iGuard

Obsession

"I... am JUSTICE!"

I sat up in my bed, groggily wiping sleep from my eyes. What the heck was that? Did some idiot break into our house or something?

I trudged over to my unpacked luggage and pulled on a shirt.

I then proceeded to cautiously creep out of my room, across the foyer, and down the wooden stairs.

The sounds grew louder. Ominous music filled the air accompanied by what sounded like... People dying?

I guess it's one of those days again.

My right hand crackled with nervous energy.

As I reached the bottom floor, I realized there was flickering light coming from the living room.

I relaxed a bit. Oh. It was only the tv.

Still a bit nervous, I crept up to the living room and peeked in.

Illuminated by the flickering light of the tv sat Brian, sprawled out on the couch, eating Cheezits as he watched some creepy looking tv show featuring a teenager (who looked eerily like a smaller Brian with sharper features and a cruel expression)

...writing intensely in a notebook.

Ok, what the heck was Brian watching?

"Hey, Brian?"

Brian immediately jolted up from the couch with shock, quickly paused the show, and whipped around to face me.

Except the person who looked at me with shock in his eyes wasn't Brian.

It was the boy from the tv show.

"GAH!" I fell backwards onto the hard wooden floor.

The teenager jumped up and ran over to my side. His sharp features were scrunched up in a mixture of concern and confusion as he crouched over me.

"Levi? What are you doing down here?"

"H-how... How do you know my name?" I stuttered in shock.

How did this random guy, seemingly straight from a tv show, know my name? And how did he get into our house?

The boy sighed in annoyance, and sat back on his heels.

"Whoops. Sorry Levi."

Suddenly, the boy's entire body began to throb, blurring for a couple of seconds, and then clearing to reveal Brian, crouched over in the exact place that the boy used to be.

He stood up and helped me to my feet.

"Brian, what were you watching?"

He shrugged nonchalantly.

"Oh, just some stupid show I found on Netflix..."

"I would like to see this stupid show of yours."

He glanced at me, eyebrows raised.

"You sure?"

"Yeah, sure."

And so we sat down on the couch, ate Cheezits, and watched tv for the rest of the night.

Apparently the show was about a teenage genius named Light Yagami who attained a notebook called the Death Note, a notebook that could kill anyone whose name was written in it as long as the user, Light, knew their face and name.

Light then decides to use the Death Note for "good", killing off many major criminals. But then, to stop Light's mass murder spree, super detective L starts a case to unmask "Kira", which was the name Light was known by across the world.

L and the task force try to put an end to Kira's "reign of terror." From what I've seen so far, it's a pretty good show. The two main character's conflicting view of "justice" and "good" and "evil" keeps you thinking throughout the entire show, because in the end, which side is right? Which is wrong?

Maybe neither of them are correct, or maybe they both are. That Ryuk guy is pretty creepy, though, no matter how you spin it...

"So," Brian asked me early in the next morning as the sun just began to shine through the windows,

"What do you think?" I bit my lip.

"It's a good show, but I think that Light guy has a pretty one-sided view of things."

"How so?"

"Well, he considers killing off criminals to be doing a favor to the world, which it was, but he became so focused on becoming "God" and evading the police that he began to veer off course, killing many innocents to keep his identity secret and achieve his goals.

"I mean, remember Ray Penber? The American agent working on the Kira case? He was about to start a life with his girlfriend Naome, but was then killed by Light so he could keep his identity as Kira secret, later killing Naomi to accomplish the same thing.

"I wonder how many lives he ruined, how many families he destroyed? In the end, he's probably just going to turn into a monster, driven mad by a death god's power."

I leaned back on the couch.

"Huh, I guess I never looked at it that way..." I looked at Brian from across the sunken red couch. He was laying back on the couch, staring at the ceiling.

"I always thought that Light was doing the right thing, by killing off criminals. For a fact, he majorly depleted the percent of crime in his world. In the grand scheme of things, he was making the world a better place. If you can't throw something important away, like in Light's case, his humanity, than you can change nothing. Look at all the change he made in his world! It became a better place... A much better place... Many were enraged by this because their loved ones were caught in his crossfire, or the prospect of so many killed enraged them, but many loved him for it. Worshipped, even. He was skilled and smart enough to dodge the task force and L, and willing to sacrifice his life, humanity, and even his soul to try to achieve his goal. He changed his entire world."

Brian now sat hunched over, staring at the couch with an angry, jaded look in his eyes. He smiled ruefully.

"You can kind of relate to him, a little. Giving up humanity for the 'greater good'..."

Brian turned to face me, and grinned sleepily, any trace of anger gone from his eyes.

"We should be getting to bed, shouldn't we?"

It was already 6 in the morning.

I laughed.

"Yeah." And with that, we both fell asleep on the couch.