A/N: Okay...don't throw tomatoes at me...please. To those who read my other stories and are waiting for updates on them, please don't hurt me. I'm sorry. Truly, I didn't mean for this to happen again, but...I can't help it. Once new ideas pop into my head, I have to write them down and post them on the internet. I realize that I have ten other stories that are incomplete and should probably be focusing on them but...the inspiration for them isn't there right now, so onto the next best thing. A fanfic for Death Note, my newest anime obsession.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to Death Note.

Warnings: This is my first time writing for Death Note, so go easy on me if you choose to review. Also, this story will eventually crossover with Bleach a little bit. (None of the Bleach characters will appear or anything like that, but some concepts from Bleach will be introduced. As time goes on, you'll understand why I've decided on doing this, but the main focus is in the Death Note world, so that's why I didn't list this story as a crossover. So don't even worry about it right now.) One other warning. Updates may be a little slow. Let's just warn everyone ahead of time.

Chapter 1

The Girl

She was adopted into a good family.

"Good" is a word that could hold many meanings in the above statement. The word can translate into the family being rich, or a family with a great deal of prestige, or perhaps power. In this context, the word could also mean that this family held incredibly high moral standards, or had a strong sense of justice. If applied to the typical definition of "good" then the people within this family could be called agreeable, commendable, super-efficient, first-class citizens that lived by the law of the land and went about their daily lives without trouble or complaint.

This couldn't be farther from the truth for this family, at least in the typical sense.

That's why Kira killed them.

That's why the girl stood alone in the small living room of her apartment, staring wide-eyed at the bodies of her adoptive family on the television screen.

The father, Yotaru Makano was a well-known fugitive who had escaped from prison nearly fifteen years ago. He was convicted on a murder charge despite having a perfectly sound alibi and no motive to kill the victim, thus resulting on a sentence of a life in prison. Before that time, Yotaru Makano had been a prominent business man named Nenji Sumodou, a well-respected, kind gentleman who had just graduated from a prominent university in America. Oddly enough, he was in America when the crime was instigated...in Okinawa, Japan where he was born.

Someone had obviously framed the man, and the alibi wasn't seen as a sound one, since it was given by a distant relative. Talk about bad luck.

The justice system had failed miserably on that account, landing an innocent man in prison while the killer continued to kill other innocent people, offhandedly finding a way to frame someone else with the evidence. It was an amazing feat really, one that Yotaru Makano resented and respected all at the same time.

He spent three years rotting in a prison cell, surviving through the day-to-day struggles of prison life while calculating his eventual escape to freedom. After all, the justice system wasn't going to help him. How could it? The so-called justice system is what brought him to this point in the first place.

How he escaped is something straight out of Shashank Redemption, a film he had seen in his youth and had ironically taken inspiration from to execute his own brilliant escape from prison despite the odds stacked up against him. He changed his name and appearance, moved to Winchester England and made a new life for himself. This included marrying a woman named Olivia Kay.

Olivia was a teacher at St. Mary, College of Winchester, and like Yotaru, a fugitive. Though not accused of murder like her husband, her conviction consisted of hacking into a military base in connection to a failed terrorist operation in Russia a few years earlier. She also changed her name and appearance. Originally, her name was Rosalie Anniston.

Two years after they married,.Oliva gave birth to her one and only biological child, David Makano. He was a rowdy boy, and as he grew he became a rowdy young man. At the age of ten he had already robbed a couple of convenient stores despite the continuous chidings he received from his parents when he got caught.

When David was ten, Yotaru and Oliva decided to adopt a child since the two of them could no longer produce children of their own.

Their original intention had been to adopt a baby from the Wammy House, but upon meeting a little girl with bright sea green eyes, curly locks of chestnut-brown hair, and a wide smile that was brighter than a million suns. They made plans to adopt her on the spot.

That's not to say that the girl didn't have some strange tendencies though. For one, she always carried around what appeared to be a diary hidden within a pink binder covered in animal stickers. Sometimes she would stare off into space, seemingly talking to someone but the space was always empty. She was a cashew fanatic too for some reason. She ate them constantly along with a variety of other nuts like almonds, peanuts, and walnuts, (if she could get someone to smash the thick shell open), though primarily she ate cashews. Every day she had to have at least three cans filled with salted cashews or some other type of nut. If she didn't, severe withdrawal symptoms would come into play. David would later find a way to make sure the girl suffered through these withdrawal symptoms as often as possible.

Aside from this she was a perfectly normal girl with some perfectly abnormal attachments to the orphanage.

