say goodnight to the bad guy

[Buko]

I got that flash of that gun in my head man—that white light. And it’s like that white light is saying: you’re dead. I been seein’ that light for a long time…gettin’ this money…tryin’ to stay y’know…stay up out the light. Stay up out the spotlight, the club and all that? Tryin’ to hide. Tryin’ to…y’know…

But it’s all fake, y’know what I’m sayin’?

This life…

This game.

There ain’t no lovin’ it…

It don’t love you back.

The path forward was wrought with questions unanswered and the road behind scattered with conflicts never solved. When you die as a young person—you die as the most perfect version of yourself. A consolidated version of potential unachieved. A personification of possibility. Often times we are more attracted to what could be than to what actually is. Perspective makes the person just as much as the person makes the perspective. When you die at seventeen, eighteen? It makes no difference who you are. All they see is what you might’ve become.

And Ace wasn’t into might've--he was into being mighty. He wasn’t trying to protect the person he had been—he was trying to continue being and becoming. It wasn’t simple or clean or clear…but that was life, wasn’t it? Ace didn’t want to think about the implications of what he was doing. Beats put all his bad feelings in a box—all the guilt and doubt and insecurity and self loathing. Locked away in an imaginary box. Beats swallowed the key and he didn't care if it went down easy.

“Can’t stay up out the spotlight when you’re center stage, right?”

Beats stared at the looming figure of the manor. Three pistols on his person and a machine gun in his hand. More boy than man with more bullets than sense. Ace felt an insane amount of pressure on his shoulders and he felt his knees buckle and stomach churn under it’s unrelenting weight.

The path forward was wrought with questions unanswered and the road behind scattered with conflicts never solved. There was still only one thing to do right? The only thing there ever was…

Keep fuckin’ going.

[ Ace Ortega Continued From: To Survive ]

As he approached the manor it became a much less looming figure.

And it became much clearer that there was a figure looming.

“Who…,” Ace tried to place a name to a face, “No…”, he couldn’t find one, “Nah…,” nope, nowhere to be found, “Uh…”

The person on the porch was both familiar and not. Beats wasn’t good with names, he was much better with faces. Ace didn’t care about a lot of his classmates outside the football team—and there was no football team left to care about. People danced through the hallways and classrooms at George Hunter High and right out the mind’s eye of Ace Ortega. This person looked like one of those ghosts…as if a spirit of some classmate past was looming beneath the surface.

But Ace couldn’t find who that person was and he couldn’t place a name to the boy he was looking at.

His hands found his machine gun and he held it tight to his chest—it wasn’t pointed yet and it wasn’t raised. Green eyes betrayed a yellow stomach.

“Hey.”

[Emprexx Plush]

((Marco Hart Continued From Down In My Beast Hart I Build An Empire))

Marco's sunglasses were tipping down his face before Ace seemed aware that he was there. It seemed the safest way to acknowledge that was seen without triggering the paranoia anybody who had made it this far would be justified in fearing; calling out to him first could startle him into raising the frankly absurd firearm in his arm into motion Marco would rather remained imaginary, while drawing on him first gave him advantage in a fight that might be totally unnecessary. Marco didn't know Ace by more than the reputations he'd forged on and off the island. Maybe he'd driven him home from a party a time or two, made small talk, passed each other in the halls, little ambient interactions that Marco might have remembered years down the line after spotting Ace's name in a college ball headline but nothing that spoke to who he was, let alone who he had chosen to become. Two of his victims had been on killing sprees of their own. One had been his captain. Others...Marco couldn't recall. There were too many names and interactions to keep track of the ones without immediate meaning. There could be another name or two that had slipped through the cracks. His name did not appear so frequently as to suggest he was attacking everyone he met, though, and Marco didn't know any reason they had to escalate conflict beyond the reminder around their necks that only one of them got to walk away on the last day. That hadn't been enough to push Marco to violence yet, so he was willing to take the gamble that it wasn't enough for Ace either. So that was it. Marco kept himself leaned up against the wall by the door, one hand on the gun hanging at his side, and eased his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose so that when Ace finally noticed him he could know that surprise broke one way. He could see Marco's gun wasn't pointed at him anymore than his was at Marco, and if he was half as dazed as he seemed coming up on the manor he wouldn't be looking to change that.

