(The full prompt on this was 'Eloquently new and abandoned to its delirious beat'. Hardest. Prompt. Ever. For L of all people!)

A pulse always ran through the streets of cities, unnerving and unceasing and peculiar, wavering in intensity. Cities—countries—boundaries—illusory constructs of society, like the Arabic numeral system he sketched onto lined paper with well-chewed pencils, 1, 2, 3, population of 12,369,000 caught in a rhythm shifted and too-unchanging, Darwin's theory of evolution, creatures adapt to the environment in which they find themselves or they (have the supply of blood and oxygen to an area of heart muscle blocked by a clot in a coronary artery) disappear.

L could not see it all, not quite, within the dimensions of a computer monitor. He had all the statistics and all the graphs, even that one, the one that had so shocked the Japanese investigators (hadn't they ever heard of Bernelli? What was education supposed to be? Did you have to be Light Yagami to understand a simple concept with what information was provided you? Was that how it was?) with the spikes like a clustered mountain range indicating irregularity. Two stretching sides that never made a solid triangle. A straight line was stasis and stasis was not acceptable,

he was a detective and an analyst and he had been aimed in this precise direction. He knew what he desired to do and it almost coincided with what Quillsh Wammy and his other benefactors probably intended. An instrument is created to serve its purpose in whatever way it sees fit, if it is dangerous enough.

--Ah, yes; that was the point at hand.

Forty-three point six percent already apprehended and imprisoned.

(desperate faces against locked doors)

What is he thinking?

…The idea that was Kira would move from provoking curiosity into inciting a public to delirium.

If brought to trial, Kira could plausibly seek a successful insanity defense, but he would never do it.

(delirium causes trouble)

Kira may have been mad as a march hare but he was consumed by righteous pride. L understood that very well. Righteous pride was ravenous for attention. L simply did not like to lose, but he understood that, other differences not withstanding.

He and Kira and their intangible-confrontation, this is called a battle of wits, that was what caught the right kind of eyes. L, yes, he had been caught up in the delirium of victory and its scent (sweet—like strawberries, fresh strawberries) and had not stepped out of it yet.

Kira! Come on, and kill me!

Shadowy and deliciously new; sharp and elite with a deadly elegance.

L was antipating this greatly.

(setting down a teacup off-center of the saucer as it balanced, precarious)

I will find you.

There was a pulse that ran through urban thought, dangerous and defiant and decided, beating counterbalance to another,

(the world was learning surely that pulses stopped when evil came to call)

If he could have brought an absolute end to it then, he would not have done so.