2 Die 4 You

a reddish sort of morning

This had to be done. They had to stop the killings before they ever started. It was obvious who needed to leave. Peace just couldn't be had until they were taken out. There was just no way around it. It had to be done. It had to be done. It had to be done.

Of course this guy didn't keep his door locked. But that certainly didn't mean that knocking was the most polite thing to do right now. Not when he only had minutes to live, if that.

And of course he had a bomb in his hands. A small one, not really much larger than a baseball if one had to guess. Why did he have to move it around as if it were a toy?

"What are you doing with that?"

Vile looked up, mostly uninterested, before returning to his fiddling.

"Don't get your panties in a twist- it's just a smoke bomb. Not even a super concentrated one either. Cocktails are one thing, taking the chance on rigging real bombs here is another."

"But you would try?"

Vile looked up again to give a hard stare.

"What's it to you?" he questioned. "Gonna police me in this lawless confine? Yeah right."

For this, his intruder seemed to hesitate. Vile cocked an eyebrow from under his helmet.

"You really think you're going to police me, are you?"

"I'm not taking any chances." was all his assailant said before lunging at him.

Vile just barely missed the blow, uttering out a single "Christ." as he further scrambled out of the way. After he had regained his composure, he laughed.

"You thought this was going to be easy?!" Vile cackled. "This is my room, asshole. I go in and out on my own terms!"

Before his intruder could further react, Vile tossed the smoke bomb at his feet. The bomb exploded over the room- albeit not reaching very high overall. It was still enough for Vile to duck under the clouds while his intruder coughed, barely able to keep track of his shadow.

"Gotcha!" Vile shouted as he leapt from the fog, tackling his intruder from behind. Both of them fell to the ground in a loud thump. Vile refused to let go of his intruder's neck, causing them to flail around from lack of air.

"Isn't this just stupid?" Vile hissed as the two wrestled. "Even if I manage to get the upper hand, I'd be blamed even when you're the Maverick!"

"I'm not a Maverick!" his assailant hollered. They slammed Vile as hard as they could into the ground- the impact caused Vile's helmet to connect at an odd angle at his neck. With him temporarily paralyzed, his intruder was able to get him off and reach for their weapon again.

"Cheap shot." Vile grumbled as he managed to get up again. "Come and face me like a real-"

He was cut off- his assailant had plunged their knife right between his lungs.

"Die." they said to him. "Die and stay dead so the rest of us can exist peacefully!"

Vile could do nothing but watch as his murderer plunged the knife even further. They pushed down so hard that he fell back onto the floor. Crumbled like an aborted fetus, Vile watched his own blood crept away from him.

In his final breaths, Vile gasped, "We... were all Maverick... when we opened our eyes... here..." and after that, his body finally went still.

It had to be done.

It had to be done.

Now they could all live in peace.

. . .