VIII.

The Illusion of Truth

From his place at the back corner of the stage, Ryuk could clearly see both the crowd, and his primary object of interest: Light. There was no doubt that his time spent on earth so far had been the most interesting of his time as a shinigami, and since he couldn't remember anything else, that counted for a lot, in his opinion.

And really, it wasn't like anyone else's opinion mattered to him...except maybe Light himself. The moment that thought occurred to him he leered grotesquely at the nearest camera, hoping someone was watching closely who could see him. Ryuk had spent centuries ignoring the opinions of his fellow shinigami – he wasn't suddenly going to care about what a human thought!

Ridiculous!

Disregarding his own thoughts, Ryuk pushed his features into an even more gruesome expression and flew right at the camera, right up close until his eye was pressed against the glass of the camera lens

"Boo!"

He chuckled to himself under his breath as he passed back and forth between the cameras. Hopefully somebody good was watching...

"Ahh! What the - !"

In the break room behind the Chief's office, Matsuda yelled and pushed himself back away from the television so hard his chair toppled and he fell over backwards. Grinning horrendously, filling up the whole of the screen Matsuda had just turned on, was a face he had never expected to see again – and saying boo like that!

The shinigami! On television, it is on television! What's going on!

He, as well as the rest of the surviving team members, had assumed that the shinigami had returned to wherever it came from when it had killed Kira. The last few days, the thing had all but disappeared from their minds – as much as any such thing could. It was remarkably easy not to think about when the thing wasn't staring him in the face.

With a shudder, Matsuda changed the channel – and then let out another startled yelp. The shinigami was on that one too! Frantically, one after another he flipped through the display, and finally after twelve or fifteen channels he found one that wasn't showing grinning Death. Matsuda let out a little sigh, and then stiffened again immediately – he could still see it!

Quite suddenly the real implication of what he was seeing came over him, and he blinked quickly, looked down at the remote.

All the channels are showing the same thing! That's why the shinigami is on all of them. But what's so important that it's taken over the whole television?

Ignoring the hovering figure of the shinigami that was moving back and forth between a few different cameras, Matsuda turned up the sound as the view panned across a seething, murmuring crowd. His fingers froze on the remote as he heard the voice of the figure on the stage, an impossible voice – Yagami Light's voice.

He had changed the channel just in time to hear the end of a sentence, and he knew that those tones, the precise and perfect words, could not possibly have been faked or imitated. His ears rang with Light's – no, Kira's – words. His fingers twitched, and then spasmed; he changed channels frantically again.

One of these stations has to have a closeup on the guy who's talking – it can't be, it can't be!

He stopped at Sakura Television's dedicated station, and saw there a face that he had thought never to see again. It was Light, definitely Light; not only his voice, but his stance, his movements, his vast and pulsating charisma.

How? How? I shot him, I shot him, I emptied my clip at him – and that shinigami, I saw it! He wrote Light's name...

"You have been told how I suffered, but it is of no matter; those who seek to harm me can do nothing which is not already written."

Matsuda knew in that moment that he would die, and that there was nothing he could do about it. His attention was momentarily frozen on the television screen.

"We are standing on the brink of a new age, an age of peace, of justice, of enlightenment; we are entering a Golden Age for all mankind. From the ashes of our many civilizations, founded on murder and mistrust, will spring a new world, bright as a phoenix. We will create a world in which our children can learn and grow in peace and safety, we will make an example..."

The sudden sound of loud voices in the hallway brought Matsuda back to himself. The others! If they didn't know, they needed to – now! He dashed out of the break room, around the corner, and down the hall towards the interview rooms.

"Aizawa! Aizawa!"

Aizawa was standing outside the only room in the whole station that actually had a criminal in it – not that the person in question had done much of anything, but the police force was grasping at straws these days. It was, he reflected, one of the side effects of not announcing Kira's demise; lawbreakers were still shy of committing the crimes that could get them killed – or rather, caught.

