Chapter 40 — Justice / Mercy (Part II)
Mercy looked away, then down. Her brow furrowed as though in deep thought, but she did not voice whatever it was that was on her mind.
Yuri turned his head back toward the road ahead. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel.
"I thought if anyone, you'd understand," Mercy said, quietly. "You have always been so level-headed one. Yet you're not even giving me a chance. You're getting so angry at me, and I don't deserve that. Do you think this breakup isn't hurting me, too? But it seems like all you care about is Yomotsu. Why won't you consider it from my point of view, too?"
Yuri gripped the steering wheel tightly. "I have considered it from your point of view," he said, "But your point of view does not seem logical to me… Now you're accusing me of only caring about Yomotsu. This is not about picking sides or who I like more. One of my close friends is hurting, and the other is in a position to help and is not doing so. If that were all, I would just ignore the friend who is not helping—but that same friend who is not helping my other friend is accusing me of being a poor friend. Mercy, I will not apologize for wanting to help Yomotsu. And I will not apologize for my view that your lack of response to him is bringing him unnecessary pain. If you really think I am so level-headed, why did you not even consider what I was saying to you, when you told me you would be breaking up with him?"
Mercy shook her head. "I never wanted it to be like this… I want to remain close friends with you, Yuri. You're a really cool person. Why do we have to fight like this?"
"Yomotsu is a really cool person, too," Yuri said. "And if you're treating him like this, and you said you would be his friend and be there for him—how would you treat me, if I were in pain? You have already made it clear what you really think about my feelings and thoughts about Vidalia. I thought you understood… You told me you did, back when I told you about her in the apartment."
"Falling in love with one person and staying in love with that person even after they have died sounds very romantic, but that is not for everyone. Like I said, relationships end, and we have to learn from them. Your relationship with her ended a long time ago… Now you're just in love with a ghost."
"I am beginning to think my love for a ghost is more genuine than your love for Yomotsu."
"Yuri! Do you really think that?"
"Perhaps not… But I also think you misunderstand me. I will always love Vidalia. I told her as much. But when you told Yomotsu that he is the greatest person in your life—you certainly aren't showing that to be true. You're letting him hurt."
"What am I supposed to do? He wants me to be romantic with him—"
"All he wants is for you to talk with him!" Yuri shouted. He looked fiercely at Mercy. "He's not asking you to be his girlfriend, even if that is what his heart wants. He knows already how you're convinced that what you're doing is right. But what have you learned about yourself?"
Mercy was quiet. She looked down, this time at her hands. She was pressing her thumb into the back of her other hand and making little circles.
"If you're so quick to refuse to help the person you think is the most important in your life over such a flimsy, intangible reason—why would I want to be friends with you?"
Tears started to slide down Mercy's cheek. She looked suddenly at him, wide-eyed. She spoke with her hands and cried, "Because friendship should be forever! That's unconditional love—loving people through their mistakes and loving them despite whatever might come to pass in their lives."
"Do you believe you've made a mistake in how you've been acting toward Yomotsu lately, then?"
"No, but you do—so that's what counts, right?"
"Not quite, no…"
"What do I have to do? Pretend that I feel really bad about it? Fine. Yeah, I really hurt him—I get it. Yomotsu feels terrible, because I broke his heart. But he'll get over it. He'll be fine. I don't want our friendship to die, just because of that—"
"But you're willing to let everything between you and Yomotsu die, because you won't show concern for him or help him in his time of need…"
"Yuri, you're my best friend, and now you're picking Yomotsu over me, and I just, I never wanted it to be like this… I thought we had an unconditional love, that it didn't matter who I dated or who you dated, but that we'd always be friends…"
"Unconditional love is one of the biggest lies in the world," Yuri muttered. He stared into Mercy's squirming blue eyes. She blinked hard. The tears that had welled up were released, and she leaned back a bit. She reclined in her seat and looked straight ahead.
Yuri took a moment to process what he had just said. Those were Meilag's words. Suddenly the text message made sense. That long, bizarre text message that Meilag sent the day Mercy broke up with Yomotsu, it finally was beginning to manifest.
"This is Meilag," the message read. "I do not like to act rashly, but I know I will be tormented inside if I do not send this to you. I already face enough torment every day of my life, so I scarcely need this burden on my soul. Do you remember when you and I were asked to patrol Yum Yums for shoplifting? Shoplifting Prevention Day. That was almost two months ago, so I understand if you don't remember anything I said. However, I was contacted by Olivia Walkins just a few minutes ago, and she is compelling me to warn you: Unconditional love is one of the biggest lies in the world. Don't be afraid to fight it. And don't respond to this message. She said you'll know what it means when the time comes. At least now that I have sent it, I can rest in relative peace."
