Don't Fear the Reaper

by DetectiveDracula

Summary:

In a world of superheroes and villains, teenager Light Yagami suffers a tragedy and triggers with the ability to kill people remotely.

Uses some Death Note characters, but takes place in the Worm/Parahumans world. You probably should have read Worm before reading this for context and to avoid spoilers.

No Death Note, but Light's power is very similar. Basically exploring how these characters' presence might change the way that the events of Worm unfolded.

Notes:

This first chapter is probably the most graphic this story will be for a while. If you haven't read Worm, go read that (it's free online!). In Worm, people develop powers after going through a trigger event, a terrible and traumatizing moment.

So yeah, just a fair warning that there will be fairly uncomfortable violence and death of innocent people in this chapter. Honestly, I don't really like writing graphic violence like this, so if you're similar to me go read something more fun. Have a nice day!

Chapter 1: A Dark and Stormy Night

Thunder boomed as the pouring rain beat against the window. Light looked out of his bedroom window. It was calm as long as Light didn't think too much about it, but everytime a storm like this came, everybody who had lived in Japan when Leviathan sank Kyushu had the same thought.

 

"Is Leviathan going to strike again, here?"

 

Light's father and mother had the same fears, and it struck Light as a cruel twist of fate that they had moved to the one major city in this state that was on the coast. Even without the proximity to the ocean, Brockton Bay wasn't even a great place to live; this city had one of the highest rates of powered individuals per capita in the world and the 3rd highest crime rate in the United States. 

 

Of course, Light hadn't complained about the move. Japan had been rough for the past few years. After people rejoiced when Leviathan withdrew, things were looking up for a while. As the recovery efforts continued and it became clear to everybody that lots of the damage could never be repaired, people still kept the faith. Even when the official death tolls were released and it hit people that almost everybody knew somebody who had died or been permanently injured in the disaster, it didn't even occur to most people that Japan wouldn't recover.

 

Light wasn't sure exactly when people began to accept that Japan's economy was failing. An economy that would have survived and been independent a hundred years ago had higher demands and a higher population to manage, and the global trade that it depended on faded away quickly. Infrastructure began to fail slowly, and then all too quickly. 

 

Light's father, Soichiro, had a good job back home, and so they were some of the lucky few that kept their home. Even as the NPA began to drastically cut their budget, Soichiro Yagami's reduced salary was significantly higher than the average employed citizen of Japan. As unemployment and homelessness increased further and further, the despair in the air eventually got to them. One day, less than a year ago now, Soichiro heard from an old friend who had moved to the US. A job opportunity had opened up fitting Soichiro's experience and values, and most importantly, it gave his family the chance to build a better life for themselves, having finally accepted that Japan wouldn't recover from the damage it had suffered.

 

Light closed his eyes and looked away from the window. It wasn't worth dwelling on the past. It was about time for dinner, anyways. Light made his way downstairs, where his sister and mother were almost done preparing dinner. Light joined them and assisted with the final touches and set the table. As they were all finishing up, the front door unlocked and Soichiro came indoors, hanging his wet coat on the hanger.

 

"Honey, welcome back. How was work today?" Light's mother called out from the dining room.

 

Soichiro joined his family, smiling. It had been a rough transition, but seeing his family at peace again had made the past few months the happiest he had been in years. Despite the long hours he put into his current role, the work life balance was far greater than back home, too, and he had a larger, more stable team than he had had in years back in Japan, letting him delegate more and more.

 

"Can't complain. There was a big bank robbery today. We had been on it for hours, but then the PRT came and took over the case, sounds like one of the thieves was a cape from out of town, so it was their jurisdiction."

 

The Parahuman Response Team. Basically law enforcement for anything related to capes, while also serving as the government organization overseeing the various government affiliated cape teams. Lots of controversy and complaints about their behaviour, but working for them was still a dream of Light's. When he was a kid, he had dreamed of being a superhero. As he got a bit older, he began to think that nobody should have that kind of power over other humans. Of course, he couldn't change the fact that people did have that power, so his current career goal was to help keep them in line.