It was expected that he'd reach for the gun anyway. Reasonable even that he'd clutch it whether he wanted to use it or not, Marco would even call it a sort of comfort that he was still so tense in the wake of Abraham's calm callousness. Marco wasn't relaxed. His hand flexed around the guard even as he stamped down the instinct to pull it to his chest as Ace had. A level of fear was the most logical thing they could feel between each other. What surprised him more than the fear was the confusion in Ace's conduct. Not that it was shocking that Ace had no idea who he was; they shared no social circle and if wasn't on the football team Marco probably wouldn't recognize him by name so easily. Ace didn't just not recognize him, though. Maybe it was wishful thinking but it seemed like he felt he should recognize Marco in some way as he stuttered through responses. He could almost place him. It was on the tip of his tongue but the answer didn't taste right. He couldn't say it. In the most indulgent of fantasies maybe he couldn't think it consciously because it seemed so far off. More realistically it was a mixture of change and unfamiliarity but he couldn't hold back the smile that confusion brought to his face. Ace didn't know him. He couldn't know him. The person he wanted to remember was so far absent from his memory that they were totally incompatible.

So he let the smile come. "Hey. It's..." Did he really want to get into it right now? There'd been a 'who' in there but Ace had moved on when he couldn't place him and the conversation that'd come with expanding on the answer was one he wasn't excited to have without the possibility of gunshots. "It's Ace, right?" If he wanted to circle back on Marco's name he could, but maybe he didn't care. Marco was content to remain a question mark. It felt better than so many of the other responses he anticipated.

[Buko]

“That’s what they call me, yeah.”

Ace couldn’t place a name but he was able to discern a few things—this dude wasn’t much. A smurf. At least a foot shorter than Beats…but he looked stout. A small dude but not a dainty one. Justin hadn’t been much either and he had managed to whoop Ace’s ass pretty handily a few times. Myles? He couldn’t fight worth a damn and Beats had his aching and still nasty looking shoulder to thank for Myles' lack of hands. Lori? She was a girl and she had Ace pinned and dead to rights in a coochie chokehold (it was strange that Lori’s cooch was the one that nearly got him killed, but whatever). What good was Ace’s 1 in 1000 strength and speed in those situations?

Why don’t you ask Lori. Why don't you ask Myles. Why don’t you ask Justin.

“Health class, right? Sophomore year?”

Ace didn’t really know.

“It don’t really matter.”

The LMG was heavy and the barrel that contained it’s ammo intimidating and cumbersome.

“Imma need you to drop your shit and walk away.”

This song and dance again?

“If you ain't bout it, don't try to be it.”

“It ain’t personal,” Beats said mostly to himself, “I don’t know you and you don’t really know me. This just the situation we in. This just the game we playin'.”

Ace saw the ghosts of Connor and Faith and Garnet and Darlene. Beats felt the strength of their stares and the weight of their judgement and it forced his hands to shake as he fumbled with his weapon and took aim. The only thing that mattered when you had a gun out to Ace was whether or not you were willing to use it…

And he was. He really, really was. Just ask Faith. Just ask Connor.

Garnet and Darlene stared at Ace as his green eyes reflected back at him in Marco's orange lenses. Ace didn’t know what to do and he didn’t know what he should be—so he played pretend. He faked it until he made it. Life didn’t come with no instruction manual. Birds are smaller and they go to the river to get their own water. Platitudes and meditations. Same shit, just a different day. Rap lyric for everything.

“Imma count to three.”

Same ol’ song and dance—just changing the steps.

"One.”

[Emprexx Plush]

The machine gun came up and so did Marco's glasses. From behind them he could eye it up from barrel to stock without showing his nerves. "Big gun there, Ace," was all he offered in recognition. It was the biggest leveled in his direction by a wide margin. The closest, though? It didn't bite into the back of his neck like Abraham's. The most steady? Ace's aim trembled under nothing but his own uncertainty. His grip would not hold it firm when the machine gun roared to life. More important than his arms, though, were his eyes. Marco stared into a gaze that could not seem to settle on his face and found none of the hate Marceline had narrowed on Nick, or Abraham's callous amusement, or Yuka's recklessness in the face of overwhelming odds. What motivation filled that space instead was speculation Marco didn't know Ace well enough to angle at, but he'd seen enough eyes locked on someone they wanted dead to know that at the very least had no desire to kill him. He could. It was more than possible he would. Ace wasn't fixated on him though.

