Helloo… Here's my reply for your lovely reviews:

Lixie: Hahaha, I am glad that someone can also relate to how much uni life can be a pain. I want to be a child again and do nothing but watch some tv and eat candy. Anyway, I digress… I am glad you liked the second chapter, personally, Hans is so irritating that I actually had to force the hell out of myself to write and just get rid of him already. Hopefully, you'll like this chapter as well! Take care and allow yourself to rest some time to time, I know how infuriating uni can be.

Guest: I am glad that you loved it! I hope this one is good enough too, thank you for your heart-warming review!

Zim: Omg, of course, I replied! You motivate the heck out of me and now I am blushing cause of your squealing hahaha (sending lots of love). I am sorry for your exam, I hope you can make it up for it in the future and either way, do not beat yourself up for it. It is cliche advice, I know, but as a person who cares too much about her exams, I really like that one. Anyways, I am doing great, just busy with life overall. How are you? I am glad you liked this chapter and… oh, there is a guy named Jack, isn't it? My my, I can't figure out who he is hahaha. Okay, that was my poor attempt at sarcasm. Jack will come around, but not so fast. So please, bear with me. Thank you for your awesome long review, can't wait to hear more from you!

So… Is this chapter a huge essay on law, morals etc? Yes, yes, it is. Is it justifiable? I think so, it is the reason why I wanted to write this story in the first place. Anyway, sorry for my long rambling. Please, enjoy the chapter!

"What's law? Control? Law filters chaos and what drips through? Serenity? Law - our highest ideal and our basest nature. Don't look too closely at the law. Do, and you'll find the rationalized interpretations, the legal casuistry, the precedents of convenience. You'll find the serenity, which is just another word for death."

― Paul Atreides ( Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah)

Chapter 3: Ultima Ratio

Light Yagami…

Elsa chewed on her lower lip, focusing on the black ink on the snow-white page in front of her. Light Yagami... Who was he? When she had searched the internet for this name, she had come across abandoned Facebook profiles, a few random, too ordinary-looking people. She had no idea who this person was, but she had a feeling that she probably wouldn't find the answer to her question on the web or on any other platform.

Elsa ran her fingers slowly over those two words. The name was written in the same strange, gothic style of calligraphy as title of the notebook and the rules on the inside.

What kind of a joke was this? She had to give in, whoever had prepared this joke had indeed put considerable effort into it.

The human whose name is written in this note shall die.

She could not get this sentence out of her head, it echoed in her head like a hymn and gave her goosebumps. This notebook was all a joke, it had to be. If it was real... how could this be possible? Was this a game of a superior being, a god?

Elsa shuddered once more, unable to stop herself from wrapping her arms around herself. She was not religious; she believed in God, but the concept of no God did not bother her. But even if God were real, why would he do such a thing? Why would God feel the need to use a material entity like a notebook?

The young woman decided to push her questions aside, she couldn't make a definite, objective judgement on the veracity of God and the notebook... unless she tried to use the notebook.

Elsa closed the notebook and began to examine the front cover for perhaps the hundredth time that day. She couldn't take her eyes off the title page. She was almost certain that the notebook was a joke, but somewhere inside her, a tiny, faint voice repeated the same question over and over, silently: What if Death Note is real?

Should she test its authenticity? Of course, she knew what it meant to use it, she was well aware of what a horrible crime it was to kill a human being... But she had to admit that she was secretly intrigued. And this sense of curiosity was extremely dangerous. The fact that she felt the need to write a name for this mysterious object, which she believed to be unreal, just out of curiosity, suggested the possibility that she was considering its authenticity. So why did she still feel the need to test it? Accepting the possibility of the notebook being real and still writing a name would be a crime!

Light Yagami... The owner of this mysterious name, if what the notebook promised was true, was dead. How dare she add a second name under it?

Articles 211 and 212 of the German Criminal Code: Murder and manslaughter. If the death book was real, she would be charged under these two articles, which she had been studying in criminal law class for a month and a half.

She would have... killed a human being.

She would have ended the life of a creature of flesh and bone, a person with feelings and thoughts. She would have slaughtered a conscience and a soul (yes, Elsa believed that humans possessed these elements).

So why then...

The young woman gasped, placed her hand on the end of the desk, pushed it hard and stood up. She paced anxiously around the room with her eyes wide open, struggling not to stare at the notebook.

She had contemplated killing a human being! How dare she? Just a few seconds of questioning the idea was not enough to qualify it as an innocent, stupid idea, because she was serious in her questioning.

