Categories > Anime/Manga > Death Note > Shinigami: Death of the Old World
Several shinigami followed Justin as he flew through the tunnels. He stopped at another bar-shaped handle poking out of a circle of metal in the tunnel ceiling, and gave it a twist. He gently eased the handle and the disk attached to it down and out of the ceiling, along with a layer of rock and gravel on top of it.
“Found one!” said Justin. On top of the stack of rock was a single crumpled sheet of paper. He replaced the column of rock and twisted the disk back into place, then unfurled the paper a bit and looked at the writing on it. “This is Midora’s writing. They’re alive!”
Variations of “Read it, Justin!” and “What does it say?” came from the crowd following him.
Justin smoothed out the crumpled paper.
“Dear Death Note,” he read. “I can’t believe I just wrote that… I’m seriously going to do a “dear death note”? That trend died about a hundred years ago, writing in your death note like it’s a diary or something. I don’t really know why I’m doing it. Maybe it’s because I have something exciting to write about, or maybe ‘cause a lot of scary shit is going on right now, and it kinda takes the edge off, writing down feelings and stuff… geez, I sound like a freaking human girl. Whatever. So, me and Zellogi got out of Justin’s hideout and went to beg the Old Geezer for forgiveness. Zellogi was right; butter him up a bit and he’ll listen to anything you have to say. We led all the King’s supporters to that cave near my swamp, but guess freaking what? Everyone was gone! I guess Justin must’ve realized we were missing, so he probably moved headquarters. At least, that’s what Zellogi told the King must’ve happened. It took a lot more ass-kissing, but the Old Geezer finally believed him. Zellogi’s a total asshat, but he sure can do the ‘talking pretty’ thing when he needs to.”
“Excellent,” said Justin, breaking off from reading the note. “Bringing them to a false hideout worked…anyway, continuing on…”
“So now, we’re part of the King’s forces, but we have to gain his trust back a bit, so we can’t have any weapons and we’re not allowed to go to the human world. Not like I’d want to go to the human world, anyway, since that’s where the hunters are. Even the guys on our side are afraid of them. They’ve caught about eight shinigami now, and when they get brought back, they’re brought into the tower and no one sees them ever again. It’s seriously creepy…shinigami are afraid to say Daril’s name these days. She’s just “the huntress,” and Sidoh is just “the eyes”-and don’t even try to talk about Kinddara, or everyone will kind of back away from you like you’re contaminated or something. They haven’t caught Ryuk or Rem yet, though. I hope they don’t…they’re supposed to bring those two back themselves, and the farther the hunters are from me, the better, in my opinion. Well, technically we’re supposed to call them ‘the trackers’, but once you’re out of the King’s earshot, everyone calls them the hunters. So right now, Zellogi and me are part of the group that wanders around the shinigami realm looking for Justin’s new hideout. That’s what everyone does, mostly, other than the bunch the old man lost when they ran away to the human world, and the guys who have to go get them when they’re caught by the hunters, or guard the entrance the human world so no one else runs away. I don’t know how many are down in the human world-between fifty and a hundred, I guess. And I thought it was bad when the realm was just boring-now it’s going to hell in a hand basket. It’s freaking scary.
This really is stupid, isn’t it? What kind of loser still uses her death note as a diary? I’d never hear the end of it if someone looked through my death note and found this. I’m probably going to have to get rid of it. This is getting torn straight out of my death note and hidden under a rock.
You can probably tell who I am if you find this and read it, but I’m still not signing my name. Deal with it.”
Justin sighed with relief. “It worked…they’re all right…”
“Huh?” said Gukku. “What the hell was that supposed to be?”
“Zellogi and Midora are telling us what the King’s up to by pretending to write ‘dear death notes’, like we did back in the 1800s,” said Justin. “It gives them a non-incriminating reason for writing down what’s going on, as well as a valid reason for hiding pages under rocks. Nobody would want to admit they’re still using their death note as a diary. Best of all, no one can prove that the notes are actually messages to us, even if they take one and read it to the King himself.”
The crowd around Justin had grown as he’d read the note; all the gathered shinigami were starting some whispered conversations…
“Sorry to break up the fun, folks, but we need to get back to digging. The sooner we finish the tunnels, the sooner we can start interfering with the King’s plans directly, and the sooner we can bring him down. The King isn’t stupid, plans aren’t foolproof no matter how good they are, and a good plan isn’t worth much if Zellogi and Midora’s luck runs out. I want to get them out of there and back with us as soon as possible.”
