A/N: Hello! My name is still King, I am a recovering GaiaOnline junkie, and I don't own Death Note.

Alternative Gods

I: Hephaestus

"Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity."

CH01: Birth of a File

The first impressions Light Yagami had on sugar_tea16 were not a flattering ones. Contrary to the suggested gender of a feminine name, this user was a most defiantly male.

He was nowhere near sixteen, either.

So much so, that first thing on Light's mind after meeting Ryuzaki over the internet was to pursue the matter with innuendos and sexual hints until the pedophile on the other side of the monitor suggested a meeting, and then Light would just welcome him with open arms and not-so kinky handcuffs.

A meeting place never actually came up, largely because (as Light found out much later on) Ryuzaki did not actually exist as someone who would be able to come to the real world completely, and Light never managed to get far with luring Ryuzaki out with dim-witted cybersex intercourse of two words or less.

Sugar_tea16 had an IP that was virtually intractable and an agenda that was had nothing to do with luring in vulnerable children, or retrieving inheritance form a Nigerian bank, or even selling pirated music.

Which was what Light's department of NPA Division of Cybercrimes dealt with.

Far from his noble idea of a glorious street officer with a dashing uniform, shiny handcuffs and a gun, but close enough to his ideal of Justice. And although most of his fellow officers showed up to work in sweatpants and snickers, since all they would do is sit in front of computers all day anyway and eat nuts and Cheetos, Light still dressed like a dashing officer of the law.

But back to people on the wrong side of the law...

Ryuzaki was flagged first as a phone phisher, than a national intelligence threat, than finally after a long chain of handing down the case nobody really knew what to do with, Light received the infamous Sugar Tea.

His Sugar Tea was flagged as a pedophile.

After nearly everyone in the department had a stab at Sugar Tea, Light was really starting to think Ryuzaki was just a harmless troll with a multitude of internet abilities and creepy quirks; someone who really should be ignored.

Thing was, creeps who stalked phone, home, surfing, billing, medical and social security records of top Japanese students and then approached them via IM after adding themselves to someone else's IM list by hacking emails just so that they could talk was kind of out there creepy.

Worse yet, Sugar Tea knew more about these kids than their own mothers did.

By hacking into national registry database.

But it got even creepier.

Sugar Tea's IP was untraceable, that was until NPA Division of Cybercrimes' top officer Light Yagami had a crack at him.

Sugar Tea was using IP redirectors and bouncers Light manually unscrambled while having a conversation with Sugar Tea about candy corns. It came from Yotsuba's direct main server.

Which was locked in an air-tight vault-like room at the time.

An hour later, this time during a pleasant discussion of coffee brands, Sugar Tea was talking to Light from the main server Mt Fuji Observatory.

Torte discussion originated at the Verizon Satellite up in space and ended at a cubicle that was neighboring Light's corner office.

Ryuzaki was fucking with him.

"Um, why are you calling him 'Ryuzaki'?"

Light wasn't sure if he accidentally snapped the pencil he was using because of the surprise attack of Matsuda's irritating voice, or because of that… livid anger Ryuzaki drove him into by fucking with him.

"W-what?" said Light, stopping his eyes half-way between the report he was writing on Ryuzaki, and a flashing new message on his screen.

Something about harmful effects of potato chips.

Ugh.

"'Ryuzaki'. Did he give you a name or..?"

"He gave me a lecture on how harmful effects of eating potato chips outweigh the harmful effects of eating cake due to taste," Light rolled his eyes at the last word, relaxing and resorting his confident face. If he let his annoyance slip and if Matsuda picked up on it, the whole division would be buzzing with rumors how even the great Light Yagami couldn't deal with Sugar Tea.

"So.."

"So I named him."

Weeks and weeks after tediously nitpicking Ryuzaki to spill his beans that lead nothing but highly intelligent but random politics and nutrition discussions, amidst debating criminals of all things, it came up.

sugar_tea16: Tennis-san only says such things because he would never push the switch himself.

Yes, Ryuzaki never did understand the difference between MisaMisa Fansite Chat and a formal college thesis statement, and it wasn't that Light wasn't at least half-grateful.

xXtennisXx: I would. I would personally pull the trigger or whatever else myself. Some people just deserve to die, and if it'd make a better world, I'd carry out death penalties myself.

sugar_tea16: Given most of the civilized world would bring back the death penalty.

xXtennisXx: They should.

sugar_tea16: I am very glad the entire world justice system is not based on a single voice of a raving justice critic such as Tennis-san.

xXtennisXx: My fist and I are very glad we are not in the same room as a face of someone as gullible as Ryuzaki-san.

sugar_tea16: What?

xXtennisXx: The feedback of strong opinionated minorities is always more critical and valuable than the feedback of morally weak.

sugar_tea16: No, Tennis-kun has just implied hitting me in the face should I be located in the same room as him, and as the reference suggests, Tennis-kun just called me Ryuzaki.

xXtennisXx: Oh.