The young woman sitting in the room in front of him was the first person to be brought in in over a week, and she was a sad case – her file showed that she had been diagnosed as a kleptomaniac, and this was her sixth arrest for petty shoplifting. For a moment, as he leaned his head on his arm and looked through the one-way glass at the frightened, sobbing woman, he wondered if, after all, they had done the right thing in eliminating Kira. It was the first time he had admitted the thought to his consciousness; once there, it spawned a whole army of doubts.

Had they done anything more than ensure the survival of the police? Had they only reacted to a method beyond their moral ability to judge – a method that had urged them to act through visceral fear? Would the world really be better off, without someone sitting in righteous judgment over those who slipped through the cracks of the justice system?

Doubts...doubts...no good now.

Aizawa was not a religious man, but his deepest objection to Kira's claim – Yagami Light's claim – had been the godhood he had taken for himself. Not as a man over other men, but as a god over lesser beings, that was how Kira saw himself.

His thoughts were interrupted by a shout, his own name echoing loudly down the corridor.

"Aizawa! Aizawa!"

Matsuda slid to a stop in the corridor and bent over, panting, one hand on the wall.

"What's up, Matsuda? I haven't seen you this -"

"Aizawa! Go watch the TV! Any channel – they've – it's – it's Kira! Light is alive, and he's got that shinigami with him!"

Aizawa was thoroughly stunned.

"You...what? Matsuda, are you sure?"

"The TV! I saw him myself – it's definitely Kira! Where're Ide and Mogi?"

"They've...they've got the day off..."

Matsuda had already pulled out his phone and was dialing; Aizawa stared at him for a moment, and then strode briskly down the corridor towards the break room Matsuda had deserted. Halfway he broke into a run; he was sprinting when he burst through the half-open door. The television was still on; the channel it was turned to was currently displaying a face he had never thought to see again, in dramatic closeup.

Yagami Light! Kira! We killed you – we defeated you – why are you alive?

Aizawa felt a shiver of fear; quickly, he flipped through the different channels, and finally stopped on one that was rebroadcasting what the major networks had already shown. This shot showed the whole stage-platform, and he could pick out each figure on the stage; most of them he knew – Kira himself, Misa, the unnatural figure of the shinigami, making faces at a camera. There was a man who looked vaguely familiar whose face he couldn't put a name to, but he broke off studying faces to listen to what Kira was saying.

"...we will make an example of evil and expel it from our lives! In the dreams of every people is a paradise lost somewhere in our common past. It is that paradise which I choose to seek hand in hand with humanity; it is that paradise which we will unearth from beneath the black memory of ten thousand years of despair! I ask you, not in my name, but in the name of humanity -"

Aizawa stumbled backwards and put his head in his hands. He could no longer listen, but he couldn't drown out Light's voice. Quietly, his own doubts leapt up again to claim him.

The phone rang four times in Mogi's pocket before he was able to fumble his chopsticks and take-out dinner into one hand so the other was free to answer the phone.

"Mogi here - "

"Mogi, it's Matsuda! Are you alone?"

"Yes, I'm alone. What's -"

"If I tell you, you won't believe me. Go watch the television – every channel is showing the same thing."

"But I was going to -"

"Go watch the television! It's – it's about Kira, Mogi, that's all I'm gonna say. I have to go call Ide – swear to me you'll go see -"

"Alright, alright, I'll stop at home before I go out. I was thinking about going there now anyway."

"Do it."

There was an abrupt click; the line went dead, and Mogi stared at the phone in his hand for a long moment, before he realized soy sauce was dripping down his hand.

"Oh! Dinner, right. But Kira...Kira's dead. What could possibly..."

His thoughts trailed off; he was very confused. Usual Matsuda phone calls were overexcited and easy to dismiss. This one...he had sounded serious, and that in and of itself was a very curious thing.

Kira...Yagami Light.

He made up his mind quickly, and closed up his dinner and put it on the passenger seat. He made his way down the empty streets towards his apartment three blocks away, and it was then that he noticed the streets were empty. No one was walking or driving; there weren't even cars parked on the street.

And I didn't have to wait for my oden...that shop always has a long line.

The silence of the city, previously unnoticed, was now disturbing. He made his way from the garage where he parked his car up to his apartment on the fifth floor without seeing anyone; the hall, too, was utterly silent. He was...unnerved.

