N/A: What is this you ask? Well, I was bored yesterday and came up with this idea: what if the characters switched places and earned another role than the one they had in the manga and anime? What if Misa was Kira? What if Matt was L? Yeah, you get the idea. Before I started on this project I wrote the names of the characters on a paper and later put them in a hat so the roles were sorted out random—more fun that way! Then I had to work with the roles I had and below you will see the complete list :)

The old roles are on the right and the new on the left:

Light Yagami/Kira: Near

L: Misa Amane (lol!)

Misa Amane: Matt (yes, Matt is in love with Near in this)

Mello: L

Matt: Mello

Near: Light Yagami

I'm going to try to keep them in character even though they are in complete different situations. Also, I'm not gonna bother too much trying to explain why for example Light chose to be a successor to Misa (that sounds sooo wrong xd) or trying to be logical about Matt's attraction to Near. Also, I'm not gonna use Light Yagami's and Misa Amane's full names—they're unknown—because it wouldn't be fun if Near could just kill them off. Also, I know that Near didn't approve with Kira's motive in the manga but that's why this is going to be so fun. The story's gonna start with six chapters when every characters get their screen-time before Light's quest of catching the evil Near begins. Why Near chose to be Kira? I'm not really sure if I know either. I hope you like this fic, it's not the most serious I have written but I need a break from my more serious fics and if know myself I (maybe) will be a more frequent updater if I have more stories in progress. I suck at sticking to one story solely after all. Thank you for reading this enormous author's note and I hope you tell me what you think of this. Also, the first chapter won't be so funny because Near is almost impossible to write funny if you want to keep him in character. He lives in London by the way—I think I have the right to change a little from the original—while the rest come from Japan. Matt is from London like Near but moved to Japan before Near finds his notebook. I'm also gonna swamp Misa's childhood with Matt's. And I don't think Near will kill Misa, I will find another solution.

Revamped

Chapter 1: Near the Kira

—|—

Near was an extremely bored person. He lived a life that followed the same pattern every single day, from the hour he woke up to the hour he slammed his face into the pillow and he thought it was enough, that he was content but he really wasn't. For every jigsaw he tugged together in this puzzle of life he understood that he had walked out from the sphere where everyone else was and spent time in another world. Nothing challenged him. His brain could spit out logical lines and keys to equations in a velocity that left no time for pleasure—it was fact and fact left no time for emotions. Emotions didn't exist in his vocabulary; it was a word he could form with his lips but it didn't mean anything. He thought emotions were for the real people, imbecile morons that followed dress-codes, blew bubbles with gums and put curses between words but somehow he knew he was one of them too. He couldn't wait for something to happen. He had to use his intelligence, he had to create entertainment, not waiting for it. He waited in fifteen years, it was enough now.

Near didn't like the outside world. He wasn't particularly afraid of it—he knew that you couldn't die of sunrays—but it never interested him, almost like nothing in particular interested him. The green plains and colorful flowers were beautiful but Near had never been amused by pretty things. Beauty lay in mathematic formulas and numbers and riddles, not in pretty paintings and social intercourses. Also, he didn't like fresh air, it felt like someone pumped air in him until he was going to explode like a balloon. People said that you needed fresh air but he didn't. He didn't need anything.

Well, okay, that was a lie, today he actually did need something and that something was a new pensile. Usually, these pathetic dilemmas weren't even a issue since his teachers always seemed to deliver everything he needed to him like he wasn't capable of walking to an affair and bring money our from his pocket himself and for him it was perfectly fine because even with his overactive brain he still was a child that couldn't take his own decisions. He pushed his problem onwards, ignored them, stated them as useless and it spun around in a circle that couldn't break. He sat in his room and did nothing and life spun around without him. But he couldn't drift away in the clouds today, he had a purpose and how ridiculous it even sounded he liked the fact he had something to do. He shoved his pale hands in his pockets and walked onwards, walked out in the grass that bathed in warm sunlight and a butterfly skipped past face, thin wings touching the bridge of his nose.