Yuri looked up at the road, then up at the sky. Dark clouds were coming from the direction straight ahead. It looked as though they were actually coming toward the car, ready to swallow it up. They were slow to move, however, and they could just be false alarms. The sunshine was going away, whether it stormed or not.
"Unconditional love is dangerous," Yuri insisted, mulling over each word in his head before pronouncing it. "Love should have conditions. You want me to love you no matter how you act with Yomotsu. Even if he wasn't my best friend, how you act toward the person you said was the greatest in your life is a direct reflection of your character. A person is the sum of his or her experiences, beliefs, tastes, words, and actions—to love a person with no regard to these things is not to love the person at all, but a real ghost. You criticize how I still love Vidalia, even after she has been dead for years—yet you want me to love you, even when I don't know who you are."
"I don't know who I am, either," Mercy admitted. "Every day, my feelings change… People change, Yuri. That's why… One should love a person for their essence, that which doesn't change…"
"That part exists in the imagination, Mercy," Yuri insisted. "Unless they are principles by which a person lives, but I know that is not what you are referring to. Yomotsu is my friend because of the principles he has, but if he betrays those principles—I have every right to be upset with him and, if necessary, end the friendship."
"I love his principles, too. That's why I fell in love with him, even before I knew he was the 12th. I guess that's also why I fell in love with Light, before I knew he was Kira… Is it bad, that I want to be protected?"
"It's only bad if you're not willing to protect in return."
"You can't expect me to control who I love! All I can do is follow these feelings—"
"And follow them you will, because you have no ground upon which you stand. What do you even stand for, Mercy? Your own words convict you. You said you were Yomotsu's friend, and you have implied that friendship implies love. But what does even the most basic form of love imply, if not sympathy and willingness to help the other person? And you said that friends should always be open and honest with each other—but you hid everything from Yomotsu for five days and was willing to be physically affectionate with him, leading him on!"
"I just… I didn't want to cause him any pain."
"But that was inevitable, the moment you decided you needed to be away from him in order to understand yourself. But unless you can name one thing you have learned about yourself since then, I will have a difficult time believing that was the real reason."
Mercy cracked her knuckles. Yuri saw her look up at the sky. "I was also having doubts about whether I loved him or not."
"Were the doubts caused by Yomotsu's behavior, your own indecision—or is there someone else you began to feel more strongly about?"
Mercy shook her head, but it was not clear which part made her do that. "Yomotsu believes very strongly in justice… But he isn't really serious about destroying evil. I realized that, after a while."
Yuri wanted to comment that this same criticism would also apply to himself, but he decided against it.
She continued, "I have always wanted to be with someone who has a strong sense of justice. People who protect others who are weak… They are wonderful people."
"What about Kira?"
Mercy looked at him, but her gaze was a bit low. She was looking toward his collar, not his face. "I don't know."
Yuri took his right hand off the steering wheel and reached for the key. They had been talking for quite a while now, and he realized that Yomotsu was probably wondering where he was. The food would take quite a while to make, and he could not keep wasting time like this.
"I was hoping you'd still be my friend," Mercy said. "It doesn't have to be this way."
Yuri started the car. "It never had to be this way," Yuri agreed. "But I can't trust you. You have defined what friendship means to you, and you have not been a friend to Yomotsu at all. I know now that you do not have any sense of direction, and you do not care who you hurt along the way, so long as they do not hate you. If you actually cared about justice, you would have given Yomotsu what he wanted from you—a little bit of kindness. Your idea of friendship is that it should be eternal, even if relationships by their very nature are short-lived experiments. The most important person in your life is temporary, but your best friend is supposed to love you no matter how you hurt others. He is not supposed to call you out on stupid decisions. He is not supposed to love you for the self you have built up, but instead he is supposed to love you for your 'essence.' If I am misunderstanding anything, please correct me… But as I see it now, you have already made it quite clear why I cannot remain your friend. I am… Very sad about this. I never wanted this, either. I hoped we could remain friends. I hoped we all could, for a very long time. That would have been wonderful, the three of us—but it can't be that way, when one of us does not care how the others truly feel."
Yuri took the car out of park and flipped on his left turn signal. When the next car passed, he noticed there was a big break in the traffic before the next car would be there. He got back into the driving lane and went forward.