Marco could work with that.

"You should put it back down before my partner puts one in your back."

Under interrogation it was not a lie that would hold up because under interrogation Marco was not a liar who would hold up. There were only so many places another party could hide, fewer still reasons why an ally wouldn't have gunned Ace down already. Marco didn't have a tale to spin around it. The facade he was able to maintain more out of dissociation than calm had no outlet for challenge if Ace responded aggressively. It was a risk that weighed Ace's reputation as a veteran in both games he'd chosen to play against the paranoid impulse to take his eyes off the ball.

The last place Marco's eyes had rested before his glasses slid up was the distance over Ace's left shoulder. Whether by instinct or by calculation that's the way he flinched when Marco's threat registered, and whether by insight or imagination Marco felt he knew he'd made a mistake before his head jerked back to him. Even if he hadn't the P90 leveled at his chest was a solid enough giveaway.

It could have been over before he looked back. Instead of pulling the trigger though, Marco let out a slow breath. "Whatever you...what you think you're getting out of this? It's not worth it." Ace didn't want to kill him. "Walk away, man. Keep your bag. Keep your gun." Marco didn't want to kill Ace. "Just walk away. We don't need this." Because that was what outweighed want; he didn't want to kill anyone. He believed, though, if Ace didn't want this, if he didn't enjoy this, if he didn't need this for any reason but to survive, he could walk away without anything worse than a bruised ego.

[Buko]

In football if you were thinking you were losing and Ace was done losing. That was very different from winning.

When Marco had said he had an accomplice behind him—Ace had believed him. This dude didn’t look like much…but his calmness was palpable and it caused Ace’s blood to run cold. There was a fearlessness and certainty behind his gaze hidden by his glasses but revealed in his posture. This man was a killer. This man wasn’t afraid to die. That was foolishness on Ace's part--and now Beats paid the price by facing down a gun of his own. In football to be soft was the highest crime--that was the only truth Ace knew. He was in too deep. He had no choice but to double down.

I’m just doin’ what I feel like when I feel like it. I’m not thinkin’ ahead if I’m even thinkin’ at all. Maybe I was always like that or maybe it’s just how I am now. I dunno…I’m sorry Saku, just scared is all. Still am.

Beats felt his aim steady. A wind and a whisper calmed his heart. Ace felt a shiver down his spine and the echoes of spirits once there and now gone. The gaze of his victims and the people he let get away caused him to buckle—this whisper caused him to build. The sun beamed down on Ace and sweat gathered on his brow. The bill of his cap protected him from the sun but it couldn’t protect him from the heat of his own soul.

“You’re right—we don’t need this,” Ace conceded, “I don’t want this.”

Both of their guns remained steady. To Ace the only thing that mattered when you had a gun out was whether or not you were willing to use it. And he was, he really, really was. This dude had a gun drawn on him. Ace could test his luck. They said his days were numbered and somehow he kept on having them. Ace could bet on Ace. He had seen much better people than him die. He had been the reason behind a lot of their deaths. It couldn’t be for nothing. Beats couldn’t stop now.

This place is scary. But you've got to start thinking ahead a bit, game's ending soon.

“I wanna win,” Ace felt the fear exit his voice, “I want to go home,” he felt his own heart steady and blood run cold, “And I wanna hole up and wait out the rest of this game,” he pointed his gun towards the door behind Marco, “In this fuckin’ manor.”

The gun quickly turned back on the small boy. Ace didn’t stare down his barrel—Beats stared into his eyes. The orange was much easier to confront than the black.

“It ain’t ‘bout what I need to do,” he was losing his nerve again, “It ain’t ‘bout what I want to do,” his heart and mind in a duel and his cowardice conquered his cardio, “It’s ‘bout what I gotta do.”

The LMG weighed a lot and Ace’s doubt weighed more—he steadied them both with a hustler’s ambition and a boy’s belief.

“I’m the muthafuckin’ big bad wolf out here,” he lied, “Don’t make me huff and puff.”

Fake it till you make it. Mantras and meditations.

“Two!”