Oh well.

xXtennisXx: I named you. Since you insist on remaining blissfully anonymous so I can't track you down and hit you in the face, I figured I'd name you.

sugar_tea16: My name is Ryuzaki?

xXtennisXx: Sure.

sugar_tea16: Okay.

xXtennisXx: Uuuunless you want to tell me what to call you? ;)

sugar_tea16: Call me Ryuzaki.

xXtennisXx: Fine.

sugar_tea16: May I ask to return the favor?

xXtennisXx: I told you you could call me Yuuri like a million times.

sugar_tea16: But that is not Tennis-san's name.

What.

Everything led to Asuka Yuuri, his computer, his social security number, his Facebook even. Yuuri was an entity created exclusively for Ryuzaki, but Yuuri had records of getting braces last month. Yuuri was as legit as anyone. Ryuzaki never brought up the legitimacy of Yuuri, either.

Fluke, Light thought. He's talking about something else.

xXtennisXx: ?

sugar_tea16: Since Tennis-san named me, I would like to call Light Yagami-san by his real name.

Light's fingers froze over keyboard and for a swift moment Light didn't know how he would connect an Asuka Yuuri and Light Yagami if he was Ryuzaki.

He just didn't know.

Seconds ticked, and nothing is a telltale sign of truth than an awkward internet pause in a chatroom.

xXtennisXx: Ooookay since Tsuki is a girl's name, I guess you want to roleplay..? I keep telling you we should meet for this.

sugar_tea16: L.I.G.H.T.

Ryuzaki spelled it out, in English, and it literally left no wiggle room. He was compromised, and the protocol in this case that never happened to Light before was-

sugar_tea16: …I am terribly sorry Tennis-san, I did not mean to startle you. I will talk to you later today; please don't let my forwardness bother you until it does.

sugar_tea16: c u

Light stared at the lame good-bye and briefly wondered how Ryuzaki would "talk to him later" when all roads lead to Rome, and Rome was Light's corner office and computer, and Light's home was off-radar due to some major hitech tweaking on Light's part.

He worked at a place that dealt with computers for a reason.

Nevertheless, he went home, bothered and half-exited to possibly see Ryuzaki in all his humanly IRL glory at his home, sipping Light's tea with no sugar. Because Light's family didn't keep any sugar in the house.

Haha, Sugar Tea.

In your face.

But there was no one.

No Sugar Tea, no his father, no Sachiko or Sayu. The Yagami residence was completely empty.

Eight pairs of slippers were lined up against the high step, and six feet above them, on a narrow wall of the hallway a wall-clock ticked away 8-something PM, mocking Light's early arrival, and rightfully so. Light could find something useful to do with himself at work, or after work for that matter, but he took off, eager to sit at home and wait for Ryuzaki's threat to talk to him at home to come true.

And laugh at Ryuzaki when nothing happened.

He took his shoes off and sunk his feet into his house slippers with firm soles, took a bag of potato chips from the kitchen (and pressed a hand to the kettle to make sure it was cold, and nobody made tea in his absence) and marched upstairs for a stakeout of his own room.

The lead, the paper and the handle were just the way he left them – in place, perfectly. He expected no surprises when he unlocked the door.

And there were none. His room smelled of leather cleaning solution and his surfaces were as sterile as he had left him, disgustingly so, reminding Light once again that in his room in his parents' house, he lived alone and invited nobody.

He should really move out, he supposed.

Nobody in his family but Sayu ever told him to, and Light saw no point in it. His work-nights were often spent on creaking cheap and sweaty hotel beds, drunk and with random strangers he would lure in with his natural charms, and the sex came with no strings, and he never gave out phone-numbers, nor was he looking for relationships with any effeminate, whiny men.

They were his dirty secrets; secrets everyone but his family (except for Sayu) seemed to know about.

But Sayu kept her mouth shut in exchange for Light correcting her essays.

And so, once he opened the door and found nothing but tidiness and scents in his room, he felt a little disappointed.

