Author's Note
I decided to re-watch Death Note and it's just as good as I remember it being, and this idea came to mind so I decided to turn it into a thing. It was fun to going back to writing a fanfic in the heat of the moment instead of writing a whole script beforehand!
Anyway, here's some music for you to listen while reading:
The Death God
It all started during my second year as a student from Canterlot High. Back then I already had quite a reputation, enough to be either respected or feared by most students, but not enough to be part of the selected few who ruled CHS. Of course, that would eventually change, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start with how I learned to "pick" locks. Well, at least that's what people suspected I did; truth is, back then I was still new to this whole "hands instead of hooves" thing and it took me a while to learn how to move my fingers separately. But I was really good at deceiving people and diverting their attention. I lost count of how many times I managed to sneak into Principal Celestia's office without getting caught or how many times I bribed others into creating distractions that would prevent her from coming back in or force her to leave. I used those brief moments of solitude to poke around, looking for personal information, maybe confiscated items - you wouldn't believe the lengths people are willing to go once you promise to give back to them things that were taken and that they shouldn't have even brought to school in the first place.
Or maybe you do. Have you met Snips and Snails?
But I digress. The point is, one day I hit jackpot: Principal Celestia left her office but didn't notice the key that fell off her back pocket and stayed behind on her chair. I gave it back to her the next day, claiming that I found it on the bathroom floor and didn't know who it belonged to, but not without making a copy of it first. Well, turns out that key unlocked her drawer which contained, among other documents, a chart with the combinations of every padlock of every locker in Canterlot High. I took pictures of them without thinking twice, left everything in the same position I found them and once the hallways were empty I'd start scavenging.
Five-oh-two. That's the number of the locker that changed my life forever. The Fall Formal was approaching and I needed to win in order to improve my popularity, but for that to happen I needed a certain senior out of the way. I had already checked her locker but I couldn't find anything useful to my case, so I decided to check her younger brother's instead. It's not uncommon for siblings to feel animosity toward each other, so there was a chance that he had some dirt on her stored away.
In there, I found a clasp envelope with something inside poorly hidden underneath a pile of school books. Thinking it was a diary, I opened it carefully as to not damage the clasp and found a single notebook inside it. It had black cover and only two words written on it: Death Note.
I rolled my eyes. "Typical edgy teenager." I thought to myself before opening it. The title page was also black, but it had more things written on it:
How To Use It
I
• The human whose name is written in this note shall die.
• This note will not take effect unless the writer has the person's face in their mind when writing his/her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected.
• If the cause of death is written within 40 seconds of writing the person's name, it will happen.
• If the cause of death is not specified, the person will simply die of a heart attack.
•After writing the cause of death, details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds.
I turned the page and saw a few names I didn't recognize written on it, all with very detailed deaths written next to them. A sensible person would have shrugged it off as just another teenager thing, but I knew better: that notebook felt different than any other notebook I had ever seen. What I felt wasn't exactly magic, but I knew that notebook had something supernatural about it, I just couldn't tell exactly what. Of course, that changed not too long after that.
I heard footsteps. Despite the "no running in the hallways" rule, someone was apparently in a hurry and would find me breaking into someone else's locker in no time. I could try to pretend the locker was mine, but before I could come up with an escape plan or even hide the evidence, I was caught. I was actually surprised to find the boy himself standing just a couple of lockers away from me, catching his breath.
"Ge... Get away..." he said between gasps for air. "From my... My locker!"
I had no idea how he knew I had taken the black notebook, but it was definitely more proof that the thing wasn't normal. I had a perfect response for him, but whatever thought I had in my head suddenly vanished when I saw it. Another figure emerged from the same hallway the boy came from, and its appearance suggested that the creature was anything but human:
The monster was tall, definitely over 7 ft in height. Most of its face was wrapped in bandages, save for a small portion of the right side. I could see its dark grey skin, tufts of white hair peeking from under the bandages, an ear which appeared to have had the scaffold torn off and a small chain hanging from the lobe like an earring, but those were all small details I only noticed afterwards; at the moment I could only pay attention to two things: the chains wrapping most of its body - save for its long, slender legs and left arm with sharp and long, dirty claws instead of nails - which, despite being many, didn't make a rattling noise, and its large, round, bright orange eye with a small black dot in the middle.