Those who knew Near had learned to accept him—even though it was rather difficult—as he was but foreigner, people with glued prejudges saw a child with perhaps a autistic syndrome, perhaps a disorder, something that was different, not like it should. Near refused to wear shoes, he hated shoes; shoes trapped his feet and gifted him with chafed feet. Also, since he barely left the school he lived in, it wasn't necessary to grow fond of shoes. He wandered with his white socks that didn't protect his soles from the burning asphalt, however he found the pain rather thrilling, to feel anything, anything at all. More things that put him under the headline "strange?" Well, he had plenty. He walked around outside with a pajamas, he had hair white as snow and eyes black and piercing. His legs were fragile and could barely lift him up when he walked so—as he stalked away to the affair to buy the stupid pensile—he looked like an old man without a rod which rewarded him with more glares. Near wasn't a sensitive person, more like empty of emotions like a turned bowl, but he didn't really appreciate those glares like he was an animal in a cage displayed solely to feed the visitors' excitement.

He was now standing on a field, a field expanding as long as the eye could reach, with grass that painted his socks green. With one hand in his pocket and the other one looping a twig in his hair he watched this and pondered the question why he didn't think this was beautiful. It was beautiful, if you would ask someone else then it was the inevitable answer, but he couldn't see it. He couldn't find beauty, he could only find the black. He was so bored. Bored and empty and vain. Being too intelligent did that to you.

"Why the hell are you wearing a pajamas?" a girl with a mask of make-up snorted as she passed by with her suntanned legs exposed by a pair of hotpants. Near said nothing. What was there to say? He didn't know? He wore his pajamas because it was a familiar attribute? He wore his pajamas because it was comfortable? There, she had her answers.

He ignored the girl—he was very talented at ignoring people—and swept down in the grass, placing his chin on the back of his hands as he lay down, wiggling with his feet and thought about nothing. The sun touched his neck and he found himself strangely drowsy and the wind that played gently through his hair and swept over his skin felt nice. He crawled forward in an attempt of trying to see what lie on the other side of the plain and found himself bruising his elbow across something.

In front of him lay a notebook with black covers, surrounded by the pink flowers, looking awfully misplaced. Still, there was something with the book that awaked Near's attention and he leaned down and touched the frame with his fingertips, then felt a chilling blow through his stomach as fragment passed by his eyes and carefully ingrained in his mind. The next moment it was over. What had happened? Near didn't know much about notebooks but he knew this; you shouldn't get a feeling of science fiction when you touched one. With one hand still looping around his hair he touched the book again and nothing happened. Was he only imagining things? He shook his head; no. He wasn't a dreaming person. He thought much but always knew where he was. But he didn't now.

He smiled a little, just a brief movement. Interesting. He stuck his finger under the cover, felt the raspy material and opened the book. Nothing. Well, there were pages but you should expect that from a notebook but nothing extraordinary. The pages were a little tainted by yellow but not much and the lines where thin and carefully placed throughout the page. Still, there was something about this book that made him close it again, lift it up and carry it as he walked to the affair to buy the pensile. He didn't know what and usually he wasn't the one that was interested in concrete things like this but he guessed that even he was a little curious on the inside. People dropped the funniest of things but this was something else. What if something happened if he wrote in it?

He couldn't wait to find out.

—|—

Near finds nothing emotional about death. Death exists and it exists for everyone. No one can toy with fate, no one can toy with death. But it is different now. He holds the key of death in his hands as he moves his fingers across the damped cover, trying to find the essence of the book. The key? But does he want to use it?

He doesn't even know.

—|—

Near returned to his school in the center of London—the city where crime was a habit, while graffiti was the natural way of showing different cultures—about one hour later and he chose to skip his class in math—he never did that usually—and returned straight to his room in the far end of the corridor snailing around the school-building. He could probably blame his absence on sickness or something; his teachers didn't really care as long as he scored well on the exams. His room looked like if a tornado had been invited inside the walls and he found himself not caring about the mess at all. Caring was unnecessary, caring made you weak, caring made you vulnerable to humans' selfish wishes. Near wasn't weak, at least he wasn't going to show it. His toys—yes, he still played with toys—lay in a mess in the centre and he walked passed them and sat down on a chair in front of his laptop in his usual position, with one knee nudging the chin and the other swinging down the pad. After a useless attempt of having a staring contest with the book he opened it again and skipped through every page, devoutly trying to find the secret.

At the last page he did.