Zellogi and Midora had split up, and Zellogi was sitting in the old grove of apple trees where Ryuk used to get his fixes in between human world visits, scribbling in his death note. It was only a grove in the literal sense of the word; there was nothing abundant or plentiful about the gnarled sticks that jabbed out of the ground and squeezed off a dry, grainy farce of an apple every once in a blue moon. Zellogi finished his note, tore it out, and lifted up a rock…not just any rock, though. Although you couldn’t tell by looking, it was right above a tunnel, and Justin would be able to get the paper Zellogi stuck under it by pulling the ground out from under the rock. As Zellogi put the rock back into place, he felt a pair of eyes on him. He looked over his shoulder and saw Deridovely standing there.
“Whaddya doing?” Deridovely asked.
“Nothing much. Just taking a break, then I’m on my way again. Go ahead and keep searching,” Zellogi replied.
Deridovely didn’t move. “Hey, Zellogi…?”
“What?”
“Uh…when you were with Justin and them…Gukku was with you, right?”
“Yeah.”
“…How’s he doing? I mean…is he okay?”
“Yeah. He’s fine.”
“…Good. If he’d gone down into the human world…”
“We should probably get back to searching.”
“…I guess so,” Deridovely grumbled. “So why’d you switch sides?”
“Hey, man, it’s like you said. Going against the King only gets you killed.”
Deridovely turned away and started walking. “Don’t remind me,” he muttered. Zellogi was pretty sure Deridovely hadn’t meant for him to hear it, but he heard it anyway. “That poor guy…”
“What guy?”
“Huh? Oh, the eighth guy the hunters caught…”
“I thought they only caught six.”
“No, it’s eight now…at least, it was…”
“Guard this one,” Daril said to Kinddara as she chained a shinigami to a tree and dashed off after the one that had gotten away. They’d caught about six shinigami so far, but those ones had been on their own; bringing in two at once was going to be a challenge. The shinigami was flapping for his life, over the lines of bushes he’d been eating blueberries off of just minutes ago. He was no match for Daril, though-no more than a seagull was a match for a hawk, in terms of speed or ferocity. She swooped down and knocked him out of the sky, landing on him after he hit the ground.
“Got you…Calikarcha?” said Daril, finally getting a good look at his face.
“Daril! Please! You can’t let them take me! He’ll kill me!” Calikarcha bawled.
“Calikarcha…”
“I thought we were friends, Daril! We used to hang out together, you and me and Thruk and Vechello! You can’t do this! Please!”
“Calm down. It’s okay,” she said, getting off him and pulling him to his feet.
“Are…are you letting me go?” he said.
Daril snapped one end of a shackle to his wrist. “Sorry, Cal. King’s orders. It’s not like I have a choice.”
Calikarcha bolted; to Daril’s surprise, the other end of the shackle was yanked out of her hand, and he ran away into the trees, his screams getting fainter…
Then they started getting louder again…Daril grabbed the other end of the shackle as Calikarcha ran past her, being chased by…
“Sidoh!”
“Hi, Daril!”
“What are you doing here? I thought you were following Ryuk and Rem’s prints while we took care of these two!” Daril said as she wrapped the shackle around a tree and snapped the other end to Calikarcha’s other wrist.
“Yeah, turns out they led to this orchard, the part with the apple trees; but then this guy came along, so...”
“Sidoh…you…chased him back here, all by yourself?”
“Yep.”
Daril was shocked speechless for a moment or two.
“Daril? Are you okay? …Did I do something wrong?”
“Sidoh…you did great,” she said, beaming at him. “I have never been more proud of you than I am now. You’re turning into a real tracker.”
“Well, watching you those last six times kinda helped,” said Sidoh. He wondered why it felt like he had too much air in his lungs, but in a good way.
“Daril! Please! I don’t wanna die! Don’t make me go back to him! Please! How can you do this to me?” Calikarcha wailed.
Daril turned to face him again. “I’m sorry, Cal. I mean it. I wouldn’t do this if I had a choice, but the King is watching me right now with a viewing hole, and orders are orders.”
