Point of Succession Chapter 19, a death note fanfic

A/N: FFN has been giving me some headaches and won't let me respond to all my reviewers. So I'm sorry if I've been unable to get back to you. I really enjoy responding to your guys' comments and I'm looking for a way to do that. Again, I apologize for not being able to respond and thank you so much for your critiques, comments, questions, and support. I do really appreciate it.

As for the delay in this chapter, I've pretty much been cultivating plot bunnies, feeding them carrots and cleaning up after their messes as they keep multiplying. XD It's not that I haven't been writing fic, I've just been writing a bunch of different things, none of which are finished as more ideas keep streaming on in. So, expect to see some ficlets popping up over time from now on.

Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note and consequently I am not making any money off of this work.

Chapter 19

The bed was soft, larger than the one she had at home, perhaps even larger than her parent's. It was ornate too, wrought iron bed frame mimicking vines running up four wooden posts, each post resting at the corner of the bed. The sheets were plush, a deep burgundy that reminded her of the wine she'd snuck a taste of at her father's last work party. But this was nowhere near as happy an occasion. Instead of bunches of drunk business men, there was only her, balled up in the corner furthest from the bed. A television set was on, stationed within an entertainment center opposite the bed, Akazukin Chacha playfully dancing over the screen. Despite Red Riding Hood's clumsy spell work, Sayu could not bring herself to watch the show, she couldn't bring herself to look at anything but her feet.

A shadow danced across the light, orange walls of her prison suite, signaling the opening of the artfully carved wooden door. The door was locked most of the time, save for when someone came to give her food. But she never ate. She'd rather starve than give into the hospitality of her captors.

An elder woman entered the room and glanced around, eyes widening once she saw where Sayu had crammed herself. "Child," the woman snapped. "There is no point to us kidnapping you if you refuse to eat!" She was the same woman who always came, wrinkled face suggesting a beauty prior to her aging, but now the woman was nothing but a sour disposition who delivered food in Jimmy Choos.

Sayu curled up further into herself, burying her head into her knees. The tears had stopped falling three days ago. She didn't think it was possible to run out of tears, but she had, and her eyes ached from it. The desire to sob was still there, poking at her gut with a rusty needle, the metal reacting to the acid of her empty stomach. But she couldn't, no salted water ran from her irises, she was a dry desert, lips chapped, mouth craving for liquid, skin rougher than sand paper, and her eyes had no tears.

The woman stalked over to her and sat before Sayu, mirroring the young girls huddled pose. The gilded platter rustled softly as it was placed on top of the thick Persian rug. A crystal bowl filled with Udon and a porcelain cup of tea decorated the place setting. Sayu stared at the tray, wishing there was more than just food separating her from the foul woman hovering over her. Soup didn't make for much of a shield.

The woman sighed and lazily began spinning the Udon ladle around the soup. "You know what happens if you don't eat darling?" The woman asked, dark, straight hair cascading over her shoulder in a lackluster curtain. The voice the woman employed was kind, gentle, the type of voice a mother used to coerce a child into eating their vegetables. But Sayu knew any maternal instinct the woman displayed was a fabrication.

A middle aged hand reached out, petting Sayu's hair. "Sweetie, do you know what happens if you don't eat?"

It hit Sayu rather abruptly that the woman wasn't going to leave soon. Probably not until she ate the Udon. Having a half starved hostage wasn't going to bring ransom prices up, and if she died it would only be worse. A hiccup shot up her throat suddenly as the thought of her withered body took form, her family huddled over a grave, a picture frame with her too young face decorated by chrysanthemums and lotus flowers. Her mother, father… her brother… She didn't want to die. She didn't want to be here. And she didn't want to be near this woman anymore.

"I want to go home…"

The woman's hand stopped its petting motion, stilling over Sayu's head. "What?"

Eyes wide with fear and pleading, it was the most undignified Sayu had ever felt. "Home," she repeated softly, voice scratchy from lack of sustenance. "I want to go home. Please, please let me go home."

"Oh sweetie," Sayu flinched as the woman's manicured nails scratched roughly against her scalp, jerking her head upwards. "You can't go home if you won't eat!" And Sayu was jerked forward, suddenly falling over the soup and tea, hot liquid splattering over her clothing and scalding her skin, forcing a dried out moan past chapped lips. "Because when you don't eat, you die!" With that, the woman was up, more agile than her age made her appear, dragging Sayu by her hair and throwing her onto the ground in the center of the room.

Sayu rolled over the floor, whimpering, but still no tears came forth. She could see the bright colors of animated cartoons flashing behind the hair that had covered her face, a high pitched squeal breaking through the television's softened tones. And then a set of expensive shoes straddled her head and she was flung to her feat. The woman was stronger than she looked, faster than she looked, and it all made Sayu's head spin.

Nothing like this had happened before. In one week she'd been held captive, hostage, kidnapped, stolen, but never manhandled like a sack of potatoes. Treated like garbage, a nothing, a lost coin that was worthless on its own. Her kidnappers had never made her feel worthless. There had only been the rational fear that she would never go home again, and that had been why she cried, why she lost her tears. But now, now the feeling was so very different.

Now she was actually afraid of the people that had taken her.

Hair was brushed back from her face, revealing wide eyes to the woman standing over her, pulling on her hair to keep her upright on her knees. The woman leaned over and brushed, sticky, gloss covered lips over Sayu's cheek and the young girl couldn't contain the whimper. She shuddered against the hot, minty breath running down her neck, wanting nothing more than to shut her eyes and block out what she didn't understand. Because she couldn't comprehend what was happening. She'd done nothing wrong. She'd been a good child, she listened to her mother and father, she ate her peas and corn, she cleaned her room and did her chores, so why was this happening to her?

The woman seemed to sense the questioning monologue running through Sayu's eyes, and it made her grimace. Face morphing into something ugly no amount of makeup could cure, cold fingers pinched Sayu's chin and held her head straight at the television set while crimson lips spoke harshly into her ear.

"If you don't want to eat," the woman said lowly, "then you must want to die." Fingers scraped down Sayu's neck, a knife was pulled from the interior of the woman's jacket and suddenly Sayu was able to cry again.

"Oh my god," she shuddered, tears leaking down her face, endless streams pouring from her freshly torn tear ducts. "…." The one word mantra rushed off of her tongue, wide eyes trained solely on the tool that could slit her throat.

Swiftly the room became stifling, hot and humid with the roughness of her sobs, body jerking with the motion of her heaving lungs and blurring vision. Scalding fingers ran down her throat, pulling her chin up until she lost view of the television set, nails pressing little crescent moons into her skin. The whimpering never stopped, her pleading never stopped.

"Please please, oh my god… please please please… please…"

Soft laughter filtered through Sayu's violent cries as lips pressed against her burning, tear soaked cheek. "Please what sweetie? Please what? Let you go?" The woman's laughter became sharper than the dagger she pressed against Sayu's stomach. "There is no point in letting you go if you starve yourself to death. Did you calculate that in with your rampant pride?"

Blood blossomed through the fabric of Sayu's shirt and a hallowed scream erupted from the young girl's chest. There was no break between her tears now, just a steady rush of salted water, warmed by the fever rising in her head. No end, no stopping, just the continuation of pain as the knife drew a clean slash over her chest, ripping her tattered clothing open to let the blood flow freely. The rug was stained beyond repair so she began to struggle.