Nailed on the cover was a note and on the note several sentences—rules—were written in a snarly handwriting painted in white, dancing across the page. He read the page and found himself oddly confused. This didn't make any sense. These rules certainly hovered above the edge to the unreal and were probably just another foolish joke to enlighten someone's boredom. However, and here it did get existing, this was an ambitious piece of work, from the design of the notebook to the creativity of the rules and he knew that humans in general didn't like to put effort in vain.

The human whose name is written in this note shall die.

This note will not take effect unless the writer has the person's face in their mind when writing his/her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected.

Interesting. Near flicked his hair as he read the rest of the rules and tried to analyze them with his concrete brain. But there was nothing logical about this, it was surrealistic and he had never been interested in their art. On the other side, though, this may be the chance to bring some life in his gray life, stroking the pensile across the gray background and made it in color. Death didn't mean anything to him after all, nor the fact that if he used this notebook he would neither go to heaven or hell. He simply didn't care, it didn't matter, nothing mattered.

While moving the newly bought pensile in circles he wondered whose name he should write in the notebook. He could write a name of a classmate but that was probably unwise and besides, he found no pleasure in killing innocent people. It had to be someone that deserved to die, like someone that found it funny to end innocent lives. He moved down the remote from the shelf above him and turned on the television with the reason to find a channel that showed lawsuits live. Being the not normal teenager that he was he wasn't the most frequent zapper so it took an eternity to zap through channels with extremely boring tennis-matches and anothers with cars that had one hundred laps to go in the race—wasn't that an issue for the global warming?—until he found one that looked promising. The camera was place from above so the view wasn't exactly the best as you could only see the heads like small particles moving around the chamber. Near leaned closer and ignored the staining pain the pixels gave him and tried to hear the name of the criminal. Suddenly the camera shifted ankle and he started right into a face with more wrinkled skin than an unironed shirt and eyes blue and unemotional. Apparently this was just a walk in the park for him and it sent a chilling down Near's spine, mostly due to the egoistic reason that the man reminded of himself.

"Mark Smith, accused for the murder committed ten years ago of Candace and Peter Jeevas, do you have something to add?"

Mark Smith simply moved his shoulder with no sign of regret, or even the simplest flick of remote for the fact that he had quenched someone's life. Nothing. "I did not commit the crime," he said and moved a hand across his chestnut-colored hair.

He had. That was certain. Near looked down at the empty pages of the "Death Note" and clenched his fingers around the red pensile. Should he? Once he had he couldn't go back. Besides, this would probably not even work. Then he could blame himself for being absorbed by illogical measures that only spilled his time.

He imagined the face of the accused killer and wrote down Mark Smith in the left corner of the book with his stubby handwriting that looked like ill-made daub. He put down the pensile on the table and waited. Near could win a medal in the Olympics in waiting, too bad it wasn't a legal branch in the games.

Then something peculiar happened.

In front of the publics' eyes the criminal started to choke, but it wasn't a normal choke, it was bigger and his cheeks received blood-red apples and saliva dripped over his face to his black shirt. Someone screamed "get help and turn off the fucking camera" and the entertainment was over. He changed channel and watched the news on the television, soon to be rewarded with the piece of news he knew he had created.

Mark Smith was dead, killed with Near's own fingers even though he wasn't even there. It felt strange, an emotion he couldn't describe filled his veins and he wondered if he shouldn't feel more. Was he like Smith? No. However, and this stung a little, Near had killed to test a notebook. Smith's death was a test. Where was the justice in that?

Still, it was too late to show remorse now. Near signed and closed the book, fully aware that he now was bonded with it with a string so hard it couldn't be cut. So much for his boredom. But now he had a purpose. What if he continued to kill off criminals that weren't going to have the penalty they deserved and became feared of the world but still admired by those who found advantages with his plan?

What if?

Near turned around in an attempt to watch his toys and see if they could give him the answer. Toys, in all their cold material and inability to use words, often gave him concrete notion and a chance to test his theories and see if they were logical or just stupid. But today that didn't worked, he didn't find himself staring with his deep eyes at his familiar and only friends, he started right into a creature with great resemblance of a jester. Near moved back but only slightly—he wasn't particularly afraid of this turn of events but he never liked surprises. This creature—was it a Shinigami?—had round, yellow eyes with a piercing stare that could melt iron and an extreme up-nose and black lips. The hairstyle reminded Near of those rock-bands that supported themselves by crying out their pain and was dyed in the same color—black—as the leather clothes that was glued around his body like a snake-skin.