[Emprexx Plush]

Who was the countdown meant for? As a threat it had too much interstitial material to be effective. The justifications Ace gave only further convinced Marco that he didn't want to pull that trigger. Ace was looking for a way out, which meant the only reason to keep counting down was to psych himself over failure. He didn't see another option. There was no other way he could imagine this turning out than them killing each other, and wildly enough Marco decided to take that as a good sign. This guy who didn't even know his name, this guy who had killed at least as many people as he had, was just as hesitant to escalate as he was and that meant the reasons why weren't as important as the fact that those reasons existed at all. Ace's barking 'two' didn't catch him flinching.

"You don't win if you kill me."

His voice didn't plead. It didn't judge. Marco spoke as a statement of fact.

"You shoot me right here and the game goes on. Same if I get you. Nobody wins this second if we pull the trigger, but we're both going to lose something."

Behind his lenses Marco was sizing him up.

"Another shot's not gonna up your chances of winning. More heat on the announcements won't do you any favors either."

He knew what he needed, what he wanted, and where they intersected.

"You don't need my gun. You don't need my food."

Ace wasn't on a quest for justice or a sadist taking pleasure in the hurt he'd done. He just wanted to feel safe. They could negotiate. He was still listening. Any moment he could have cut Marco off with gunfire but he was still listening. Hesitating.

"You need a place to hole up. I'm with that. It's a big house. If you don't want this, and I don't want this..." Marco tilted his head down so Ace could see his eyes. "We can both lose, or we can both win. If what you gotta do is what helps you win, put the gun down and talk."

[Buko]

“Man, I was born at night not last night,” Ace spat, “This shit ain’t a team sport bro! I don’t get nuthin’ by takin’ your gun? I don’t get nuthin’ by gunnin’ you down?”

Marco was probably right, Marco was probably reasonable—but Beats was neither and neither would serve him. Ace felt his aim steady and his heart slow. The anxiousness and the bravado were battling and coming as peaks and valleys. They washed over him like waves and Ace was lost in the tide.

“I get you the fuck out my way. Shit, that’s more than enough for me.”

Ace nodded to himself and steeled his gaze. There was no more backing down. There was no more hesitating. It was disrespectful to all who had sacrificed themselves to him. It was disrespectful to Connor who Ace had sacrificed to win. Ace had let Darlene and Garnet go—they had been no threat. The man had a gun on him. This man was not backing down. If Ace wouldn’t now—why would he later? If shit was gonna end…let it end with all the cards on the table. If Beats was gonna fall? Let it be standing tall and on all ten. Look in the mirror and what did he see? The baddest motherfucker he knew.

“It’s a big house,” Ace acknowledged, “But it ain’t big enough for the both of us,” Beats felt the fire in his stomach move up to his eyes, “If you ain’t ‘bout usin’ the gun? If you don’t wanna be killed or kill me? Be the bigger man,” Ace said with a steadiness, “Walk the fuck away.”

The kid didn’t move. The dude didn’t budge. That was enough for Ace. Beats didn’t even give him time to respond.

“That’s what I fuckin’ thought!”

Well now what? Either follow through or fold. Either break him or breakdown. Fuck that. Fuck this and fuck him. This dude wanted to bring the fuckin’ drama? Let him bring the fuckin’ drama. This dude wanted to enter Ace’s world? Fuckin’ let him. Beats wasn’t cut from the same cloth as the rest of the people out here. 1 in 1000 and don’t you fuckin’ forget it! Nobody out here had worked harder than Ace. Nobody here had sacrificed what he had sacrificed or seen what he had seen or done what he’d done in the name of getting home.

I feel you A, I do man. But a n---- like me man, I love the game. I love the hustle. Man I be feeling like one of them ball player n----s, y'know? Like Bird, Magic or something. Yeah you know a n---- got dough, a n---- can leave the league. But if I leave...the fans still gon' love me man?

Ace wasn’t better than anybody but nobody was better than him. That was a distinction others didn’t get. That was a selfishness and drive that a lot of people couldn’t stomach. Beats swallowed it whole.

“Thre--!!!”

[Maraoone]

An explosion rocked the second floor of the manor, shattering the windows, splintering the roof and walls.