Back in Equestria I read many books about all kinds of creatures; big, small, docile, hostile, cute, horrendous, numerous, extinct, but I had never seen any of them in the flesh before, so I was unprepared for the shock of seeing something extremely intimidating right in front of me for the first time. I'm glad I had gone to the bathroom not long before that, otherwise I would have embarrassed myself in front of a person whose name I couldn't even remember at the time and a strange creature that didn't belong in this world.
I wanted to scream, but no sound came out of my mouth. I wanted to run, but my legs wouldn't obey me. I wanted to attack, but my fear response wouldn't let me approach them. When I realized that the creature didn't show any signs of hostility I took a deep breath to calm my nerves and clenched my fist to force my hands to stop shaking.
"Wh... What is... That?" I asked, my voice faltering. Maybe calling attention to it was the wrong move, but I wanted... No, needed to know!
The creature looked left and right before pointing a dirty claw at his face.
"You can see me?" it asked me, its voice deep and raspy - definitely a man's voice. He then looked down at the boy who had turned so pale that it was like all his blood had suddenly vanished. "She can see me, Hal. What now?" he bowed in a way that would be physically impossible for a human, approaching his face to the side of the teenager's head. "I'm looking forward to seeing how you're going to deal with this one." the boy named Hal sighed.
"Please, just... Just give me back the note and forget all of this ever happened." he pleaded.
"I want answers!" I insisted. Answers to what? I had no idea. My mind was so full once I had calmed down a bit that I couldn't even decide what to ask. Meanwhile the boy was clearly lost in thought, weighing his options. Then he finally decided:
"Fine! Meet me by the statue in front of the school after classes are over." he tried to reach for the black notebook I was still holding, but I moved it out of his reach before he could touch it.
"I'm taking this with me." I said. I wouldn't just hand over my only bargaining chip. I put the note back into the clasp envelope and took it with me, leaving the boy and the... Thing behind.
The rest of the day seemed like a blur. All I could think about were that thing's blazing orange eye staring directly at me. What was that thing? Was it a local creature? Was it from Equestria? What about the note? Can it really kill people just by writing down their names? While I was busy coming up with my own theories the bell rang, signalizing the end of the class. I wanted to get there as quickly as possible but if I acted abnormally then someone would notice something was going on, so I took my time to get there. Calmly, one foot after the other foot, slow and steady breaths.
He was waiting there, just as promised, but so was the other guy. I can't explain why but just looking at him would give me shivers. I kept my cool. I couldn't show any more weakness than I already showed earlier that day.
"Come, let's walk." I ordered. The topic at hand was obviously something you wouldn't want others to know about, so moving away from the people we knew and keep moving to avoid letting random strangers hear relevant details was a necessity. "First, let's continue from where we started." I looked at the creature following us. He surprised me once again, this time by the fact that he was flying instead of walking; a pair of feathery grey wings pushed the chains aside to free themselves. Based on the wings alone I'd say he looked almost angelic, but they looked extremely out of place on the back of a creature so... intimidating! "What is that?"
"My name is Rasz." he said. "Pleasure to meet ya."
"Don't lie to her." Hal said before turning to look at me. "Meeting you doesn't give him pleasure. Rasz is only here for his amusement, and nothing more." the creature named Rasz chuckled.
"You're no fun. But like I was saying, I'm a Death God."
"A god?" he surprised me for the third time. "No offense but you're not the first thing that comes to mind when people talk about gods."
"We get that a lot."
"So you're a Death God, then. Does that mean there are more like you?"
"Not like me because I am myself but yes, there are several other Death Gods. We come in all colors, shapes and sizes. Some look very similar to creatures from your folklores, others would drive you humans insane just by simply being looked at."
"So if you're a Death God..." I reached into my backpack and retrieved the envelope. "...then I suppose you have something to do with this."
"The Death Note, yes. Let's call it a Death God's 'weapon'. We all have one." Rasz patted the Death Note hanging from his waist, wrapped in chains.