Everything was suddenly louder. Her heart pounded like a wild animal wanting to burst through the bars of a cage that was her ribs. The television was strident, large screen glaringly bright against the warm glow of the chandelier hanging daintily over Sayu's bleeding form. Her hearing was growing more acute as more blood ran down her stomach, pain drowning out all her other senses. The cuts weren't deep, shallow, but her skin was still open, oppressive air brushing against it and pulling the blood from her body.

She felt lightheaded as she thrashed, broken fingernails clawing viciously, the waving of her head, pulling against the tight grip exposing her neck, it made her brain swim. She didn't understand anything beyond the pain and the laughter of a magical girl on a television screen. She didn't understand what she'd done wrong, who these people were, why they had taken her. She was just a girl, a stupid, little girl.

Her cries were no longer desperate, no longer coherent, just a simple mass of unintelligible syllables strung together with nothing but trepidation and agony holding them in the air. Sayu was turned backwards and the knife drew a steady line up the middle of her chest, silver painted with matted blood, scalding and cold all at once, she screamed. Terror, poignant, curdling terror ricocheted around the room, seconds later accompanied by the biting laughter of an unhinged, middle aged woman.

"Oh sweetie," the woman stroked Sayu's cheek, releasing her hair, watching the girl's head swing forward in a mess of panting delusions and rivers dripping from her eyes. "I can end that for you, just look at the screen and I can give you what you seem to so desperately want. And you won't have to starve to get it."

Wide eyed smiles assaulted Sayu's blankly terrified gaze as she obeyed the woman's voice, trembling, blood running through her veins in a painfully swirling motion of harsh anxiety. It was like the liquid wanted to escape her body. Sharp, pointed, the dagger lazily ran across her throat and Sayu's lungs stopped working, her heart stopped beating, breath no longer came.

The woman purred. "Just watch the show and you won't feel anything more."

It was a flash of silver just beneath her field of vision and the television roared. "LOVE, COURAGE, AND HOPE!"

The knife clattered to the floor, sliding through the puddles of blood with a sickening 'smack.' The body clutching Sayu shuddered, a chocking gasp struggling to claw its way from the woman's throat before hands, suddenly colder than ice, fell away, releasing Sayu. She hit the floor heavily, blinking back the confusion and alarm. Something was wrong, everything suddenly felt so much worse, which was saying a hell of a lot considering she'd been about to have her throat slit opened. But things were wrong, out of place, dark.

She crawled to her knees, turning, preparing to fend off a deeply outraged woman, and her insides turned to granite. Dead. The woman. Dead. Three words, those three words ran through her mind with all the consistency of sludge in a dying bird's intestines. And then she was gaping, gasping, sobbing violently, laying on the soiled floor in her own, rancid body fluid.

A hand fell to her head and she latched onto it, clutching the smooth skin, crying into it like a napkin that smelled of blackberries and cigarette smoke. The scent, whoever it was, she needed it, needed something. Helplessly, not willing to believe in reality anymore, wishing more than ever for an end to the nightmare, she clutched at the offered hand, burying her head into the leg of whoever the hell she was crying over. Brokenly, a thank you sobbing from her lips for reasons she didn't even comprehend, she glanced up into the cool, blue eyes of a boy with a black notebook in hand.

And the television blared. "PRINCESS HOLY UP!"

Light kicked a stray pebble across the green-lit hallway, mentally cursing L as he stalked towards the exit. This was stupid, this was unreasonable, this was only going to end in pure disaster. But, as always, L didn't quite see things that way. So he'd gone and concocted the most ridiculous plan Light had ever heard of. If there was one thing to be said about the Greatest Detective in the World, he had balls of fucking steel. There was no other way L could prepare himself, mentally and physically, for what he was about to do.

And yet, what irked Light the most was that L had not asked if Light was okay playing the role he was about to play. The detective had merely assumed that, because Light had barged into the carpeting store and saved Matt's ass, that Light would be perfectly okay with once more covering Matt's darling, pink haired ass.

But, at the very least, he'd be there with L, covering his ass as well. Light thanked the world for small favors, even though he knew there was a very small chance L was coming out of this in one piece. That was just the kind of monster Beyond was. And, of course, there was a newfound paranoia regarding L's well being that Light was contending with. Factoring that into the equation made objective thought… difficult.

Another stone kicked its way down the hall and Light watched it clatter away into the darkness. Checking his watch he sighed and took a turn down a corridor bathed in an unsightly red glow. B had to be watching. B had to know. It was foolish to think otherwise, so Light didn't even know why they were trying. There was no guarantee Beyond didn't know. Of course, as L had stated earlier, there was no guarantee that B did know. And they'd been pretty good about the hiding, Light had some fairly nice bruises along his arms and chest to prove that. Ammo wasn't exactly a lightweight object when it came in crates large enough to fit a small giraffe. And getting it into the tank… that had been interesting.

The exit sign loomed in the darkness, letters contrasting deeply with the red flood lights, and Light pushed his way through the double doors into the Laser Tag arena's front lobby, which really looked no different than the rest of the play pen, all fake rusted walls, caution tape lining the corners, with a dull, institutional yellow glow bouncing through the air like a wraith moving just below the speed of light. Without even pausing to glance at the rows of firearms he'd set over the ammunition counter he pushed through the doors and onto the cloud covered street.

Fuck this was an obvious plan.

B had to know they were there…

He glanced at the watch falling down his wrist and heaved another sigh. Pulling his phone from his pocket he dialed Watari and through up a prayer. Light wasn't one to ask a higher power for assistance, but today, he figured, was a good day to start.

Watari pushed Matt through the hotel parking garage, which seemed to sparkle almost as much as the hotel lobby. Bell boys and valet service stood against the brilliantly painted walls but Matt noticed none of them. He was too busy focusing on the two screens unfolded before him, poking at the moving, digital characters with a silver stylus, trusting Watari not the steer him into a wall as Near had done only minutes previous.

Matt wasn't going to be talking to the albino anytime soon, and the glare arched against his eyebrows was proof enough of that face.

Coming to the obnoxious car that Matt was ashamed to say matched his hair, Watari opened the pink van door for the boy and followed him inside. "You know… Near does have a point."

Matt sprawled over one of the white leather car seats, kicking his boots up onto the small table bolted to the center of the van. "Yes, but he could have made that point without shoving me into the door jam. But whatever. He hijacked my laptop and won't give it back. I take it L gave him an assignment?"

"If he did I didn't hear about it."

"And you're supposed to be our guardian," Matt grimaced at the screen. "Where is L anyway, I haven't seen him or Light since yesterday afternoon." That little factoid brought some rather disturbing images to Matt's mind, but he pushed them out as the sounds of a screaming Witch demanded fifty five percent of his brain's attention.

"He and Light have been at the Bunker," Watari answered from the front seat, switching the van into gear and backing out of the parking garage.

Pulling onto the street, the Pink van attracted a series of stares from the hotel staff, as well as random pedestrians, but soon blended into London's mid morning traffic. Matt pulled down the van's window drapes, blocking the people and noise from view with a noncommittal huff. "More surveillance? Isn't that what we're doing today?"

"No, they were making preparations."

The game shut off. "Brief me now Alfred."

Watari's head twitched upwards to view Matt from the review mirror. "Alfred?"

"Yeah, you know, because you're the Alfred to L's Batman," Matt shrugged sheepishly. "Now tell me what's going down today. L said nothing about a plan or anything, so I'm assuming this was a fairly recent development."