To Yuri's surprise, Mercy was silent the rest of the time. She did not even cry. He hoped that it was not simply that she had given up what had been an act, but it certainly seemed like she had accepted defeat. No, rather—she accepted that Yuri had made up his mind. He knew she did not actually think of herself as being wrong.
"I do not wish anything for you but the best," Yuri said, after about a minute of silence had transpired. "I know you likely do not believe me, but I do not hate you. I hope you find the happiness and identity you said you were looking for. I hope you do find out who you are and who you want to be."
He thought about how Yomotsu was one of the few people he knew who truly knew who he was and why he did what he did. Yuri knew that saying something about that, however, would only make the situation even worse than it already was. Aside from that, all of the thoughts on his brain were suddenly overwhelmed when he saw the smoke up ahead.
"Smoke—and it's coming from a house on Germaine Avenue—!"
He drove as quickly as he could, while still obeying traffic laws. Soon he got close enough to get in view of his house, and what he could see was overwhelming—their house was on fire. It was completely ablaze. Firemen were doing what they could to extinguish the fire, but it was surprisingly resilient.
Yuri parked the car on the curb a safe distance from the house. He glanced at Mercy. She was wide-eyed and shaking. If she knew that this was going to happen, she did not look the part. He could not shake the awful feeling that she would date Light again if she could, and something about this whole situation, even with all the panic in his system right now, clearly indicated Kira's involvement.
Kira was the only enemy they had faced who knew where they lived. No one else knew their real identities. Yomotsu was not prone to accidents, and there was no reason why he would not have contacted Yuri about this. Yuri's phone had been on the whole time, yet he received no call.
Yuri opened the door and ran toward the firemen. "This is my house," Yuri quickly explained. "What is happening?"
"There is a fire," one of the firemen said. He was a very tall man.
"WELL NO DUH," is probably what Yuri wanted to say, but he instead asked, "Has anyone been saved from the fire? I have a housemate… Have you seen him yet?"
The fireman looked at him and shook his head slowly. "Sorry… No one has been recovered… The fire has consumed the whole house. Is it possible he left the house?"
Yuri thought on it. Would Yomotsu have left? That was unlikely, unless Anemone or someone else from The League had dragged him out of there. He had not been leaving his house at all except to go to work, and the idea of the suddenly changing seemed unlikely.
He looked toward Mercy. He would see the flames reflected in her eyes. Yuri then ran into the burning building.
"Wait! Hey, wait!" The fireman called after him.
Others who were hosing down the place soon began calling as well, but Yuri was not paying them any attention. His whole body glowed blue—they did not realize that no fire could hurt him. As powerful as this fire was, it was not as powerful as the flames he could control. He waved his hand ahead, and he dispersed the fire. He parted the flames and walked on safe ground.
It was a proper snapshot of Tartarus' fiery pit. The living room table, the kitchen counter—everything was ablaze. He scanned his surroundings and then proceeded. "Yomotsu!" He called. "Yomotsu!"
He kept the fire at bay and increased his pace. He ran across the hall, glanced into the bathroom along the way and noticed the fire consuming the shower curtain, and charged into Yomotsu's room. The bed as on fire, and of course everything else was. When Yuri looked in the closet, he saw that the 12th's costume was being licked up the fire. The giant eyeball mask was melting on the floor. Yuri was fixated by the sight, but he had to keep moving.
There was only one more place to check, and he had to check it.
"Yomotsu! Yomotsu! Come on, Yomotsu…"
He started to fly down the stairs, but suddenly he saw a burst of fire roar up from down below. There was no hope that Yomotsu was down there. Nothing could be alive in that inferno. For a brief moment, he thought of the waterfall display in the wall. Everything Yomotsu had set up for him in the basement was gone. Yuri turned back and shot upstairs.
Yuri ran out of the house, panting. He was immediately grabbed by a couple of firemen.
"Are you some kinda NEXT?" One asked.
"He's gotta be… Can't youz see how he's shinin' all blue an' the like?" The other, who was shorter and fatter, responded.
Yuri looked at them both, first one and then the other, and felt himself laughing. "It's you two," he muttered, hysterically. "You're those two police officers…"
The firemen looked at each other. "Guess youz was right," the fatter one said. "We ain't ever gonna be able to leave that job behind fer good."
"And here I thought being a fireman would be a safer job," the taller one remarked.
Yuri, amidst his hysterical laughter, happened to glance back toward his vehicle. There was no one between him and the car—no Mercy in view. He looked around, but he could not find her. He was still looking around for her and for Yomotsu while the two firemen escorted him from the building, each carrying one of his arms.
