Futatsu no Tsuki

Futatsu no Tsuki

Chapter 25

B felt the glare - the foreboding sense of danger - before the voice screeched at him. The rage inside the voice was unlike anything he'd experienced. Unworldly.

A voice he'd heard only recently.

"How dare you..." The shinigami growled, her eyes livid and her claws outstretched. Rem swooped down at the man, her eyes murderous-red.

"Wha..." B blinked, barely registering the pain as the shinigami clawed his chest. Blood trickled from his lips as Rem squeezed her claw into his flesh. Her nails reddened with blood.

"How dare you write Misa's name in the death note!" Rem's contorted mouth spat even as her body started to disintegrate. The pain in her words was all B needed to understand.

"You..." He turned to Yue who lay bound and half naked on the floor. The bruised lips curled into a faint smile, too cheerful of an expression for his victim. He snarled. "You little shit..."

"Heh. My plans don't always fall through..."

Rem's eyes widened at Yue's words, comprehending their meaning - and her mistake. "You...You! Argh..."

The shinigami pulled her claw from B's chest and lunged at the bound teen. The attempt too late as punishment for breaking the taboo broke her body into bits of sand.

'Misa...' Rem whispered to herself before dying - the image of the blonde lying motionless in the darkened apartment imprinted behind her eyelids.

Curled in a ball beside a bookcase, a puddle of blood around her beautiful hair - Misa had ceased to breathe in front of Rem's eyes.

The 19 year old model, distraught after watching the news of the massacre and Kira proclaiming himself god, had slit her tongue and throat. Bleeding to death with the apartment door unlocked. She hadn't even listened to Rem and struggled when the shinigami tried to stop her.

Throughout it all Misa's lifespan remained unchanged, revealing a death years away, until it vanished completely.

Kira. The death note. The creator of those bizarre suicides. It was his doing, and Rem sought vengeance for the death of her beloved human. Rushing to the new owner of Misa's death note, she'd mistook B for Misa's murderer. And forsaking use of the death note in her revenge, Rem broke the taboo that bound shinigami to using only death notes to kill.

"Misa..."

0

Ryuk stretched out his wings, the roof of Light's house beneath his feet. It was boring. And there were no more apples.

"...I wonder if it'll be more interesting following Yue. I'll certainly get more apples from him..." Ryuk stared at the horizon, then above him - flexing his wings before leaving the roof.

0

"Heh, heh heh." Yue laughed bitterly, propped against a concrete wall. His skin and the remainder of his clothes covered in blood, he struggled against the handcuffs binding his arms.

B's immobile form lay face down on the floor, blood spilling from his back and mouth.

"Heh." Yue crouched into a ball, his eyes heavily shadowed by his hair. Knees pulled to his chest and arms bound behind his back, he curled tighter in a fetal position against the wall. The rough concrete comforting. "Heh. So much for the rest of my plan..."

He bit into his lip, splitting open the skin even more. The metallic taste tinged with pain.

"If I can't get these handcuffs off..." He cursed. A few teardrops falling from his obscured eyes and down his pale cheek. His body trembling, he drew in a few breaths - forcing himself to forget what B had done. Rem's arrival had prevented B from going all the way, but the raven-haired man had come close. Too close. "Shit. Shit."

The tears continued. Yue swallowed, breathing deliberately slow in order to prevent himself from audibly crying.

"Fuck..."

Blinking away the blurriness of his vision, Yue lifted his head and studied the room - it appeared to be a sparsely used warehouse or large storage shed. Only a few boxes here and there, and a medium sized crate decorated the room.

The teen swallowed again, his eyes roaming toward the body three feet away. The pistol still rested next to B's corpse, though the pile of shinigami ash had already dispersed and vanished.

"Oh..." Yue gaped at the notebook lying where Rem's remains had been. 'Could that be...?'

Gritting his teeth, the teen lunged himself away from the wall and wormed toward the notebook. The thread of his jeans hardly protected his knees as he struggled forward on them, still bound.

"...I'm sorry" He whispered once he reached the notebook and flipped it open with his feet. Dipping his big toe into the pool of B's blood, he returned to the notebook and began writing.

0

Raised voices awoke Light, the words said not very clear, though the hysterical tone in his mother's voice jostled him. Sitting up in bed, he listened carefully to the voices and rubbed at his blurry eyes. He glanced at the clock.

