FicWad

“The old man’s been watching you with a viewing hole pretty much since you left.”
“So that’s how you knew approximately where to find us…,” said Daril.
“Yeah, but let’s get to the point so I can get outta here. After the old geezer sent us all to find Justin and the rest of them, a whole lotta shinigami chickened out and ran away down into the human world,” Deridovely continued to explain as they flew toward the place Ryuk and Rem had disappeared. “So he wants me to give you these.” He handed Daril several chains with semicircles on each end. “He called them shackles. If you find some shinigami other than Ryuk or Rem who’ve run away down here, he wants you to chain them up to something and put one of these on them.” He handed her several small black boxes, each with a red button in the centre. “You push the button, and it sends out a signal to something the old geezer has up in his tower that tells him where in the human world the box is. He’ll send someone down to collect whoever you catch, so you can get back to tracking down Ryuk and Rem right away, without bothering to drag them back up to our realm.”
Daril tucked away the black boxes and shackles, except for a few that wouldn’t fit, which she hung from her belt.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “The King can see the human world from our realm, and that’s how he knew where to send you…he’s been watching us through a viewing hole. If he were to search for Ryuk and Rem using a hole, he could tell us where they are with some sort of machine that we could use to talk to him …”
“He’s already got Ryuk and Rem on a viewing hole,” said Deridovely. “You were about a hundred miles north of them when I left to come here…but that’s kind of useless, I guess, now that you’ve already caught up to them and lost them again. He overheard you talking about that earlier, actually, and he said to tell you it’s a great idea, and he’s working on it. But he says it took him hundreds of years to figure out how to send a one-way signal from this realm to ours, so don’t expect a two-way signal to turn up overnight.”
“So do we get to kill them? The other ones in the human world?”
“NO, Kinddara. Am I right?”
“Uh…” said Deridovely, “actually…he didn’t say anything about that…”
“So then we can kill em!”
“KINDARRA! Will you stop with that already? I’m only going to tell you one more time-the king kills other shinigami if they need to be killed!”
“But you was gonna let me kill Rem.”
“No, I wasn’t. I was just trying to scare the truth out of her. It’s called bluffing. You are not killing anyone, understand?”
Kinddara’s hand strayed toward her back; her face went sour as she realized she didn’t have a knife. She looked over at Sidoh…more specifically; she looked at the knife he was holding…
“Don’t even think about it.”
Another snarl, but Daril paid no attention; Kinddara did that so much, she was starting not to notice.
“The tunnel’s under here,” she said as she landed in the foundation of a building that the construction crew had abandoned for the night. “I can’t go down because of my wrist, though. Sidoh-see if you can spot anything in there. Take Kinddara and Deridovely with you.”
“What? Why me?” Deridovely complained.
“A spare pair of eyes couldn’t hurt. Keep them in line, all right, Sidoh?”
“Uh…okay…?”
The three shinigami dropped through the ground and into the tunnel. It was made of grey concrete, lit up by small lights all in rows. Sidoh walked up and down, looking for anything that looked like it was caused by a shinigami, while Kinddara and Deridovely watched. Suddenly, he stopped and stood perfectly still, staring down the tunnel.
“He found something,” Kinddara mumbled.
“How can you tell?”
“He always stares like that when he’s found something…”
Sidoh’s eyes were wide and gleaming; he wasn’t moving a muscle.
“Hear that?” he asked.
“No…” Deridovely and Kinddara said at the same time.
“It’s kind of…it’s kind of a…I dunno, like…a…it’s like a rushing sound, I guess…”
“Huh?” said Deridovely. “Have you been eating too much chocolate or something?”
But now he heard it, too. It was slowly getting louder…then it got suddenly got really loud when a huge wall of light barrelled into them, followed by a huge chunk of metal. All three shinigami screamed as it hit them before they had the chance to dematerialize.
Sidoh opened his eyes; he’d closed them when thing had hit-he was instantly relieved when he did. He hadn’t had time to consciously dematerialize, but apparently he’d done it instinctively, because now he was standing chest-deep in the floor of rooms that kept rolling by, filled with humans sitting down, and standing up holding onto poles. Kinddara’s head was poking out of the floor too, but Deridovely was nowhere to be seen. It only took a few seconds for the thing to roll over him and go shooting down the tunnel and out of sight.
“Holy Hell!” Deridovely squeaked as he got back up, after falling down when the thing had arrived. “What kind of shit are you guys putting me up to? That’s it! I’m going back to the shinigami realm!”
“What happened? Are you guys okay?” Daril shouted, her voice only faintly audible to Sidoh through the thick ceiling of dirt. Sidoh flapped back up through the ceiling and hovered half out of the ground so he could speak clearly with Daril.
“We’re fine,” he said. “This really long huge thing full of humans just went past. It kinda surprised us, is all…”
“I heard it go by…it only took a couple of seconds. How fast was it going? Faster than a shinigami could fly?”
“Uh…I think I could keep up to it. But why would we need to follow it?”
“Let me rephrase that question. Faster than Ryuk and Rem could fly?”
“Uh…maybe. I guess. Yeah...yeah, it was probably faster than them. Definitely.”
Daril had never looked more excited. “Find out where that tunnel goes, okay? I want you to check out every inch of it, and if you find a way out, come get me so I can help you search. Nice to see you’re getting back on track. Keep up the good work.”
