kawaiimint: Whoa...I gave you feels? I don't know whether to be sorry...or to feel accomplished.
I suppose we'll discover Anna's fate here, huh?

Reader: Haha, well, you're right, that isn't nice...but I don't think BB really cares, aha.
Yes, the real Sam and Sierra read this. Real-Life Anna actually isn't allowed to read it because her grandma (my mom) won't let her read it. But yeahh, Real-Life Sam and Sierra definitely have read this~

Well, let's hope Anna lives, here, eh?

Onward!

Anna.

A voice through the dark. The haze. The dark haze. It was comforting too, so she supposed she didn't mind it.

Anna, wake up. Now.

Why should she? It was nice…. It wasn't a darkness where you just fell and fell and fell…. It was a darkness where the air was thick and you seemed to float. Drift. She rather liked this darkness.

Anna, open your eyes.

Why? she thought back to Near in a slurring tone.

Just crack an eye open and don't move. Listen to me.

Why? She was slipping again.

Trust me, Anna. Please.

She decided to listen to him – he'd actually said 'please,' after all – and forced one eye open halfway. She looked around. Where the heckll was she? Her eyes opened. She looked around some more. She saw that she was lying on a table. There were knives and scalpels on a table to her right. A figure was working on something somewhere down by her feet, but she couldn't see without moving her head. She got scared. What had happened? What did she miss? Was this a bad dream?

Calm down, Near thought to her, and she suddenly remembered the fight she had. Her face went red in embarrassment. Not only did she hate her temper, but she had blurted something she didn't exactly want known. Focus on what happened after that, Near told her.

Well, yeah. She'd been walking in the rain with L….

I don't think that was L, Anna….

But who else could it be? BB died….

I don't think the plan worked, Anna. Either Beyond didn't eat the jam, or Sophia ate it instead.

She felt the color drain from her face as she stared at the ceiling. So, I might have indirectly killed Sophia? she asked hesitantly. She felt kinda sick.

Maybe. And I'm sorry.

Anna was surprised. He didn't say that too often. 'Please' and 'sorry'? Today was a special day.

Now, Anna, listen to me. Tell me when Beyond is farther away, or not looking in your direction.

Anna gulped. Okay, she thought, and strained her eyes without moving her head to watch as B lingered awhile doing something or other before leaving the room through an exit somewhere to her left, too far down for her to see. So do I run for it?

No, Near responded. You don't know where you are, and it could very well be that the only exit is where he's going right now. Instead, grab a knife from the table to your right.

Um, why? she wondered nervously, though she took one of them anyway. She was trembling ever so slightly, but somehow Near was able to calm her senses and give her better self-control. Why didn't he do this before, exactly?

You are going to stab him before he tries to hurt you. You will stab him, and then you will run. Alright?

She swallowed hard. Alright. She tried to make the knife harder to see without moving too much as she saw B come back into the room.

Close your eyes, Anna, Near ordered calmly.

She did so quickly, breathing deeply. She heard him step closer and closer, and she bit her tongue simply because she was unable to tense up any other way without alerting B that she was awake. She could hear the sound of a knife being lifted off the table.

Now, Anna, thought Near, and Anna's eyes flew open. She swung the knife from beneath her, tearing her shirt and accidentally slicing at her own back, and plunged it into Beyond's side near his stomach.

"Damn it!" he cried out, and the knife in his hand clattered to the floor. Beyond clutched at his side, his eyes wider than Anna thought they could go. She froze, unbelieving of what just happened.

Anna, move, now!

She rolled off the table onto her feet and ran, her feet pounding on the cement floor. She ran into the next room and up a flight of stairs, through a door to freedom. She kept running. Kept running and running and she wouldn't stop until she reached home.

Roppongi. It would happen in Roppongi tonight. Light and I knew. How? Saki Ijiri had been found in six pieces, in six different trees. 'Six trees.' 'Roppongi.' It was simply what the name's origin meant. We wondered if L had found out yet. We just weren't quite sure of whom the next victim was…. Light was working on that now, back at his house, while I made my way back to my own home. I'd left before I had gotten too tired this time. Wouldn't want to wake up only to start blushing profusely…. Luckily, the rain had let up soon enough that that wouldn't have to happen.