Inside, he made his quickly to the television and turned it on. Immediately he was assailed with the sounds of voices, hundreds, thousands of voices. They were chanting for Kira, and he was at once fascinated and disgusted. What was wrong with these people? Kira was a killer, a mass murderer!

And he's dead; somebody's going to have to tell them that eventually...when we can figure out how not to release his name. Or how he was killing.

He switched the channel, and fell backward from his knees onto his back. Slowly, he pulled himself up again. The screen was showing Yagami Light descending from the sky in the hold of that shinigami!

He's dead! He's dead, how could he be – he's dead!

He changed the channel again, but it was worse. The camera of this station had focused on Kira's face in closeup; it was Light's face, unchanged from how it had been just before his death; there was a glint of power in his eyes that had always been concealed before, but now that it was openly showing Mogi could not understand how he had ever missed it. How could the son of such a great man be so evil?

Again, he clicked the remote; Misa, talking. Again, and it was Kira once more, his voice rich and charismatic:

"I ask you, not in my name, but in the name of humanity, to take up my cause – Justice, for those who have suffered at the hands of murderers and rapists, thieves and deviants! Justice, for the ones who have been kept in the dark by those who promised enlightenment! Justice, for every man, woman and child kept in fear or privation by those who promised to govern with equanimity! It is time, my people..."

Mogi sat stunned; he was going nowhere, would see no one tonight. Part of him was afraid; part of him calmly observed that fear was foolish – fear was for the unknown, and it was a certainty that he was going to die.

What was there to be afraid of about that?

Ide's phone only rang once, and Matsuda didn't have to say anything; Ide was already well aware of the developing...situation.

"Matsuda, I'm already watching it. Do the others -"

"I've called Mogi, and Aizawa's in the break room taking it in right now."

"Did anyone think of calling N?"

Ide could have sworn he heard a faint hiccup of laughter from the other end of the line.

"You think he doesn't know? You think we have time to plan anything? You think there's really a point? Light – Kira – he was dead, Ide! Dead, and he definitely isn't now! What could we possibly do to someone like that?"

Matsuda's voice was faintly hysterical, but for once Ide honestly couldn't blame him.

"I don't know."

The blunt, honest answer had the unexpected effect of calming Matsuda down somewhat.

"Listen, Matsuda...chances are, you're right. We don't have a chance to do anything. He knows our names and faces, and we're all going to die whenever he wants us to. Aizawa is at the station with you...where is Mogi?"

"Probably at his apartment-"

"I will go down now to pick him up; we will be at the station in five minutes. No one's on the road, and I have an emergency siren in the trunk. Wait carefully – and stay with Aizawa. Remember, the Death Notes can control behavior. If either of you start acting strangely, perhaps the other will have a chance to stop it. We have the advantage of knowing what's going on, after all."

Ide's calm, deliberate words further calmed Matsuda. Ide heard a couple deep breaths, and then a huff of exhalation.

"Right. Will do. See you when you get here – and be careful."

There was a click as the line disconnected, and Ide got up, put his keys in his pocket, and shut the door firmly behind him.

Chance, good luck, and a relatively long friendship had brought Ide and Mogi to live in the same apartment building – as fellow bachelors, police officers, and admirers of Yagami senior, they had much in common and had had several good conversations over sake during the course of the long, and often profitless Kira investigation.

Mogi was four floors down; Ide took the stairs, made his way down two long hallways, and then pushed open the door into Mogi's apartment – it hadn't even been closed all the way – and found his colleague on the floor staring at the television. It was a bright glare in the darkened apartment that grew brighter as the camera panned over the white-robed crowds pushing towards the edge of the stage platform and then dimmer again as the focus returned to Kira.

"It is time, my people, for us to come together as one united front, for the good nature in the human soul to finally outweigh the bad. Let those who so choose be anointed the Chosen of Kira!"

And though the gathered thousands heard nothing, Ide and Mogi shuddered at the sound of unnatural laughter; they knew to whom it belonged.