Wrinkled hands tensed on the steering wheel, but from the back of the van Matt saw nothing but Watari's kindly expression. "My hope is that nothing "goes down" today, but L's been preparing for a rather different scenario. You'll find, upon arrival that the arena is no longer suited for the weaponry provided."

Matt's brow furrowed until he realized exactly what was being implied. "The fuck is L thinking!" the teen exclaimed, pulling his goggles down over his eyes. "Yeah surveillance sucks but he's seriously just going to spring on me that fact that I get to fire a gun at Beyond fucking Birthday now?."

"Surveillance only "sucks" because you lack discipline," an emotionless voice echoed through the car speaker.

"Says the kid who whined about field work all of yesterday," Matt shot back at the air, scoffing over Near's proclamation. "Either way, I do get a gun this time right?"

"Yes, you get a gun." Watari still held the boy in his vision through the review mirror, concern being rapidly written into the wrinkles along his forehead.

A frown turned the pink haired teenager's lips downward, the memory of trepidation and B's crawling form had not yet reached its expiration date in Matt's mind. "Damnit," Matt hissed, punching the side of his fist into the seat. "I'm not prepared, or ready, and L is a bastard. When was this decided?"

"Yesterday evening, after I dropped Near and Mr. Yagami off at the hotel," Watari said, the worried edge in his voice still present. "You can do this Matt."

Green irises made contact with Watari's own eyes in the mirror, surprise flecked throughout. "What?"

Watari sighed, focusing his gaze back on the road though his mind was still very much centered on the child he was transporting. And that really was just it. He was driving a child, precious cargo. But a child with a mind of brilliance, who could strategize and problem solve. The elder inventor couldn't help but think that what he and L were about to inflict upon the boy was very much a necessity in terms of Matt's mental development. Yet, there was always that small portion of him that wondered… "You can do this Matt. I have faith in you, and so does L."

Gaping, Matt let his eyes fall to the floor of the van, checkered black and white like an old diner, and traced the geometric pattern carefully. He never spoke up, never made any inclination, the hotel walls were sound proof, so nobody heard in the middle of the night when sleep actually claimed his mind. Dreams were meant to keep the human mind from insanity, occupy it, assist it in processing information. But there was a fine line between the dreams that helped and those that ravaged. Matt had taken a flying leap over that line days ago.

Fingers racking over his leg…

Cool laughter burned at his ear drums…

The tip of a knife at a toddler's foot…

Blonde…yellow.

But L had a plan, something to maybe, finally, draw this all to a close. Sear the edges of the frayed ribbon so they no longer looked like such a mess.

Funny how that thought was no longer as comforting as it had once been, as it had been an hour ago when there in fact had been no plan.

His eyes squeezed shut and Matt held in the shiver. It was more than slightly pathetic. He wasn't in any state of danger at night, under the covers, clinging to a pink PSP. He'd never tell. It was a secret, a shame that could not, under any circumstances, be voiced. Like cutting, driving a butcher knife down the river in a bathtub. Like throwing up the contents of one's stomach into the porcelain throne because eating was forbidden. He felt nothing but disgrace in face of his own, shoddy, mental fortitude.

As a child of Wammy's, the inability to deal was unforgivable. So Matt repressed the shiver, shut the images into a box, and prepared himself to face his nightmare on the planes of reality.

Eight minutes later Near decided that Matt's pensive wallowing was unproductive. "Your unease suggests that you are no longer confident in L's abilities."

"And you are?"

"I'll admit, I was worried earlier given his attachment to Yagami. But he has since assuaged my fears."

A pink, bedazzled PSP (he was never letting Linda near his electronics again) came out of his pocket, while he threw the 3DS onto the small table in front of him. "And how did L do that?" Rapidly he pulled up some Korean game that he no longer remembered the name of but was more kickass than guitar hero, mainly because the music was more techno than old school rock.

"I am not at liberty to say."

Matt missed a beat and glanced up with an internal growl, trying to find a speaker that he could punch or destroy and thus make Near's bodiless voice disappear.

"Now Near," Watari cut in from the front. "It is impolite to inform people of something when you know you cannot give them all the details."

"Ah, my apologies Matt. But as we are both candidates to be L's heir, I believe you'll understand why I cannot divulge information to you." The voice was automatic, robotic, and it had Matt picturing cylons with only a laser, running back and forth across their face, for an eye. Eerie as fuck image.

He didn't think Near understood exactly how his statement could be taken, and had he been anyone else, namely Mello, the van would have been pulled over and Near would end up with his face smothered into the carpet, purple bruising contrasting against his paler than normal skin. But the kid was more socially awkward than a beaded, animal keychain, so Matt took it with a grain of salt and reminded himself that Watari was in the van with him. Any violent or crude behavior would be met with punishment, and so Matt stayed in line.

"Yeah Near, I get it," he spoke to the van, eyes on the harsh blinking in front of him. "Worry not little lamb."

Light leaned against the trunk of the car he'd rented for L casually. He'd been all for something silver and low key, a vehicle that blended into the pavement. L, however, had opted for something slightly more… ostentatious. The GranTurismo Range had turned heads across London, and Light swore he'd seen drivers go past them twice, just to see the car one more time. Even more unfortunate, comfort did not come standard with the carbon fiber sports car, the thing was built for speed, not a drive down gravel and pothole infested side streets. On the other hand, the trunk fit a surprisingly large arsenal, and for that Light was thankful.

Arms crossed, brow irately scrunched up, the twitch could not be suppressed when Light finally saw a pink truck rise over the horizon line. For a detective who lived in the shadows, his cars certainly cried for attention. Through the windshield he could see Watari's eyebrow raise questioningly at what Light was leaning against, but the profiler just shook his head, too exasperated to actually comment as Watari pulled in beside him and rolled down his window.

"Sometimes I just don't know what to do with that boy," the elder gentleman commented fondly.

At that moment Matt disembarked from the L-mobile and openly gaped, like a two year old who'd learned that not only would Christmas be celebrated in December and July, but also May and October. "Can I drive it?" the teen asked, looking as if he wanted to bow down before the car and worship its very existence.

"You have a permit?" Light drawled.

Matt actually pouted at that. "No. But considering what I'm about to walk into I think I deserve a joy ride."

"How about I just give you a .45?"

Grimacing, Matt took the offered firearm and tucked it into the back of his jeans. "So what are we doing? Alfred here didn't actually tell me what the plan was."

"Plan?" Light raised an eyebrow. "We go in, we shoot, we pray to God, Buddah, Allah, and the Candyman that L doesn't die."

"Uh huh…" Matt didn't even try to hide his skepticism. "And the reason no one is actually here?"

"They're not open in the middle of the week," Light said flippantly, because those business hours weren't strange at all.

"I take it you're not too thrilled about any of this?"

Running a hand through his already mussed up locks, Light scowled. "Watari will be on the roof of a nearby building, our main objective is to get B outside."

"And then what? Watari's going to blow his head off?"

"No." The inventor pulled a black case from within the van and popped it open, showing the contents to Matt. Eight vials, each with a yellow tinged liquid inside, were nestled into the case. "Tranquilizers. We want Beyond alive after all."