He wanted his Sugar Tea.

And then, it came.

From his desk in the far corner of the room, his laptop, forever asleep on hibernate mode sang the Windows boot melody and came on without Light even touching it.

It turned on by itself.

Light dropped his chips.

It popped open an IM screen.

Light ran for it.

Light didn't have an IM installed.

Shit.

'Impossible' was not the world he was looking for; what he wanted to say was 'fuck fuck fuck', but he said nothing and manually pulled the plug of his modem as fast he got there.

The cord, tangled up with a charger cable and an external harddrive sent all the hardware pieces tipping and tumbling over with shallow plastic crashes.

He had really fucking sensitive data on that computer. Which was why he went through so much trouble to hide himself from the rest of the internet world. If someone accessed it when he was gone, or messed with it, or god forbid copied it-

Breathing heavily, Light started typing away.

His phone vibrated in his pocket, alerting Light he had a text message waiting, but Light ignored it and started up virus check after virus check after system access log.

It received four more messages until Light bothered checking it amidst his major panic attack.

All four were from his cellphone company, and the only times his cellphone company contacted him were the times to tell him he went over his weekly minutes limit.

But instead, they all read, 'Please turn your internet back on. –R'.

With half of the appropriate scans started, with a pile of fallen hardware add-ons at his feet, Light stood in the middle of his room, frozen, staring at his cellphone screen, unable to process a course of action.

What the hell was he supposed to do in a case like this?

Act professional, that's what.

And so, professionally, Light dumped the contents of his desk drawer onto the floor, completing the glorious mess, one that his room has never seen, and dug out a small Netbook from the pits of the drawer. He disabled the wi-fi on his violated laptop, and plugged in his cellphone to his Netbook, and Netbook directly into the modem, and ran a trace on the texts, which is all the Netbook was capable of doing.

Because Light wrote the OS for the Netbook himself.

And not two minutes after a prompted IM download on the Netbook that failed, Light witnessed something glorious.

The small 9-inch Netbook screen split into two windows – one of the perks Light did so that if his Netbook was accessed from two points at the same time, he could see the action of the ghosted screen... the first window happily ran his trace program.

The second one was messing with his system folder. Files were replaced, hundreds at a time, and then the second portion of the split-screen split into two more, and the second one of the second one started manually rewriting his bloody OS he made himself, with fucking text, right in front of Light's eyes.

And then an IM installed itself and opened.

sugar_tea16 signed in.

O-okay.

sugar_tea16: humor me, Light-san. Please.

Light's fingers trembled over the keyboard with bursts of adrenaline as he typed, 'what the fuck.'

sugar_tea16 requested a voice call.

And then it hit Light, too late perhaps, but at the point where he had no idea how this was done, or what the hell was going on, it was the effort that counted.

Light jammed his thumb into the Netbook's built-in webcam and reached for the mess he made of his drawer where he saw a pack of post-it notes. Cupping the webcam with his palm, he removed his thumb and put a post-it on over the camera's eye.

Then, he cracked his cellphone open and pulled out the phone chip. Try to hack that, Ryuzaki.

He switched on the sound recording option and set it on the floor by the Netbook, and only then did Light realize he sitting on the floor, and the floor only added an insult to his injured ego.

Begrudged and furious, he accepted the voice-call.

Sugar Tea could have used a text-to-speech program.

Instead, the high-pitched metallic voice-scrambler came with as little intonation in it as a text-to-speech would have. It annoyed Light, and yet all he could do was sit in awe and wonder how this whole ridiculous fuck-up was possible in the first place.

"Does Light-san know anything about the L?" Ryuzaki wasted no time.

"Fuck you," Light said. The least the bastard could do for him is bother with small-talk.

"The L, Light-san. What can you tell me about it?"

The L, with its pathetic 50-bit encryption, was a rumor, and if it mattered, it was supposed to be a super-virus. At some point, it interested Light too, until he was unfortunate enough to find out that L. Something was an actual person – a paranoid and egocentric lead tech developer for Yotsuba. Apparently, his work was worth his work demands, and so Yotsuba provided him with absolute anonymity.

In short, Light could tell Ryuzaki a lot about L. So he said:

"What the fuck is an L and what the fuck are you doing on my computer and who the fuck are you," completely unamused.

"The L is something that is related to what Light-san will do for me. I am talking to Light-san. I am Ryuzaki."

"Bullshit."

"Recently, Yotusba underwent a major hacking. A massive amount of read-only files were stolen, I am sure Light-san is aware."

