FicWad

“I can’t take it, Rem! I need an apple RIGHT NOW!”
“I know, I know. Just hold on a little longer.”
Ryuk’s contortions were getting serious; he was having trouble hanging on as Rem headed for yet another city, straight ahead. After what seemed like forever, she finally landed in front of a grocery store. Ryuk tumbled off Rem’s back, trying not to land on his injured wing despite the awkward positions his limbs were in. Ever since it had gotten injured, Ryuk hadn’t been able to move his wing at all; not even to retract it back to its non-flight position. This only made Ryuk look more ridiculous: not only was he twisted up and doing handstands; he constantly had only one wing sticking out, making him look hopelessly lopsided.
“Can you tuck your wing away yet?” she asked.
Ryuk tried. “Ow! Nope. Not gonna happen.”
“All right. Wait here.”
Rem walked through the wall of the store, and emerged a few minutes later. She pulled about five apples out of the space in her back where she stored everything. It was fairly obvious that Ryuk had no control over his limbs at the moment, so she held one out for him to gnaw away at. It only took one apple for Ryuk to straighten out, and Rem handed him the rest. Ryuk gulped them down one after the other in quick succession, and sighed with satisfaction as he finished the last one. It was only then that he realized…
“Oops. Sorry…I guess I should’ve saved some for later…”
“It’s fine. You need to eat if you’re going to heal. Are the apples helping at all? I realize that they’re no shenzu nuts, but it’s been weeks…”
“I think they are. I mean, my wing doesn’t hurt all the time anymore; just if I move it or poke it or something.”
“I wish it would heal more quickly. Until you can get that tape inside your body by tucking your wing away, you won’t be able to dematerialize it, and if the hunters catch back up to us, it might mean the difference between life and death…”
“You worry too much, Rem. It’s been months, and we haven’t seen one stinking trace of them.”
“That doesn’t mean they aren’t out there. The sooner you’re well enough to use your wing again, the better. Speaking of which- I think now would be a decent time for you to get some rest.”
“About time. You have no idea how hard it is to stay awake when you’re hurt…oh, yeah. You do…sorry,” said Ryuk, quickly, before Rem could give him another one of those looks.
It didn’t take long for them to find some discarded, flattened cardboard boxes and drag them under the covered storage area with the shopping carts.
“There,” said Rem. “That’s a reasonable amount of cover…we should be all right. Go ahead and sleep; I’ll keep watch.”
Ryuk got down on the boxes, and Rem started scanning the night sky for the hunters. She looked back at Ryuk; to her surprise, he wasn’t sleeping- he was staring at her, looking very amused indeed. She went back to watching the sky. To her surprise, Ryuk let out a few “hyuk”s at this…quite a few, actually.
“What?” she finally said, turning back to look at him again.
He was still giggling as he answered. “Rem…sometimes it’s hard to believe that you’re really a shinigami.”
When she gave him a confused look, Ryuk continued, “Well, look at you. Any other shinigami with half a brain would’ve run off and left me by now. It’s pretty obvious I’m slowing you down, and we both know how messy it will be if we’re caught. If you had any sense at all, you’ve flown away while I was sleeping a while ago and let me fend for myself; yet here you are, carting me around, bringing me food, being my watchdog...I just don’t get it. I’m curious, Rem…why are you doing it?”
It took Rem a while to answer. “I can’t really explain,” she finally conceded. “Leaving you to die…it wouldn’t sit right with me…it’s just sort of the right thing to do, I suppose.”
Ryuk launched into another series of “hyuk”s; as though Rem had told him one of the funniest things he’d ever heard.
“Oh, Rem…you’re the spongiest little weirdo I’ve ever met. I gotta admit, though; you’re probably the best shinigami to be stuck with right now, considering the state I’m in. You’re probably the only reason I’m still alive…”
“You’re welcome,” said Rem, looking away and back up at the sky.
“So, will you wake me up if the hunters get here, so I can see what you’re planning this time? You might have outdone yourself with that firework one…I wish I could’ve seen it. It was probably even more entertaining in person…”
“Hopefully, they won’t show up, and you won’t have to see any plan I come up with. Hurry up and get to sleep.”
With a shrug and an amused grin, Ryuk drifted off.
Sidoh watched as Daril and Kinddara fought. They where a whirl of arms, legs, and in Kinddara’s case, teeth; once again, Kinddara was knocked to the ground, and Daril pinned her down.
“How many times do I have to tell you, Kinddara? You can’t win a fight by clawing and biting wildly. You need to think about what you’re doing…find your opponent’s weakness, anticipate their moves…you won’t get any better if you keep fighting like a wild animal. I’d better see some improvement next time.”
She let go, and Kinddara got back up, looking at her with so much hatred it made Sidoh shudder.
