Justice
The elevator doors slide shut with a soft mechanical hiss. The boy takes a slow breath, then runs his fingers through his hair. He watches the floor numbers above the door, descending from the top floor where he'd just completed his masterpiece of planning.

He smirks with satisfaction. Because he knows that by the time the elevator reaches the ground level, everyone in this building will be dead.

All this is possible because of the black notebook under his arm - the Death Note. When he first found it, he thought it was a prank. "The human whose name is written in this note shall die." But he tested it. It was real.

He immediately understood what a godlike power had fallen into his hands. He could kill whomever he wanted, anywhere in the world, and it would be completely untraceable as long as nobody found the notebook. He could even dictate the exact manner of death.

Soon, he was visited by the book's original owner, a shinigami named Ryuk. Ryuk explained that he'd grown bored of the monotony of being a god of death one day and had decided to give it to a random human for his own amusement.

But the boy never believed that he got it by chance. He knows it is his destiny to clean up the world. In the first week alone, he killed more than a thousand criminals. He numbers each entry. Now he's at 13,802. He's in love with it.

Today, he did something special. He wiped out the police task force investigating the mysterious deaths. It wasn't easy because he didn't know their names. But he found a way to obtain them. They had to be punished for trying to stop his new world order.

"Everything went according to plan. Do you understand now, Ryuk?"

The shinigami floating next to him in the elevator tilts his head. Only a user of the Death Note can see or hear him, so no one questioned the ten-foot-tall demon following a boy into the police headquarters.

"Huh? You mean you're done already? I thought you were going to kill everyone in this building. But you only killed the young officer who brought you up here and the fat old guy in the office. There are still like three hundred people in here."

"Of course. I know that. I killed them too. Didn't you see what I was doing in his office?" The boy says condescendingly and chuckles. "You know, Ryuk, sometimes I wonder why I even bother explaining anything to you."

The boy opens the notebook to show page after page of meticulous writing.

"You see? The Death Note lets me specify the cause of death in detail, including the victim's actions before death. First, I found a detective in the lobby and read his name tag. It said he was Matsuda Tōta. So I wrote that Matsuda Tōta would die of a heart attack after escorting the boy claiming to be the police chief's son upstairs to his office." He flips the page.

Ryuk's face looks interested now. "Oh! Even I didn't know the Death Note could do that. So that's why he believed you when you approached him, huh."

The boy smiles at that. He likes it when his intelligence is recognized. As the smartest student his age in all of Japan, it happens a lot.

"Then I wrote that the police chief would go into his office, making sure he would not be disturbed, open the database of everyone working for him on his computer, and die of a heart attack. He did exactly that. He was already dead when we walked in. All I had to do was sit in his chair, copy their names into the Death Note, and walk out. And right now -"

He checks his watch.

"Every single person in this headquarters, every detective in Japan working on the Kira case, will be dead or dying. Right now. While we ride down. A bunch of civilian secretaries and janitors too, of course. But you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. Besides, no one who isn't on my side of true justice is truly innocent. My fingers still hurt from writing so many names." He laughs maniacally.

"That's pretty clever. But couldn't he have just emailed you the list? Why did you have to come here?"

The boy laughs.

"You know what emails are? I'm impressed, Ryuk. But of course not. An email would have been traced. I can't risk that; it would be irresponsible. I had to come here myself. If I want to be the god of this new world, I have to take these kinds of risks."

The elevator continues downwards. The numbers above the door illuminate in sequence:

9

8

7

The boy looks at the indicator with a self-satisfied smile. Soon, he will step outside and see the building of his enemies turned into a morgue. He'll go home and pretend to be shocked when he hears the news.

"Oh, this is so interesting," Ryuk says suddenly, as if he sees something through the walls, and starts to cackle. His red eyes glimmer with something the boy misinterprets as approval.

The boy takes out his phone and searches YouTube for "kira". That's the name they've given him. Some people call him a monster. Some call him the god of the new world.

He likes the second group. The ones who truly get it. There's one channel in particular that he loves called "Kira's Conquest". Run by a woman with long red hair and enormous cleavage that she always puts in the camera. She seems to truly believe in his vision, defends him, even says "Thank you Kira!" at the end of every video. His face flushes when he sees the thumbnail. He has to adjust his pants.

4

3

2

The boy puts his phone away and frowns at Ryuk. The shinigami is cackling, floating in circles around him like a puppy.

"What's so funny? Shut up," he snaps at the empty air. "There's nothing funny about this. This is justice. I'm building a new world order, and you're just here to watch. So stop interrupting."

His small hand reaches up to smooth his hair once more, a habitual gesture of self-assurance.

Ryuk's grin widens. "You have no idea, do you?"

The elevator comes to a smooth stop. The mechanism releases with a soft ding.

1

The doors slide open with a pneumatic whisper. The boy prepares to step out, then shrinks back, his eyes wide - the first moment of genuine surprise he's shown all day. He's staring into the muzzle of a suppressed pistol. Held by a young woman in tight-fitting tactical gear, aimed at the middle of his forehead.

Fwip.

His head snaps back as the slug penetrates his skull, his blond hair whipping around. The nerves in his brain fire in a final spasm of confusion and his knee jerks up once. He leaves a fine splash of red on the elevator wall behind him, which is then smeared by the back of his head as he slides down to the floor. His eyes, still containing that spark of intelligence, roll upward to show the whites. His body doesn't even convulse.

The doors begin to close, but the tactical officer jabs her leg between them, forcing them back open. The small, lifeless body hasn't moved. It remains slumped in the corner of the elevator, bleeding onto the carpet, with one leg folded awkwardly beneath it.

Her radio comes to life. "I heard gunshots! Report immediately! Pull back if you have to, I repeat: do NOT risk your life!"

"I shot him," she replies. "Repeat: I got Kira."

There's silence on the other end. She steps into the elevator, keeping her gun trained on the limp form, ready to put another bullet in the boy's head should he stir. She pokes him with her foot. No response.

She takes off her glove and bends down to check for a pulse. "Target eliminated. Repeat, he's fucking dead."

The doors close again. She grabs the boy by the cheeks and looks into his face. There is a neat hole in his forehead with a trail of blood running down from it. His mouth hangs open. One of his eyes is half-closed due to nerve damage, giving him a sleepy expression. Blood mixed with brain matter continues to ooze out of the hole in the back of his head. His blond hair is matted with it.

He deserved this, she thinks. He murdered thousands. Just because they were criminals didn't make it right. And today, he murdered her friends and colleagues, as well as probably everyone else in the police headquarters. She's happy she got to be the one to serve justice. Plus, L will finally have to stop being a creepy shut-in and accept that someone else finished the job.

She looks down and sees the obvious tent in his pants. He's hard. She makes a vindictive smirk and slides her hand into his pants, past his underwear, and touches his small penis. It twitches a bit from the stimulation, then settles into the curve of her hand. She gives it a squeeze.

The shinigami laughs.

"Humans are so interesting."