The creature let out a chuckle as the staring contest continued—Near didn't want to start the conversation but the Shinigami didn't look like he was going to leave him alone before he had his share of the treat. Near wasn't stupid, of course this had something to do with the notebook and that Near used it.

"Heh, nice to meet you," the Shinigami said, probably dead tired of Near's silence. "My name is Ryuk."

Near heightened his knee so his teeth clenched together. "Hello. Are you a Shinigami?"

Ruyk grinned and run a long nail through his magpie's nest of a hair. "Very bright, are you?"

"You don't look human," Near deadpanned, immune to any dose of sarcasm as usual. Ryuk seemed to find this amusing. Near didn't.

"Huyk, Huyk, that was the most obvious statement I have heard today. I'm a death god though and I'm bonded to that notebook and since you used it I'm bonded to you."

Near said nothing. Ruyk's chuckle grew louder and filled the room like a never-ending echoing. "Interesting," he finally said even though there was nothing interesting about this. The notebook was interesting, but not this irritating Shinigami.

"I have three questions to ya, little dude," Ruyk said and swept closer and his peculiar appearance made Near swallow and wish he could push him away. "First, what's your name?"

The lump in Near's throat grew larder and got stuck against the walls. "Near."

"Only Near?"

"No."

The Shinigami grinned. "Why not telling me your full name? Think I will write it down in the Death Note and kill you?"

"It never hurts to be careful." That was the longest sentence he had spitted out today.

"It surely doesn't. Second question; will you kill again?"

"Does it bother you if I do?"

"Not particularly, but it will be more interesting if you do."

"Interesting? You find pleasure in murders?"

"No," Ryuk told him and nudged Near's chin with one nail. "I find humans interesting. Like you, Near."

"Why? I'm not the most entertaining of humans."

"'It's always the quiet ones'," he quoted and swept away again, gazing around the room as like he was searching for something. "Look at you, Near, you're boring and transparent and vain and it was still you who took the notebook. Why?"

"I tested it."

"You want to test it again?"

"Probably."

"Hehehe, excellent. I think I will stick with you for a while."

Near pulled one sleeve over one of his hands to entertain his fingers. "I see."

"You don't want me here?"

"Not really but I assume you won't be listening to me."

Ruyk laughed. "Smart kid you are. No, I'm not going to listen to you. I'm different from you, I can do what I want and right now I will wait and see what you're going to do next. Oh, the third question."

"Yes, Ruyk," Near signed, still sick of the thought of having this death god follow him like an obsessed stalker.

"Do you have apples?"

"Apples?"

"It's a round fruit that can be either red or green—"

"Ruyk," he interrupted with his monotone voice and received another chuckle. Was Ruyk only toying with him? He probably was. "I think there are apples in the kitchen but I'm not allowed to just walk in there and steal them."

"Heh, don't worry about that. I can take them."

Near reached for the pensile on the table and started spinning it around again. "Is that really wise? It's not necessary to scare the pupils in this school to death by heart attacks."

"You don't find me very attractive, do you?"

"No," Near said.

"Not very tactful, are we Near? But you don't need to worry about that. Humans can't see me. Only you can. Find it a gift from this kind death god." He laughed again and swayed out of the room, through the blue wallpaper.

Near turned around and faced the book again, pondering again if he regretted writing in it. This started something he couldn't walk away from. Like the handwriting that was edged in the paper said, one kill was enough and it still didn't stop him. He was a killer now, how absurd it even sounded and there was nothing he could do to erase his crime. He even had an annoying Shinigami following him like a puppy that found his personality—or lack thereof—amusing. And with the lack of remorse for the kill of Smith this could escalate into something he couldn't stop.

He could continue or he could stop. Near circled his fingers hard around the pencile and opened another page.

—|—

Near receives no personal gain from this and the lack of emotions makes him dangerous and he knows this himself. He knows that he does and he knows that he does wrong. But what can he do? He gives the murderers' victims justice, he gives them relief. Isn't that something admirable?

Probably.

—|—

When Ruyk returned with a pile of blood-red apples Near had killed three more. Ruyk only chuckled.

—|—

fin