"You saw the rules already, right?" Hal asked me.
"Yes, I did."
"That's a very underwhelming response for someone who just found out that Death Gods are real and is holding a notebook that can kill people just by writing their names."
"Let's just say that where I come from, your 'weird' is my 'trivial'. Seeing Rasz back then just caught me off-guard."
"Well, the point is, Rasz is a Death God and the Death Note kills people. Can you give it back to me now?"
I shrugged and extended the envelope to him, but pulled it back as he was about to grab it.
"One more thing, though." his groan was mildly amusing. "I noticed that you already wrote down a few names, and their deaths were quite detailed. Care to explain that?"
His eyes widened. "I... I..."
I smiled as I placed my hand on his shoulder. "Yes, I understand. Every person has their own visualization of a road to success, but sometimes obstacles appear on their road and they have to be dealt with, right?" I offered him the envelope, but didn't pull back this time. He accepted it. "Sometimes people will stand between other people and their destiny, and bad things will happen to those who turn into a nuisance. And no one wants to be a nuisance, right?" Without giving me an answer, Hal turned his back to me and crossed the street. "Goodbye... Harold Helium!"
The Death Note wasn't the only thing I removed from his locker, I also took a library card containing his full name. As he turned around to look at me in shock, I waved at him with my right hand while I held a scrap of paper torn from the Death Note with my left hand.
Harold Helium - car accident
After taking back the notebook he runs off but dies instantly after getting hit by a car at 4:15 PM
Apathy is the perfect word to describe the old me. The concept of "going too far" was alien to me, and while I can never forget the look on his face as he saw the car approaching for as long as I live, at that moment I couldn't feel anything.
"That does it for me. The notebook is the real deal." I picked up the envelope that had fell down just a few meters away from where I was standing. Passersby and the driver himself were too busy rushing to the dead body in the middle of the street to notice me leaving the crime scene with something that used to belong to him. "No one wants to be a nuisance."
Rasz was a very quiet Death God, but at that moment he simply wouldn't stop laughing.
"So, what else can this notebook do?" I asked Rasz as I flipped through the Death Note while sitting on my favorite chair located inside my bedroom. "Does it have hidden secrets not specified on the rules?"
"The Death Note has many secrets." Rasz was a very cryptic Death God, he hardly ever gave a straight answer to my questions. "So many secrets that even us Death Gods don't know all of them yet. Well, most of us don't."
"Well, and what do you know about it?"
"Didn't Hal tell you that the reason I'm here is to be amused by you humans? Just telling you everything wouldn't be fun at all. I will answer any question, as long as you ask the right ones."
"Are you always this... Mysterious?" his answer was an eerie chuckle.
With a pencil between my teeth, I pondered. I already knew the Death Note worked, but how could I use it to my advantage was my main concern. The obvious answer was to get rid of competition, but with her brother dead then Nicole Neon would definitely not be attending the Fall Formal. I decided to spare her; I had more pressing matters to attend to.
If the name Nikolai Burya sounds familiar is because the media wouldn't shut up about him for months. He was a kingpin - they called him a "businessman", but everyone knew the truth. He was never convicted because there was never enough evidence to throw him in jail and his team of lawyers were masters of distraction and loophole experts. If he died in any conspicuous way they would investigate his death thoroughly and my plan would be ruined. But he was my first choice for a reason: the guy was extremely overweight, a chain smoker and a heavy drinker. I'm still surprised by the fact that he lived that long without a single emergency trip to the hospital (then again, the media isn't 100% trustworthy, I'm pretty sure he had to undergo surgeries due to his unhealthy habits more than just a couple of times, they probably just kept quiet about it).
"The Death Note can manipulate a person's actions to a certain degree, that much has been confirmed." I thought out loud before turning to speak to Rasz. "Is there a limit to the amount of time I can manipulate someone before killing them?"
"You'll have to be more specific."
I rolled my eyes. "Does the Death Note have a deadline?"
"Yes. Every death specified on the Death Note must occur within a period of 23 days in the human calendar. If this limit is not respected then the human will simply die of a heart attack 40 seconds after you write down his or her name."
