of crusader, protecting the public from evil. They saw him as Justice.

Raito thought of himself that way.

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L ground his teeth in irritation. He sat in the dim light of his workroom, staring at the laptop screen before him. On the screen were the internet poll ratings for Kira. Across the board was an overall approval of the assassin. The world saw him as a champion instead of a criminal. A hero instead of a murderer.

It was not acceptable.

He needed to eradicate this enemy, and fast. He needed his logic to be sure, so that he could bring Justice swiftly and neatly upon Kira's head. Scowling, he opened the files on his computer relating to Kira's past victims. He had received these files a few hours ago from Japan's police force. Maybe there would be a new connection between the victims. His eye skimmed over the page, not seeing anything new. Most of the victims were probably paid hits. All of them had significant numbers of enemies, any of whom could have contracted a hit. All of the victims had different backgrounds. Some were alone at the time of death; some were under police protection… L froze.

Some of them were under police protection.

He pushed a button on his cell phone, and held it awkwardly to his ear.

"Watari?"

"Yes sir?"

"I have new instructions for the UN, to be carried out tomorrow evening. Also, bring the car around. We are going to Japan."

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Raito stepped into his apartment after yet another boring day at University. "I'm home," he called into the emptiness. As usual, there was no answer. To fill up the empty silence, he flipped on the television to the news. Then he went to the kitchen and made himself a bowl of soup. Sipping from his spoon, he read the newspaper as he listened noncommittally to the newscast.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this special report.

Raito glanced up with interest at the nervous looking reporter on the screen.

We apologize for interrupting our normal programming. A live international broadcast from ICPO, Interpol, will now begin.

The screen switched over to a serious-looking, middle-aged man in a sharp suit. He looked into the camera with a sharp intensity.

I am the one person who controls the entire planet's police force, Lind L. Tailor; alias, L. To the murderer who is targeting criminals- this is unforgivable; the worst crime in history.

Raito's eyes narrowed. The man continued.

Consequently, I will catch the ringleader of these crimes, referred to vulgarly as "Kira." Kira, I can imagine what you must be thinking, to do something like this. But, what you are doing is evil.

Raito flinched. "You think I'm…evil…" he mumbled. Then he shot to his feet. "No! I am justice! The man who saves the weak who cower in FEAR of evil! I will create a new world that is everyone's ideal! If you oppose that, then YOU are the one who is evil!"

Lind L. Tailor smiled.

I imagine you are quite angry with me at this point, Kira. However, there is nothing you can do about it. I broadcast this so that you would know that I am on the case. So that you would know how close you are to capture. At this moment, I am under the close protection of the International Police- you cannot reach me. I am safe, and you are not. I look forward to meeting you.

The screen went black.

Raito, his entire body trembling with fury, narrowed his eyes.

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"Are you sure about this, L?"

L glanced over his shoulder at Watari. "Of course I am, Watari. As soon as Kira heard our little broadcast, he will have accessed the Interpol's files. If he has sufficient access to the files, as I suspect he does, then my double will be dead before the night is out."

"Why are we here, if you are so certain? Why put yourself in danger?"

"We are perfectly safe Watari. Kira does not know what I look like, and we are not even in the same building as his target. From this window, we should be able to see anything that occurs in the room we placed the target in."

"Which also puts us in the perfect place for Kira to snipe from, if he wanted to shoot the target."

L smiled. "That, my friend, is an exclusive hotel. It is meant for the richest, most hated people in the world. The windows are made of bulletproof glass. Any assassin worth his salt wouldn't even bother."

"Oh. So we should be able to catch him when he tries to enter the room, then?"

L looked thoughtfully at the room across the street. "No, I should be very surprised if we managed to capture Kira so easily. However, I do think we will be able to gather more valuable evidence."

Watari nodded.

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Light sat quietly in the dumbwaiter, staring through the small crack down the hallway. Dumbwaiters were yet another security risk that most people do not take into account. A few yards down the hall, two guards wait alertly by Lind L. Tailor's door. Any moment now, he would have a free entrance into the hotel room. He picked up the cell phone he bought with the help of a "friend" in the assassin business; it was completely untraceable and no one knew it belonged to him. He quickly called the front desk of the hotel.

"Front desk, how my I help you?"

"This is an emergency!" Light said in a high-pitched whisper. The whisper made him sound more urgent, and would also mask his voice. He might even pass for a girl. "I just passed a guy checking his suitcase… it had a gun in it!"

"Where did you see this man?"

"On the third floor corridor, outside the south elevators!"

"Thank you, where are you calling from? Are you in a safe location?"

"Yes, but…" Light gave a theatrical gasp and ended the connection.

A few minutes later, the guards in front of him got a call on their radios, and ran off towards the elevators. A few more followed from inside the room.

Light smiled and crawled silently out of the dumbwaiter. He slid up to the slightly open door, palmed his weapons, and attacked.

