Disclaimer- I don't own Death Note, understood?(I don't own the rule below either, although I tweaked it a bit, so that I can advance my plot line a bit more,k?)

So as not to impact other lives, only the person whose name is written in the notebook shall die. The person's death will not hurt or kill any other living being. This is to ensure that no other person is inadvertently effected.

Chapter 10

Impact

Noriko tried not to completely freak out then and there. She was scared out of her wits at the moment however and not freaking out was getting harder by the second. Her face paled and her eyes widened as she watched the man wave his gun around wildly at the people on the bus.

The man began ranting about money and told the bus driver to call Spaceland. The driver complied and the phone was torn away from him as the call connected. Once he had the phone, the hijacker gave instructions for a woman to bring all the profits from the day before, by car, to a bus stop that was two stops before Spaceland.

Light tapped Noriko softly on the leg. She looked over at him worry plainly written on her pale, beautiful face. He had a piece of paper in his hand that he was trying to show her.

Noriko read the paper carefully, her eyes widening as she scanned the message. It was a plan for him to grab the gun from the hijacker and then pin him down.

"No, Light-" she began in a frantic whisper grabbing on to his arm tightly.

"That's too dangerous, let me take care of it," the man behind them spoke.

Light began to scribble something down on the paper in his hand.

"It's alright, as long we talk quietly he won't be able to hear us over the sound of the engine," the man said.

"Not to be rude, but you have a slight accent. You aren't Japanese, are you?" Light asked.

"No, I'm American. My mother is Japanese though," the man replied.

"Do you have any way of proving you aren't the accomplice to that hijacker," Light asked.

"What, why would-" Noriko began before being cut off by Light.

"It's pretty common, they make you think there's only one guy, but actually he has an accomplice in the back to watch and come to the rescue if something happens."

Noriko remained quiet as she waited for the man to give them some kind of proof. The proof he provided was something she didn't expect.

"Here," the man said as he passed Light something that resembled a wallet.

Light flipped it open and stared at the F.B.I identification card that was inside.

"F.B.I. What's the F.B.I doing in Japan," Noriko said quietly.

"Ok, I trust you. I won't ask what an F.B.I agent is doing on board a bus in Japan though," Light said as he handed the man back his I.d card.

"You have a gun right?" Light asked, still sitting facing forward.

"Yeah."

"So I trust you'll take care of anything that might happen?"

"Yeah."

Noriko sat silently throughout the exchange, watching the hijacker nervously as he stood at the front of the bus.

'What's the F.B.I doing in Japan,' she thought.

She heard a mumbled 'oops' from Light as he dropped a slip of paper on to the floor of the bus.

'The note,' Noriko thought, now beginning to panic.

"Hey you, hold it. What's that paper?!" the hijacker yelled as he approached the back of the bus.

Noriko tried to crouch lower in her seat and pushed herself against the side of the bus trying to get as far away as possible. She wrapped her arms around herself protectively, and waited in a tense silence as the man made his way towards Light.

As the hijacker picked up the note, she heard muffled movement from the agent behind her, but resisted the urge to look over her shoulder and give the man away.

"What's this? Where you're meeting your date," the hijacker snapped, unfolding the note to read Light's neat, impeccable writing.

Noriko sighed in relief before tensing again when the gun was pointed directly at Light. If she had been paying more attention she may have noticed that Light didn't seem at all troubled by the fact that there was a gun being pointed at his head by an insane man who was shaking so bad from what Noriko figured where drug withdrawals.

"Drop something else and I'll shoot ya! That goes for everyone else!" he yelled as he tossed the paper back at Light.

The paper bounced off the seat in front of them and would have landed in Noriko's lap if Light hadn't quickly grabbed it just before it did. Noriko looked at him oddly. He had moved sort of awkwardly to get the paper before it touched her. She also noticed the relieved expression on his face as he grabbed the paper, as well as the strange grin that crossed his face as he placed the paper back in his pocket.

'What was that about,' she thought curiously as she stared at him. The loud voice of the hijacker broke her out of her thoughts a few seconds later and she snapped her attention back to the front of the boat.

"Anybody makes a move and I'm gonna..."

The man trailed off and stared at the back of the bus his eyes widening in fear as he started shouting about a monster. He raised the gun and put his finger on the trigger.

Noriko's whole body went rigid. The man at the front of the bus continued shouting out in fear, screaming obscenities at whatever being it was that only he could see.

'He's seeing things,' she thought, still frozen in shock. 'Someone's going to get hurt.'

"Everybody down," the agent yelled from behind her.

She couldn't move, just stared wide eyed in fear at the man as he pulled the trigger of the gun. She heard the sound of glass shattering as the bullet crashed into the window in the back of the bus, letting in a sudden gust of cold air.

