//------------------------------//
// Fear 
// Story: My Little Death Note 
// by Caberea 
//------------------------------//

Death Note

Twilight spent quite a while just staring at the book, it was so strange, just lying here as if it had been thrown away. Yet at the same time it didn’t bear any of the tatters of mistreatment. The name was rather peculiar too. It would have to be fiction, the title was simply too vague for it to be anything else; yet Twilight had never heard of such an oddly named story. There was no art on the front or spine to help her find out what the book entailed nor was there any blurb. So there was only one way to find out.

Twilight sparked up the magic in her horn and sent the tendrils of magic to open the book forth. Her advanced studies had not only taught her new spells, but better control of her magic as well. She had learnt that magic was actually an extension of the unicorn’s body. The horn acted as a focusing point from which the magic could be released, and the mind shaped the magic, much as it shaped images from the eyes. The only difference being that magic was released from the body, and it took just as much energy to retrieve the expelled magic as it did to emit it in the first place. Her studies had taught her how to branch her magic, meaning that she exhausted herself less from it, and could therefore conduct complex and powerful spells with the same ease that she could teleport with.

For the moment it was simply a matter of turning the cover, and such a simple piece of magic would take less energy than a step. However as her magic made contact with the cover, a strange shiver came over her. A sickly taint hung in the air around her, making her feel as if she gasped for air. She released her magic from the book, but the feeling only intensified. She tried to take a breath, but couldn’t force her throat to take in the air. She felt her vision starting to haze around her.

“Revoke ownership of the book. NOW!”

The voice seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere, a creepy whispering voice that sent chills down her spine. She tried to tell the thing that she hadn’t claimed that the book was hers, but she couldn’t find the air in her lungs to speak.

And then, just as suddenly as it had come, it stopped.

Twilight just stared at the book, as if the whole thing had been a dream, maybe it had, some deluded fantasy she had conjured. But that wouldn’t explain how real it had felt, and she certainly didn’t feel as if she were insane. She flipped over the cover and glared at the first page, a silent dare for the book to try that again. 

At the top of the page there was a picture of a strange skull surrounded by a weird circle with numerous spikes protruding from it. The words “Death Note: How to use it” were written below the skull in a rather creepy manner. Directly below that the words began to look more normal, but their message was not.

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

Twilight couldn’t bring herself to read any further. Her experience with the book was already too weird, but if it really did have the power to kill ponies, then it was far too dangerous to be left outside like it was.

Twilight shut the book and carried it with her inside, intending to hide it in the basement. Hopefully the clutter of her experiments when she was last here would give her a place to hide the book, until she could find a way to dispose of it.

“Twilight, I see that you’ve made my breakfast, however It is far too cold, you will have to make it again.”

Twilight was greeted by the hay sandwich she had made earlier that morning.

“Hello star.”

The words were barely recognizable through Twilight’s gritted teeth.

“Now, now Twilight, are you forgetting who the current owner of this particular establishment is?”

Twilight silently started to prepare breakfast again for the irritating mare, unleashing the anger out on the meal before slamming it down in front of Star.

“Why are you so angry with me now, Twi?”

What in Equestria was this pony saying? They take over their place while she was gone, order her around once they’re back, and didn’t seem like they’d actually ever tried to do their job.

“I arranged the books this morning.”

“That’s good; I never really found the time to do it. By the way, you said you did it this morning. When did you wake up?”

Now Twilight got it, Star had adjusted the time forward on the clock so that Twilight would think she was late, but Twilight knew what the actual time was.

“3:13”

“You’re lying.”

Where the heck did this pony get off saying that? She knew the time that she had woken up this morning, so what was this mare trying to prove with any of this. Twilight decided to confront her.

“No, I found out about you changing the clock, when I woke the clock told me it was 6:13, but in reality it was three hours before that. So tell me Star, why is it that you did that?”

Star seemed to be taken aback by the accusation. But she quickly regained her composure and sighed as if addressing some foal.

“In order to see what kind of a pony you were. By checking the clock, you’ve proved to me that you are nothing but suspicious of those around you; though whether you plot behind their backs or not I’ll have to find out later.”