"What else the Death Note can't do?"
"You'll--"
"...have to be more specific, I get it. Let's see... Are there people the Death Note can't kill?"
"The Death Note will not affect humans under 780 days old, over 124 years old and with less than 12 minutes of life left."
"I don't plan on killing babies and I can't imagine a single elder who would get in my way." I'll be honest: at that moment, memories of Princess Celestia flashed in my head. "...Is the Death Note able to kill non-human sentient creatures from another dimension?"
"I don't think the Death Note was meant to be used on non-human creatures. But like I said earlier, not even us Death Gods know everything the Death Note is capable of."
"Right..." I pushed the Death Note aside, opened my normal school notebook and began to write.
"You're not going to use the Death Note?" Rasz sounded genuinely confused.
"You are a Death God, if you kill people there will be no consequences. But I am just a po--" it was just my second year in this alien world, and you know what they say about old habits. To this day I'll still sometimes say everypony when I'm distracted. "I am just a human. Even if I'm using the Death Note, if they catch me then it's game over!"
"I see, I see..."
Rasz watched over my shoulder as I wrote until he eventually got bored and simply sat on my bed as I kept writing. I sat there for a long time, trying to come up with a flawless plan, but I still had nothing.
"If Nikolai acts suspicious before his death someone would definitely notice." my stomach growled. It had been a long time since lunch, after all. I reached for my backpack and pulled out a sandwich I had bought before leaving school. As I removed it from inside the paper bag, something clicked in my mind.
"That's it!" I said a little louder than I planned. "I know what to do!"
"And what is the master plan you came up with?" I didn't even reply to Rasz, I just pulled my notebook and began to write. Once I was satisfied with the result, I closed it and turned on the TV. "If you know what to do, then why don't you do it?"
"Like you said, I only have 23 days. Why waste one? I'll wait until midnight." I looked at him again. "That's when the Death Note considers a day to be over, correct?"
"Yes, once the clock strikes midnight in the place where the Death Note is located the day is considered over."
I pulled out my phone and checked the time. It was a quarter past 9 PM.
"I guess I should wait until 1 AM, just to be safe."
Nikolai Burya had been interviewed recently, and he revealed part of his morning schedule: every morning before going to work he would take his beloved dog for a quick walk in a park, always accompanied by two of his most trustworthy bodyguards. After that one of his bodyguards would take his dog back home while the other escorted him to his car and drive him to work. I arrived at that park early in the morning wearing a beanie, a torn hoodie, dirty pants and old shoes. Successfully disguised as a homeless woman I sat down next to a trash can and waited. Less than an hour later I heard heavy footsteps and didn't even need to look up to know that those two fat legs moving toward me belonged to him. His dog tried to approach me but with a quick pull he yanked the puppy away.
"Don't go next to that thing, I don't want their fleas jumping on you." I heard him saying with that heavy accent of his. I then heard the thud of something hitting the bottom of the trash can and he left. Once the three men were out of sight I got up and investigated the trash can, finding a paper bag inside it. Picking it up, I went to the nearby bathroom. Hidden in a vent was a backpack I had planted there earlier that day with the clothes I entered the park wearing: a singlet, shorts, running shoes and a pair of sunglasses. I took off the disguise, shoved it inside the backpack along with the paper bag, wore the running outfit and spent another hour jogging in the park before leaving. That was my morning routine for the next 30 days, but I disposed of the homeless disguise after the 23rd - I had no reason to disguise myself after Burya was dead; neither him nor his bodyguards would be passing by there any longer.
I visited the school library during lunch break on the 24th day, just to make sure everything had gone according to plan and, just as I had expected, several news websites had published articles about Nikolai Burya dying the previous day. I already knew the cause of death, but I decided to check just to be sure:
"Yadda yadda yadda, businessman, yadda yadda yadda, suspect, yadda yadda yadda..." I smirked. "...heart attack."