"Come on, Mogi. Aizawa and Matsuda are waiting for us at the station. If we are going to die, we should die together – the last four fighters against Kira."

"Yes. Yes, let's do that. You want to drive, or shall I?"

Gathered together, Ide, Mogi, Matsuda and Aizawa were sitting in a semi-circle around the television. They had all seen Light's whole speech now, and as he stepped backward at the end of it there were tears and sighs and shouts and screams of devotion from the crowd that had silenced itself at his merest gesture.

Some of the people were obviously appointing themselves "Kira's Chosen" on the spot; many had fallen to the ground in ecstatic convulsions and there were still people trying to push forward from the sea; none of the four men watching could be sure that there weren't drowned bodies being shoved around amongst those in the deepest water, so many people were screaming and choking in their attempts to get closer to Kira.

Suddenly the shinigami's face was in the camera again; Matsuda let out a yelp and only Mogi's hand on his shoulder kept him from sliding off his chair onto the floor.

"Come on, Matsuda, it's not like you haven't seen it before -"

"I know, I know! It's just when it pops up like that -"

"Well, try to have a little more dignity – we're trying to die like heroes, here."

There was a moment of complete silence, and then the room was full of laughter. After a minute or so the four men turned their attention back to the television; something was happening in the crowd and the camera was swaying around like mad trying to keep track of someone – a woman, it looked like – who seemed intent on rushing the stage.

Light had ended his speech exactly when he had planned, at seven o'clock precisely. Just as he was stepping back, he heard a loud series of shouts from very close to the edge of the platform. The noise from the crowd was changing quickly. There had been a sustained, continual hum, a chant of breathless sound beneath all the other noises of thousands of people crammed together in far too little space. Now that hum was being disrupted; he heard screams, more shouts, and then a loud No!

He could not see exactly what was happening, but Takari could see perfectly clearly – a dark haired young woman, her mouth moving to form words that were lost in the distance between them. As if in slow motion, Takari saw her struggling with one of the men in the thin line of security that Sakura Television had provided. He saw her hands slide around the man, and one of them grabbed something from beneath his shirt.

Time returned to normal speed as the woman swung her hand around and pointed the gun at the stage, at Kira-sama! She pulled the trigger; Takari dove across her path and felt a sharp sting in his chest...and then nothing. He breathed twice; blood flowed from his mouth, and then he was dead.

Light stood totally still, a food behind Takari's fallen body, and did not move as he heard shouts from the guards who had run to take the woman hostage. His eyes glanced down at his watch; it would be 7:02 in ten seconds...seven...five...three...two...one...

There was a great outcry that moved throughout the whole crowd as Masuyo Yori swayed in place, and clutched her chest, and fell down, dead. The gun skittered away from her limp fingers, and the crowd pulled back, leaving a circle of empty space around her and the weapon. The guards who had been advancing stood frozen; Light stepped forward to the edge of the stage.

Immediately, the attention of everyone present was on him again.

"Are there others who would seek to destroy our chance at paradise? Is there another who would like to try to kill me?"

Light heard Misa's indrawn breath from across the stage, but he was not worried. After that obvious display of Kira's power, it was probable that very very few, if any, among the people now present doubted that he was Kira. At the same time, as far as they knew, he and this woman were complete strangers to each other who had never met before this moment. Even her companions were aware that he had only encountered her for the first time at that bus stop, completely by chance.

As he expected, he was answered by complete silence. Wave sounds dominated, and the occasional cry of seabirds. After a moment, he inclined his head.

"Good. This woman was not evil; her lack of belief in the truth of my presence is understandable, but her methods are not easy to forgive. Her life is in her own hands now; if her faith in Me is stronger than her darker nature, she will return."

There was a murmur in the crowd; the chant was returning now, and its pressure was more intense, the words sharper, harder, though softer in volume.

Light stepped across to the side of Takari; his blood was still seeping across the smooth wood of the stage-platform, and Light was careful not to step in it.

" As for you, my faithful servant, sacrificed for my sake – you, too, shall be tested. Succeed, and return to life, one of my Chosen, one of my Favored. Fail, and you will be condemned to Nothingness."

