Categories > Anime/Manga > Death Note > Shinigami: Death of the Old World
Ryuk dropped lower and lower, sand streaming out of him, until he was lost from sight. Daril didn’t bother going after him. Judging from the huge gush of sand that had burst out of him, he wasn’t going anywhere when he landed. Right now, their main concern was the one that was still moving. Rem was headed straight for a massive human city, looming before them with innumerable lights…she put on an extra burst of speed and made it to the city limits, but they were catching up. It was only a matter of time. Making herself intangible, Rem wove in between the sky-scraping buildings, through them, up, down, side to side, trying to evade the trackers. Daril wasn’t used to the human world; she’d only seen it through the viewing holes, and had never actually gone down into it. The bright lights and massive boxlike structures were both confusing and irritating. It was only possible to see glimpses of Rem in between the giant, gaudy flashes of all colors of light coming from signs and posts, which were only made even brighter by the blackness that occurred whenever they flew through a building. Half-blinded, Daril simply flew forward as fast as she could, hoping to catch Rem before this nonsense could go on for too long…suddenly, with a jolt, Daril realized that Rem had disappeared…they had flown through about five buildings, without her in front of them…
“Stop!” she shouted, trying to take a good look around despite the obnoxiously bright neon-coloured lights that were screaming at her eyes.
“Where’d she go?” said Sidoh.
Crap. If even Sidoh couldn’t see her…
“Everybody, go up! We’ll be able to spot her if we’re at higher altitude…”
In a matter of seconds, they were a few hundred feet up, with half of the entire city visible beneath them. The city stretched for miles-there was no way Rem could have flown out of it in that little amount of time, but Daril still couldn’t see her.
“Do you see Rem, Sidoh?”
“No...!” said Sidoh, starting to sound panicky.
“Then she’s hiding somewhere, probably in one of these buildings. No point searching for her; she might sneak away while we’re down there looking…she’ll come out eventually, and we’ll see her when she does if we stay high. Come on…we’ll perch here while we wait.”
Kinddara and Sidoh followed Daril to the top of the tallest building around, one with a large, pointed needle sticking out the top of it. Daril stood right in the middle of the building, holding the needle for balance against the blasting wind, and Kinddara and Sidoh sat down on either side of her. Daril scanned the city carefully, patiently; as she waited for Rem to come out…she couldn’t hide forever.
Rem clung tightly to the underside of the helicopter she’d grabbed onto in mid-chase, listening to the faint babblings of the humans inside.
“Happy New Year, ladies and gentlemen; I’m Wayne Pickford, and this is your evening traffic report. As you can see, we’ve got a bit of a backup on 1st Avenue; looks like lots of folks are heading downtown already to start the celebrations. No rush yet, but it’s only going to get more backed up as the night goes on, and if you want to bring the little ones down to the park before the fireworks start, you may want to hang a left on Broadway instead…”
Rem forced herself to stay underneath the helicopter for a full fifteen minutes while the reporter and his pilot flew steadily farther away from the building they’d taken off from moments before she’d grabbed on, hoping to borrow some speed. Hitching a ride on the helicopter had done more than given her a speed boost…although she hadn’t realized it at first, she was perfectly camouflaged with her white body against the painted white metal of the news helicopter, and it seemed as though the hunters had lost track of her completely. Rem may have gotten away, but she wasn’t relieved in the slightest. The last she’d seen of Ryuk, he’d been plummeting earthward, badly wounded, and once the hunters realized they’d lost her, they’d go looking straight for him, and there was no way he’d be able to get away…if he was still alive, that is. Sand had been rushing out of him like a river as he’d fallen …Rem couldn’t take it anymore. They were near the city limits, anyway; so she was probably as safe as she could get from Sidoh’s all-seeing eyes. Rem let go of the helicopter and dashed off in the direction where Ryuk had fallen, determined to find him before the hunters did.
Rem had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach as she neared the place Ryuk had gone down over. She hadn’t noticed what they were flying over back then; at that moment, she’d been too frightened to take a gander at the darkened scenery. But now, it was obvious that they had been flying along a coastline, with a long, sandy beach. If the worst had happened, and Ryuk was dead, he was now either under the ocean, or he was just another part of the beach, indistinguishable from the rest. If he’d landed in the water, his death note would have disintegrated, and she’d have no way of finding out if he was alive or dead. Rem hoped he’d landed on the beach, and that she’d find his death note there…she hoped even more that he’d still be a shinigami attached to that death note when she found him, instead of a pile of sand.