“All right, Sidoh; your turn.” With only that brief warning, Daril turned to Sidoh and attacked. He had no time to think; he simply blocked every blow as it came; one after the other, over and over…
Daril stopped. “You know, Sidoh, you’re allowed to attack back.”
“Sorry…” he said.
“Don’t be sorry. You’re defending yourself well, but I want to see that you can attack, too.” She struck again, and Sidoh continued to block her, move after move…
“Come on, Sidoh! Fight back!”
Sidoh raised a foot to aim a kick…and found himself flat on his back, pinned.
“Too slow, Sidoh.”
“Sorry…I suck at this…”
“No, you don’t. If you hadn’t have hesitated, your kick would’ve been too fast for me to block or dodge, and I’d have gone down. You’ve got plenty of talent, Sidoh. You just lack confidence. The second you start believing that you can fight, I’ll stand no chance against you. Let’s see some more nerve next time, okay?”
She got off, and Sidoh got back to his feet, dizzy with disbelief. He stared at Daril in awe and befuddlement.
“What?” she said.
“Uh…um…”
“Spit it out.”
“I guess…thanks.”
“Huh?”
“…No one’s ever said stuff like that to me before…that I’m, uh…talented, or good at something…you’re really…uh…really…nice. For a shinigami, I mean.”
Daril shrugged. “I’m not trying to be nice. The King put me in charge of leading you guys, and part of that is keeping you motivated. I’m just trying to improve your performance.”
“You don’t try to improve her performance by saying she’s doing a good job,” Sidoh said, pointing at Kinddara, who was sitting a ways off, sulking.
Daril giggled in her bizarre, oddly high-pitched way. “Touché,” she said. “But Kinddara’s already got an out-of-control temper; she doesn’t need a swollen ego to go with it. Even if I did say something good about her, she’d probably forget it five minutes later, just like everything else I tell her.”
Sidoh couldn’t help it. He laughed too, quietly, afraid that Kinddara would hear.
“I don’t care if you guys think I’m nice or not. You’ve got talent enough for all three of us, but it’s not going to be of any use unless you have more confidence, and I’m just trying to get you to improve on it. That’s all. Now, let’s get back to looking for traces. You too, Kinddara!” Daril shouted at the shinigami who was still stubbornly sitting a distance away.
Sidoh sighed. He still couldn’t decide if this was any fun or not…he had hoped that the vaguely dirty feeling he had would hurry up and go away, but it hadn’t. He walked around, scanning for prints in the mossy ground of the forest in the middle of nowhere…
“Sidoh, stop walking through trees. Otherwise, I won’t be able to tell if another shinigami went through them.”
“Oops…Sorry!” said Sidoh, hastily backing out of the pine tree he’d been taking a shortcut through. Daril flew rapidly through the trees, feeling for places that were easier to get through, and eventually she flew out of sight. As the King had told them, things in the human world became temporarily easier to move through if another shinigami had already gone through them; Daril was checking if any shinigami had flown through the trees recently. Sidoh wondered if they were still on the right track. They’d tried to have a look at that building Rem had led them away from, despite the screeching alarm and the red lights that were flashing annoyingly, and all the human policemen that showed up afterward, but all they’d found were a few sprinkles of round sand on the floor. With no real clues, they’d simply had to spread out and search, fanning out into the surrounding area…it had taken weeks, but finally, Sidoh had found a skeletal footprint, several miles away from the city. They’d been making their way in that direction ever since, looking for traces that meant they were still on the right track, and with Daril trying to predict where Rem, and possibly Ryuk if he was alive, might’ve gone next. Unlike the shinigami realm, the human world had a tendency to erase all the footprints it collected through things like weather and human activity, but despite this, they’d found three prints so far. Each one seemed to be in between a city and the one closest to it, progressing in a linear fashion. Right now, they were searching the area between the last city Sidoh had seen a footprint in and another one west of there.
Daril came back into sight, and swooped down and landed next to Sidoh.
“No one’s flown through any of the trees near here. Have you found any footprints?”
“Not yet…” said Sidoh, still wandering around looking at the forest floor.
“Well, no wonder; I’ve never seen you work so slowly. Usually, when you look for prints, you’re rushing around like your life depends on it. What’s the hold-up?”
Sidoh looked up from scanning the ground. He thought about how he should respond…it was eating at him, this weird guilty feeling. It would be nice to get it out of his head, to ask how to get it to stop…but it seemed like the kind of thing you got sneered at for. Heck, Daril had been the one doing the sneering more than once. But then again… now that they were in the human world, she was acting really different…maybe…maybe it was safe to tell her; maybe she’d be able to help…
“I’ve been thinking…do you ever get the feeling, like…I dunno…you…don’t wanna do this?”