The sudden noise and the sound of the glass shattering caused her to throw her hands up and cover her ears. A sharp pain suddenly shot up her right arm, she cried out in pain just as Light reached up and grabbed her. He pulled her down and put on arm over her, holding her tightly while the hijacker continued to empty his gun at the monster that was tormenting him. When the gun was empty, he dropped it onto the floor and ran towards the front of the bus, yelling for the driver to stop. The driver did as he was told, slamming on the brakes and nearly flipping the bus. They hadn't come to a complete stop before the crazed man was pushing his way through the doors to get off the bus.

Noriko watched as the man stumbled out of the opening doors of the bus, somewhat relieved that the ordeal was over. The screeching of tires on the asphalt caught her attention and she once again looked out the window. She let out an anguished cry, turning her head away from the gory scene outside her window and into Light's shoulder. The hijacker had practically fallen off the bus, right into the path of a mid-size car.

Shaking, she glanced out of the window, only to instantly regret it when her green eyes landed on the mangled corpse of the hijacker lying lifeless in a growing puddle of his own blood.

"Noriko." Light's voice was soft and reassuring. He was trying to get the dazed girl to look away from the grotesque scene just outside while tears fell unnoticed and silently from her eyes.

A piece of the broken window had sliced her arm at an angle from just below the inner area of her elbow to just under her thumb. She had removed her jacket when they had boarded the bus so her black v-neck sweater was now ripped and soaked with her own blood.

Tears streaked slowly down her face as she resisted the urge to vomit at the sight of the bloodied corpse outside of the bus. Her body shook with the effort of trying to regain control over her emotions. At the moment they were all going haywire. She couldn't sort through the thick fog that had settled over her mind. Each emotion pressing in on the other fighting for dominance in the fog.

"Noriko," Light said again, this time shaking her shoulder lightly.

She blinked a few times to clear her eyes of the tears that still leaked from her now dull green eyes. Her head rose slowly to look up at Light who was standing in the aisle looking worriedly down at her.

"Let's go outside, ok, we need to get that cut bandaged."

Her movements felt like they were in slow motion as she nodded and raised her hand to put it into his. She stood up carefully, afraid her knees might buckle under her without warning, sending her crashing to the dirty, glass covered floor. Light wrapped an arm protectively around her shoulders and guided her out of the bus. He gently pushed her head towards his shoulder as they exited so that she wouldn't have to see the corpse that lay just a few feet away.

They walked to the other side of the bus and to the sidewalk where the few other passengers had gathered. Many people were still in shock and not speaking, just staring wide eyed at the bus while others cried.

As they stepped on to the sidewalk, Light brushed some hair from Noriko's tear stained face with his thumb, before trying to get her to look up at him.

"You're safe Noriko, remember I promised I'd never let anything happen to you," Light said reassuringly. He was studying pale face and red rimmed eyes with concern and tenderness, stroking her cheeks calmly with his thumbs.

She found it hard to talk and was only able to mumble his name quietly before burying her head in his chest and holding tightly to his jacket. Wrapping his arms around her, Light held her and let her sob quietly into his jacket.

"Come on. Let's get out of here," Light suggested finally. Trying to gently push her away so that he could lead her away from the area.

"Shouldn't we wait for the police," she mumbled as she pulled away and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.

"Do you really want to deal with more questioning? I think you've had enough excitement for today. We need to get that cut bandaged, it looks pretty bad." He carefully took hold of her wrist to look at the bleeding cut on her arm.

'She shouldn't have been hurt. In the experiments I conducted no one else was ever hurt except for the person whose name I had written down,' Light thought in confusion, staring at the open cut on Noriko's arm.

She winced slightly as he raised her arm, but nodded in response.

"Hey, what happened to that F.B.I agent, he's gone," Noriko asked.

"The police aren't supposed to know he's in Japan so he left, I told him we wouldn't say anything to the police, or my father. So let's just keep this whole ordeal to ourselves, I'm sure you'd rather not talk about it or have to keep answering questions about what happened. Besides if the girls at school found out we were out on a date, you'd probably have to deal with them and their absurd remarks," he said trying to lighten the mood.

"Oh, right," she replied with a sniffle and a small chuckle. "Like I don't get enough trouble from the girls at school, they'd wind up making up some knight in shining armor story and I'd somehow be the bad guy for putting you in danger or something."

They began walking away from the scene of the accident, Noriko leaning against Light as he wrapped an arm around her.

"Wait here," Light spoke up suddenly. Detaching himself from Noriko, he jogged towards a little convenience store.

"But-"

"I'm going to get something to bandage that up. Unless you'd rather go to the hospital and explain it," Light said as he cut her off.

She lowered her head and nodded slightly before Light turned and walked into the little store. He emerged a few minutes later with a bag in his hands.

He walked over to Noriko who was sitting on a low brick wall to the side of the store.

"Come on, there's a park around the corner. We'll go there and clean that up for you."