"I'm fine," Yuri said. "Really… I'm fine. Let go of me, please."
Yuri shook himself free of their grasp and took a few more steps back. He looked on at the house—the sky blue house on Germaine Avenue, where he had lived with Yomotsu for over a year, was crumbling. The firemen could not save it. This was no ordinary fire. It ate purposefully, and Yuri was convinced that this was done on purpose.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and held down the #2 button for a few seconds, until Yomotsu as speed-dialed. He held the phone up to his ear. He listened to a full ring. Then another. Then it rang again, and again.
"Greetings, this is Yomotsu Hirasaka—if you want to leave a message, I will gladly listen to it when I am available, unless you are a wicked evildoer! If that is the case, I'm afraid your reckoning is at hand! Oh, and here's a beep."
The phone beeped, and Yuri ended the call. No use leaving a message. Yomotsu always answered his phone. Even in the state Yomotsu has been the past few days, he still would have answered the phone. He could hear it ringing from a mile away. Wherever he was, he did not have access to the phone, or else it had been lost in the fire.
Yuri sighed. He slid the phone back into his pocket, but when he did so, he felt something else in the pocket. His eyes widened when he realized what it had to have been. He pulled the phone back out, along with the folded-up piece of paper that had been in his pocket. He examined the paper, on which was the phone number Anemone had given him to call in case he needed The League's help.
"I will call Anemone," Yuri said. "She will know what to do, if anyone would…"
Yuri dialed the number on the paper.
It rang once.
"Hello. Who is this?"
Yuri blinked hard. This was not Anemone's voice. It was not a voice he had ever heard before. It was distorted.
"This is Yuri Petrov… I was given this number by Anemone. Who am I speaking with?"
"Oh, yes. I know about you. Then I see it's time… I'm L."
Yomotsu was thrown back, onto a chair. It was incredibly uncomfortable—however designed this furniture had terrible taste. He realized quickly that the chair was made of bone. The arms of the chair were each a long, thick bone. The seat and back of the chair were composed of smaller bones assembled and secured together. His first impression definitely was accurate. It was a horribly uncomfortable chair.
What made it worse was that, just as soon as he was thrown into the chair, he was shackled: his wrists to the arms of the chair, his ankles to the floor. He gave each limb a little tug to test out the restrictions on his movement, and it was apparent that it was going to be impossible to break the cold metal that was binding him.
"I was impressed by what Muru Muru could do with Acid's armor, but for your imprisonment, I told her we would need something even stronger… And I must admit, I'm impressed."
Hearing Light's voice sent a chill of reality through Yomotsu's spine.
"I'm going to be your prisoner, is that so? Why don't you just kill me and get it over with?" Yomotsu asked.
"If that's what you want…" Light chuckled. "No, I actually want you to live. For now. You're no longer an obstacle in my way, so your death is not urgent. And if you don't want to think of yourself as my prisoner, you don't have to—you could also look at it this way: you are in the best seat imaginable to watch my purification of the world. It's a shame you're blind, because if you could see, you would be able to watch Graceville's imminent redemption."
Yomotsu moved his head around. That was at least one part of his body that was free of restrictions, and he liked it that way. "Where are we?" He asked.
"We're in Kira's Castle. On the deck overlooking the world below. Muru Muru was able to create this moving fortress for me without any trouble, and it's going to be invaluable for the early stages of my plan."
"Moving fortress…?" Yomotsu anxiously repeated. He wanted to ask about the plan and what these early stages exactly entailed, but he thought it would be better to tackle one topic at a time.
"This castle hovers above the tallest buildings in the world. It can move in the air and defy the laws of gravity howsoever it wishes, just like the Cathedral of Causality. The primary difference is that this castle is equipped with weapons."
Yomotsu knew where this was going, and he did not like it.
"But if you blast up the entire world, you're not going to be killing just criminals… You'll kill everyone!"
"Not exactly," Light corrected. "You see, I've no intention of ruling over a world without people. The innocent people who live good lives will be saved, and only the people the world could do without will be sentenced to death. I will know where to strike because of the Justice Diary in my possession."
Yomotsu shook his head. "You have one now, too?"
Light laughed. "I have yours."
Yomotsu could hardly believe what he was hearing.
"Muru Muru was the one who gave you the Diary—and just as she giveth, she can taketh away. She has transferred ownership over to me, and because the Diary responds to the sense of justice the owner has, I am not limited to your narrow predictions. The Justice Diary will tell me the location of each criminal I am going to kill and will tell me the best way to eliminate him. So you see, it's game over, Yomotsu. I win."