I blinked as I reached the driveway. The lights were off. Anna wasn't home?

"Aunt Natalie!" came the cry of said niece, and she emerged from the night in the opposite direction, hugging me tight on contact and clutching me close. She seemed on the brink of tears. "Aunt Natalie," she repeated, relieved, and hugged me tighter. "Aunt Natalie…."

I hugged her close, concerned. "Anna, what's wrong?"

"C-can we get inside first?"

"Of course," I told her, and we walked up the driveway with my arm around her.

"I-it was… BB…," she mumbled.

I stiffened as I walked. "What happened, Anna?" I asked seriously.

"BB caught me…. I thought he was—he was L, and…."

I unlocked the door, let us in, and led her to the couch after taking off my shoes.

"He tried to kill me," she said, barely above a whisper. "I was scared, Aunt Natalie…."

I pulled her into a hug. "He's gone now, Anna…. You're safe with me," I assured her in warm, soothing tones, holding her close and rocking gently. Oh, yes, she'd be safe with me. Because even if he did come here to get her, I may very well have killed him with my bare hands. First Misa… then my niece. That was a no. Yes, I rather wanted him dead…. We did. And we would somehow get him killed...

His breath was shaky. B was trembling again; shaking violently, and he couldn't do anything about it. After Anna had run, he had only sat there on the ground as his side throbbed and protested at the sudden movement of collapse. Well, not quite collapse, but he'll admit it was somewhere along those lines. He eventually released his side and stared at his bloodied hands (his own blood this time), shaking; still shaking. He tried to breathe normally but couldn't. Why couldn't he stop shaking? He shuddered, and it hurt, but he couldn't help it, and what was this pain anyway compared to burning alive? Burning, burning, burning forever. (But of course he lived again because he was the phoenix, and she was his mockingbird. But his mockingbird is dead now and the phoenix is very lonely….)

He felt like a child again. A child trying to perform his first murder. It was messy and unorganized and he failed. A horrible job; a horrible job indeed. And he'd only gotten stabbed when he'd felt much worse and here he was, sitting on the ground with his blood pooling around him, staring at his hands and shaking, unable to stop. He put his hands to his face with his eyes still wide open, smearing the blood on his forehead and cheeks but not caring as he curled forward and tried to stop shaking. Just sitting here won't do anything.

He staggered to his feet, holding his injured left side with his right arm again as he looked around. He left his pool of blood (That'll leave a stain; I know it'll leave a stain….) and headed to a cabinet in the right corner of the room. He needed bandages. Gauze and surgical tape. Yes, that would keep him good for the night. It wasn't that deep, and besides, he knew that he had had much worse….

He had to get things together; he had to get things together. He shuffled through the medical things and shakily wrapped the gauze and taped it. His hand slipped unexpectedly once and he jabbed at the wound, consequently releasing a yelp of pain. Normally he wouldn't have made a noise, but something was wrong with him and he couldn't help it. Then he made his way to the next room, leaving bloody footprints….. Blood. The blood! "I need to wash it off…," he told himself through gritted teeth, and turned to the sink, hastily running the water and thrusting his hands beneath the downpour. He looked in the mirror and saw his blood-smeared face, so he brought his hands up to the blood there and repeated again and again until his face was clean. He shivered as he grabbed the towel. Done; this all needed to be done….

He shuffled to the corner where he had a few spare clothes just in case, and he stripped down so that he could put them on. Shaking, it took a little longer than he liked. But he finished, so that was done. There. Now he was decent. He needed to find a victim. He took a deep, shaky breath and went up the stairs to the outside world. He was already in Roppongi. He just needed to find a person. He had a syringe and a…. He let out a yell of frustration and ran back down to grab a knife before going back up again and making his way to where the people were. It had stopped raining. He passed one person, then two, but neither of them seemed good candidates. The shakiness began to subside to the cold Nothing he had experienced earlier. His eyes narrowed as the Nothing engulfed him; all became still. The shaking stopped. He would get his job done, and he would win against L because the copy would surpass the original and B would be better than him at last.

Even without his mockingbird.