“Why? Are you unhappy, tracking down Ryuk and Rem? Feeling overworked?”
“No, it’s not that…it’s just…well…Ryuk was kind of a buddy of mine…”
“Oh. That makes sense.”
“Why does the King want us to catch him, anyway? Rem, I understand, but why Ryuk? I told him that he didn’t know what he was doing, when he took Rem out of the tower…”
“I was wondering that very same thing, actually; right from the moment the King told us who we were tracking down. I went so far as to ask him why…” Daril trailed off.
Sidoh looked at her with rapt attention. When Daril didn’t continue, he urged, “So, what did he say?”
“…Have you ever heard the old man when he’s angry, Sidoh? I never had, up until then…I didn’t even know he was capable of getting angry. All he said was, ‘That’s my business, and none of yours. Shut up and do as you’re told, and you’d better not ask me again.’ I’ve never heard him so angry…I’d never heard him angry at all, before then.”
A minute passed in silence.
“I dunno…it just don’t like it, tracking down Ryuk…” Sidoh finally spoke up.
“To tell the truth, you might not be tracking Ryuk down anymore. All the sand we found, the fact that Rem had his death note, the way that all the traces we’re finding are of Rem, and not Ryuk…there’s a fair chance he’s already dead, Sidoh. Even if he is still alive, the King told you to track him down, so you’re going to have to track him down-you can’t help that. It doesn’t matter if we like it or not; we do what the King tells us. That’s just the way it is.”
Sidoh sighed unhappily. “I guess.”

“Buck up, Sidoh. Moping about it won’t change anything. I know you like tracking when you aren’t thinking about Ryuk…I’ve seen you smiling every time you find a footprint. Just enjoy yourself while you’re down here.”
Sidoh looked down at his feet-suddenly, his eyes widened in surprise.
“Prints! They’re the right length, and they’re all skeletal…they lead that way for three steps, then disappear…”
“Atta boy, Sidoh! How fresh are they?”
“They look pretty clear…they’re definitely less than a few days old…”
“I knew she was headed this way…if the pattern holds true, she’s headed for the next human city in that direction. Everybody up…we’re flying the rest of the way.”

Yet again, Ryuk was starting to get withdrawal symptoms, and Rem headed toward another city. It would’ve been irksome; having to head for a town or city every five days or so to get apples, if Rem hadn’t kept reminding herself that Ryuk needed them to heal. She found a grocery store and brought out some apples for Ryuk, as usual-it was more difficult doing so in the daytime, when the store was full of humans, but she managed to tuck some away while no one was looking. He ate them as she flew through the city, staying fairly low, but high enough that humans wouldn’t notice the strands of duct tape that seemed to be flying through the air unsupported, and keeping close to the buildings for the same reason.
“Hey, Rem…why don’t we stop and hide in there for a while?”
Rem stopped and looked where Ryuk was pointing…a movie theatre. She turned back and glared at him.
“Come on, Rem. It’s almost sunset…wouldn’t it be better to hide for a bit, so we can fly out of the city under the cover of darkness?”
“Daril Ghiroza prefers darkness. That’s why I’m flying in the light.”
“Yeah, but what about Sidoh?”
“He can see in the dark just fine. Even so, Ghiroza’s the leader, and they’re going to be looking for us on her terms; most likely, during the night. I know what you’re up to, Ryuk. You’ve done this every time we’ve stopped in a city…you just want to see that movie that’s being advertised everywhere...”
“You got me. But seriously, Rem, why not? It’s been weeks, and we haven’t seen the hunters at all. Can’t we afford to take just a little break? Having some fun will be good for me…it’ll probably help me heal faster…”
Rem sighed. “If I let you see the movie, will you stop bothering me about it?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
Rem flew to the movie theatre and searched along the outside of it until she found an air duct…this was probably the best way to get inside without having to make Ryuk go through a wall or a crowd of humans. She pried off the covering, and they crawled inside, looking through the grates and into the rooms as they went…
“That one!” said Ryuk, looking out into a darkened theatre where the opening credits were starting. Rem went through the grate to the other side, and carefully unscrewed it, silently moving it away from the opening so no humans would hear. It was a good thing that the theatre was so dark…that way, no one would notice the grate moving on its own, or the visible mass of duct tape on the invisible Ryuk. He crawled out of the air duct and down onto the floor of the theatre, choosing a spot at the back to sit down and stare at the screen. Rem followed, and as she sat down next to him, she muttered, “And you call me weird…you and your obsession with human entertainment…”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’ve got to be the only shinigami I know who will go out of his way to see something in the human world…the whole time we’ve been down here, you’ve wanted to go see this, go play with that…it’s just not shinigami-like, the way you have to be curious about everything …”
“What can I say? The shinigami realm is boring.”