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L knew it had begun when he saw the police force run out of the room. He grimaced when he saw that they had left only two guards behind to guard Tailor.

He scowled when the smoke bomb went off.

It blocked his view completely, and it probably completely disoriented the people inside. Peering through the binoculars he had brought, L could only see vague shapes though the mist. Finally, one of the operatives had the sense to open the window. Slowly, the smoke cleared, and it was clear that Kira had succeeded yet again. The two security operatives were out cold, and Lind L. Tailor lay on the floor, blood pooling around him from a stab wound to the chest.

L seized his handheld radio and began to talk rapidly into it. The security that previously scattered ran back into the hotel room. They took a look around and then began to fan out, looking for the criminal. Others went to block the exits.

Light had already escaped down the dumbwaiter shaft and out the laundry room exit.

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Light got to the next building, a large grocery store, as quickly as he could, oversized coat both keeping him warm and hiding the large bloodstains on his shirt and hands. He ducked into the store's bathroom, switching his bloodstained clothing for clean clothing and washing the blood from his hands. The bloody clothes he tucked into his knapsack. Upon leaving the store, he turned down a small alley and placed the knapsack into the trash bag he brought along for this purpose. He dumped the knapsack in the dumpster, a good half-block from the hotel. He turned out of the alleyway grinning.

He had gotten away with it.

It was problematic, planning this. He had to find out where Tailor was staying, and then how to distract the guards. They would probably try to track his phone call, but he had disguised his voice and cut the conversation too short for tracking. It would be a long time before they pinpointed the dumbwaiter as his point of entry, and even then, he had left no evidence that could be used to track him. He had even made sure that the security cameras in the hallway were conveniently "relocated" so as not to record his approach to the room. The bloody clothes would be gone quickly, as trash pickup in this neighborhood was scheduled for… Light looked down at his watch. Now.

Staring at the watch screen, Light grinned in triumph. This was a difficult job, but he had pulled it off. It was a perfect. Everything had gone according to pl…

At that moment, Light ran into somebody going the opposite direction and fell. He hit his head on the pavement, and blacked out.

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L looked darkly at the young man on the ground before him. How much bad luck could he have in one day? Lind L. Tailor had been killed, and Kira had escaped. Worse, there was little to no evidence as to how the assassin had entered, or how he exited. All they had was a wound, a smoke bomb container, and an untraceable phone call with questionable voice patterns.

Now this.

Two more steps, and he would have been in his car. Instead, he had run right into this… boy. The boy was unconscious. He didn't look as though he needed medical help, but he couldn't leave him here. L could call an ambulance or the police to pick him up, but they would all be needed at the crime scene at the hotel… L sighed.

"Watari…"

"Yes L."

Between the two of them, they managed to get the boy up and maneuver him into the car.

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Raito woke up with two thoughts: he had a pounding headache and this was not his room.

He sat up and looked around. Not a hospital either; in fact, it looked like some sort of hotel room. An unused one- there weren't even any suitcases or clothing in the closets. The door to the hallway was open, clearly an invitation to leave. However, there was another door, one that probably led to the bathroom or to a living room area if this was a suite. Raito pulled himself out of the bed. He crossed to the other door, and opened it. If there was one thing that Raito had in abundance, it was curiosity.

The door led to an open living room area, complete with kitchenette and balcony. Raito let his eyes skim over the room before freezing on the balcony. There was someone over there. The sliding glass door was slightly open, and he could see the outline of a figure through the softly fluttering curtains.

He sidled up to the door. He could hear murmuring from outside.

"There has to be a pattern…"

"Of course there's a pattern," Light said, opening the sliding door. "There's always a pattern. It's a statistical law."

L jumped a little and looked up. "I see you are awake."

"Yeah. Why am I here? I remember running into someone and I woke up here."

"You were unconscious. I brought you here to sleep it off."

"By yourself?"

"You are free to leave whenever you like."

Raito grinned and sat down beside the other man. "I'm Raito Yagami."

"… Ryuzaki."

"Cool name."

"Indeed. Are you a student at the local university?"

"How did you guess?"

"Well, you are too young to be a mathematician, but it isn't every day a high school student quotes advanced statistical theory at you."

"True. But that's extremely advanced for a university student as well."

"Indeed it is."

Raito just looked at him for a moment. The man was slender, and if he stood up, Light guessed he would be tall. He was pale, and his hair was jet black. He would look almost Japanese if it weren't for the distinctly European bone structure and huge black eyes.

Those eyes.

Raito had never seen eyes so black. And worse, they had shadows all around them, as though the man hadn't slept in years.

"I'm sorry if I took your bed. You look tired."

"It's fine. You've only been there a few hours. My eyes always look like this."

"Oh…"

"I'm not insulted."

"Good. Thanks."

"How long are you going to sit here?"

"Oh, I can leave!" Raito went to stand.

"Where did you learn about that Law?"

Raito smiled and sat back down. They talked about mathematics and statistics for the rest of the day.