Because they still didn't know where Mello was. Fuck, they didn't even know if Mello was still alive. And fuck if he needed to stop thinking like that, the worst case scenario. Really, when had Matt's indifferent optimism gone out the window? Probably about the same time his nights of twelve hour coma bliss and secret cigarettes had gone. Actually, the cigs he'd lost when he'd been herded into a London hotel room with Near and placed under Watari's watchful gaze. That'd teach him to stop taking Roger for granted and cussing him out.

Pink hair ruffled in the breeze, the scent of rancid water coming up from the Thames and making a home in Matt's nostrils. "Simple enough, right?" He said with a smile.

Light tilted his head in agreement before turning away with a tight nod at Watari. Gravel crunched beneath his feet as he tried his hardest not to hurry, he needed to stall, not rush, but keep himself from actually entering the arena. It was difficult, harder than it should have been, forcing the pace of his legs to move only slightly faster than a slug. Nor did it help that Matt seemed to be in a hurry, pink mop flashing past, almost jogging to the arena. Time seemed to work against him, and in what felt like only a matter of seconds he was back at the steel doors, pushing them open.

First thing Light noticed upon stepping inside, the firearms he laid over the ammunition counter were gone. Second thing he noticed was the door behind him clicking shut and the audible hiss of an automated lock sliding home.

There went the bait.

"All by myself… don't want to be, all by myself…"

A very cross eyed glare fixed itself onto the phone Mello had been staring at for the past twenty four hours straight, ringtone raping his already dwindling sanity. He had half a mind to simple stomp on the phone, maybe make that a new hobby as there was nothing else in this goddamn hotel for him to do. So he'd stomp on his phone, and then he'd stomp on B's, that way no one would be able to call the stupid, motherfucker Darling. And well he was at it he'd rip that taunting game bored to shreds.

Problem solved.

"Don't want to be all by myself anymoooooooorrrrrrreeeeeee…."

Mello's eyebrow twitched and he picked up the phone. "You know I had this thing on vibrate."

"I reprogrammed it." The voice was soft, fuzzy, unclear reception or done purposefully, Mello hadn't a clue. But it made listening to Beyond's Darling difficult.

Tensely, he pressed the phone closer to his ear. "How the fuck did-"

"I hacked the carrier and made some changes to the phone settings from there. You're a genius, you should have guessed."

"I don't guess, I deduce."

"Ah, I see. A nonconformist then."

Mello blinked, twice. "The fuck is that supposed to mean?"

Laughter came through the phone, making the speaker pop and crackle like rice cereal. "Children who use coarse language I find are largely unimaginative."

The tension in Mello's spine tightened, more than lamb intestines on polished, hollow wood. Had he more strength in his left hand the phone would have snapped in half. Suddenly, he was pissed, and something about the white hot anger just made him feel a hell of a lot better. It was almost as divine a feeling as the high he received from the chocolate bean. "I'll have you know I possess a perfect imagination, and at the moment it's toying with images of you, a machete, and a garrote."

There was a slight pause on the other end of the line before, "I see you've been spending a lot of time with B… his influence is unmistakable."

"Shut up." There was no influence. The influence was absent; it had taken a vacation, booked a trip to Medellin where it had been viciously murdered by Colombian drug lords because Mello had snapped his fingers and ordered it to happen. There was no influence.

"You don't like being compared to him?" Darling asked, amusement Mello really didn't appreciate flecked throughout his soft voice. "Believe me, it is a compliment of the highest caliber."

"Bastard had me shoot the balls off a child snatcher," Mello deadpanned.

"That, I think was more for the benefit of his… infatuation… than you. Though I did read about it in the paper and I'll admit, I was highly amused."

"You're both sick."

"You liked it," Darling snapped back, almost as if he'd been waiting to say the words. "But we digress. It's Beyond's job to play therapist. If we start talking about this I'll have to charge you four hundred American big ones… per hour."

Comical, darkly comical, Mello thought, that he was angrier than he'd ever been before, the time Matt fed his chocolate to a crying two year old notwithstanding. Yet, the conversation was civilized, his cool was being kept and he had no idea why. Already the gears in his mind had been turning, oiled to move at a steady beat of production. He was mad, teeth grit, but he was level, and that cold feeling of control, of being in control of himself, he rather liked it. If only he could extend it beyond his own flesh and through the cell phone in his hand.

"I thought I was supposed to call you," Mello stated dryly, shifting the subject.

The blonde practically heard the shrug over the line. "You we're taking too long."

"I called yesterday and you didn't pick up!"

There was a pause, an uncertain pause, which buzzed over the line. "…he actually left yesterday?"

Darling sounded unsure, and not wanting to give way to his own uncertainty Mello responded nonchalantly. "Yeah, he was gone for hours, came back sometime this morning, played with is game bored, and then left." The teen paused to pick at his half eaten chocolate bar, staring at the cardboard box filled with several over slabs of sweet cocoa. "He also brought me chocolate. Why, have you lost him?"

"Beyond has one job right now, and getting it done is all that I really care about." The reply was clipped with exasperation and a small amount of aggression. Mello ate it up.

"Whatever he's doing, I take it he's not doing it as well as you'd like."

Laughter. Cold, vicious, laughter. The sound cut with the intensity of a wire whip. "No no. What he's doing, he does it a little too well. But I don't think you're ready to know about that yet Mello."

And there it was, the opening just big enough for one innocent kid to step through. "What if I wanted to help?"

"Dirty little liar I would call you." Darling laughed again and Mello heard the voice growing just past the realm of a whisper. Did that mean he was doing something right? Or was he just royally screwing this conversation up?

"None of us are doing this because we want to help."

"Then why are you doing this?" The blonde flipped a piece of chocolate into his mouth, corner of the bar stabbing against his tongue. "Kidnapping me, killing random people?"

"That's just Beyond, not me." The distinction left no room for argument, though Mello already had his opinions on that matter. "It's his way of achieving an end," Darling admitted.

Mello went for the obvious answer, the one that scratched the surface. "L?"

Silence, and normally Mello would count that as an admission of guilt, but in this context, he wasn't too sure. "Is L usually the goal?" Darling asked, a smile in his voice.

"I think he's a product of your goal."

There was another pause, this one pregnant with soberness and something duller than a butter knife. "Hm, Beyond's done well with you…" The declaration seemed almost regretful.

In Mello's professional opinion, Darling was a darling little fool.

Then came a question Mello hadn't expected, not from the orchestrator, the person holding Beyond blood crusted leash. "Would you really want to help me Mello?"

"You haven't told me what you want to do." He shot it out harshly, acidic sarcasm off the tip of his tongue.

Darling responded in kind. "But you know what I want to do."

He did. It was obvious in the way a horde of zebras stood out in the midst of a burning savannah, the illusion of something obscuring the real truth. Mello knew what Darling wanted to do, despite having no clue who actually existed behind the term of endearment, a perverse play on affection. He could hear it in the speech pattern, the self confident, self loathing lilt. Mello knew that voice. Near knew that voice. Matt knew that voice. It spoke of an orphanage, of genius climbing towards the top, hating what you had to do to get there, the pressure and the grief, but craving that moment in the spotlight more. Because winning outweighed everything else. The voice was pure Wammy. Every child who'd passed out on one of the orphanages mattresses, exhausted from endless studying, crying themselves to sleep because they knew they wouldn't be good enough for tomorrow, every Wammy kid spoke like that. Behind closed doors. That was there language.