Calikarcha was breathing funny. “I don’t wanna die…please, please, I don’t wanna die…”
“You’re not going to die, Calikarcha. All you did was stay in the human world longer than 82 hours without giving a human a death note. That’s only a level eight punishment, if the King even decides to bother with it. You’ll be fine.”
“But, Daril! That human I…”
“All you did was stay in the human world too long,” Daril said, cutting him off. Was that a hint of panic in her voice, Sidoh wondered? “Nothing more. Right?”
Calikarcha looked confused. Daril winked.
“Yeah…you’re right. That’s all I did,” said Calikarcha, catching on. Daril took out one of the black boxes, hung it from Calikarcha’s chain, and pressed the red button.
“Someone’s going to come and take you back to the shinigami realm. I’ll be heading back there myself once we catch Ryuk and Rem, okay? Say hi to Thruk and Vechello for me, and tell them I’ll see them soon. Come on, Sidoh.”
Sidoh followed Daril back through the fruit orchard. In the months that had gone by, and as they’d tracked Ryuk and Rem closer to the equator, the human world had gotten a lot warmer, and a lot more colourful. Well, the places without a lot of humans did, anyway; cities tended to be mostly grey no matter how warm or cold it got. Even in the dark, this orchard had a lot of green in it, and the fruits were something else with all those really bright colors Sidoh didn’t know the names of. They smelled really sweet too…it kind of filled the air in a syrupy way. Sidoh wondered if fruit tasted as good as chocolate. Ryuk liked fruit an awful lot…he paused for a minute…
“Put that down, Sidoh. We don’t need you getting hooked on fruit and twisting up whenever…,” Daril trailed off.
Sidoh had just finished plucking the peach off its tree, but he dropped it anyway, just as he was told. It hit the ground with a juicy ‘splat.’ Sidoh turned to look in the same direction as Daril, and fell right down after the peach when he saw the scene that had stuck Daril speechless. Sidoh opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out.
A chain bordered the roots of another peach tree, and a pile of wet sand lay before its empty shackles. Kinddara was using her hands to pile the sand up…she was making a sand castle, Daril realized with a horrible churning feeling in her stomach. A knife, caked with sand, lay abandoned by Kinddara’s feet.
“Kinddara…how…knife…” Daril choked out.
Kinddara glanced up, only noticing them just now.
“Stole it off that Dovely guy when he wasn’t lookin.” Kinddara turned back to her sand castle, humming as she drew a little moat around it.
“Found one!” said Justin. On top of the stack of rock was a single crumpled sheet of paper. He replaced the column of rock and twisted the disk back into place, then unfurled the paper a bit and looked at the writing on it. “This is Midora’s writing. They’re alive!”
Variations of “Read it, Justin!” and “What does it say?” came from the crowd following him.
Justin smoothed out the crumpled paper.
“Dear Death Note,” he read. “I can’t believe I just wrote that… I’m seriously going to do a “dear death note”? That trend died about a hundred years ago, writing in your death note like it’s a diary or something. I don’t really know why I’m doing it. Maybe it’s because I have something exciting to write about, or maybe ‘cause a lot of scary shit is going on right now, and it kinda takes the edge off, writing down feelings and stuff… geez, I sound like a freaking human girl. Whatever. So, me and Zellogi got out of Justin’s hideout and went to beg the Old Geezer for forgiveness. Zellogi was right; butter him up a bit and he’ll listen to anything you have to say. We led all the King’s supporters to that cave near my swamp, but guess freaking what? Everyone was gone! I guess Justin must’ve realized we were missing, so he probably moved headquarters. At least, that’s what Zellogi told the King must’ve happened. It took a lot more ass-kissing, but the Old Geezer finally believed him. Zellogi’s a total asshat, but he sure can do the ‘talking pretty’ thing when he needs to.”