Just as predicted, most news blamed his lifestyle as the cause of death. And even if they decided to investigate things further there was no way they would come even close to suspecting me. After all, what reasons they had to investigate a simple high school girl whose only similarity she shared with the man was the place they went in the morning? And even if they approached me to ask why I stopped jogging just one week after his death, I can just say it's because the finals were approaching. It's not technically a lie, the finals were indeed just around the corner! But I must admit, jogging in the mornings was really fun, I should start doing that again one of these days.
I tried not to smile all day, but it was a difficult task. Once I got back home I opened the Death Note and admired my work one more time.
Nikolai Burya - heart attack
he keeps acting normally but, without anyone knowing, he wraps $50,000 in cash in aluminum foil and hides it inside a paperbag, which he drops inside the third trash can in the park while he walks his dog in the morning. He repeats this process for 23 days and dies from a heart attack at 18:30 PM
I smirked as I looked at the green duffle bag on my bed, which contained exactly one million and a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. As long as I managed that money carefully it would last for a long time. Now that I no longer had to worry about keeping myself alive and comfortable I could just focus on climbing the social ladder in Canterlot High and rising to the top. With the Death Note by my side, I was unstoppable.
Or, at least, that's what I thought; when working on a plan to kill Burya, take his money and not get caught I realized that in order to succeed, the one thing I had to avoid at all costs was getting greedy. But, after a couple of years using the Death Note for personal gain and getting away with it, I got careless. When the portal to Equestria opened, I did something reckless: I went through it. Why? Two reasons: first, I missed my horn. Second, I wanted to test the Death Note on ponies and see if it worked. Those are the conclusions of my experiments: you can kill humans when you're in the human world and you can kill ponies when you're in Equestria, but you can't kill humans when you're in Equestria and vice versa.
Don't get me wrong though, I believe meeting Twilight was the best thing that happened to me since I became Princess Celestia's star student, but the old me thought that was a mistake that would haunt me for a long time. Anyway, after going through the portal I found myself in an unfamiliar place called the Crystal Empire. I only spent a couple of hours there but I learned a lot in that short amount of time, the most important being that the Elements of Harmony had been found and the Element of Magic, the most powerful out of the six, was very close, within my reach and unprotected.
I noticed that the Element of Harmony was strangely similar to the crown of the Fall Formal, so I quickly returned to the human world, snuck into Canterlot High - I also used the Death Note to force the janitor to make copies of several keys - and took the crown/fake Element. I didn't expect to fool them, I only wanted to taunt Princess Celestia. What I didn't expect was me tripping and falling, making unnecessary loud noises and waking up Twilight, who alerted the rest of the castle. That's when the plan fell apart. I tried to lose her, but she was very fit and very good at casting spells.
"Sorry it had to be this way, Princess." I told her in a mocking way to show confidence, but on the inside I was trembling. They knew who I was, where I came from and where I went, so they would definitely come after me. I even tried to kill Twilight after she came after me when I realized she was alone - I acted like I didn't recognize her when she confronted me in the hallway, but her voice is pretty unique. I was just playing safe.
Twilight - murder
A mugger threatens her with a knife but stabs her in the chest after realizing she has nothing of value, killing her at 23:59 PM.
In Equestria some ponies have surnames and others only have first names, and I thought she was the latter, after all I only heard ponies refer to her as "Princess Twilight", not "Princess Twilight Sparkle". By the time I realized my mistake - by reading her full name in Pinkie Pie's clipboard - it was already too late: she had already made an impression, and if my only rival for the title of Princess of the Fall Formal that year suddenly turned up dead they would definitely suspect I had something to do with it. I would have to make her quit without using the Death Note.
I decided to keep up with the "I didn't recognize you before" act - being too careful never killed anybody. I did all I could to spread rumors about her, even going as far as forging evidence - that usually worked with the girls from the human world when killing was not an option - but she just wouldn't quit. That's one of the many qualities I admire in Twilight: her resolve.
I eventually got the crown back and became on the outside what everybody knew I was on the inside: a horrific monster. That changed after Princess Twilight and the others used the power or harmony to purge every trace of darkness I had in my heart. For the first time in a long while I could feel things like pain, sadness and remorse, all at the same time. I was so overwhelmed that I couldn't hold back the tears; I cried as I apologized for all my wrongdoings.