Deridovely burst out of the ground and shot off into the sky without a glance back.
“What about him?”
“Whatever. We don’t need guys who run away after one little scare.”
Sidoh flinched. “Sorry.”
“What are you sorry for? You didn’t run away, just now.”
“Didn’t…hey, yeah, I didn’t!” Sidoh grinned.
“Atta boy. I knew you had it in you. Now go search the tunnel.”
“Yes, sir! I mean…ma’am? Er, um…captain?”
“Just go already.”

“You look like you’re in pain. Is it your wing?” asked Rem as they flew toward the next human city-it looked much smaller than the last; more of a town, really.
“Yeah, it hurts a bit. It’s not a hundred percent better yet.”
Ryuk’s grin looked awfully forced. Somehow, Rem knew that his wing was hurting him more than just “a bit”.
“I can carry you again, if it’s bothering you.”
Ryuk snickered; his grin went from forced to genuinely amused. “Hell if I’m gonna make you cart me around again,” he said.
Rem smiled back at him. “Have it you way.”
They flew on to the limits of the town; the streetlights were just starting to turn off as the sun was coming up.
“…That’s a pretty sort of pink, right there around the sun,” she said.
“Yup.”
A moment or two passed as Rem looked at where the sun was rising over the horizon. She hadn’t watched a sunrise until now; when she’d been in Tokyo with Misa, buildings had blocked out the horizon every morning, and usually, by the time Misa was done getting ready for the day, the sun was already fully up. Rem had loved Misa like a daughter, but it hadn’t stopped her from seeing the rest of humanity. Humans were ugly creatures, no doubt about it…but their world was breathtakingly beautiful. The shinigami realm was full of grays and blacks; but the pinks and reds that melted into the deep blues and purples in this sky…Rem had no idea why something as simple as a few colours could move her this much, but she liked it.
“That’s why I like this realm. It’s really alive, isn’t it?” said Ryuk.
“Yes.”
Eventually, they floated down onto the streets of the town below them.
“I’m going in for an apple,” said Ryuk as he headed for yet another grocery store. Rem stood waiting. There were no skyscrapers to block her view; just small houses, single-floored businesses…even the grocery store they were at looked to be a small, locally owned one as opposed to a large chain store. There was no other way to describe it, looking up…it felt like something inside her was glowing, right next to the part of her that had died when she’d heard of Misa’s death…the pain was very real, but given the choice, Rem still would’ve chosen to feel it. It only hurt this much because the thing she was grieving for had been so beautiful, and she’d been lucky to know it, even if it inevitably had to be taken away. One day, she’d be able to think of Misa and smile. After all, she’d had a few years with Light Yagami; Rem had succeeded in making her happy for a while before she’d met her end.
Rem heard a door creak open; a bell chimed, and she looked to where the sound had come from. Ryuk was holding the door of the grocery store open.
“It wasn’t an automatic door or anything. I just had to turn this knob to unlock it. You should come in and find something to eat. You’re hurt too, you know.”
It hadn’t occurred to Rem until now that she should eat something, but now that she thought of it, he was probably right. She followed Ryuk back into the grocery store, looking at all the shelves and the dozens of things on them…Rem hadn’t eaten in a long time. Once she’d simply stopped getting hungry all those years ago, she’d stopped eating completely, because frankly, food didn’t appeal to her all that much. The ridiculous amount of food piled up on the shelves was no exception.
Ryuk seemed to notice that she was at a loss. “Here,” he said, grabbing a bag off a nearby shelf. “Try this. It tastes kind of like a shenzu nut if you use your imagination.”
Black Liquorice…Rem tore the bag open and took a bite out of one of the strands. Yes, it did taste a bit like a shenzu nut, if you coated it in plastic and added a ridiculous amount of sugar after letting it sit outside the pod for a few weeks. Oh, well. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad, either. It was as good as anything else she’d find in the human world, she supposed.
The two shinigami sat and watched as the town started to come alive. There were only a few vague wisps of darkness in the sky now, and a few cars rolled up and down the street. Humans with dogs and without jogged past sporadically, their breath puffing out as miniature clouds in the cold air as Ryuk savoured an apple and Rem chewed the liquorice without really paying attention to it.
“You know, now that you can fly on your own, you don’t have to feel obligated to stay with me.”
“I know. Don’t care. You’re the one with all the getaway plans, so I’m sticking with you.”
“Being around me only puts you in danger. The King wants me captured, and he’ll keep trying for as long as it takes.”
Ryuk shrugged. “He’s pissed at me, too. Why? You don’t want me around?”
“…I don’t mind.”
The streets were getting busier now that the sun was fully up.
“I wonder if the hunters have found our trail yet. It worries me, how they found us despite my efforts to leave as few traces as possible…”
“Don’t bother worrying,” said Ryuk. “That won’t do anything to change whether they’ve found something or not. Go ahead and think about how to get away if they catch up, but don’t worry about it-that’ll just stress you out. So, how do you figure Justin’s doing? We kinda have no way of finding out, and it’s been a few months…”
“Hopefully he’s doing better than we are.”
“Come on, don’t talk like that. We’re alive; mostly in once piece…we’re doing okay.”
“…I suppose.”
Now Rem was wondering…just what had the King and Justin done up in the shinigami realm in their absence, over the past months…?