Rem flew up and down the beach, searching, but she didn’t see any signs of Ryuk. Rem was torn…she was done for if she was still here when the hunters came, and there was no point in getting killed for a shinigami who was already dead. But what if Ryuk was alive and she just kept missing him? She couldn’t leave him here to die, especially since it was her fault he was part of this mess…suddenly, Rem spotted something lying on the beach. It was a dark, feathered object; bent at strange angles …it looked like the broken body of a dead crow, only far too large…
Rem swooped down and slid to a stop on the sand beside the object. It was Ryuk…he was still himself, still a shinigami, not a pile of sand…but he was far too still. Deathly still.
Rem had only seen a shinigami die once. Did they always turn to sand when they died, she wondered? Was that the rule, or the exception? Was she…too late? Gingerly, Rem reached out with one bony talon and poked at the wing folded underneath Ryuk’s contorted body…
“EEOOOOOWCH!”
Ryuk’s body jerked to life; he flopped away from Rem and off his wing, and she was dumbfounded when she saw the damage that had been done.
Ryuk’s wing had a massive slash along its entire length. About halfway towards his wingtip, the knife has cut through his wing completely, splitting it in two. Sand was spurting eagerly from Ryuk’s broken wing, forming a wet, mountainous pile. He looked incredibly weak and in pain; at the rate the sand was leaving him, it looked like he’d be drained dry in a matter of minutes…it was a miracle he was still alive in the first place. Rem had to get him out of here, before the hunters came; and she had to eliminate all traces of his presence. There was a knife sticking out of the sand, made of a metal that didn’t look like it came from the human world…she wrapped the blade with pieces of paper abandoned on the beach so it wouldn’t accidentally cut her, and then tucked it safely away in the same space in her back she’d used to store her death note and pen. She gave Ryuk’s sand pile a quick kick, shuddering in disgust…it was gory, but it had to be spread out so it would dry and become indistinguishable from the rest of the beach before the hunters arrived. She swooped down and clenched Ryuk’s wing closed…
“OOOOWW! DON’T TOUCH IT!” Ryuk screamed.
“You’ll bleed to death if I don’t keep it closed...!”
“NOOO! IT HUUURTS!”
Rem ignored him as she picked him up and swung him onto her back.
“OW! OW! OW! STOP IT! LEAVE ME ALONE!”
“You don’t want me to leave you here to die, do you?”
“YES! IT HURTS SOOO MUCH! JUST LET ME DIE!”
“Shhhh. The hunters are coming, and if they hear you…”
“I DON’T CARE! IT HURTS! IT HURTS! YOU HAVE NO IDEA…”
Rem’s face went suddenly and incredibly cold as she turned her head to face him. “I have no idea?” she asked bitterly, staring directly and furiously into Ryuk’s eyes. Ryuk went silent as he looked into Rem’s single yellow eye…the one that had been sliced out, and taken weeks to grow back. A vertical scar still bordered her eye where that slice had occurred, stubbornly refusing to heal…much like the hundreds of other scars that still criss-crossed Rem’s body…
Ryuk clung silently to Rem’s back, keeping his eyes shut tight and letting out the occasional whimper as she flew off…things were getting fuzzy again…was he going to die this time? Yeah…that sounded nice…it would stop hurting if he died…that was Ryuk’s last thought before everything drifted into blackness, and he thought no more.
Daril was getting a bad feeling about this. They’d been waiting on top of the tower for a good fifty minutes, and they’d seen no trace of Rem. She’d expected to see Rem after half an hour, at most; as she’d learned from the King, a frightened prey didn’t like to lose the location of the trackers who were after it. Rem would have to be right at a window of one of the smaller buildings to watch them from this height, and Sidoh had assured Daril he hadn’t seen Rem in any of them. The King had said that Rem was conniving and clever. She also knew the human world better than all three of the trackers... if they hadn’t seen Rem by now, it was likely that she’d escaped, using her knowledge of the human world to her advantage.
“Can we go now?” Kinddara hissed.