“…goodbye Star.”

“Indeed, I will be out for the day, but when I get back I expect for everything here to be just as perfect as when I left it. Otherwise I’ll know you’re the scheming kind.”

As soon as Star had walked out the door Twilight threw open the Death Note and flicked through it until she found a blank page. That obnoxious prick would be an excellent test for the book, if the book worked then she would dispose of it and the library would be a much better place. If it didn’t then nothing was lost. Twilight used her magic to levitate a quill that had been lying near Star, the surprise that there was already ink on it was quickly shoved into the back of her mind. With a flurry of the quill, Twilight wrote the first name in the Death Note: Star.

Twilight paused with the quill over the Death Note. What had she done? No matter how annoying somepony was she couldn’t have killed them, not that easily. No, the book must be a fake; she couldn’t have killed another pony. What if the book was real? She had just taken the life away from Star, just because they had irritated her. What else would she do with it? What if one day she were feeling angry with Pinkie and ended up killing her before her better judgment took hold?

She couldn’t take it anymore.

Twilight decided to write one more name in the Death Note, if it was real, then she wouldn’t have to live with the guilt of her sins. If it was fake, nothing would happen, and she could stop worrying. So she wrote down her last words: Twilight Sparkle.

Twilight waited.

She wasn’t sure what she was waiting for, all that she had seen of the book was that the pony whose name was written would die. She didn’t know how they would die, maybe it would be quick, and she wouldn’t even notice. Or maybe each of her limbs would be ripped off and she would bleed to death. Either way, five minutes had passed and the Death Note hadn’t taken effect.

Twilight took a heavy breath filled with relief. The book was a fake. There was nothing to worry about, Star would still be alive, and she wasn’t a murderer.

A small grin came over her face. To think she had been as silly as to think a book actually had the power to kill ponies. The very thought of it was ridiculous. She giggled to herself. Maybe she should read through the rest of the book. There couldn’t be any harm in it, and she had never even heard of this book before, let alone read it. She wondered what it could be about, what could have such a creepy opening. The blank pages near the back she had flipped to would no doubt be to write notes, or some sort of continuation. Maybe this was some book somepony had been writing that never got finished. 

Twilight trembled with anticipation over what was contained inside the Death Note.

However before she could properly investigate the book, Spike burst in through the door, and promptly collapsed on the floor. Spike’s mouth was oddly puffed out, as if he had stuffed his face full of food. He didn’t seem to be in much pain or danger, just sick. The poor dragon had probably gone to one of Pinkie’s parties and eaten too much. The dragon raised his head weakly to Twilight and croaked out 

“Don’t do it.”

Before Twilight could ask what exactly she shouldn’t do Pinkie Pie hopped inside, carrying a basket full of little wrapped candies on her head.

“C’mon Spike, could you try just one more, I think I’ve gotten the recipe just about right.”

It became pretty obvious at that point; Pinkie had gotten Spike to test some sort of new candy that she had made. Pinkie had always loved to party, parties always had party food. It was a logical conclusion that Pinkie would therefore try to make her own food for those parties. However, Pinkie was not exactly the most balanced of ponies, and that was also apparent with her “cooking” experiments.

Pinkie noticed her.

“Oh, Twilight you here. How would you like to try one of these candies I’m making? Spike seems to be a bit full at the moment.”

Twilight knew it would end badly, but she would do it. It was for her friendship, and for whatever kind of science cooking was. Twilight tried to probe the candy for what ingredients it contained using her magic but before she could even deduce if it was edible Pinkie had succeeded in shoving one into her mouth.

The inside of her mouth felt like an explosion had happened there, she could swear her tongue was literally on fire, but it didn’t hurt. Before it reached the point of pain she felt the candy drip a cold, sour liquid onto her tongue. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant sensation, but it felt good in contrast to the fiery wrath of the treat before. Once the sour liquid had finished seeping out of the candy, it actually wasn’t so bad. It was perhaps a tad too sweet, but overall it was quite nice, with a distinct strawberry flavor to it.

