Death Note: Alight Equestria

by DeviousNights

Remorse?

Sycamore Gavin set his uniquely gray Death Note onto his couch and sat down on a green rug in his home. He lay back, staring at the ceiling fan rotating.

"Why didn’t you tell those two about the rules?" Silpheed asked, entering his peripheral vision.

"Oh, it doesn't matter." Sycamore said. "The less they know, the less of a possibility it is for my information to get leaked."

Silpheed picked up the gray Death Note and opened it. She glanced over all of the rules in it, seeing so much information that would've been potentially valuable.

"The less they know, the better. If they knew any details of this one, they’d know mine is different. Especially the rules portion."

"They don't know that you cannot die by a Death Note...?"

"Each time my name is written in a Death Note, a year is subtracted from my life, blah blah blah, yeah, that. That'd be bad if they knew that, they'd just have to write my name a crapload of times in one of their notebooks, assuming they'd ever want to kill me."

"And the fact you can kill multiple people at once without writing all names..."

“At the expense of a month of my life.” Sycamore finished. “Yeah, you were there when I took out those grunts in the bar. I had to punish those idiots, after all.” Sycamore responded, taking his remote control from under his couch into his mouth. “I didn't feel it needed to be explained that my Death Note was different.”

“Different?”

“The only one that requires anypony who wants to see you, to touch it to do so, whereas every other one just requires you to touch any Death Note. That couldn't possibly be used to our advantage, anyway.”

“But you should tell them eventually, if you actually care.” Silpheed sighed, closing her eyes and shaking her head at him.
"Oh, don't try to play that card. I care, I'm just waiting for the right time to reveal the extra rules." he said nonchalantly, turning on the flat screen. He flipped to the news, thinking he should probably watch the news to see if any idiots had committed a crime they’d regret. Glancing at the clock, he saw it was around five in the afternoon.

"Breaking News! Lieutenant Colonel Aryan Blues of the Hoovington Police Department has been arrested in connection with the arson of a local bar and the murders of four ponies. A police commander's uniform was found at the scene, one only those of that rank can wear." The reporter pegasus spoke into the microphone. The view flipped to an interview with the Interpol Police Commissioner.

"It pains me to do this, but she's the only commandant who was in the area at the time." Commander Heaveswood said, his eyes downcast. Silpheed perked up.

"Isn't that the police pony that drove Major into behaving recklessly?" she questioned.

“Nightmare.”

“What?”

“Um, he’s ‘Nightmare’ now. He hates being called ‘Major,’ now that he’s the Royal Guard’s Commander. He thinks it takes away from his status.” Sycamore rolled his eyes. Silpheed looked thoughtful.

“I suppose it makes sense… his first name does certainly sound like the intimidating god he perceives himself to be.” she mused.

“Whatever. That Aryan’s gonna die for making Maj--Nightmare do that stupid stuff.”

Sycamore grabbed his Death Note, but after a moment, he carefully placed it back on the couch. Silpheed cocked her head, showing her confusion.

"I can't kill her with my Death Note… I kind of want that month of my life." he responded, implying one of the different rules. "Damn!" Sycamore quickly grabbed his trench coat, threw it on hastily, and opened the door. He plunged outside and was surprised with an unnaturally cold breeze. It was the middle of summer, why was there a breeze that chilly? He ignored it and stepped outside. Looking at the sky, he remembered that the weather-ponies had predicted a partly cloudy sky with a 5% chance of rain. Sycamore, realizing his distraction, shook the unrelated thought from his head and began to jog down to the train station. He dodged past some signs and noticed that hardly anyone was in the street. Was it because of the Kira predicament, or Rarity's death?

"Well, I'd imagine that ponies would be scared for their life, since an Element of Harmony could be killed by Kira." the racing stallion mumbled to himself.

There was a funeral procession for Rarity that day. Her being an Element of Harmony, there were thousands in attendance. The most notable members were the other Elements, Discord, the Interpol Investigation Team, and Lieutenant General Nightmare Moonlit himself.

The crowd was split into two in the middle of a sunlight-bathed field. Red ropes separated both halves and a purple carpet was laid in the middle. Heavily armored ERG members carried Rarity's casket on their backs. The casket was made of silver and had diamond encrusted rims. A blanket with her cutie mark embroidered on it covered the top.

The new Commandant of the Royal Guard was near the front of the crowd, with Attorney General Lawrence Sawyer next to him. The two tucked their heads downward, feigning sadness. Nightmare, out of simple respect for the event, decided to wear his formal purple tuxedo to the program. Twilight and her friends were in front of the grave pit, where the casket was to be lowered into the ground. Most of them cried silent tears, but Pinkie sobbed loudly without any thought to whatever anypony else thought of her.

Pinkie suddenly galloped at the casket and tried to climb on top of it, screaming the name of her deceased friend as a river of tears streamed down her face. Two armored guards grabbed her and took her back up to the heightened land that the rest of her friends stood on, making sure to take extra care in placing her down gently.