So yeah. Mello knew what Darling wanted, it was what they all secretly wished for, and it sure as fuck had nothing to do with the twelfth letter of the alphabet. Chances were L wanted it too. They all wanted to see the demise of what had created them.

"Something like that," Mello spoke honestly, gravely, tongue sharper than the point of needle, "You'll die trying."

And Darling laughed again, at the one thing Mello still didn't understand. "I'll dye achieving Little Dear, because that's what it's going to take."

"What are you doing?" Giovanni looked over Naomi's shoulder, watching her play with the image on the computer screen. Clutching the empty Styrofoam cup in his hands he blinked back the urge to pass out into oblivion on his boss's desk and squinted into the light of the monitor. "That can't be legal…"

Naomi scoffed, bringing her own cup to her lips only to find it equally as empty as Giovanni's. With a stern sigh she set the useless thing down. "I called in a favor. The images came from London's U.S. embassy. At most what we're doing is a little shady, but how is that any different from when we started working this case?"

"This isn't a case, this is you stalking Sayu Yagami from the other side of the world and using government resources to do so." How sad was it that he didn't even have the energy to deadpan that response. It was four in the morning, the office was a mass of shadowed blackness mixed with emergency lights and the city would wake in about an hour. Yet he had not slept. Knowing Naomi wasn't going home, not until she got her answers, until every piece of paper headed with the Yagami name had been read through, he wouldn't leave until she did.

Seven hours after making that decision, it finally looked like Misora was getting somewhere.

"I'm investigating her fiancé actually," the dark haired woman said, furiously clicking through street photo after street photo. It was amazing how many traffic shots were taken in a day, and all from a single vantage point.

Giovanni stared harder at the screen, trying to discern people from motion blur, but his exhausted mind was making the task difficult. "Why?"

"A hunch."

His yawn was lost in the glare he threw at her. "Naomi."

The woman sighed, turning away from the images she'd had emailed to her to face her subordinate and friend. "You wouldn't understand. You're a man."

"I'm also out of coffee."

She laughed, no amount of fatigue present in her demeanor, and Giovanni found himself, once more, admiring his superior.

"Think about it," she said. "A girl, kidnapped, who somehow, over the course of her kidnapping, meets this boy under the alias Attach. She was kidnapped by the same criminal organization the family had ties to after all. Not that big of a stretch. And then, once she's home she repeatedly runs away?"

He blinked at her. "Are you telling me this is all some overdramatic, Romeo and Juliet drama?"

"Perhaps… But I've other theories too." Theories, she thought, all revolving around Light. Gut instinct had driven her original mind set, as well as her desire to not loose Light as a member of her team. She'd never tell him, but as soon as he'd joined, her success rate in apprehending criminals had gone up, way up. That had been the original intention behind prodding, to keep Light Yagami with her, make the kid stay and build a career out of justice. Unfortunately, the unsanctioned "case" had become quite a bit more than that and she didn't exactly know where to go from here. It was one thing to investigate, it was another thing entirely to find an answer one didn't want to hear.

Naomi knew about Light and the lengths he would go to accomplish an end. It was those lengths, the ones he'd taken as a mere teenager, which would make him a target to both sides of the law. Information was a tricky business, but Light Yagami had flourished in it, just as "Attach" apparently had.

"You're not going to share are you?"

"No." Her long, black pony tail swished behind her head as she glanced up at Giovanni, musings interrupted.

"So," Gi began slowly, nodding his head forward in hopes that the motion would give him the jolt he needed to actually explain himself. "In the world of your very farfetched and ridiculous theory that would make Hollywood proud, is the girl working with this boy... Attach Junko, who so far has no first name?"

"Another possibility," was the straight answer. Which was true, it was a scenario she'd already written on her mental white board. Meanwhile, she couldn't help but consider the alternative possibility more, the possibility she didn't write down, physically or mentally. Light was protecting Sayu, quitting, not mentioning anything of what he was doing, all for the sake of his sister's happiness. Naomi had long maintained the belief that the only member of Light's family he loved was his little sister. Sure, he respected his parents, but there was too much resentment for the way they pushed him, expected him to mold to their wants, for the love to be untainted. If protecting Sayu was his motive, and Attach was tied into the familial knot, well it made for a rather nice looking package; minus the loose threads here and there.

Further, she cycled through the black and white images of London. Face recognition software had already zeroed in on Light, courtesy of the embassy. From there, she just wanted a picture of Light and someone, anyone, who seemed legitimately close to him. An individual who wasn't family or an identifiable friend, she needed to see him with someone new. Really, she'd take anyone, and if she could run a background on the face and come up with nothing, hallelujah.

She paused on one blurred image finally. Light, coming out of an Indian restaurant of all places, no doubt a torture his sister had devised. It's what Naomi always did to him after all. But accompanying him was another man, Asian, confident, and unmistakable carrying a gun. She saw it, just barely, peeking out from its holster as the breeze of traffic blew back his blazer.

"There we go…" Four clicks and the image was enlarged, a face, the computer's algorithm running over the key characteristics of the man's face. We proportioned eyes slanted into almonds, sharp nose, high cheek bones, and fair brown hair unusual among the Asian populace. The search was fruitless, and that was the sweetest apple the case had given to her thus far. Inside, deep down beneath the twist of her intestines and curve of her stomach, the metaphorical gut clenched, and she knew it was Attach.

Almost simultaneously, a number ran through the forefront of Naomi's mind, noted to only be used in extreme situations. She didn't know if this situation counted exactly as "extreme," Giovanni certainly didn't seem to think so if his sleeping slump was anything to judge by. But L was interested in Light, and Attach was related to Light and one of the world's most notorious crime syndicates. When she stretched it like that, it all seemed fair enough.

Resolved, she picked up her cell and dialed for L.

The lights were gone. Not switched off or burnt out, they were gone. Filaments crushed to leave sparkling shards of safety glass on the floor, facets glittering in the beam of Matt's flash light. It was their only source of illumination, an app on Matt's phone much handier than Angry Birds. Light hadn't expected Beyond to smash every flood light in the establishment, he didn't even think B would have enough time to shut everything off. Underestimating a serial killer, amateur move, B had always been one to disregard human possibility and the laws of physics.

"So…" Matt skirted around the sharp debris, keeping the glass from embedding itself into the soles of his boots. He was gripping the Glock tighter than necessary, a two minutes walk into the arena and already his palms were sweating, skin ignoring the air conditioning blowing a steady breeze through the vacant corridors. He was on edge, phone extended a full arms length in front of him so as to illuminate as far down the hall as possible. Sadly that wasn't much, two feet at the most. Comforted, Matt was not.

Light glanced at the boy who walked a few inches behind him, brow arched.

"We're just looking for him?" Matt whined, biting his lip at the gun in his hand.

Light rolled his eyes. Typical teenager. "Eventually, we will find him."

It was at that moment, Matt opening his mouth to make some snappy comment in response, that he tripped, falling to the ground as his foot tangled against something long and heavy obstructing his path. The cell phone skidded out across the hall, sliding over the smooth cement and into the darkness.

"The fuck!" Matt gripped, twisting around and feeling through the darkness. The .45 was still in his hand, and he nudged it against the long cylinder on the ground. Even in the darkness he could distinguish the shape of a shotgun.

Light reached over and picked the gun up. Silently he slid the action bar back to see a single round pop out of the gun and into his waiting had. But none did. It was empty. Quickly, he pressed the butt of the gun against his hip and emptied the magazine tube. There was only one bullet loaded.