This thought, this desire, was above all against her moral code. She could not kill a human being on purpose... ever. She could never take a human life out of hatred, revenge, jealousy or for any other reason. She had no right to do so. If she killed a human being, she would never forgive herself, she would not know what to do out of remorse.

Apart from her own moral judgements and conscience, Elsa was a student of law, she believed in the law. The law gives the final judgement to ensure justice, punishes the wrongdoer and defends the righteous. The ultimate aim of the law was to prevent society from descending into chaos, to establish a certain order in society through laws and legal norms, and to maintain and protect that order. Law served humanity. What could be a nobler purpose than this?

However, much as she admired and respected it, Elsa in particular was aware of its shortcomings. Human nature was both evil and good, and although the law tried to strengthen the good side of humanity, it was man-made.

Law was based on ideologies. Liberalism, capitalism, socialism, communism... The law determined its laws according to certain ideals. Elsa would not deny this, it was inevitable that a certain group of people would base their laws on certain ideologies, and if she herself wrote laws she could not remain impartial, it was impossible.

Nevertheless, the fact that the law was based on ideologies was problematic. She took her own country, the USA, as a main example; she found the current US legal system very problematic. Although the jury system sounded good in theory, it was very flawed in practice. There was an even bigger issue. The average US citizen did not even have one of the most basic rights of a human being, the right of self-defence. If you really wanted to be properly defended in court you had to pay tens of thousands of dollars to your lawyer. It was ironic that this country, which presents itself as the face of civilisation, would strip its own citizens of one of their most basic rights because of its love of wild capitalism. This was one of the reasons why Elsa chose to study law in Germany.

Elsa found the current German constitution to be very well drafted, and she admired the German legal system for its continuous improvement. However, she could never say the same about Nazi Germany or the GDR, the first one justified racism against the Jews and all those horrible, unthinkable events on the basis of fascist ideology, and the latter rejected the civil code for a long time because of the so-called communist ideology: The GDR, which came into being in 1949, only deigned to enact a civil code in 1976. Even the current German constitution had a dark past: After the Nazi regime ended in 1949, two temporary constitutions for West and East Germany were formed. After reunification on 3 October 1990 and after the dissolution of the GDR, the constitution of West Germany became the basis of the Germany of today.

A completely new constitution was not drafted and no referendum was organised, but it was unconstitutional not to do so.

The law was full of ironies, complexities, and manipulation. Law changed with humanity, but it did not always evolve. Throughout human history, it became a puppet of politics, religion and ideologies. Hence, it was tragic that its ultimate aim was to prevent chaos. While trying to prevent chaos, the law sometimes did cause chaos.

Therefore, to what extent was it wrong for her to use Death Note? Even in some parts of the world, even in developed countries like the United States and Japan, death penalty still existed. Why shouldn't Elsa execute people?

Because you alone have no right to make a judgement, because it is wrong to kill people, because your conscience cannot allow it, let alone the law...

And how exactly did the conscience of the people who committed evil to allow them to do so? Rich people who sell weapons to terrorists just to make money, fathers who beat their children and wives, hate crimes, money lords who steal from the poor, corrupt politicians who starve people and send them to their deaths for their own power fantasies... What use was Elsa's conscience? None of these people had a conscience, what good was it to tell them they were wrong?!

There was both good and bad in all humans, yes, but they could still categorise individuals as 'good' and 'bad'.

There were too many bad people. The law could not reach them all. This problem was especially evident in countries where the legal system was considered to be 'underdeveloped', for example in countries governed by the sharia or in countries where the law was not enforced. While the oppressor walks freely on the streets, the oppressed are condemned to more oppression.

Why should she not reach where the law does not reach? Why not try to help the law? Of course, she could never deny or convince herself that what she was thinking of doing was against the law, but Elsa was prepared to defy it in order to help it. After all, they both wanted to help humanity.

Nonetheless, she kept postponing the most obvious question... Could she live as a murderer? Could she really afford to have blood on her hands?

Elsa sighed deeply, no longer resenting herself for being serious in her questioning. She felt that something was changing inside her, or perhaps the thoughts and feelings she had buried deep down were coming to the surface.

Why did she always have to be the good one?

Be polite when talking to people, say thank you after eating, don't hold the knife and fork too close, say good morning and good evening to people, take care of your elders, look after the little ones, don't wear too many mini skirts, avoid swearing, don't make a fool of yourself by drinking too much alcohol, focus on your studies or else you are a lost cause... There were so many moral rules imposed on people by society. This particular social moral order was sometimes necessary, but it certainly had an unnecessary side, and it could be too oppressive on the individual.