“Yes. If we haven’t seen Rem by now, we’re not going to. We’ll track her down later…right now; we’re going back for Ryuk.”
They jumped off the tower and soared back the way they’d come. Daril told Sidoh to take the lead; as Ryuk had fallen, she’d told him to watch carefully and remember where Ryuk landed. Sidoh led them to a long, sandy beach bordering an ocean. Daril stared out at the ocean as she landed…it was peculiar, seeing that much water in person instead of through a tiny little viewing hole. The shinigami realm was so dry, barren and enclosed…all that liquid in one place, stretching on for miles and miles of wide-open space…it was unnerving, really…
“He’s gone!” said Sidoh, sounding panicky again.
Daril snapped abruptly out of her brief reverie. “What do you mean?”
“I saw him land on this beach. This is exactly where he landed, but he’s not here anymore! Where did he go?”
“He may not have gone anywhere. Do any of the sand grains look different from the others, Sidoh?”
Sidoh concentrated hard on the sand for just a few moments. “Hey…yeah,” he said. “There’s this great big spatter of really round-looking grains, instead of all rough…”
“That would be sand from a shinigami. Show me exactly where it is, Sidoh.”
Sidoh walked around the invisible shape the round sand had made-it was vaguely oblong, and about seven feet across.
Daril considered the shape for a moment. “That’s a lot of sand,” she said mildly. “You might have killed him, Kinddara.”
Kinddara chuckled.
“I wouldn’t laugh if I were you. Our job is to bring them back alive, and if he’s dead because of you, you’ve directly disobeyed both the King and me. Plus, if Ryuk is dead, his death note and the knife would still be here, unless somebody picked them up. That somebody is definitely a shinigami…Rem, to be exact. Thanks to you, she now has her own death note, and if she didn’t have one of the King’s weapons before, she certainly does now.”
Kinddara growled irritably at Daril. “Don’t be stupid. A human coulda picked ‘em up.”
“No. If a god of death dies in the human world and leaves a death note behind, only humans able to recognize that god of death’s image and voice are able to see his death note. Only a few in seven billion humans can recognize Ryuk, and according to Sidoh, not one of them lives anywhere near here. I think it’s obvious what really happened.”
“Psh…according to Sidoh…” Kinddara grunted.
“Yes, according to Sidoh…who can actually manage to hold onto his knife, unlike some shinigami.”
“Knife? Yeah, I need a new knife! I gotta go get one from the King…” said Kinddara.
“What you need to do is concentrate on finding Rem like you’re supposed to. I might let you get a new knife, eventually, but first you need to prove that you’re capable of having one. Rem doesn’t need any more free weapons, I think.”
With a horrible screeching snarl, Kinddara launched herself straight for Daril’s throat. Sidoh squealed and covered his eyes. When he dared to look again, he expected to see Kinddara with her teeth sunk into Daril’s neck…but instead, Kinddara was flat on her back, the wind knocked out of her.
“I don’t need behaviour like that from you, Kinddara. Pull yourself together and be somewhat useful, or I send you back to the King. And before you attack me again, keep in mind that I have a knife, you don’t, and I’m the better fighter.”
Sidoh was…what was this feeling? But he was also worried…
“Hey, Daril…do you think the King will be mad we screwed up? They kinda got away…”
“Are you scared he’ll be mad, Sidoh?”
Ordinarily, Sidoh would’ve said no, would’ve denied it…
“I…I guess.”
“Don’t be. He said to find them, and we will. We can’t expect to be perfect on our first try, and the King probably doesn’t expect us to be. I think we’re doing well, all things considered. Already, we’ve gotten Rem out of the shinigami realm and away from the other shinigami, so that’s a plus. She may know the human world better than us, but we’ll learn soon enough. Keep in mind that no matter how many times they escape, no matter how many times they win, we’ll be able to go after them again. We only need to capture them once in order to win for good.”
Sidoh smiled. Ever since the King had put Daril in charge of this task, she’d kind of grown into her role of leading it…Sidoh hadn’t had a chance to see this side of her when she’d done nothing but sit in their realm and gamble. She always sounded like she knew what she was doing, she was always so confident that they would win, and the way she said stuff kind of made Sidoh feel the same way…plus, Kinddara was the scariest shinigami Sidoh knew, and the way Daril had taken care of her, fearlessly and skilfully…Sidoh was kind of impressed. Respectful, even.