“Excellent,” said Justin, breaking off from reading the note. “Bringing them to a false hideout worked…anyway, continuing on…”
“So now, we’re part of the King’s forces, but we have to gain his trust back a bit, so we can’t have any weapons and we’re not allowed to go to the human world. Not like I’d want to go to the human world, anyway, since that’s where the hunters are. Even the guys on our side are afraid of them. They’ve caught about eight shinigami now, and when they get brought back, they’re brought into the tower and no one sees them ever again. It’s seriously creepy…shinigami are afraid to say Daril’s name these days. She’s just “the huntress,” and Sidoh is just “the eyes”-and don’t even try to talk about Kinddara, or everyone will kind of back away from you like you’re contaminated or something. They haven’t caught Ryuk or Rem yet, though. I hope they don’t…they’re supposed to bring those two back themselves, and the farther the hunters are from me, the better, in my opinion. Well, technically we’re supposed to call them ‘the trackers’, but once you’re out of the King’s earshot, everyone calls them the hunters. So right now, Zellogi and me are part of the group that wanders around the shinigami realm looking for Justin’s new hideout. That’s what everyone does, mostly, other than the bunch the old man lost when they ran away to the human world, and the guys who have to go get them when they’re caught by the hunters, or guard the entrance the human world so no one else runs away. I don’t know how many are down in the human world-between fifty and a hundred, I guess. And I thought it was bad when the realm was just boring-now it’s going to hell in a hand basket. It’s freaking scary.
This really is stupid, isn’t it? What kind of loser still uses her death note as a diary? I’d never hear the end of it if someone looked through my death note and found this. I’m probably going to have to get rid of it. This is getting torn straight out of my death note and hidden under a rock.
You can probably tell who I am if you find this and read it, but I’m still not signing my name. Deal with it.”
Justin sighed with relief. “It worked…they’re all right…”
“Huh?” said Gukku. “What the hell was that supposed to be?”
“Zellogi and Midora are telling us what the King’s up to by pretending to write ‘dear death notes’, like we did back in the 1800s,” said Justin. “It gives them a non-incriminating reason for writing down what’s going on, as well as a valid reason for hiding pages under rocks. Nobody would want to admit they’re still using their death note as a diary. Best of all, no one can prove that the notes are actually messages to us, even if they take one and read it to the King himself.”
The crowd around Justin had grown as he’d read the note; all the gathered shinigami were starting some whispered conversations…
“Sorry to break up the fun, folks, but we need to get back to digging. The sooner we finish the tunnels, the sooner we can start interfering with the King’s plans directly, and the sooner we can bring him down. The King isn’t stupid, plans aren’t foolproof no matter how good they are, and a good plan isn’t worth much if Zellogi and Midora’s luck runs out. I want to get them out of there and back with us as soon as possible.”
Zellogi and Midora had split up, and Zellogi was sitting in the old grove of apple trees where Ryuk used to get his fixes in between human world visits, scribbling in his death note. It was only a grove in the literal sense of the word; there was nothing abundant or plentiful about the gnarled sticks that jabbed out of the ground and squeezed off a dry, grainy farce of an apple every once in a blue moon. Zellogi finished his note, tore it out, and lifted up a rock…not just any rock, though. Although you couldn’t tell by looking, it was right above a tunnel, and Justin would be able to get the paper Zellogi stuck under it by pulling the ground out from under the rock. As Zellogi put the rock back into place, he felt a pair of eyes on him. He looked over his shoulder and saw Deridovely standing there.
“Whaddya doing?” Deridovely asked.
“Nothing much. Just taking a break, then I’m on my way again. Go ahead and keep searching,” Zellogi replied.
Deridovely didn’t move. “Hey, Zellogi…?”
“What?”
“Uh…when you were with Justin and them…Gukku was with you, right?”
“Yeah.”
“…How’s he doing? I mean…is he okay?”
“Yeah. He’s fine.”
“…Good. If he’d gone down into the human world…”
“We should probably get back to searching.”
“…I guess so,” Deridovely grumbled. “So why’d you switch sides?”
“Hey, man, it’s like you said. Going against the King only gets you killed.”
Deridovely turned away and started walking. “Don’t remind me,” he muttered. Zellogi was pretty sure Deridovely hadn’t meant for him to hear it, but he heard it anyway. “That poor guy…”
“What guy?”
“Huh? Oh, the eighth guy the hunters caught…”
“I thought they only caught six.”
“No, it’s eight now…at least, it was…”
“Guard this one,” Daril said to Kinddara as she chained a shinigami to a tree and dashed off after the one that had gotten away. They’d caught about six shinigami so far, but those ones had been on their own; bringing in two at once was going to be a challenge. The shinigami was flapping for his life, over the lines of bushes he’d been eating blueberries off of just minutes ago. He was no match for Daril, though-no more than a seagull was a match for a hawk, in terms of speed or ferocity. She swooped down and knocked him out of the sky, landing on him after he hit the ground.