"Ok," she replied meekly.

Light frowned at her as she stood and began walking beside him, her head bowed and her face a mask of confusion and pain.

'She's really shaken up. Not that I can blame her, but it's like something else is bothering her too,' Light thought.

Noriko chewed on her bottom lip as she followed alongside Light. 'The F.B.I...The only reason they would be here would be because of L and Kira. L did say he could mobilize the police forces in every country. The U.S would definitely help, especially if they think Kira poses a threat to them in any way...But why would there be an agent on the bus...what was he doing there?' Noriko's thoughts revolved around the F.B.I agent and the reasons he would have been on the bus.

"Nori," Light called, concern in his voice, which snapped her out of her thoughts.

"Huh?"

"Take this and go in the bathroom to clean out the cut," he told her as he handed her a bottle of peroxide and pointed to the bathroom.

She looked at the bottle in his hands and hesitated. She really wasn't too keen on the idea of cleaning it out by herself. Blood didn't really make her uncomfortable, but pain did, and she was pretty sure that this was going to hurt. A lot.

Light sighed, "Come on," he said. Taking her other hand in his, he tugged her to one of the bathroom doors.

The lock read vacant so he pushed the door open and stepped into the cramped little room with Noriko behind him.

Motioning for her to stand by the sink, he carefully rolled up her tattered sleeve trying his best not to hurt her. He noticed that she had looked away and was nervously fiddling with her jacket that she had in her left hand.

"This is probably going to hurt," Light warned quietly, looking into her eyes.

She bit her lip and nodded.

A few seconds later she had to clench her teeth in an effort to not cry out in pain as the cool liquid was poured onto the cut. She closed her eyes as tears threatened to pour from them. Her breathing grew quicker as the pain flared up and she tried not to move.

She could feel the strange tingly sensation of the disinfectant bubbling as it cleaned the cut and the coolness of it as it dripped from her skin.

"You ok," Light asked as he began to dab at the cut with a dry paper towel. Wiping away the blood that stained her pale skin.

"Mmhmm," she hummed through clenched teeth.

He then carefully bandaged up her arm while she continued to look away.

"I'm done," he said to her.

She glanced at him then to the bandaged cut on her arm. She noticed that Light had somehow managed not to get a drop of her blood on him. The sweater she was wearing, on the other hand, even though it was black, was discolored in some places by the blood that clung to it. She frowned down at the sweater.

She began tugging the bottom of the shirt up in an effort to take it off. The pain caused by her right arm though was enough to make her wince and nearly give up, until she felt the shirt slowly and carefully coming away from her body.

"Here," Light offered quietly.

"Thanks," she mumbled when he pulled the dirty, torn shirt over her head and helped her get it off her injured arm.

She tossed the sweater in the trash and stood in her silver tank top, luckily the blood hadn't soaked through the sweater and onto the shirt.

He brushed a kiss against her forehead. "Let's get you home, so you can rest."

He smiled at her before exiting the cramped bathroom with her right behind him.

She shivered in the cold, and began to carefully shrug her jacket back on. Light helped her after seeing the difficulty she was having. After she had gotten the jacket on he rested his hands on her shoulders and leaned forward to place a kiss on her forehead.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly.

Noriko blinked and looked up at him in confusion.

"Sorry? For what Light?" she asked.

"I let you get hurt," he replied as he pulled her in to a tight hug while carefully avoiding her right arm.

"You didn't let me get hurt Light. You didn't hijack the bus, or shoot the window to bits. It's not your fault."

He remained silent as he continued to embrace her.

"Light," she questioned softly after a few more moments.

He pulled himself away from her and smiled. "I guess I just feel responsible, I said I'd protect you and you got hurt," he explained, placing his arm around her shoulders.

"It wasn't your doing, don't worry about it, and you did protect me. I could never blame you," she said letting her head rest against his chin.

He put a finger under her chin and tilted her face up to his. "I love you Nori, I won't let you be hurt again. I promise," he said quietly and before she could reply, he leaned forward and caught her cold lips in his.

Noriko gladly kissed him back, the warmth of his lips on hers was like a that first warm day after winter. It was refreshing and it promised more warmth to come.

"I love you too, Light," she whispered breathlessly.

"It's a long walk back home, do you wanna catch the bus back," he asked.

She shook her head. "No, I like walking like this. We don't get much time together anymore and I think I'll take advantage of it for now."

"You don't want to be alone, do you?"

She was silent for a moment, but after a short sigh, she nodded. "Not after that."

"You could have just said that and you can stay at my house for a while before going home, ok?"

Noriko nodded her head in reply.

The rest of the walk was spent in silence as Noriko snuggled against Light and tried to push the events of the day out of her mind. She took comfort in being with Light, and was glad that he had been there for her. It was also good to know he wouldn't constantly bring up what had happened that day, she didn't want to ever think about it again.

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