Death Note: Game Over (An AU fanfiction)

End of the Line

The silence in the room seemed to stretch for an eternity even though it lasted for a single minute only.

Light watched L, his eyes gleaming as he waited for the detective to start dying. L regarded Light calmly with half closed eyes, almost as if the prospect of his own impending death bored him. Mikami was watching both L and Light with wide eyes.

Light's maniac smiled faded then disappeared as he realized that L was still breathing.

"Why won't you die! I wrote your name down in the death note! You should be dead!" Light shouted. He whirled on Mikami. "Are you sure Lawliet is the right name? You spelled it right and everything?"

"Y-yes," Mikami stammered.

"The answer to your question is obvious," L said.

Light turned back to him. "What do you mean?"

"NO! YOU CAN'T DO THIS! THIS IS GOING TO PUT SAKURA TV ON THE MAP!" Demigowa yelled.

Seconds later there was a crash as the door to the TV studio burst open.

Aizowa rushed into the room followed closely by his partner, Chief Yagami, Mogi, and Matsuda. Mello entered on their heels with the SPK close behind him. Near entered the room last of all, playing with a white pair of chinese handcuffs.

Lidner and Gevanni went straight for the thugs by the door. Before the big men could react, they were on the ground moaning and handcuffs where on their wrists.

Aizowa and his partner rushed to Mikami. They grabbed him, but Mikami was twisting and squirming to much for them to get cuffs on him.

Light watched all this, rooted to the spot in shock as Mogi and his father approached him.

Mogi pulled out his handcuffs and cuffed Light's left wrist. Light pulled away from him. He turned to his father with wide eyes.

"Dad? Its me, Light! Your only son! You are not going to let them do this to me? Are you dad!" Light cried.

Chief Yagami's gaze was hard as flint. He strode up to Light and took a hold of his right arm. "My son is dead. Kira killed him a long time ago and took his face and name."

Light watched in shock as his father cuffed his right wrist to his left one and led him back behind the pulpit with Mikami whom Aizowa and Matsuda had finally managed to cuff.

"What I meant, Light, is that your earlier statement was false. You did not write my name in the Death Note. The notebook you currently have and the notebook in Mikami's suit pocket are ordinary notebooks. They are fakes created by Gevanni," L said.

"But how? How did you replace the notebooks with fakes? How did the taskforce and SPK find us so quickly?" Light demanded.

"I have to give credit where credit is due. This plan would never have worked without Near and Mello to help me," L said.

"They were just pawns," Light scoffed.

"No. I just wanted you to think they were. Take, Mello for example, you think him to be a smart person who nevertheless lets him emotion get in the way and takes unnecessary risks. That was first set up when he led the mafia in an attempt to get a death note. It was further confirmed by his break in at your apartment and his abduction of Misa Amena. By the time you had Mello in custody, you never questioned whether or not Mello found the Death Note when he searched your house. Why else would the Death Note still be there when Mello left? Then there was his 'attack' on you when he and Near were being exchanged for me. You thought that Mello had simply slammed into you out of an emotional impulse to save me. So you never realized that Mello's 'attack' was simply a way for him to get close enough to you to drop a tracking chip in your pocket. We knew that you would search me for bugs and there was a slight chance you might check your thugs for one, but we knew that you would never check yourself for one. Then there is Near. He helped me come up with a way to seemingly vanish from the bus when I visited you. Near also helped establish the link between himself and Mello and later me so that you would realize that we were all on the same team and think that I was responsible for the entire plan. As for how we replaced, Mikami's death note. The same night I was abducted by you, Gevanni sneaked into Mikami's home and replaced his death note with a fake," L said.

Mello checked the thugs' pockets until he found keys in one of them. He unlocked L's ankle cuffs and handcuffs.

"Thank you," L said, rubbing his wrists. He pulled his legs up to his knees, sitting the way he was accustomed to.

"That was an awfully big risk to take L. What if Kira had simply killed you the moment he had you?" Matsuda asked.

"That wasn't going to happen," L said dismissively. "Doing things this way offered Kira two things he couldn't resist. The chance to get rid of me and to have the whole world watch him defeat me. Kira didn't appear to have any weaknesses to me at first. It wasn't until I 'died' and saw that gloating smile on his face that I realized his fatal flaw. I deduced early on the Kira hated to lose. What I failed to notice is that Kira also loves to win and gloats when he does. So I offered him what seemed like a win: me helpless and at his mercy. As a result he has confessed to being Kira on video. That will be enough to convict him."

"If it was a conviction you wanted then why didn't you arrest me after you 'haunted' me on the bus? My words would be enough for there to be reasonable suspicion, most of the time that is enough in Japan for a conviction," Light snapped.

"Because after my apparent death, the people of the world decided that Kira wasn't bad. Some were afraid, others just deceived," L looked at Mikami as he said the word deceived, paused for a moment then continued, "If I had simply tried to arrest you then odds are pretty good that the government would have refused to allow it and I would have been offered up to you on a silver platter like as some kind of sacrifice to appease you. If I wanted to do what I set out to do, hold Kira accountable for his killings, I knew that I not only had to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are Kira, but I also had to expose your true face to the world. Judging by Mikami's reaction, I think I have done that."

"But I didn't do anything!" Light protested.

"You didn't kill anyone this time. You did, however, lose your temper and beat a helpless prisoner up on live television. You both sounded and looked like you were raving mad," L pointed out.

Light fell silent for a moment then suddenly laughed. "Very well, L. You win. We will see how long you survive after this. Your face has been revealed to millions of viewers. Thousands of criminals now know the name and face of the detective who has hunted them for years. How long do you think you will last before one of them finds and murders you."

"Is that what you think? I will tell you something, you will find interesting. This studio is not live. Demigowa agreed to set the cameras on record instead of broadcast. Make no mistake, the tape of what happened tonight will still be shown, only with certain edits. My image will be replaced carefully with another person's and then blurred beyond all recognition as will Near and Mello's. My name will be censored from the program as well_" L began to say then he stopped.

He suddenly found himself unable to move his body. He toppled out of the chair and onto the floor.

"L!" Mello cried, dashing to his mentor's side.

It is happening. I have fulfilled my purpose so the Shinigami King has killed me. I am dying again, L thought.

The last sound he heard before blackness engulfed him, was the sound of Light, laughing hysterically.

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If you made it this far into the story, then Congradulations. What follows next is the Epilogue and it will be in two parts. The first part, Judgement, will be posted next week.