 

The meal continued for several minutes without incident. It was a good meal, some small talk was exchanged. The rain had reduced to a light patter against the windows. Overall a pleasant evening, for about 8 minutes. 

 

On the 9th minute, a loud series of rapid knocks rang against the front door. Soichiro started to get up from his seat, but Light's mother stopped him.

 

"Don't worry about it, dear. I'll see who it is."

 

Light and Sayu kept eating their dinner calmly while their mother, Sachiko, went to check on the door. Soichiro wiped the side of his mouth with a napkin and slowly got up from his seat, in case it was a colleague here on work business. It was still peaceful and quiet.

 

The silence was broken by two gunshots.

 

Light, Sayu, and Soichiro all turned their heads toward the sound of the gunshots. The front door. 

 

Standing in the entryway to the dining room was a tall, deranged looking man. White, with dirty, long, black hair and an unkempt beard. He was wearing a long, ragged, green coat. 

 

He was holding a gun. The gun was pointed at Sayu.

 

"Soichiro fucking Yagami. Do you remember me?"

 

Soichiro did, but that wasn't his immediate concern. He reached for the gun on his waist, but was interrupted by the man yelling at him.

 

"Hands where I can see them, Soichiro! Reach for your gun again and your daughter's brains will spill!"

 

Soichiro complied and took a deep breath as he placed his hands palm down on the dining room table. 

 

"Kyle Dumont. Yes, I remember you."

 

Light was still in shock, but trying to think of what he could do. He remembered the Dumont case. It was a few months ago, not long after they had moved to the United States. Soichiro had caught Kyle and Alicia Dumont, a married couple who had gone on a crime spree: about a dozen charges of armed robbery and a few counts of first-degree murder. Light wasn't sure of the details, but he remembered it being major news that Kyle had escaped when they were transporting him to death row.

 

Kyle Dumont glared at Soichiro, the gun held sure and still, still aimed at Sayu. A tear fell down his face, but his face still only showed fury.

 

"You know, they killed Alicia today?" 

 

Soichiro nodded, breathing deeply and slowly through his nose. He knew in that moment that Sachiko was likely dead or dying in the hallway, out of his sight. He needed to get Kyle out of there, fast. If there was any chance he could save her, he needed to get her medical attention, fast.

 

"Yes, I heard. The execution. I'm sorry to hear that."

 

There was a pause for a few seconds. There was a strong tension in the air. Soichiro continued, taking Kyle's silence as an opportunity.

 

"She wouldn't want you to be hear, to further lose your soul. You can leave, you have caused us enough suffering to last a lifetime, you've got what you wanted. Please. Alicia wouldn't want you to throw your life away like this. You can leave now, before the police arrive, and start a new life somewhere new."

 

Kyle paused for a few seconds. He seemed to be seriously considering what Soichiro said. For a moment, Soichiro felt cautiously optimistic, but then a twisted grin grew across Kyle's face, revealing a missing tooth. Soichiro's heart dropped as Kyle began to speak.

 

"Yeah, I don't think so. You took away all I loved. I'm going to return the favour."

 

Before Soichiro could react, the gun fired. As the gunshot rang out, Sayu collapsed to the ground. Light jumped up and was ready to tackle Kyle. Kyle switched the gun's aim towards Light and Light fell backwards. Before he could fire, Light and Kyle heard the click of a gun. Next to Light, Soichiro pulled the trigger of his service pistol, aimed at Kyle's head. 

 

No gunshot came. The gun had jammed.

 

A look of horror grew on Soichiro's face and he quickly prepared the gun to take another shot.

 

 

Kyle smiled and aimed his gun at Soichiro at point blank range.

 

"Tough luck, Yagami."

 

The sound of gunfire deafened Light's ears. He watched as his father's head burst in front of him, drops of blood splattering onto Light's face and into his eyes. He saw his sister on the ground next to him, her eyes still open, sad and staring, blood leaking from the bullet wound on her forehead. Light glanced in the hallway, where he could just barely see his mother collapsed on the ground.