'5:26 am...' Light stretched then paused. The sound of footsteps from his sister's room running across the hall reached his ears. Quiet, then a sharp knock on his bedroom door.

"Nii-chan! It's terrible! Yue-nii..." Sayu yelled through the closed door.

'Wh...Yue...' Light jumped out of bed and, on his way to the door, noticed that his room was eerily silent. '...Ryuk isn't here...'

"Nii-chan!"

"All right, Sayu. What happened?" Light opened the door, partially knowing what his sister would say.

"Yue-nii disappeared from the hospital! And, and..." Sayu was cut off by their father coming upstairs, his authoritarian voice telling Sayu to go to her mother and for Light to come to him. "But..."

"Now Sayu." Souichiro repeated, waiting for her to disappear down the steps before turning to his son.

"What is it, father? Is there something that you can't tell mom and Sayu about?"

"Light..." Souichiro studied his eldest son's face, his own expression brimming with frustration. "L wants to question you. About Yue."

"Why? What's happened to Yue? Sayu says he's disappeared from the hospital, but...is the task force looking for him?"

"Just come on. We can't speak here."

Light glanced over his father, then nodded. After saying he'll be down after getting dressed, he shut the door.

'I have a strange feeling about this...'

0

L tapped his lip with his forefinger, his dark eyes staring at his reflection on the windowglass. The world outside just awakening, he ignored it - focusing instead on B's ultimatum.

'It's a trap going after Second Kira...'

He continued rubbing his lip as he heard Matsuda switch on the television. The other officers were still searching for Yue, while the youngest had decided to return.

It didn't matter that the youngest officer of the task force was present, it was actually safer for Matsuda who L suspected would easily get himself into dangerous situations when unsupervised. However, it was unexpected that Matsuda would give up on the search.

L glanced at Matsuda's reflection on the windowglass.

'It seems he's preoccupied with watching TV...'

"Matsuda-san, why aren't you still out searching for Yue? Weren't you and Yagami-san searching as a team?"

"Chief decided to get Light-san to help instead and told me to come back here." Matsuda replied, slightly nervous being alone with the detective. "There was a News report I caught a glimpse of on my way here and I thought I saw something..."

L watched the officer silently, now and again glancing at the television monitor.

"And that something wa..."

L's eyes widened as his question was answered before he finished asking. A clip playing on Sakura TV News revealed someone that L recognized as B outside an apartment complex. He had sunglasses on and dressed and acted different, yet L recognized him.

There were not too many people walking around with incompletely covered burn scars on their necks and hands.

"B..."

"It is B? I had an hunch when I saw the clip, yet..." Matsuda began, expression like a pet's expecting a reward. "Ryuzaki-san?"

L ignored Matsuda and instead read the News headline - his eyes widening even more.

'...This News headline says Misa Amane was found dead in her apartment...but that's...' The detective chewed on his fingernail, listening to the news clip about the up-and-coming model's death. A death that suddenly occurred, an apparent suicide. '...her apartment door was unlocked when she was found, that's...'

L scratched the back of his leg with his foot. He tilted his head downward, obscuring his eyes while thinking. It wouldn't make sense if B was behind this. L bit down into his bottom lip.

'Yue...he must have created this...an open-room suicide to match the others...' L clenched his teeth, his stomach twisting at the thought of the danger Yue was now in. 'If Yue has disrupted B's plan for my encounter with Misa Amane as Second Kira, then B will...B will...'

"Yue..." L whispered, bracing himself against allowing his emotion to show. "...Matsuda-san, it is even more urgent that Yue is found soon. It'll take too long to explain why, but Amane-san's death will anger B, and he'll most likely take it out on Yue...Just start searching with the other officers again quickly."

"Wha...Ryuzaki-san..."

"Quickly, Matsuda-san!"

"Ah...yes." Matsuda bowed and left, picking up on the urgency and worry in L's words. His own worries he shook away. 'I didn't get to tell Ryuzaki-san that it didn't seem right when Yagami-san decided to leave and told me to go back to the hotel...I guess it could just be my imagination...'