Then a sound, the scraping of plastic on cement, came to them as Matt's cell phone slid out of the darkness, bouncing back against Light's feet. Both boys stopped, staring into the light of the phone for all of half a second before two guns were trained down the hall, unwavering and waiting for the first hint of movement. Matt's finger ached for the trigger, he wanted to feel the recoil, the sling of a bullet firing off, and he wanted that bullet to taste blood. His breathing was slowing to a rate of nonexistence while arm muscles protested the strength it took not to shake while holding the gun. This wouldn't be a horror story, the pink haired teen vowed. Games they may play but this wasn't a trap and Matt wasn't letting B get away, let him go back anywhere near Mello, even if he had no fucking clue where his irrational, angry, other half was. Matt licked his lips, and then the darkness parted.

At least he wasn't crawling this time. That was the only thing running through Matt's brain as the white shirt and ripped jeans materialized on the other side of the hallway, uniform of a homeless psychopath. At least, that was the image Beyond portrayed. There was no laughter this time either, in fact, Beyond made no sound at all as he walked forward, closing the distance between Light, Matt, and himself. He was expressionless, eyes a vacancy of dull red, no light left but the illumination of the cell phone still on the ground to reflect off of them. He walked like a normal man, an emotionless man. There was nothing in the stature of B, no tell to give him away, he was outwardly empty. Disobeying the wisdom of the firearm, Matt's finger wrapped around the trigger before he was prepared to shoot.

B stopped, still yards away from them, but he stopped in the white glow of the cell phone and blinked at them. "I was going to be civil, but you decided to bait me." His words came softly, clear and more articulate than anyone had ever heard him be. "We were supposed to play laser tag, maybe some air soft, kind of like we did at Wammy's once upon those tragic times. But no, you mock me with your real weapons and ammunition, putting it out there for me to see, to notice. You mock me by parading around in that pink truck without actually coming in here and looking for me. I've been here all week! You're not taking me seriously." He paused, the dark monotone of his voice not even ringing down the corridor as a natural voice would. "I am offended." The voice was stagnant.

Light didn't respond and neither did Matt. Both were frozen in equal states of shock because this was not the Beyond Birthday either of them had been expecting to find. This thing before them, the imitation of L, was off, so very off it failed to even register in their minds. Logic dictated that bullets should have already been slicing through the air and puncturing the white cotton of B's overly large sweater. But logic was failing, as was any sense of reality they had possessed, because Beyond Birthday was never calm, never emotionless, and never did he stand straight.

"Where is Mr. Twelve?"

The air was sucked from the room with the question, that or Light had stopped breathing. Eyes narrowed, he stared Beyond down. There was no way he knew. No way.

Matt was the one who answered. "L isn't here."

Red eyes rolled to the ceiling, B's blank visage wrinkling in a disturbing expression of casual thought. "Pity, everyone else here is blithely unimportant. Sweetie Jam, Mattie-Ma, and even Mello, the Little Dear. Un. Im. Por. Tant."

That was all it took for Matt to lose it. Out of character or not, B wasn't fucking allowed to speak of Mello unless he was giving them the boy's location.

Light rushed to stop him, but already he was squeezing on the trigger, absorbing the force of the gun slamming back against his arm. "YOU!" BANG! "FUCKING!" BANG! "ASS!" BANG! "WHERE THE HELL IS MELLO?" BANG BANG!

Look at that, Matt noted, the lack of blonde in his life had him acting like one… But there wasn't enough time for him to contemplate his recent lack of temper. Light slammed him up against the wall and out of the way of what sounded and looked like a missile, thundering right through the negative space Matt's head had previously occupied. The wall shook as the bazooka crushed through the floor with a deafening rumble and Matt found himself further pressed against the wall, Light flesh behind him, held up by the force of the explosion.

Dust powdered the air, enhancing the darkness, the cell phone light now absent, destroyed in the rubble of the bazooka.

Light coughed roughly, stepping back to release Matt from the wall. "Liberating isn't it?"

Matt stared at him, at a loss for how calm the older man seemed when they'd just had a missile launched at their heads and the psycho responsible disappearing into the blackness, before he actually considered the way he was feeling about having shot at an actual human being. "You know… it is a bit."

"It would be," Beyond snapped, his voice now disembodied in the darkness. "Is Mattie-Ma's gun empty now? Or does he still have more bullets, because I know I have more." And B started running; they could hear his footsteps, heavy combat boots thundering down the hall. Without a second thought Matt was tearing after him, Light following close behind.

A flash of white came four feet before Matt and he fired, right over head, following Beyond's inhuman leap upwards. Abruptly, before he could even see what the hell B was jumping onto, Matt was being pulled to the ground, cheek smacking against the floor as Light yanked roughly on the back of Matt's shirt, depriving the teen's lungs of air for three seconds. The grenade cleared the air and hit against the wall, which failed to explode, but still the shockwave pushed at the air around them.

"The hell are those things coming from?" Matt's shout came beneath his arms, covering his head to protect the spinal column from Beyond's playfield perversion.

"The walls." Light was already on his feet, the movement of Beyond, blending into the shadows like a crippled insect, pulling his legs foreword. The explosions had made it almost impossible for his eyes to adjust, refit themselves in accordance with the dimness. His over stimulated mind could only register the deceivingly empty air before him and trust it not to sever his head from his shoulders.

"You mean he - "

"Are you seriously surprised?" Light panted at the teen, hot behind him, the barrel of Matt's hand gun trained in the air. "Now don't shoot in the fucking dark! It's useless! Just follow him! He has a hostage here somewhere."

"Oh Sweetie Jam is so very smart." The voice came from above, harsh and metallic. The vents. "All those toys you left out, the ones you insult me with, I made better ones." A ringing clash of metal called to Matt and Light from further down the hall, a gun falling from the ceiling. "Take a chance each time you fire you unimportant things!" And there was scuttling, like pincers sliding against metal, scratching for purchase and moving quickly. Light was up and running after the noise, grabbing the dropped weapon as he did and throwing it into Matt's arms.

Matt juggled the firearms, struggling to keep them suspended in his arms while running, finger still poised against the trigger of the .45. They were so fucking screwed. Shoot and have their heads blown off or follow B down the creepy hallway so he could strip the flesh from their bones with his over grown fingernails. Great set of options right there. Though if it came down to it, Matt had no problem returning the favor sevenfold. But even that was a fucked up situation. Murderous blood on his hands, it was fucked that he wanted to feel that.

There was no fear in Matt's body anymore, it'd been replaced, thrown out in a heavy duty, black garbage bag, limbs from a distant nightmare protruding at odd angles, pulling at the plastic. For once, he was the one chasing his tormentor, and even if B wasn't running from them in fear, there was something about having a gun and being on the hunt that made fear so very inconsequential. Useless.

He'd take B's head off and mount his shit filled skull to the wall of Wammy's House.

The bang of a gun, Light puncturing the vents with two bullets, was Matt's only warning to leap to the ground, roll into the corner and narrowly avoid the grenade that rolled out of god only knew where. It halted before Matt's face, apparently he hadn't rolled far enough, and he just had time to make out the pink, smiley face painted on the bulb before brown leather shoes kicked it down the hall like a football. The thing was air born, and went off while still in the air, a brilliant flash of flame and smoke more blinding than the darkness had actually been. But neither Matt nor Light stopped, both were back to running, stalking.