After realizing for the first time that the Death Note would bring nothing but pain, I decided to have a talk with Rasz.
"What will you do if I relinquish ownership of the Death Note?" I asked.
"The same I always do: I will erase your memories of the notebook then drop it somewhere else and hope someone picks it up and uses it in amusing ways." he replied nonchalantly.
"And what if I destroy the notebook?"
Rasz hardly ever conveys emotion. The last time I saw him do something other than chuckle was when I killed Hal. This time he approached me in a very threatening manner and bowed the same way he did when I saw him for the first time, this time to look me in the eye. That bloated orange orb looked like a burning fire from up close.
"You have no idea how rare it is for a Death God to own two or more Death Notes. The Death God world is the dullest place I have ever been to and seeing humans coming up with creative ways to exterminate other humans is the only pleasure I have. I don't mind you tearing pieces of the notebook to use it when you're incapable of taking the entire thing but if you destroy the Death Note I will kill you and all of your dear friends. And I will not be merciful; your deaths will be slow, gruesome, cruel and very, very painful. Think about them, Sunset Shimmer. Think about Rainbow Dash, Jacqueline Apple, Rarity Belle, Fluttershy Breeze and Pinkamena Diane Pie. Is this really what you want? Think carefully, I'm in no rush."
"I... I'm sorry." cornered and defeated, I apologized. "I won't destroy the Death Note."
"You are smart."
"You won't do anything to me or my friends as long as I don't destroy the Death Note, right?"
"That is correct."
"Then I will never use the Death Note ever again. I will lock it away and never even look at it for as long as I live!"
"I dealt with humans like you before, Sunset. You will use the Death Note again. Sooner or later, one day you will meet someone you'll wish were dead and write down their name. And I will patiently wait for that day that I know will come."
I wanted to believe that Rasz was wrong. I wanted to believe that I was different.
Sadly, he was right.
When the girls and I were locked under the stage at the finals of the Battle of the Bands I used a piece of the Death Note I kept hidden in my boot along with a small pencil (for emergencies only) and tried to write down their names while my friends were pointlessly bickering.
Adagio Dazzle - accident
While performing during the finals of the Battle of the Bands the spotlights fall down, crushing her to death at 9:44 PM.
Aria Blaze - accident
While performing during the finals of the Battle of the Bands the spotlights fall down, crushing her to death at 9:44 PM.
Sonata Dusk - accident
While performing during the finals of the Battle of the Bands the spotlights fall down, crushing her to death at 9:44 PM.
The time passed and they were still singing. Panicking, I wondered if those names were fake, but then I realized: fake names or not, if they were around since Starswirl The Bearded's time then they had to be much older than 124 years and, therefore, immune to the Death Note. I had to try something else, so I started by trying to make my friends stop fighting.
That wasn't the last time I used the Death Note, though; when Twilight Sparkle from the human world became Midnight Sparkle I almost wrote down her full name. Almost!
Twilight Spar
But no matter how I looked at her, all I could see was the Princess of Friendship who helped me in a time of need and eventually became one of my first and best friends of all time. I had to do something to repay her, and killing an innocent girl who didn't even wanted to be there in the first place was definitely a step in the wrong direction. I managed to save her, but someone had to be punished. And I knew exactly who.
Abacus Cinch - car accident
A truck hits her car while she drives to work, killing her instantly at 6:45 AM.
I decided that I will never use the notebook for personal gain ever again. Instead, I will only use it for the sake of my friends. I will protect them from any and all kinds of harm, even if that puts me in danger. Of course, I will always try to avoid killing others, talking to them will be the first option and the Death Note will be my last resort, but if someone crosses the line I will not hesitate and write down their names as soon as I see them. Next month we're going on a trip to Camp Everfree, and I will make sure that every human who tries to hurt my friends will never be able to hurt anybody else ever again.
Oh, another interesting fact about Death Gods: they can see any human's name just by looking at them. And the best part is, they can share that power with Death Note owners! Sure, some would see giving up half of your remaining time span to have a Death God's eyes as a bad trade, but if it means that I will be able to protect my friends more efficiently then no price is too high.