Nightmare couldn't say he cared much for how the other ponies felt about the passing of Rarity, but he would be lying if he said he did not feel any remorse for what he did. The fact that he did it almost without a second thought didn't help matters.

No, no, he couldn't feel any remorse for anything he did… That's how idiots who did things like this screwed up. The irritated stallion tapped his hoof lightly as the Equestrian National Anthem began to play. Everypony bowed their heads, save for him. Instead, he looked straight forward. This National Anthem should have been the Moonlit National Anthem.

Nightmare thought back to when his father first told him the story of his noble clan. Unicorns wanted to be the race to rule the land and attempted a coup-de-tat against Not-Yet-Alicorn-Celestia. Celestia, receiving the “magic of friendship” from her own friends, sealed away, his grandfather, in their final battle, wanted to decide who would claim Equestria: the unicorns of the Moonlit clan, whose ideals were that the strongest should rule. Point blank, period. Celestia thought that all ponies should live together in peace and harmony: hence why that conflict started initially. Needless to say, in the end, Celestia and her own assistants proved more powerful and claimed Equestria, banishing the remainder of the Moonlit clan to the mountainsides next to Hoovington. Since then, only a few ponies of the clan were alive, or at the very least, known to be.
His clan was noble. The fiercest fighters in all of Equestria. Who was better fit to rule a land, besides them? An alicorn that could only raise the sun and banish other ponies? Surely, they could make better leaders.

And that's what he planned to show everypony else…

Nightmare was a traditionalist. He held to the original goal his clan had, and planned to stick with it. True, he thought evil was the scum of the world--and he still did. However, after all evil was eradicated, he had one other ulterior motive. Genocide… of all earth and pegasus ponies. Continuing his grandfather's legacy, mass-murders, whatever you would call it, that was what he truly wanted.

Up until now, he thought that it was all he wanted. But he just couldn't help but feel remorse for Rarity. This pony had loved him. She had held her tongue about it for so long, defending him of any accusations and believing in him.

No! She had also tried to betray him, and if she really cared about him, why would she attempt to interrupt his conquest? It made no sense…

But was what he doing truly justice? Was his supreme plan really justice?

Just some miles away, Sycamore Gavin boarded a train to the funeral site. He rushed into his seat, sitting down anxiously. Sycamore fidgeted, trying to make the ride go by quicker. The one uncomfortable thing with his Shinigami eyes was that he saw thousands of names every day. He had a hard time remembering just one, and in fact, about twenty names were floating around him at that very moment. They must have come from a far-away city, or didn’t know of Rarity's death. Some ponies didn't have television, and were extreme introverts anyway.

He closed his eyes and tucked his head into his chest, squirming and trying to get rid of his dizzying feeling.
"Hey… uh… are you okay?"

His eyes darted to the voice’s direction: a grey mare with a dusty-blonde mane and wall-eyes.

“Yes, yes I'm fine.” Sycamore said hurriedly. “Just a little claustrophobic is all.”

“That's all right, I am too. I remember, one time when my mom…”

Sycamore groaned softly in annoyance as the uncomfortable train ride continued.

As the anthem ended, it snapped Nightmare out of his mental argument. He looked upwards to see a group of solemn unicorns setting the casket into the pit. Many ponies began to weep.

Nightmare shook his head, tilting his head into his tuxedo where the right shoulder area was beginning to stain. His breathing began to get unsteady for a moment.

Lawrence turned towards Nightmare, who ignored him and looked upwards towards the gray sky. A single tear streamed from his right eye. The clouds began to release rain into the crowd of ponies.

“Just the rain, Attorney-General. Just the rain.”

Author's Note:

Are those crocodile tears? Will Sycamore reach Nightmare before he forgets the name?

Comments

[PsychicBeagle]

Oh, the rule discrepancy was intended... I retract my earlier statement. That was actually a nice, subtle hint, just lost on me until I looked back in hindsight. Tip of the cap for that one!
But now, I have two more problems. Issues that apply to both this and the New Contacts series, if memory serves. One, the way you get across new intel. It's presented as part of the narration way too often. Not naturally as a character's thoughts, not from small environment hints, just flat out dumped on us by the narrator. You did it very well with the introduction of Sycamore's special rules, as character banter that was only mildly forced, and lampshaded at that, but the whole Moonlit clan story was jammed down our throats like a horse pill (tee hee!).
And that's thing number two. You tend to put too many strings of plot into one story. We were fine with just Dark being a zealous justice seeker, we didn't need the ancient clan rivalry with Celestia. The founding of Equestria thing? The ancient battle? We don't need so much. There's more than enough to work with already, with murder notebooks and depressed, accused police mares. If you jam too much into a picture, you lose sight of what's on the page. The Moonlit clan could be interesting enough if given its own story, not forced into an already occupied script. I literally cannot stress this enough.
On a positive note, you did a good job with the stinger. A nice, powerful line to finish with. See how much more memorable it is? Just pull a bit of the thinking about remorse from earlier, leave it for that end note, and I'd call it great. I look forward to the next update.