He took long strides, his eyes flicking right and left in case he should spot someone. He accidentally brushed against one man whose name was Akira Ueda. His face was unshaven and bristly, and he had short, messy, black hair. "What do you think you're doing?" he asked testily.

Beyond didn't respond. Only looked at him.

"Watch where you're going, next time," the man muttered, and Beyond flung his fist into Akira's stomach. "What that hell?!" he snapped, and grasped at the collar of Beyond's shirt. B let it happen. He just gazed at the man with empty eyes. His lifespan was due. He flipped out the knife and, in one movement, swiftly plunged it between his ribs and into his chest. Ueda made a horrible gasping sound, stiffened, and went limp. B easily slung him over his shoulder and ran.

In a specific alley, prepared before Sophia had died, he had a body bag hidden. It was there that he placed Ueda and zipped him up before heading straight to his hideout in Roppongi. This one was aboveground. He took his time doing his makeup to look like a completely different person, even dressing himself up in a suit for the part and fitting a wig on his head. This didn't take too long, and soon he was taking dear Akira to the Roppongi Hills building, one of the tallest skyscrapers in the district. They – 'they' meaning a very tired woman who wasn't really paying attention – let him in under the name Tekii Hurami (Hahaha, what a funny, funny name!), and he headed right up to the roof to see that the sun was just appearing on the horizon in the east. It wasn't quite up yet, and he couldn't see it, but there was light beginning to shine from behind the skyscrapers and the line of the Earth.

Beyond unzipped the body bag, pulled Akira Ueda out, and laid him in front of him before pulling out the knife and etching into his chest groups of letters that currently only he could understand. But L would figure it out. L would figure it out too late. B had to think about them, really think about them, but he got them down. When he was done, he smiled, but it felt like he was just pulling up the corners of his mouth, not actually smiling. He decided to stop, and did. He lifted Ueda, carried him over the edge, and with a dull-eyed, dark, expressionless face he threw him over the edge and down to the awakening city below….

He threw him off a building. Threw him off of a building. To represent animosity – or aggression, but it really didn't matter which one. How creative. And he was there in person; there were witnesses. Not of the murder, but they saw his latest victim (Akira Ueda was his name) plummet down fifty-four stories only to smash into the pavement of the sidewalk, leaving a nasty stain that the homicide team would have to clean up. The only clue was a scrawl of seemingly random letters on the man's chest.

L would have to figure this out, and quick, if he wanted to catch him. That wasn't the last of the murders, and he knew it. The next murder victim would be Beyond Birthday himself. He wouldn't be surprised if he burnt himself alive again, either. L supposed it would happen the twenty-seventh, if only because seven plus two is nine, and of course nine was one of Beyond's special numbers. (Because 13 is B, and 1 + 3 is 4 and 4 + 9 is 13 all over again, wasn't it?) Alright, the who and the when were set.

Next question: Where?

Well, where was the place in Tokyo with a lot of suicides and a lot of murders? (Of course it had to be both, since he couldn't just imply he was committing suicide. It had to seem like murder, after all.) The two most popular ways to commit suicide in Japan were to jump in front of trains (or rather, subways) and to jump off of buildings. Crime in Japan (you know, back when there was more of it and Kira didn't exist) was centered around train stations (or rather, subway stations). The busiest train station in the world happened to be in Tokyo: Shinjuku Station in the Shinjuku ward of Tokyo. It would be in Shinjuku, then; likely nearby Shinjuku station. But he couldn't be completely sure exactly where… and after all, Shinjuku was a large area, and the station was closely connected to so many other platforms. Those letters etched on Akira Ueda's chest would tell him the answer, he was sure. The only problem was the fact Ueda's fall had made the marks nearly illegible. L supposed he would have to call the autopsy people to ask them to make the letters able to be read. All they had to do was carefully take off the skin of his chest with a scalpel….

He sighed and pressed the connection button in order to connect to Roger.

Sorry the chapter is relatively short. I hope you enjoyed anyway.

Fun Fact: I think I was reading Stephen King's Misery at the time of writing this, and that's where the idea of the haze came from in the first scene.

Review? For...stabbing serial killers before they kill you? Ahaha...