“You think we can find them again?”
“I know we can. More specifically, you can. Do you see any more round sand grains, other than the ones in the main spatter?”
Sidoh looked around.
“Yeah, they kind of trail off that way, getting thinner and more spread out…” he said, pointing inland.
“Ah…he’s flying…but not on his own, judging by how much sand he left on the beach…we’ve got them. Good work, Sidoh. Let’s go.”
And just when Sidoh was beginning to think the trail had gone cold, they were on it again.
“Stop!” she shouted, trying to take a good look around despite the obnoxiously bright neon-coloured lights that were screaming at her eyes.
“Where’d she go?” said Sidoh.
Crap. If even Sidoh couldn’t see her…
“Everybody, go up! We’ll be able to spot her if we’re at higher altitude…”
In a matter of seconds, they were a few hundred feet up, with half of the entire city visible beneath them. The city stretched for miles-there was no way Rem could have flown out of it in that little amount of time, but Daril still couldn’t see her.
“Do you see Rem, Sidoh?”
“No...!” said Sidoh, starting to sound panicky.
“Then she’s hiding somewhere, probably in one of these buildings. No point searching for her; she might sneak away while we’re down there looking…she’ll come out eventually, and we’ll see her when she does if we stay high. Come on…we’ll perch here while we wait.”
Kinddara and Sidoh followed Daril to the top of the tallest building around, one with a large, pointed needle sticking out the top of it. Daril stood right in the middle of the building, holding the needle for balance against the blasting wind, and Kinddara and Sidoh sat down on either side of her. Daril scanned the city carefully, patiently; as she waited for Rem to come out…she couldn’t hide forever.
Rem clung tightly to the underside of the helicopter she’d grabbed onto in mid-chase, listening to the faint babblings of the humans inside.
“Happy New Year, ladies and gentlemen; I’m Wayne Pickford, and this is your evening traffic report. As you can see, we’ve got a bit of a backup on 1st Avenue; looks like lots of folks are heading downtown already to start the celebrations. No rush yet, but it’s only going to get more backed up as the night goes on, and if you want to bring the little ones down to the park before the fireworks start, you may want to hang a left on Broadway instead…”
Rem forced herself to stay underneath the helicopter for a full fifteen minutes while the reporter and his pilot flew steadily farther away from the building they’d taken off from moments before she’d grabbed on, hoping to borrow some speed. Hitching a ride on the helicopter had done more than given her a speed boost…although she hadn’t realized it at first, she was perfectly camouflaged with her white body against the painted white metal of the news helicopter, and it seemed as though the hunters had lost track of her completely. Rem may have gotten away, but she wasn’t relieved in the slightest. The last she’d seen of Ryuk, he’d been plummeting earthward, badly wounded, and once the hunters realized they’d lost her, they’d go looking straight for him, and there was no way he’d be able to get away…if he was still alive, that is. Sand had been rushing out of him like a river as he’d fallen …Rem couldn’t take it anymore. They were near the city limits, anyway; so she was probably as safe as she could get from Sidoh’s all-seeing eyes. Rem let go of the helicopter and dashed off in the direction where Ryuk had fallen, determined to find him before the hunters did.
Rem had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach as she neared the place Ryuk had gone down over. She hadn’t noticed what they were flying over back then; at that moment, she’d been too frightened to take a gander at the darkened scenery. But now, it was obvious that they had been flying along a coastline, with a long, sandy beach. If the worst had happened, and Ryuk was dead, he was now either under the ocean, or he was just another part of the beach, indistinguishable from the rest. If he’d landed in the water, his death note would have disintegrated, and she’d have no way of finding out if he was alive or dead. Rem hoped he’d landed on the beach, and that she’d find his death note there…she hoped even more that he’d still be a shinigami attached to that death note when she found him, instead of a pile of sand.
Rem flew up and down the beach, searching, but she didn’t see any signs of Ryuk. Rem was torn…she was done for if she was still here when the hunters came, and there was no point in getting killed for a shinigami who was already dead. But what if Ryuk was alive and she just kept missing him? She couldn’t leave him here to die, especially since it was her fault he was part of this mess…suddenly, Rem spotted something lying on the beach. It was a dark, feathered object; bent at strange angles …it looked like the broken body of a dead crow, only far too large…
Rem swooped down and slid to a stop on the sand beside the object. It was Ryuk…he was still himself, still a shinigami, not a pile of sand…but he was far too still. Deathly still.