While the adoption proceedings were taking place, she wouldn't stop crying for Yotaru and Oliva to adopt all the other kids. In particular she wailed endlessly for a slightly older boy with unruly bluish-black hair and soulless looking eyes lined with heavy bags, screaming exhaustion and the copious amounts of caffeine and sugar the kid was consuming. He continuously walked barefoot in a slouched over position and sat with his knees pressed against his chest for no clear reason. The young girl imitated some of his actions, giggling at him while claiming that the boy was a little weird but still very special to her. She was dead sent against leaving unless Yotaru and Oliva adopted him as well. David didn't have a problem with this, he even started begging his parents adopt the other child. He seemed cool enough to him and he needed a good punching bag anyhow.

However, this other child refused, stating that he belonged at the orphanage and couldn't leave before his training was complete.

The little girl protested, but eventually she was forced to go along with the separation.

On the day of departure she cried, clinging to her friend, begging him to come along anyway. He smiled, but didn't return the embrace, saying that they would meet again and that she shouldn't cry needlessly. There would be better reasons for tears, none of them including him.

At the time, the girl thoroughly disagreed.

However, nearly ten years later, she's beginning to understand what he meant.

At the age of seventeen, an age where the realities of life and death have begun to set in, she knows that the world is filled with rotten people, that hope may as well be a meaningless fiction for the uneducated. She knows she should feel bitterness, hatred, fear and most of all, the desire to end it all.

But she can't.

Though she stares at the lifeless eyes of her loved ones, she can't bring herself to feel any of those things. As she stands, trembling in disbelief, she can only register the emotion of sadness, of emptiness.

She would never claim that her adoptive family were good people in the typical sense. Her father wasn't a murderer, but he had run away. He didn't fight against the conviction or try to go about clearing his name legally from inside prison. Appeals were possible after all, but he never went that route. Instead he took matters into his own hands and ran, further convincing others of his guilt.

Her mother was someone who had assassinated people in the past and had continued to do so despite being a teacher. Even when the family moved back to a year earlier Japan, she continued to carry out missions from different mafia groups. After all, it was one of the few ways they could earn money.

Eventually her brother turned to the darkness as well. He ended up becoming a drug dealer to help the family make more money. Having fugitive parents meant moving around after so many months of being in one place. Big money was required for such a feat, especially with a son who spends needlessly.

Unfortunately, David got caught up in a deal that ended up in a horrendous gang-war recently. As a result, Oliva was forced to use her old mafia connections to try to clean up the mess he made. Much to the detriment of the entire family, Olivia was too hasty and made mistakes that caused the police to track her down, rendering her alias useless in the process. After interrogations and torture, Oliva spilled the beans about her life, including her marriage choice. Yotaru was caught in the same net thanks to this. His alias was also rendered useless. The media released the real names of her family: Nenji Sumodou, Rosalie Ansiton-Sumodou, and David Sumodou.

The girl was surrounded by this, but she never committed a crime, leaving the police no choice but to leave her be when they took all of her family into custody. For years on end she had lived a life separate from her family, at least in that sense. She went to school, studied, and traveled along with her family when it was time to move on to somewhere new. Though they were criminals, they were good people in her mind. They were sympathetic, helpful, strong, and willing to do anything to protect her. Though adopted, she was the baby of the family and the one that was shielded from reality the most.

But reality found other ways in.

Truthfully, she had hidden a secret for a while.

One that changed the very nature of the scene she was staring at now.

It was her fault. She knew this without a doubt, yet she still wanted to blame Kira. More than anything she wanted to find a way to kill him. No, better than that, she wanted to kill someone he loved so he could feel what she was feeling now.

But once again, she couldn't bring herself to act on these feelings. That's the reason why all of this began.

All because she could never accept her fate. All because she couldn't accept the ugly truth of what she truly was deep inside.

She hated herself for that.

But she hated Kira more for taking advantage of her weakness. Still, even with that hate beginning to brew inside her, she couldn't bring herself to feel much of anything, except deep sorrow and regret.

Sorrow for relinquishing her powers...

Regret for loving the hideous creatures humans were...

Sorrow in knowing that the countless deaths in the last month were her fault...

Regret in knowing she'd put those events into motion...

Sorrow for turning her back to her reflection...

Regret for wishing...

For hoping...

For being...

A shinigami living in human skin.

A/N: And that's the first chapter. More of a test run than anything else right now. If you guys are interested in reading more, let me know in that review box. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on this first chapter because, like I said this is my first time writing for Death Note and I'm introducing an OC that apparently doesn't have a name right now...uh oh, this already screams disaster. Oh well, thanks for reading and stay tuned for chapter two! I promise it'll be longer than this.