Yomotsu hung his head low. He closed his eyes. He knew there had to be a way out of this. There had to be a way for them to still win.
"On the surface, we were just two friendly coworkers, but in reality, we were always investigating each other… But in this world, all the earnest people who fight for justice, they always lose. It's as you have said, the righteous are always victorious: if Kira is defeated, that makes him evil, but if he wins and rules the world, he'll be justice."
Yomotsu certainly did not like his words being used against him like this, but he offered no response.
"Looks like this is finally the end. No—the beginning. The beginning of the perfect world of Kira. But don't worry. I no longer have the Notebook. No one does. Ryuk is back in the Shinigami Realm, and unless there's an act of god, I doubt I will be getting my hands on the Notebook ever again."
That was a small relief. Still, with the powers of a demi-god, a moving castle at his disposal, and a ravenous Justice Diary, the odds were still stacked impressively in Light's favor.
"When you confronted me before, when I had the Death Note, you had the chance to kill me. And you squandered it. I'm disappointed in you, Yomotsu. Because of you, a lot of people are going to die. How does that rest on your conscience?"
Yomotsu smirked. He lifted his head up and finally opened his eyes toward Light. "My conscience is clear," he said. "Because I know that you will be defeated. Even as you speak to me, your defeat is in the works. You may have defeated the 12th, but you have not defeated Lunatic."
"Lunatic?" Light repeated, with a chuckle. "He's no match for me. If he has any intelligence, he will not try to save you, but I know he is stupid to know he does not stand a chance. When he arrives to challenge me, I will have no choice but to destroy him. That is unfortunate, because I am sure that Mercy is not going to be happy that he will have to die."
Yomotsu felt a lump in his throat. "M-Mercy?"
"But when I explain to her what happened, I will say it in a way she can understand… And then maybe I will add a nice touch, like, 'I'm sorry, my love, but he was going to kill me—and if he killed me, I would never be able to spend eternity ruling over this world with you, like I wanted to.'"
"Shut up!" Yomotsu shouted. "I know what you're trying to do—and it's terrible. Capture me and submit me to mental torture… But don't hurt Mercy. Leave her out of this."
Light's footsteps could be heard, first louder, then gradually quieter. As he walked away he said, "This concerns everyone in the world, Mercy included… And I have a special role for her to fill. She will be at my side, when this ends. I would never hurt her. How could I hurt her, when she told me herself a few days ago that she loves me again?"
Light left Yomotsu unattended, and the latter could not trace where his captor went. Whether guards were placed next to him or not made no difference. Yomotsu could not escape under these conditions. Now there was total silence, broke only by the whistling of the wind.
"Mercy…" Yomotsu whispered to himself. He wanted to cry, but he did not have many tears left at this point. "Mercy, you don't know who you are, do you…?"
"Aaaaaaaand that's the end of this installment of Just Us Boyz!"
From somewhere deep beyond the normal barriers of space and time, Yomotsu and Yuri stood side-by-side, a bright spotlight over them. They each wore sparkly sequin suits.
"Normally this is where two new characters would foreshadow something important for the next upcoming ten chapters," Yuri explained.
Yomotsu nodded and recollected, "There was Light and Ryuk, then Deus ex Machina and Muru Muru, and most recently Kotetsu T. Kaburagi and Kaede."
"But this time, Yomotsu and I are going to introduce you to the next part," Yuri said.
"Spooky, right?"
"Right," Yuri agreed. "I bet the reader is spooked too, thrown off by how unusual this situation is."
"Anyone reading this would be so spooked right now, but they wouldn't even know about the three major character deaths coming up!"
"YOMOTSU—! Well, now that cat is out of its proverbial bag."
"Putting cats in bags is certainly not righteous!"
"And neither of us condones animal abuse such as that."
"Similarly, we will not allow you to stop reading the story here. Only ten chapters remain, and then it's over!"
"We probably would let you stop, but is that really what you want?"
"I'm trapped in a bone chair, brokenhearted and alone, and you'd just quit reading right now?"
"I mean, you could stop reading, but that would be rather cold. The whole world is about to end, and you would just let the story conclude now?"
"You might as well keep reading."
"But, regardless, we truly appreciate how you have taken the time to read Just Us Boyz up to this point," Yuri concluded. "And we hope you enjoy the exciting conclusion to the story. Just keep in mind that these next ten chapters are a bit different than the preceding 40. If you want to know more, just ask the author."
Yomotsu cleared his throat. "So, anyway—here's part five! CUE RIGHTEOUS DRUM ROLL!"