Rem had only seen a shinigami die once. Did they always turn to sand when they died, she wondered? Was that the rule, or the exception? Was she…too late? Gingerly, Rem reached out with one bony talon and poked at the wing folded underneath Ryuk’s contorted body…
“EEOOOOOWCH!”
Ryuk’s body jerked to life; he flopped away from Rem and off his wing, and she was dumbfounded when she saw the damage that had been done.
Ryuk’s wing had a massive slash along its entire length. About halfway towards his wingtip, the knife has cut through his wing completely, splitting it in two. Sand was spurting eagerly from Ryuk’s broken wing, forming a wet, mountainous pile. He looked incredibly weak and in pain; at the rate the sand was leaving him, it looked like he’d be drained dry in a matter of minutes…it was a miracle he was still alive in the first place. Rem had to get him out of here, before the hunters came; and she had to eliminate all traces of his presence. There was a knife sticking out of the sand, made of a metal that didn’t look like it came from the human world…she wrapped the blade with pieces of paper abandoned on the beach so it wouldn’t accidentally cut her, and then tucked it safely away in the same space in her back she’d used to store her death note and pen. She gave Ryuk’s sand pile a quick kick, shuddering in disgust…it was gory, but it had to be spread out so it would dry and become indistinguishable from the rest of the beach before the hunters arrived. She swooped down and clenched Ryuk’s wing closed…
“OOOOWW! DON’T TOUCH IT!” Ryuk screamed.
“You’ll bleed to death if I don’t keep it closed...!”
“NOOO! IT HUUURTS!”
Rem ignored him as she picked him up and swung him onto her back.
“OW! OW! OW! STOP IT! LEAVE ME ALONE!”
“You don’t want me to leave you here to die, do you?”
“YES! IT HURTS SOOO MUCH! JUST LET ME DIE!”
“Shhhh. The hunters are coming, and if they hear you…”
“I DON’T CARE! IT HURTS! IT HURTS! YOU HAVE NO IDEA…”
Rem’s face went suddenly and incredibly cold as she turned her head to face him. “I have no idea?” she asked bitterly, staring directly and furiously into Ryuk’s eyes. Ryuk went silent as he looked into Rem’s single yellow eye…the one that had been sliced out, and taken weeks to grow back. A vertical scar still bordered her eye where that slice had occurred, stubbornly refusing to heal…much like the hundreds of other scars that still criss-crossed Rem’s body…
Ryuk clung silently to Rem’s back, keeping his eyes shut tight and letting out the occasional whimper as she flew off…things were getting fuzzy again…was he going to die this time? Yeah…that sounded nice…it would stop hurting if he died…that was Ryuk’s last thought before everything drifted into blackness, and he thought no more.
Daril was getting a bad feeling about this. They’d been waiting on top of the tower for a good fifty minutes, and they’d seen no trace of Rem. She’d expected to see Rem after half an hour, at most; as she’d learned from the King, a frightened prey didn’t like to lose the location of the trackers who were after it. Rem would have to be right at a window of one of the smaller buildings to watch them from this height, and Sidoh had assured Daril he hadn’t seen Rem in any of them. The King had said that Rem was conniving and clever. She also knew the human world better than all three of the trackers... if they hadn’t seen Rem by now, it was likely that she’d escaped, using her knowledge of the human world to her advantage.
“Can we go now?” Kinddara hissed.
“Yes. If we haven’t seen Rem by now, we’re not going to. We’ll track her down later…right now; we’re going back for Ryuk.”
They jumped off the tower and soared back the way they’d come. Daril told Sidoh to take the lead; as Ryuk had fallen, she’d told him to watch carefully and remember where Ryuk landed. Sidoh led them to a long, sandy beach bordering an ocean. Daril stared out at the ocean as she landed…it was peculiar, seeing that much water in person instead of through a tiny little viewing hole. The shinigami realm was so dry, barren and enclosed…all that liquid in one place, stretching on for miles and miles of wide-open space…it was unnerving, really…
“He’s gone!” said Sidoh, sounding panicky again.