“Still…why so much interest in this movie? So far, it’s very similar to many movies I’ve seen; there’s been a few humans shooting at each other, an explosion or two…It will probably end in a similar manner, as well. There will be a few more explosions, a few more humans shooting at each other, the hero will save the world, and then it ends.”
“Well, I can’t deny that you’re probably right, but it doesn’t mean that they’re all the same, either. Just watch. You’ll get it.”
They sat and watched for the two hours it took the hero to blow up a building, get in a few shootouts, be captured, escape by defeating his captors in hand-to-hand combat, and defeat the evil terrorist conglomerate in time to get back home and propose to his girlfriend. Ryuk chuckled throughout the entire movie; Rem sat in silence. Finally, the lights went back up, and Ryuk hid his wing under a seat as the humans started to file out.
“So, whaddya think? Pretty good, eh? I’ve never seen a human take down another human with an air compressor before…”
Rem didn’t answer. The girlfriend that had shown up in flashbacks throughout the movie…small, blonde, always declaring her undying devotion, promising to love the hero no matter what…it reminded her so much of…
“Ryuk…if it’s all right with you…there’s something I’ve wanted to do, ever since we came down into the human world. It might be risky, seeing as most shinigami know of our connection to Japan…but I want to check up on Misa. Does she still live there, with Light Yagami?”
“…Uhh…” said Ryuk. He’d forgotten; Rem didn’t know what had happened. She’d been locked up for nine years, after all…how could he put this…?
“…I’m…um…no longer attached to Light Yagami.”
A light bulb seemed to go off in Rem’s head. “Right…you were in the shinigami realm when you took me out of the tower; of course you weren’t attached to a human. I should’ve realized that. Why? Did Light Yagami have to relinquish ownership again? I would’ve thought he’d have had no more problems, with Ryuzaki dead... what are he and Misa doing right now?”
“Uh…I guess there’s no other way to say this, so I’ll just say it. He’s kind of dead.”
“What? How can that be? Ryuzaki was killed…he was unopposed…his lifespan wasn’t supposed to run out that early! Why did you kill him?”
“It was finished. I got bored.”
“You…you got…,” Rem gasped, disbelieving. A strange look was coming over her face… “Then, Misa…what happened to Misa?”
Ryuk shrugged. “Not much. She jumped off a building about a year later.”
It was as though he’d slapped her in the face. Rem was staring at the floor, hunched over, shaking… “You…you…killed…”
“…What’s the matter with you?”
Rem looked back up at him; and Ryuk recoiled…what was that look on her face? He’d expected some sadness, but instead…she hadn’t looked this angry since…well, ever...but that made no sense. What did she care if he’d killed Light?
“You…you killed him…”
“Yeah, I killed him. What’s your point?”
The scream of inhuman fury that roared out of Rem shocked Ryuk only slightly more than the fact that she’d attacked him and was now trying to tear his head off with her bare hands.
“AAAARGH! Stop it! Stop it! What are you doing?!”
“YOU BASTARD! YOU KILLED HIM!”
“Why are you attacking me!? You didn’t even like Light Yagami!”
“Light Yagami can rot in hell for all I care, but you knew damn well that Misa couldn’t live without him! YOU! KILLED! MISA! YOU…….!”
“ACK! Cut it out! What’s the matter with you? Since when do you attack…OW!”
“Ever since they KILLED MISA!”
Ryuk hadn’t expected her to take the news well, but this had come completely out of left field…Rem was the last shinigami he’d expect to up and attack someone…Ryuk struggled to get out of her grasp; he aimed a kick at her midsection.
With a surprised “oof!,” Rem went flying off him and through the wall into the next room. He heard her land, but he didn’t hear her get back up-just a cry of frustration and despair…
Nothing happened for a long time. Warily, Ryuk approached the wall Rem had gone through.
“Rem…?” he said, wincing and preparing for another attack…
Her voice came through the wall…it didn’t sound crazed anymore, but if Ryuk didn’t know better than to think that a shinigami could cry, he would’ve sworn that Rem was doing just that…
“Why, Ryuk? How could you?”
Ryuk opened his mouth to explain, but before he could, he heard a shinigami walk through the wall in the next room; and someone said, “There she is!”
That was Kinddara’s voice. Ryuk bolted for the air vent and jumped inside just as he heard a “thud” behind him and a surprised cry, starting out muffled and suddenly becoming clear. He looked back; Rem had fallen through the wall back into the room he’d just left; Daril Ghiroza had her pinned down, Kinddara was cackling gleefully, and Sidoh was standing by, saying, “I told you I heard her…”
“It’s about damn time!” Daril said, practically cheering. “I wondered how long it was going to take before we caught you…”