Finally the laughter started. A howling cry, echoing in a deep throated gurgle of psychotic joy, and it moved over them like an unseen ghost. Startling, how that laughter turned the room, brought down the temperature and pierced straight to the darkest part of Light's soul. He shuddered, skidding around the corner, whisky tinted eyes following the barely distinct lines of the ventilation shaft ascetically. The profiler had to admit, reveal the facts to himself, that being around Beyond once more was a high of stringent curiosity. He wanted to see and to know.

Light didn't play B's game because L wanted him to. He played because it brought him closer to the answers he hadn't had time to gain before. Putting Beyond at ease, picking up your assigned character piece and slamming it onto the board, only to that would Beyond open up.

Quite suddenly, the laughter, which had gone onward, without end and hitch, ceased. Warm silence was left to pollute the air until, with one final whip around a corner, light, a brilliant white, filtered down the hall from beneath a crack. A centimeter, Light's mind calculated instantly, between the floor and the double door that stood at the end of the open hallway. He and Matt reached the steel doorway in seconds, each ramming a shoulder against it harder than they needed to. They fell across the threshold, stumbling into the whiteness of a spotlight.

Everything else was bathed in the unearthly glow of green flood lights, the occasional orange search beam casting over the layout of Beyond's hellish playground. Wire, crates spilling open, blocks of concrete over six feet tall, and at the very end of it all, centered over an army green tank, sat Beyond himself. He straddled the cannon of the war machine, lips tilted upwards in a smirk that was barely even there. Hands casually splayed over the cannon, he rocked back and forth slowly, like a child on a see-saw. Only B was nothing like a child, nothing like an innocent, and the body swinging through the air above his head only served to prove those facts.

She was drenched in the sweat of terror, hair a mess of wetted tangles resembling ill-formed dreadlocks. Had they been able to see her face, Light imagined makeup, befitting the sleek, satin purple dress and expensive, black heels the woman wore, would be dragging itself down her tear stained cheeks. But her head was lolled forward, hanging over chest while her arms were stretched above, tied over several times with rope and then hooked via carabineer to a cable cord. The steady breathing of the woman's chest was the only thing which quelled the rapid hammering of Light's heart, but just barely.

It was clear, standing there on the balcony leading into the main arena, what had taken place before was only foreplay. This, this was where the real shit was about to explode, and it'd do so literally if B had his way.

"Welcome to the arena you unimportant liars." Beyond's voice radiated from the speakers hanging from the high ceiling of the field. "This match is simple. If you can kill me you can have her," he gestured calmly to the captive above his head. "And then you can have your precious little blonde back. She knows where Little Dear is, after all. So, come on boys, this is her holiday, she's visiting from Slovakia! Let's show her a good time!"

A muffled whimper licked the lips of the girl, and her body began to sway more. Conscious, she was conscious.

A .45 caliber bullet zinged past Light's shoulder, Matt firing off, the dull, feminine voice searing through the blatant shock that had bubbled around him and bringing an animalistic growl from the teenager's throat. The bullet exploded against the wall as B spun over the barrel of the tank, hanging himself upside down like a skeletal sloth. Something dropped from the ceiling seconds after the bullet hit the wall behind Beyond, bouncing on the platform right at Light and Matt's feet. One look at the purple smiley face and complete lack of pin and both investigators were diving over the railing, an explosion of flame and boiling air slamming into the backs, singeing clothing and flesh.

Stop. Drop. Roll. The childhood safety lesson had Matt tumbling across the ground and hitting his head against a barrel labeled "TOXIC." Glancing to his right he saw Light dart behind a maze of towering blocks. Gulping back the adrenaline, he clutched the rifle to his chest, leaving the now emptied .45 on the ground. The other rifle B had dropped down to them was slung over his back. With a breath, ignoring the stinging pain of his burnt flesh, Matt peered over the top of the tin barrel, craning his neck in order to remain low and hopefully out of sight. Yet, there was nothing to remain out of sight of.

Beyond had disappeared.

Crouching low, Matt walked forward, the bright spot light which had illuminated the entrance now moving slowly across the field to fix itself upon the girl. Heart hammering, he made his way towards her. It was the point of the game, to get to the girl… and slay Beyond Birthday.

Right.

Green eyes narrowed, he just walked out into the open, gun drawn, a long and thin shield he might even use as a club to bash in B's skull. Which is exactly what he did when the man came ramming into his side from behind. Skidding over the floor, a tangle of limbs, Matt twisted the gun, jamming the head of the barrel into Beyond's stomach as if to spear him on a rod. Grunting, grinning, hands stretched downwards, wrapping around the teenager's neck. And Matt stared wide eyed into eyes more explosive than the grenades poised to fall above their heads. Thumbs squeezed down over his throat and suddenly the gun separating him from the murderer fell to the side, an involuntary action as Matt grappled against the thin hands cutting into his throat, déjà vu of the nightmarish brand.

Three clicks and a very creative sting of profanity echoed towards them as Matt's blurring vision caught sight of Light hitting the side of B's skull with a bare knuckle. The serial killer released his grip on Matt in favor catching Light in a similar position. Light's gun kept clicking as he ran backwards, leaping and swerving away from Beyond's galloping frame.

Click. Empty.

Matt ran after them, but his eye's weren't on their two weaving and darting forms. He watched the girl sway through the air, blonde, thin, tall, European. A hanging woman, teetering between life and oblivion, the symbolism was not lost on Matt.

Click. Empty.

Finally, an echoing bang rang out, followed by the explosion of a grenade, yanking the pink haired boy's focus from the girl and how to get her down, and back onto Light, who was suddenly standing by himself, gazing around, mouth drawn in a tight line, questioning why Beyond was so goddamn fast.

"Where'd he go?" Matt gasped, pressing his back to Light's. It was the smartest move, both already having been blindsided by B and his affinity for blending into shadow and popping out whenever and wherever the fuck he wanted.

"No clue, I wasn't expecting the gun to go off," Light griped, chest heaving rapidly, pressing firmly against Matt.

A banging clang pulled on their sides, turning them around to face a small, tin shack just off to the left of the tank B's hostage hung above. A spray of bullets, tiny and sharp hit a foot before their feet and had the two leaping back for cover. Bombs dropped all around, at least eight of them exploding across the arena in volatile bursts of smoking flames. Light grit his teeth, hunching his body against the barrier he'd hidden behind. Rubble and dust showered over his body, coating his clothes and skin in layers of ghostly grime. Eyes sharp, defined, he steadied his breathing, slowing the heart rate and trying not to choke on the dirtied air surrounding him.

"You know," B purred, leaning the butt of the machine gun on the roof of the shack he now stood atop while resting his chin on the end of the barrel. "I worked here as a technician. I'm sure Mr. Twelve went and stalked all the employees, and no, he wouldn't have seen me here, but I've been putting in the hours, getting Alli's paycheck. Yet, no one noticed me. I really don't appreciate that." He said it with a pout, cheeks flaring into a childish puff of displeasure. The expression wasn't endearing in the slightest, and Light reached around the corner between them and aimed for B's head.

"Is that why you're demanding attention now?" Light spat from behind the block of cement providing him cover.

"You're the psychologist Sweetie," Beyond purred, leaning forward over the gun, eyes not even looking at Light. "You tell me…" Without batting an eyelash the gun was flipped up into B's arms. Bullets sprayed over the field, forcing Light to dive back behind his shield of processed rock.