Daril snapped abruptly out of her brief reverie. “What do you mean?”
“I saw him land on this beach. This is exactly where he landed, but he’s not here anymore! Where did he go?”
“He may not have gone anywhere. Do any of the sand grains look different from the others, Sidoh?”
Sidoh concentrated hard on the sand for just a few moments. “Hey…yeah,” he said. “There’s this great big spatter of really round-looking grains, instead of all rough…”
“That would be sand from a shinigami. Show me exactly where it is, Sidoh.”
Sidoh walked around the invisible shape the round sand had made-it was vaguely oblong, and about seven feet across.
Daril considered the shape for a moment. “That’s a lot of sand,” she said mildly. “You might have killed him, Kinddara.”
Kinddara chuckled.
“I wouldn’t laugh if I were you. Our job is to bring them back alive, and if he’s dead because of you, you’ve directly disobeyed both the King and me. Plus, if Ryuk is dead, his death note and the knife would still be here, unless somebody picked them up. That somebody is definitely a shinigami…Rem, to be exact. Thanks to you, she now has her own death note, and if she didn’t have one of the King’s weapons before, she certainly does now.”
Kinddara growled irritably at Daril. “Don’t be stupid. A human coulda picked ‘em up.”
“No. If a god of death dies in the human world and leaves a death note behind, only humans able to recognize that god of death’s image and voice are able to see his death note. Only a few in seven billion humans can recognize Ryuk, and according to Sidoh, not one of them lives anywhere near here. I think it’s obvious what really happened.”
“Psh…according to Sidoh…” Kinddara grunted.
“Yes, according to Sidoh…who can actually manage to hold onto his knife, unlike some shinigami.”
“Knife? Yeah, I need a new knife! I gotta go get one from the King…” said Kinddara.
“What you need to do is concentrate on finding Rem like you’re supposed to. I might let you get a new knife, eventually, but first you need to prove that you’re capable of having one. Rem doesn’t need any more free weapons, I think.”
With a horrible screeching snarl, Kinddara launched herself straight for Daril’s throat. Sidoh squealed and covered his eyes. When he dared to look again, he expected to see Kinddara with her teeth sunk into Daril’s neck…but instead, Kinddara was flat on her back, the wind knocked out of her.
“I don’t need behaviour like that from you, Kinddara. Pull yourself together and be somewhat useful, or I send you back to the King. And before you attack me again, keep in mind that I have a knife, you don’t, and I’m the better fighter.”
Sidoh was…what was this feeling? But he was also worried…
“Hey, Daril…do you think the King will be mad we screwed up? They kinda got away…”
“Are you scared he’ll be mad, Sidoh?”
Ordinarily, Sidoh would’ve said no, would’ve denied it…
“I…I guess.”
“Don’t be. He said to find them, and we will. We can’t expect to be perfect on our first try, and the King probably doesn’t expect us to be. I think we’re doing well, all things considered. Already, we’ve gotten Rem out of the shinigami realm and away from the other shinigami, so that’s a plus. She may know the human world better than us, but we’ll learn soon enough. Keep in mind that no matter how many times they escape, no matter how many times they win, we’ll be able to go after them again. We only need to capture them once in order to win for good.”
Sidoh smiled. Ever since the King had put Daril in charge of this task, she’d kind of grown into her role of leading it…Sidoh hadn’t had a chance to see this side of her when she’d done nothing but sit in their realm and gamble. She always sounded like she knew what she was doing, she was always so confident that they would win, and the way she said stuff kind of made Sidoh feel the same way…plus, Kinddara was the scariest shinigami Sidoh knew, and the way Daril had taken care of her, fearlessly and skilfully…Sidoh was kind of impressed. Respectful, even.
“You think we can find them again?”
“I know we can. More specifically, you can. Do you see any more round sand grains, other than the ones in the main spatter?”
Sidoh looked around.
“Yeah, they kind of trail off that way, getting thinner and more spread out…” he said, pointing inland.
“Ah…he’s flying…but not on his own, judging by how much sand he left on the beach…we’ve got them. Good work, Sidoh. Let’s go.”
And just when Sidoh was beginning to think the trail had gone cold, they were on it again.
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