Yes, 'Lights-san' was aware. A he couldn't care less. It wasn't his department.

Yotsuba should've backed up their files. Morons.

"By tomorrow morning, Light-san will be transferred onto the Yotsuba hacking investigation team," Ryuzaki's metallic artificial voice droned on, and Light suddenly found himself caring about the Yotusba hacking, because it meant if he was transferred, he could do nothing about this cheeky little bastard on his computer.

"I would like Light-san to keep me posted on the case, as well as do favors for me."

Light did a double-take and choked on his own saliva before an involuntary laughter-imitating gargle escaped his throat. Favors. Sugar Tea could hack into the case notes himself. It was the favors he was after.

"Go fuck yourself by yourself."

"I understand Light-san is very unhappy about my intrusion onto his property. I apologize and assure him I have done nothing to his equipment, and I also apologize for leading him on with his investigation of me. I needed to asses if Light-san was reliable."

Reliable? Reliable, Light's ass. As soon as he got his hands on that-

"In exchange, I can do whatever Light-san wants, except turning myself in, as I have done hardly anything illegal."

The gall.

Some people on internet – and Light detested them almost as much as he detested criminals – they thought that without a face or any social status whatsoever, they were little gods of their own little universes; the internet was their escape from their miserable existences, and they could be whatever they wanted; they could be the all-powerful. The best.

They could lie, and nothing was as pathetic as exposing lying internet posers; they were never convincing, nor did they ever get their story straight.

The internet was the pity party.

It gave people, people like his little Ryuzaki, the impression that they could do anything and everything at all.

And Light loved crushing their blind belief that under the cover of anonymity, they were all-powerful. Crushing them down to Earth, into their pathetic bedrooms, where they were powerless tiny people with greasy fingers, hair and clothes.

And so to make Ryuzaki feel like a worthless piece of human trash that he was, Light played along, for the sake of his own ego, really.

If only he hadn't.

"Okay."

Light stood up, towering above the small Netbook with Ryuzaki inside of it.

He turned on the TV.

Flipped through the channels.

Found a live news feed of some moron holding half-a building as hostages.

"The criminal on channel 36. I want him to die. Now. That's what I want."

"I understand," Ryuzaki's scrambled voice droned.

There was a pause on Ryuzaki's side of the IM window, and Light humored him by giving him time. Light's watch tapped seconds away, slowly and quietly, and the quiet ticking was the only sound in the room.

Nothing happened.

Light was about to taunt Ryuzaki.

And then...

The news anchor was talking away when the left side of the building on Light's TV, the one with hostages and the criminal inside, popped the glass from the window frames, and the windows and doors themselves vomited red and rounded clouds of fire, and the sound of explosion, the screams and the rattle all shook the building and the cameraman fell over. Somebody – a hostage probably, was blown out of the window and trashed around in the grass, on fire, burning alive.

"Anything else, Light-san?" the cold metallic voice asked politely, and Light watched the screen of his TV in blank stupor.

Slowly, he lowered himself to sit on his bed, with the Netbook at his feet.

"Oh… my god," he whispered, covering his mouth with the palm of his hand.

All those innocent people.

Dead.

And yet, the criminal was dead, too-

No, no, no… the train of thought was just horrible.

Light shut Netbook lid with his foot, curled up on his bed and stared at the bleak, dusky sky, blankly.

He didn't think about the hack of pretty much every piece of technology he owned, or the danger he suddenly found himself in if Ryuzaki was capable of electronically messing with gas and electricity of buildings, or the Yotsuba, or the L, or the dead people, or the dead criminal, or even justice.

Nothing like that.

It was that...

Everything so far was impossible.

And Light was fascinated.

-Alt-

A/N: Alrighty. With DT at its last dying breaths, I had to push this out. 8D

It's my next baby. I've been planning a cyberpunk fic for years and years and years. Is gonna be grand, yeah… I bought up fanart of it on Gaia for inspiration, ha ha. I'm pathetic.

I have nothing to say for now, really, other than, this is another mindfuck. If you came from DT, you know what to expect from me. If you have no idea what the hell this is, just... kinda, bear with me, ha ha? I'd really appreciate initial thoughts on this though. :'D

Oh yeah. Hang onto it while you can: happy ending promise. In, say... 30 chapters?

A/N2: I am publishing this, and I have tears in my eyes. MY SECOND BABY IS HERE! Yay!

Magic Button.

It stalked you even here.

Click and say something. :D

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