“Got you…Calikarcha?” said Daril, finally getting a good look at his face.
“Daril! Please! You can’t let them take me! He’ll kill me!” Calikarcha bawled.
“Calikarcha…”
“I thought we were friends, Daril! We used to hang out together, you and me and Thruk and Vechello! You can’t do this! Please!”
“Calm down. It’s okay,” she said, getting off him and pulling him to his feet.
“Are…are you letting me go?” he said.
Daril snapped one end of a shackle to his wrist. “Sorry, Cal. King’s orders. It’s not like I have a choice.”
Calikarcha bolted; to Daril’s surprise, the other end of the shackle was yanked out of her hand, and he ran away into the trees, his screams getting fainter…
Then they started getting louder again…Daril grabbed the other end of the shackle as Calikarcha ran past her, being chased by…
“Sidoh!”
“Hi, Daril!”
“What are you doing here? I thought you were following Ryuk and Rem’s prints while we took care of these two!” Daril said as she wrapped the shackle around a tree and snapped the other end to Calikarcha’s other wrist.
“Yeah, turns out they led to this orchard, the part with the apple trees; but then this guy came along, so...”
“Sidoh…you…chased him back here, all by yourself?”
“Yep.”
Daril was shocked speechless for a moment or two.
“Daril? Are you okay? …Did I do something wrong?”
“Sidoh…you did great,” she said, beaming at him. “I have never been more proud of you than I am now. You’re turning into a real tracker.”
“Well, watching you those last six times kinda helped,” said Sidoh. He wondered why it felt like he had too much air in his lungs, but in a good way.
“Daril! Please! I don’t wanna die! Don’t make me go back to him! Please! How can you do this to me?” Calikarcha wailed.
Daril turned to face him again. “I’m sorry, Cal. I mean it. I wouldn’t do this if I had a choice, but the King is watching me right now with a viewing hole, and orders are orders.”
Calikarcha was breathing funny. “I don’t wanna die…please, please, I don’t wanna die…”
“You’re not going to die, Calikarcha. All you did was stay in the human world longer than 82 hours without giving a human a death note. That’s only a level eight punishment, if the King even decides to bother with it. You’ll be fine.”
“But, Daril! That human I…”
“All you did was stay in the human world too long,” Daril said, cutting him off. Was that a hint of panic in her voice, Sidoh wondered? “Nothing more. Right?”
Calikarcha looked confused. Daril winked.
“Yeah…you’re right. That’s all I did,” said Calikarcha, catching on. Daril took out one of the black boxes, hung it from Calikarcha’s chain, and pressed the red button.
“Someone’s going to come and take you back to the shinigami realm. I’ll be heading back there myself once we catch Ryuk and Rem, okay? Say hi to Thruk and Vechello for me, and tell them I’ll see them soon. Come on, Sidoh.”
Sidoh followed Daril back through the fruit orchard. In the months that had gone by, and as they’d tracked Ryuk and Rem closer to the equator, the human world had gotten a lot warmer, and a lot more colourful. Well, the places without a lot of humans did, anyway; cities tended to be mostly grey no matter how warm or cold it got. Even in the dark, this orchard had a lot of green in it, and the fruits were something else with all those really bright colors Sidoh didn’t know the names of. They smelled really sweet too…it kind of filled the air in a syrupy way. Sidoh wondered if fruit tasted as good as chocolate. Ryuk liked fruit an awful lot…he paused for a minute…
“Put that down, Sidoh. We don’t need you getting hooked on fruit and twisting up whenever…,” Daril trailed off.
Sidoh had just finished plucking the peach off its tree, but he dropped it anyway, just as he was told. It hit the ground with a juicy ‘splat.’ Sidoh turned to look in the same direction as Daril, and fell right down after the peach when he saw the scene that had stuck Daril speechless. Sidoh opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out.
A chain bordered the roots of another peach tree, and a pile of wet sand lay before its empty shackles. Kinddara was using her hands to pile the sand up…she was making a sand castle, Daril realized with a horrible churning feeling in her stomach. A knife, caked with sand, lay abandoned by Kinddara’s feet.
“Kinddara…how…knife…” Daril choked out.
Kinddara glanced up, only noticing them just now.
“Stole it off that Dovely guy when he wasn’t lookin.” Kinddara turned back to her sand castle, humming as she drew a little moat around it.
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