Author's Note: Completely edited author's note! This used to be a drabble, but I got enough feedback to keep it going...finally. Please enjoy. More serious of a fic than I was used to when starting, but now more as a cooloff story, like a few others. Yes, there is comedy, if you know where to look. Especially for sadists, like myself.

Summary: Raito Yagami was taken away from his family at age 10 to train at Wammy's House to become a lean, keen, mean killing machine and is now using the alias Light on his mission: eliminate criminals. L, the infamous private detective was hired by Light's parents soon after his kidnapping to find the boy. Now 8 years later, there are finally some new leads to point L in Light's direction. Will they both make it out alive?

Note: First person's Light's POV. Third person is either just third person or L's POV.

Warnings: Violence, gore, adult themes, language, yaoi in later chapters ((maybe)), screwed up ages ((Matt, Mello, and Near))

Spoilers: L's, Mello's, Matt's, and Near's real names, later

Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note. If I did, Near would've died. I do, however own this idea. ^-^

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Chapter 1

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Perfect.

PUNCH

I have to be perfect.

STAB

I have to win every game I enter.

KICK

And not let a hair out of place.

CRUNCH

I must kill them all…perfectly.

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Eight years ago:

"Good-night, Raito," Sachiko Yagami cooed as she tucked in her little ten-year-old. She loved him so much. How could he ever do anything wrong, the perfect little angel? Soichiro Yagami stepped into the room, waiting to switch places with his wife. He had just tucked six-year-old Sayu, Raito's little sister, in bed.

Soichiro walked over to his perfect son's bed and whispered, "You know we love you, right?" Raito nodded. "Good. Keep on being the best you can be, perfect. Good-night."

"'Night, Dad," Raito's tired voice squeaked out. He smiled and closed his eyes, ready for a good night's sleep. His father left and closed the door behind him, exhausted and ready for bed.

When the whole house was quiet, everyone either falling asleep or already sleeping, Raito heard something odd outside his window. Thinking it was just a tree branch or a bug, he rolled over and tried to sleep. Again, the noise at his window, along with the creak of it being opened. The young boy sat bolt upright, staring at the glass slowly moving up, black gloved hands underneath. His eyes bugged out of his head and a scream worked its way up into his throat.

When the black-shrouded figure climbed through his window and into his room, creeping towards him, the scream of fright found its way out, quickly hushed by a cloth to his mouth. Movement was heard around the house as the rest of his family woke up. Raito fell unconscious, the cloth drugged.

The only thing his parents saw as they ran into his room was an open window, the curtains billowing into the room from the wind beginning to gust outside. Sachiko collapsed into her husband's arms and cried at the loss of her loved son.

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Present:

It took years of training to get where I am today. I'm the head of my division, one of the smartest, and the leader of my particular group. We call ourselves the Mid-Knights. I didn't come up with it, Matt did. It's one of the only things he can do, since he doesn't normally help us during battle. Sure, we call it battle, but in all honesty, all we do is go around killing those we are assigned to kill. We needed a name and Mello thought that since Matt was a computer whiz, he would be able to come up with a good name.

Damn Mello. The four of us were in the same group because we were the smartest in the whole academy. Forced together is more like it. I like working on my own, and so do the others, but sometimes, we have to work together. Sometimes, we are allowed on our own missions, which is what I like the best.

Matt, as I said before, is a computer whiz. He usually hacks into the security cameras so we won't be noticed, or tracks down whom we need.

Mello deals with actually getting inside, along with capturing, tying up, and or drugging anyone we don't need killed. He's also the one who designed our outfits. Man, I wish sometimes that I didn't assign him to do that. The leather jumpsuits were always riding up my ass.

Near plans all our attacks and kills. All we get is a name and face then he and Matt work together from there.

And then there's me, Light. I am the one who goes in for the kill. My skills with that are phenomenal. I can use any weapon, any move. I've been tied up before and still been able to murder. That's why I'm the leader. There are other groups like us, but they don't get the big missions.

Part of being a killing machine is being a machine. We cannot have any emotions, cannot remember our pasts. Right from the beginning, they forced me to go through hours of meditation to block out my past, my family, my old life. Now I can't remember anything and am glad for that. I would've been a wreck otherwise. I can't even remember my real name. Neither can the others. We were all taken when we were ten and brought here, to Wammy's House, to train as killing machines.

We were all personally selected by our leader, Watari, to come here. Then kidnapped at night, leaving our families in states of complete distress. Like it mattered to us anymore. We have no feelings, have no reason to love, have nobody to love.

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Eight Years Ago:

The strange black-haired man walked into the Yagami's house without as much as a greeting. He was brought to the living room, where he sat peculiarly on one of the armchairs, across from the worried parents. He then took out a pad and pen, ready to take notes.

"You are L, correct?" Soichiro asked the man. "The private detective?"

With a small sigh, but no emotion shown on his face, the man answered in a monotone, "Yes, I am L. I would think that the one who hired me should already know that. But please, for future reference, refer to me as Ryuzaki." The father seemed shocked by the abruptness. "Now, you said your son was kidnapped two nights ago, correct?"

Sachiko was the one who answered. "Yes. You see, we tucked him into bed and left to go to sleep ourselves. Then maybe ten or twenty minutes later, we heard him scream, but the scream was cut off. We ran as fast as we could to his room. But he was already gone, his window open wide." By the end, tears had started to fall again and she became chocked up once more. Soichiro wrapped his arms around her and held her close, letting her cry into his chest.

Still, L showed no emotion. He had seen this too many times to show anything. And he was trained years ago to let his feelings never show. "Your son is ten, correct?"

They nodded. "Turned ten just last month, February," Soichiro said somewhat proudly.

It was L's turn to nod. He wrote something down then said, "I have no idea where Raito currently is, sorry. I do have a vague idea, but…" He sighed. The memories were painful, and he often tried blocking them out. Still, they showed up in nightmares, and that was why he now suffered from insomnia. He asked a few more questions on Raito's appearance and personality, trying to obtain as much information as possible.

It turned out that Raito was extremely intelligent, more so than anyone else he'd ever competed against mentally. L wondered if he ever met the boy, they would be able to have an intellectual talk. It had been a while since he had had one, but alas, the boy was only ten. Raito's genius was one of the clues L had as to his whereabouts. Another was his physical strength and stamina. The boy was a tennis champion for his age group. L again wondered that if they were ever to meet, they could play a game or two.

He shook his head to stop it from wandering, as it did so often, and stood to leave the gloomy household.

"Wait, I have another question, Mr. Ryuzaki," Soichiro called out as L was walking out of the living room.

L turned around in surprise, but didn't show it on his face. "Please, just Ryuzaki. And what is your question?"

The older man took a deep breath while looking the detective up and down. L had the vague notion that he was checking him out, but knew that was completely false and suppressed the awkward feeling. Finally, Soichiro asked, "Just how old are you?"

Slightly taken aback by the question, L thought back to his last birthday. He believed he was seventeen now. Yes, he had tried going to a bar and see what it was like to drink illegally, but after one sip of beer, quickly tore off to the bathroom to puke up the remains of a delicious cake…that wasn't so great the second time around. He knew that when his twenty-first came around, that was one thing he wasn't going to look forward to. That was back in October if he could remember correctly. His birthday was one of the few memories he had retained from his childhood.

"I see no need for you to know that, but if you must, I am seventeen."

The Yagamis' eyes widened. Sachiko let out, "But you're so young!" L just sighed and turned around, exiting the house once and for all. He knew he was young, but he never truly showed his age. He probably looked a little older than he was currently was, and acted even older. But that was one of the side effects of his life prior to detective work.