A bazooka launched somewhere to Light's left, and he pressed closer to the ground, waiting for any sign of a grenade dropping over his head, keeping still until the explosions, the utter chaos, settled into a low rumble.

"Oh please," Matt's voice spat out through the haze of dust and flood lights. "Cut the crap B. You play a shit victim."

A single shot rang out, from where, Light had no idea. But he used it and the explosion, the heady crash of shattering rock and metal raining down in hot shards, he used it and ran for the shack. His feet pounded in rhythm to the pounding of his brain, and he prayed to god that was only a mild concussion and not the thoughts attacking his gray matter. Panic. Desperation. Exasperation. A healthy dose of respect for Beyond's mechanical engineering. Sound detonating grenades, truly and disturbingly brilliant… as long as one didn't drop on the tank.

Another shot exploded from Matt's gun, followed by a series of empty clicks and an explosion directly to Light's left.

"FUCK!" Matt screeched, pulling fruitlessly at the trigger in hope one more bullet would ring out of the magazine. Furiously, Matt settled for shouting at the murderer. "You could care less about being noticed by someone, especially when this is all your fantastic idea!"

A chilling cackle came from somewhere above the shack, and Light made a run towards it, just barely seeing Matt dart behind a wooden crate. "Playing into my hands then?" B taunted. "Is that what you and Mr. Twelve have been doing? Following my lead?"

"Well it's not as if you've given up much choice asshat!" And a string of bullets finally hit the air, blasting away at the grenades dangling from the ceiling like painted Christmas ornaments, and just as delicately they fell to the glorious sounds of Light's mental cursing. It was bad enough the things fell every time they took a shot, to have them all go down at once was simply unnecessary.

Scrambling over a crate, another gun he'd picked up along the way tucked into the small of his back, he reached the side of the four walled enclosure, slipping at the shuddering of multiple explosions erupting across the arena. Shards of metal speared into Light's skin from all directions, piercing and slicing into his clothing, drawing red-brown licks of blood over his body as the rock battered against his frame, knocking him sideways. A scream echoed from above, high pitched and turning Light's intestines rancid at the sheer terror of it. But he shut it out, climbing over another crate and reaching up to wrap his hand around the roof of the metal structure. The entire thing buckled under another blast, the final detonation judging by the sound, and he clung tightly to the roof of the building, trying not to be knocked back to the ground.

Nothing could be seen in front of Light aside from the glow of smoking dust dancing through the humid air. Aside the sudden lack of explosions came the huffing cries of the girl he knew to be hanging in the air somewhere above his own head, miraculously still alive despite the warzone Beyond had forced them to create. Her voice glided through the air like thick sludge, pulling at Light's mind, his need to answer her call, get her down and out of there. But he couldn't, she wasn't the main objective, no matter what Beyond had said.

He hung off the side of the building, pulling his legs up to propel himself onto the roof, when suddenly a hand wrapped around his neck and Light was hoisted into the air. He choked, air suddenly straining to reach the bronchi of his lungs, stretching to oxygenate his body, but the difficulty in breathing wasn't born of the grip Beyond had on his neck. Without thought, just the pain of forgetting to breathe, he reached for the gun jammed in his pants only to have another, very unwelcomed hand slip down the same direction.

Torrid and strangely minty breath huffed over his ear as B's hand slid off his neck only to have nails clawing into his shoulder, forcing him to his knees, back against the stiff, hard fabric protecting Beyond's chest. Bulletproof vest, how quaint. "Naughty, naughty place to keep a gun Sweetie." And the gun was ripped from his pants, scrapping harshly up his back as Beyond flipped it over in his hand and pressed it under Light's shirt, end aligning between his shoulder blades.

Click.

Light actually flinched at the sound, shuddering within Beyond's grasp as the sudden realization that his life could end pressed into his back right with the barrel of the gun. Dust settled around them and Light scanned over the arena, billowing clouds filtering through an air conditioner somewhere, running away and leaving him behind in the hands of a madman with a fucking gun pressing into his back.

He'd known from the start he'd be going to hell with this suicide mission. But it was quite different to actually have said hell breathing down his neck, softly, invitingly, so very hungrily. Because Light could feel the want in the way Beyond gripped him, like his fingers were pressing closed against a flow of water, trying to capture and contain the liquid in his own bare hand. As far as Light was concerned though, the gun made it pretty damn certain Light wouldn't be running anytime soon, even if it was completely empty. Russian Rulette just wasn't his kind of fun.

Nor was the rifle Matt had pointing directly at his chest, trembling and snarling, any type of party either.

"Let. Him. Go."

B's head tilted into the crook of Light's neck and a sinister smile pressed into his skin, making Light want to gag. "Come on Mattie-Ma," the killer whispered against Light's skin, not even loud enough for the teenager to hear a word he was saying. And yet, Beyond's actions were shouting rather loudly. "Shoot me. Hit me hun, fucking HIT ME!" That was when Light's neck snapped, backwards into B's hand, auburn strands of hair abused by the thinness of B's fingers and the way he twisted them, exposing neck and collar bone, making Light gasp in pain. B was standing, dragging Light up some with him, pulling his shirt up as the arm locking the gun to Light's back rose. "If you don't start firing, be it for my head or his, I will."

Click. Another empty round, six more to go.

It was visible, the falter in Matt's step, the widening of his eyes, and the tremors, the never ending tremors that had the rifle in Matt's arms vibrating violently, practically a blur. He didn't know what to fucking do. Shots didn't even come out of the stupid rifle regularly. B had them playing a game of lethal chance, and no doubt the twisted sicko found it all very amusing. Matt, however, didn't quite maintain the same opinion, and he was fairly certain Light would agree with him. But this, this was the deep end of the water, a swimming pool with a hidden vortex sucking him down past the bottom.

Sweat stained the metal of the gun, fluttered at Matt's eye lids as he blinked back the uncertainty, the inability to appropriately act. Did an appropriate course of action even exist?

Click. Four chances left.

Through pink bangs Matt saw Light shudder, eyes open as if B was keeping them from blinking. Yet, fear was absent. Matt didn't know how to define the disarming emotion staring back at him from across the field. But he knew what Light was seeing, and he knew it wouldn't be comforting. The gun rose a fraction of an inch, because that was all it took for Matt to aim at Beyond's head, and consequently Light's shoulder. But he couldn't take the shot.

Nor did he actually have to.

The tank let out a screech, painful to hear, causing everyone to flinch. The girl hanging above it screamed as the top hissed open, unscrewing and flipping upwards with the crunch of an unused hinge, and something crawled out. Slowly, gracefully, a figure pulled itself out of the tank to crouch casually atop the army, green machinery as if all was cheesecake and ice cream.

"Beyond," L said dryly, "I would very much appreciate it if you released my boyfriend now."

Silence overtook L's statement, mixing caustically with the surprise in Beyond's eyes, and then, the doppelganger lunged.

A/N: If anyone has a GranTurismo Range and is open to letting me take a drive in it, please drop me a note. ;)

And, in answer to questions most of you have been messaging me with, yes I do make references to various T.V. shows, movies, books, etc. (the last chapter being a painful example of this as I was watching TDK while reading American Psycho XD). There's pretty much a reference in every chapter I've written, so I suppose you can think of that as a game of "Discover the Lame things Bag Likes."

Thanks for reading!