 

Light screamed.

 

Everything went dark and bright. For a moment, Light wasn't in his dining room, in the worst moment of his life. He saw what seemed to be endless space, with infinite stars and incomprehensible shapes and beings moving through the space. Patches of pure black and patches of unimaginable colours, swirling together in ways Light couldn't understand. And in the next moment, Light could barely remember this, and was back in his dining room, surrounded by his dead family and a man who was about to kill him. 

 

Kyle Dumont was pointing his gun directly at Light. There was a sad, satisfied smile on his face.

 

Light looked at Kyle Dumont with fury and hatred in his eyes. Never in his life had he wished such hell upon a person. If he did one last thing in his life, he would kill Kyle Dumont. 

 

As Light thought Kyle's name and stared at his face, he felt a strange feeling. As if an invisible tendril was reaching from his chest and connected to Kyle's... essence? It was a strange and abnormal feeling, but undeniable in it's reality. Light had an overwhelming pressure to pull on the essence.

 

Almost instinctually, Light tried to flex the imaginary tendril muscle he felt. He could feel his grasp on Kyle's soul tighten, and he yanked. He felt a quiet, immaterial snap. 

 

Kyle's eyes went wide and his mouth fell open, he dropped the gun and clutched his chest. Light was ready and made the most of this opportunity. He reached to his right and grabbed his father's fallen gun, and shot Kyle Dumont in the chest.

 

Dumont fell backwards, to the ground. Light heard sirens in the distance; the police, finally coming. Light looked at the awareness leaving Kyle Dumont's eyes. Light wasn't sure what had happened there, what had given him his opportunity to take out Dumont, but he was alive. It didn't seem likely that Dumont would live, but Light wasn't taking that chance. Light readied the gun, aimed, and fired a final bullet into Kyle's face. Kyle Dumont would never kill or hurt anybody ever again. Light had made sure of that.

 

Chapter 2: Kill God, Then We'll Talk

The rain was over, but you could still smell it in the air. It was late at night, but the darkness in front of the Yagami household was illuminated by the lights of numerous ambulances and police cars.

 

Light watched as several stretchers were wheeled out of the house. His family. It didn't seem real. He knew, on some level, that they were dead. He saw the emptiness of the eyes, the bullet wounds, the blood, as he was walked out of the house. 

 

Somebody had complimented him upon seeing Dumont's body. "Damn. Nice shot, kid.". Light couldn't remember who had said that or how long it had been since then.  

 

Light was sitting on the curb across the street. Somebody had brought him a cup of some brown liquid. Light hadn't paid attention; he didn't know if it was coffee, hot chocolate, or some mysterious third kind of brown liquid.

 

People were mostly ignoring him, but he caught a lot people glancing his way with a sad, pitiable look. Every now and then somebody would come up to him and ask some questions. He thought they must have the whole story by now, but they kept asking things. In reality it can't have been that long, but it felt like he had been out there for hours.

 

Another person approached Light. Light looked up. A woman, black hair, wearing a suit and a fedora. No police uniform, must be a detective. She walked confidently and unwaveringly through the crowd, unnoticed and unacknowledged by the other police.

 

She stood in front of Light and Light looked up. She grabbed a photograph from her pocket and handed it to Light.

 

It was a golden man in a skintight white outfit. Light recognized him, of course. The first parahuman ever found, spotted floating above the water in the middle of the ocean. Probably the most famous and powerful parahuman, too. Scion.

 

The woman cleared her throat. Light looked up. 

 

"Zion", the woman said, enunciating the Z.

 

Light looked back at the photograph and felt a sudden, strange connection from his chest to... Somewhere. He was still in too much shock to register much of what was happening or to recognize the similarities to what had happened before Kyle Dumont's death, but he did note that it felt familiar in an odd way. Kind of a pull. But where before the pull had been toward Kyle Dumont's body, this pull was towards something greater and harder to comprehend. Light felt as if his soul was reaching out to try to grasp something collasal and overwhelming, greater than the Earth. Light felt almost faint, but then, he felt his essence squeeze and tighten it's grasp on whatever he had connected to. He felt a strong, instinctual urge to pull it.