“What do you think of them Twilight? I call them Combo’s; the idea actually came to me with my Pinkie sense. Because sometimes it tells me good things are going to happen, but it can also be bad too.”

Twilight would be honest.

“There actually pretty good, but could you tone down the massive amount of heat with it, I don’t know how you managed to make something that spicy…” Twilight remembered the time they had visited the Rainbow factory in Cloudsdale. “You put rainbow’s into it didn’t you?”

“Yup!”

“Could you find something just a little less spicy for it?”

“Oh, you mean like only putting six of the colors in instead of the whole rainbow? Sure.”

Before Twilight could tell the party pony what she had actually meant, she had already bounded out of the house. Twilight felt sorry for the poor pony that would be the first to try a combo with 86% of a rainbow.

She turned to Spike to ask him to sweep up the library but upon seeing the poor state that the dragon was in, she decided to let him rest there. Moving him would probably just cause him to be sick, and personally she didn’t want to know what the previous incarnations of the Combo had looked like.

With that distraction out of the way Twilight could get around to reading through that book. Twilight decided that the basement would be quite a good place to read it. Star wouldn’t interrupt her reading when she came back, and there wouldn’t be any more distractions like Pinkie Pie for her. However, as she entered the basement, she found that it was clean. Not just clean as in free of dust, but clean of everything. The room was completely empty except for herself and the Death Note.

Twilight was going to have to ask Star where she had taken it later.

But for now, Twilight could read the Death Note, skipping past what she had already read, she continued through the page.

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

Had she had Star’s face in her mind when she wrote the name, had she had her own? Could this Death Note actually be real and the only reason she was still alive was because she hadn’t known this rule?

If the cause of death is written within the next 40 seconds of writing the pony’s name, it will happen.

If the cause of death is not specified, the pony will simply die of a heart attack.

After writing the cause of death, details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

This thing seemed far too detailed to be just some fake, nervous to see just how many way’s this thing could kill, she skimmed across the black pages at the start of the book until she came to the first white page, one of the pages on which she had written her and Star’s name. 

As the force upon the book died down and gravity took its course she noticed one page, right at the end of the black pages, in the color of blood. Immediately intrigued by this page by some strange reason she couldn’t fathom, she turned it over and read the page. Unlike the black pages this one bore two scythe’s crossing over each other where the skull would have been, and immediately began its rules where the other’s had been entitled “Death Note: How to use it”.

The immediate owner of this Death Note is immune to the effects of both their Death Note and the Death Notes of others.

Should the Shinigami who originally possessed this Death Note die for any reason, the death's of those written in the Death Note’s will be undone, provided their original lifetime has not passed, and the powers of the Death Note’s rendered invalid.

What did this book mean? She had heard the word Shinigami before in some foreign tongue. If she recalled correctly, it had some relation to death, but it had also had some connotation of immortal. If only she could remember exactly what it meant.

As Twilight flipped through the pages of the book, she found one of the pages had been torn out quite forcibly, but not as if it was done in a rush, rather as if somepony, or some Shinigami hadn’t cared about the damage they dealt to the Death Note.

“Now I wonder who did that.”

The voice was that same as when she had first touched the book with her magic, except this time it came from a definite source; right behind her.

Twilight turned around to find herself staring at a dark black robe, whatever creature it was stood upright like a minotaur, and as she followed the orientation of the body upwards, the robe branched out. Straight above where the robe branched was a hood, the inside shrouded in darkness except for the evil glow of two red eyes. Both to the right and left of where the robe branched out it took a steep turn down at the end of it was an opening from which protruded on each side the skeleton of some strange creature; perhaps a relative of the Minotaur, though the skull resembled that of an ape. The rest of its body was something of a mix between the skeletons of an ape and a minotaur, their hands resembling more claws than anything else. In the right hand was a scythe, looking deadly sharp and could probably cut her head off in one swing if she wasn’t careful.

She had heard about this being in stories told to both explain the passing of a life and to scare foals away from committing bad deeds. She had never thought such a creature existed, yet here she stood looking up at the harbinger of destruction, the taker of souls. 

She stared into the face of death himself.