Takari's lifeless body had, of course, no answer; Light stepped backward slowly until he was at Misa's side. She had remained on her knees for some time, and had been startled to her feet by the sound of gunshots; now she was pleased enough to hold onto his arm and stand a little in front of him, glaring around defensively. Now more than ever she wished for shinigami eyes again, eyes that would give her power over anyone...but she had already halved her life twice. She had no way of knowing how much time was left, but a quarter of a normal lifespan – that was bad enough. An eighth...how much was that?

Not much.

She shivered a little, and pressed closer to Light. If he asked her to, she would do it – of course she would. But this time she would wait until he asked – after all, L was dead now, and probably N too...or he would be shortly. Swiftly, she found herself being pulled along to the back of the stage, and then behind the background curtain. Light spoke softly and quickly into her ear, and then released her with a little push in the direction of the hovering production manager.

"Misa, we have done enough for one night. Tell Kanzuka that we will return in the morning to speak to those of my followers who choose to remain; I am leaving him in charge of the actual vigil and he is not to do anything other than guide candle lightings and prayers to Kira."

"Yes, Kira-sama."

She said it loud enough that Kanzuka could hear, and then approached him very fast. Light was pleased; her swift action reinforced that she brought his own words to Kanzuka's ears, and it gave him a few extra seconds to escape. He made his way to the very last trailer and pulled three keys from his obi; one opened the door, one unlocked a drawer in the desk, and the third unlocked the file shield in the drawer.

From inside he pulled out his bag, and his relief was extreme as he felt the Death Note still inside. It had been the greatest risk of the evening, leaving it here, but it had been necessary to bring it with him and he had been unable to find a better place to hide it. Kanzuka had ensured him with a fearful expression that he would have the only keys, and keeping it on his person was far too uncertain...and obvious. Swiftly, while he had the space and the opportunity, Light stripped out of the red yukata, pulled on unremarkable trousers and a pale blue button-down shirt, and packed his bag carefully – white yukata over red yukata wrapped around Death Note.

He watched out the window to make sure no one was watching as he slipped out. Misa was waiting at the border of the dunes where the parking lot started. He almost berated her for not bringing other clothes to change into, and then shrugged. Considering how many white-dressed people were about tonight, he was probably the conspicuous one...and she had done very well, after all.

"Misa, are you ready?"

"Yes – good, come with me, there's something I want to watch."

Misa wrinkled her nose, curious.

"A television show?"

Light's chuckle was low and dark; he was pulling her through the parking lot very quickly, so that she was half-running to keep up with his longer steps. They made it to a very quiet bus stop where not a soul was waiting, and not even a full minute later a bus pulled up and opened for them. Like the bus stop, it was silent, empty; the driver waited for a few seconds, but it was obvious no one else was coming and he drove off quickly enough.

Misa saw no reason not to continue their conversation; she wanted to know what TV show could be interesting enough to hold Light's attention.

"Light, what show do you want to watch so badly?"

Again, Light chuckled; it was not a pleasant sound.

"The American news will be broadcasting something I want to see at exactly twenty past seven. I'm sure you'll want to see it too, Misa."

"Something good?"

Her voice was eager, like a child's.

"Something really good."

A/N: Ta-Da! I'm back! My last summer final was Saturday morning, and voila – a chapter ! You guys should feel lucky, you're the first to get one – all my other fics are still only chapters in progress. I have two weeks off before my new classes start (at least, I hope they start, registration can be a bitch) so I may, depending on how the muses treat me, get off one more chapter before then. Coming Soon: Four Dead Men and the end of N! Also, Getting Back the Death Notes! Much thanks to reviewers:

Zero Panda: Aha! And another update! More Near in the next chapter, I think...but it won't be pretty, oh no!

Umino-gaara: Thanks much, finals successfully passed (I hope, still one left to hear back about...)! Glad you like it; I really really try for original in my stories because it seems like so much fanfiction is just a reworking of the same stuff. I like to think of this more as a...continuation. Like, what really would have happened if the absolute worst thing hadn't always happened to Light, always! More soon!