 

The black-haired woman spoke.

 

"Pull."

 

Light, feeling faint and still disoriented from the events of the evening, complied. It felt right. He pulled on the essence, and after a bit of something that felt like resistance, he felt a loud snap. He felt a brief but sharp pain somewhere in his head, but also faintly all around him, but in the next second, it was gone. Light looked up to see the woman staring off into the distant.

 

She seemed deep in thought, stopping every few seconds to do what seemed like catching her breathe, followed by more deep thought. After a few repetitions, the woman seemed to relax. A tension left her shoulders as they lowered slightly, the stern look on her face faded and the perpetual frown on her face turned to a slight smile. She looked down at Light one last time.

 

"Thank you. You might not realize it, but you've helped us all a great deal."

 

As the woman walked away through the crowd of officers, Light felt confused. He wasn't quite sure what had just happened. He had still been a bit out of it, but recognized that that had been a very strange interaction. The last comment might have been refering to when he shot Dumont, Light rationalized. The interaction was almost forgotten as the night continued; more police asked him more questions and eventually a police officer that Light vaguely recognized approached him. A young, maybe early-mid 30s Japanese man with slightly unkempt hair.

 

"Hi, Light. Look, I'm sorry about all this. I know you've probably already heard this from the guys, but your dad was a good man. And your mother and sister... I'm sorry, this shit shouldn't... Look, I'm not good at comforting people. Your father was a close friend, and he asked me to look out for you and Sayu if anything ever happened to him. I don't expect you'll want to sleep here after what happened, and with police crawling all over. You can crash at my place for a while, we have a spare bedroom."

 

Light recognized the man. Aizawa, he was pretty sure his name was. An old police buddy of Soichiro's back from Japan. If Light remembered right, Aizawa was the one who told his father about the job opening here in Brockton Bay, having emigrated a few years earlier. Light wanted on some level to blame Aizawa for his father's death, for getting him to leave Japan in the first place. But Light was too tired and empty to feel much of anything at this point, and just nodded.

 

Light gathered a quick bag of his belongings from his room, taking care to avoid looking at the bloodstains and damage in his home. After looking around and saying a quick, silent goodbye to his room, Light turned off the lights and headed downstairs to join Aizawa. Light had the feeling he might not see his home again for a very, very long time.

 

________________________________________

 

At a hidden location, several miles away, the black haired woman in the suit knocked and entered a familiar room. Inside was awaiting the individual known to few as Doctor Mother, a stoic, middle-aged black woman with long hair. She spun her chair towards the younger woman and raised her head to look into the eyes of the younger woman. 

 

"So? How'd it go?"

 

Contessa smiled. A very good sign.

 

"I'm fairly certain Scion is dead, or will die soon. End of the Path, Doctor. I keep trying to find another Path towards ending Scion, just to make sure, but nothing comes up."

 

Doctor Mother let her face reveal a rare smile as well. 

 

"Everything we've done has been worth it, then. Was it one of ours who did it?"

 

Contessa shook her head.

 

"Didn't seem like it. Some sad, traumatized kid in Brockton Bay. From the amount of police and paramedics at the scene, I'd imagine he just triggered. The Path to Victory put me in front of him, had me say a few words, and that was it. Whatever he can do, somehow it leads to Scion going away."

 

Doctor Mother looked thoughtful. "He could be a powerful asset to keep in mind. It would be a good idea to write down the address and anything else you remember, just in case. Now that Scion is out of the way, maybe we should focus on taking out the Endbringers. Do some more good while we're at it."

 

Contessa sighed and shook her head. 

 

"We killed a god and prevented the end of the world today, I think it's about time we celebrate and relax a bit. I propose we get some drinks and order a pizza. We can figure out how to kill the Endbringers tomorrow."

 

Doctor Mother smiled, a real smile this time, and agreed. Some much deserved time off. The weight of the world was off their shoulders. The burden that had been plaguing them both for decades was gone. For one night, at least, they would relax.