0

"Father, where are we headed?" Light asked as he glanced out the car window. His father had been driving for around five minutes longer than it would take him to get to the hotel. The strange feeling gnawing at his stomach refused to lessen, and instead grew stronger each minute.

His father ignored him and continued driving. The gnawing feeling in Light's stomach turned to nauseating fear.

'Did Yue...no...he wouldn't...' Light swallowed, understanding why his father was acting strange. His brother had done the unthinkable. 'write...father's name...'

Light jerked back in his seat as the car abruptly stopped, and his father told him to exit. Biting on his inner cheek the elder Yagami twin did as told, the shutting of the car door deadening. After taking a few steps away from the car his father left, heading back towards the main road. The sickening feeling in his gut grew.

"Yue...you..." Light glowered, taking stock of his surroundings. A warehouse loomed in front of him, dark and grimy. It's eeriness lessening as the night sky gave way to daybreak.

'This ends now, Yue.'

Light entered the open warehouse door, his eyes and ears riveted to any sign of life. It didn't take him long to reach the single area where a light glowed. His eyes widened as he approached, a body lay motionless on the floor. The stench of blood curdled Light's stomach.

"Yu..." Light glanced closer at the corpse, surprised, the next second shaking his head. 'That must be B...for a second I thought it was...'

"Hyuk hyuk, things are gonna get interesting now..." Ryuk laughed from above Light, causing the brunet to jump.

"Ryuk! This is where you disappeared to? Why...no. Is Yue still nearby?" Light swallowed back his shock, keeping his anger locked inside. 'If Ryuk decides to help Yue...I'm screwed.'

"I'm here, aniki." Yue approached his brother from the shadow just beyond the lamp light, his hands messing with the broken handcuffs that refused to budge from his wrists. "You must thank that shinigami of yours for breaking the chains of these handcuffs. Otherwise we wouldn't have had the chance for a one-on-one face-off."

"...Yue, did you write dad's..."

"...regrettably your shinigami didn't get here in time to prevent my desperate attempt to get you here...but depending on who dies now, it might be of some benefit..."

"Yue!"

"...if you win, you won't have to worry about father..." Yue continued coldly, his voice different than what Light was used to. A cold, broken voice - almost like his twin had given up caring.

"Yue, what's..." Light froze as he saw the bruises and torn clothing covering his twin. He glanced back at the body on the floor. "...were you...did that man...rape...you?"

Yue burst into laughter - bitter, crazed laughter that chilled Light. The laughter echoed through the warehouse, strengthening the elder twin's nauseating fear. He could do nothing but watch his brother, even as the younger twin lay a pistol next to the lamp.

"...you sound surprised, aniki. The one constant in my life - and you're surprised by it." More laughter.

Light shivered, his body overcome by the madness of Yue's words. Something seemed to have broken in his brother. "Yue..."

"...my plan was to make you unable to kill as Kira by blinding you, but...hah...what's the point?" The younger twin spoke through his laughter, grasping his knees. The next moment he fell silent, and glared at his brother. His caramel eyes simmered with loathing. "Why...why do I not only always fuck up, but also always do so to protect you?"

"What?" Light flinched. He shook it off and glared back at his brother. "It isn't my fault you always screw up, and when have you ever protected me? I'm the one who saved your life when we were kids."

"...it wasn't your life I protected, aniki." Yue laughed bitterly, covering his forehead with his hand. "It was you that Hirose wanted...he changed my answers on a test thinking it was yours. And Yashima..." Yue tilted his face upward toward the ceiling. "...he threatened to rape you so I killed him."

"Yu..."

"Now I've used that murder notebook even on dad, I..." Yue trembled and bit sharply down on his lip, drawing blood. "And it was all to stop you from being executed as Kira...aniki..."

"...if you really wanted to help, you should've just stood away. Or just done nothing..." Light replied coldly, burying his shock at Yue's words deep beneath a calm exterior. "I never needed your help."

"...yes, that's right..." Yue mumbled, picking up the pistol beside the lamp. "...that's right..."

"Yue..." The color drained from Light's face as his brother aimed the gun at him.

"You've never needed my help at all...never..." Yue stared at his brother, the rims of his eyes slightly damp; the rest of his face devoid of emotion. "...but L does..."

"Yue!" Was all Light could respond as his brother's pressed the trigger, the gunshot reverberating through the warehouse.