Elsa had tried all her life to fit in with this established order, not to disobey it. She was not happy with it, but it was what she was used to, thus, she felt a sense of trust and respect for it. But, especially since she had moved countries and started university, the pressure on her had increased. It was exhausting to always play the role of the 'perfect girl' to her friends, family and the people she interacted on daily basis.

Worst of all, she was less and less convinced that playing this role would honour her, that it would lead her to something good. All her life she had cared about school, about her studies, and she was finally where she wanted to be, studying law at the best university in Germany. But it would be at least seven years before she could become a lawyer, judge or prosecutor, if she passed the exams.

How many more years would it take to fulfil her ambitions? What really frightened him was whether it was possible at all. Finding and punishing the unjust and helping the righteous was not the only thing she wanted to do: She also wanted to fight against social problems. For example, she wanted to defend the immigrants of a country or society that did not care about the rights of immigrants. Of course, she knew that she could not solve the problem of a whole country on her own, but she simply wanted to have the possibility to fight for this cause.

Now, even that did not appear to be possible.

So, really, why didn't she use that notebook in front of her? Society determined what was right and what was wrong, but so far, society's morality, or her own, had not helped much, people continued to suffer, the world was more unfair than it was fair.

Death Note was an ultima ratio, a last resort. It had the power to achieve what the law could never achieve.

However, Elsa could never use that power to its full potential, because she did not believe in a utopia where no crime would ever be committed, because evil would exist even in such a world. Moreover, even if she created this utopia, the fact that she created it through fear and oppression would make her the evilest and most despotic.

But on a small scale, she could, for example, make a crime, for which she could never find any justification, the main focus and punish those who committed that crime. Maybe it wouldn't have changed much in the world, but it might have helped a few people.

In her eyes, there was a great crime that could never be justified: Rape.

A person could kill in self-defence, steal to support his family, resort to violence due to past protect someone. But when it came to the crime of rape, Elsa could not empathise with the perpetrator and could not accept the criminal's motive for committing such a crime.

Wouldn't she be doing humanity a favour by writing the rapists' names in Death Note? No one would characterise rapists as good people. Moreover, Elsa could also bring justice to the governments that punished people who had been raped. If she couldn't intervene in their corrupt legal systems, she could at least cause the beginning of a change.

Why shouldn't she try?

The young woman sat back in her chair with a calm demeanour. Death Note was a joke, but if it wasn't a joke, she could admit to herself that she wanted to take the chance of making those goals all happen, even though she knew it was ethically, legally and morally wrong.

In order to confirm that someone had died in 40 seconds, she had to kill someone who was live on air, and she had the perfect person in mind. Drew Steven Nicolson, an American comedian with a live TV programme, was arrested on four counts of rape and the sexual abuse of three girls under the age of eighteen, but only served six months for good behaviour. Moreover, he was not sacked.

By now, US time, he should be live on the air. Elsa quickly grabbed her phone to find a live stream of his show. As soon as the found the stream, she felt as if the disgusting rapist pervert was spewing his filth at her. The young woman grimaced as she listened to his stupid jokes, reached into her pencil case with her right hand and picked up a pencil. When the pencil touched the page of Death Note, she gasped.

She was going to do it... Yes, she was really going to do it.

Elsa was about to write the name down when she paused again. The tip of the pencil was located exactly one line below the line with Light Yagami's name. The young woman couldn't help but stare at that name again. Why did that name affect her so much?

She didn't know why, but she suddenly felt uncomfortable, as if she was disrespecting Light Yagami. That name deserved a page of its own, not to be lumped in with other criminals. So, after one last glance at that name, she flipped the page and wrote the name Drew Steven Nicolson on a new page, this time without hesitation, but very slowly. As she did so, not only her hand trembled, but also her breath and even her whole body.

As soon as she finished writing the name, Elsa locked her gaze onto her wristwatch, though she was watching the live feed out of the corner of her eye.

5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

Drew Steven Nicolson clutched his chest and fell to the floor, the other people on the live broadcast burst into screams, and Elsa couldn't contain herself and threw out everything in her stomach all in the same second.

Elsa: *respects Light*

Me: Bitch, you better be joking.

Okay… I may have a habit of discontinuing my fanfics so you have the right not to believe me when I say that I will finish this fanfic. But really, I will. I've planned the whole plot and it won't be a long one. The thing is, I probably won't be able to update until the second week of march. I have exams coming up very soon and I need to deal with them. So, you may not encounter an update for a while but I promise I will continue. I hope you liked this chapter, can't wait to read your reviews, thank you all so much for your support! Take care and lots of love!