[Emprexx Plush]

Why was he stalling if he was so committed to running Marco off with violence? Ace barely gave him time to react to his demands before steamrolling ahead with conviction that Marco behaved exactly as he expected. So what was the point? What did Ace get out of this interaction if he didn't care how Marco responded? Did the pretense of choice make him feel justified? Like he was arguing himself into a place where there were no options left rather than starting mired in that hopelessness and looking for a way out? That had to be it. There was no other reason Marco could conceive why Ace hadn't just shot him but wouldn't open himself up to cooperation. His finger tensed on the trigger in anticipation of Ace's final warning; there wouldn't be another opportunity, he couldn't hold out hope that Ace would flinch, what option did he have but to draw first, what else could he be stalling for but the confidence that there was no way out but through?

Somewhere in the distance he heard a sort of clunking, thudding, popping, couldn't quite place it sound. Before Ace could bring his threat to bear the manor shook.

The first thing Marco made out under the roar of the explosion was not his own footfalls rushing to cover inside the front room, nor was it Ace taking fire at his retreat. He must have run since he was curled up behind a chair and it was only logical Ace would open up in shock if nothing else, but neither act echoed into the present. He heard only laughter. Laughter choked into irregular spasms reverberating across the first floor of the house. Laughter that came involuntarily, punctuated by panic and gasps that should have left him breathless but swung back to hysterics without fail. He couldn't stop. His mind was racing to find clarity in the absurd escalation before he'd crossed the manor's threshold; why was Ace so ready to believe Marco had an ally behind him? Because he was hiding one as well. Why stretch on countdown with commentary and questions he didn't want answered? Because he was never going to shoot him at all. All while Marco thought he was distracting Ace, Ace was the distraction. He didn't want to shoot Marco, but he did what he had to do to get him out of the way. They couldn't cooperate when Ace already had a better deal under the table.

There were pieces that didn't fit, wild leaps of logic required to make the story work but it was a story. He laughed because it was an insane story reeling with convoluted irony to the point of being unreal, yet it was still less insane than the possibility that it was all disconnected. It was more comforting to believe in an incredible joint conspiracy than to believe Ace and the unknown attacker had bought into the game so thoroughly that they saw no solution but to attack every person they met until none were left.

It was more comforting, and soon it wouldn't matter.

Marco's sunglasses dropped to the floor when he went to wipe his face on his arm. Had to see the doorway clear. Had to control his breath. Had to hold the doorway steady down the sights.

They were all going to lose.

He wouldn't be the one to lose worst.

[Buko]

I've been real all my life, they confuse it with conceit
Since I will not lose, they try to help him cheat
But I will not lose, for even in defeat
There's a valuable lesson learned, so it evens up for me

Rap lyric for everything.

That was just an accepted rule of 'The Universe According to Ace' a text available absolutely nowhere and understood by absolutely nobody--least of all Ace himself. Everybody made mistakes but not everybody learned from them. Beats couldn’t count himself among the ignorant. Beats had learned from his losses and even when he lost he didn’t lose those lessons. It was easy to do anything in victory—it was only in defeat that you find yourself. In football, if you were thinking—you were losing. Ace was done thinking. Beats was done losing.

That was very much different from winning.

The sound that proceeded the explosion was enough to stop Ace dead in his mission to dispense death unto others. Beats dived forward and onto the ground as if he was Michael Phelps and the dirt was water. He wasn’t and neither was the dirt. His ears rang and his body shook as he stared at the second floor and then at the man in the doorway.

So the dude wasn’t lying. Sunglassy Smurf was buddies with Bomby Smurf and they were all in the business of blowing up Aceito’s spot. Well fuck that and fuck them. This was a true fact—since when had it become cool to get shot and not shoot back? Fool me one time shame on you. Fool me two times can’t put the blame on you. Fool me three times, fuck the peace signs, load the chopper and let it rain on you. There was only one way out—fight with everything you have. There were no other choices. There were no other options.

Ace knew that. There was no use giving anybody else time to learn.

In the wake of the power of the assault on the manor Beats was on the ground quick and up even quicker. Up-downs were the punishment of choice for uppity coaches during summer two-a-days. Tennessee heat was not something that could be endured by just anyone. It molded and shaped you. It forged you and hardened you like iron in the forge. Fear was fire and fire was fuel.

The roof, the roof, the roof was on fire…

Ace left his duffel bag on the ground, he didn’t need no water. Beats dashed to the side, away from a straight sight from Marco. Half a crawl and half a sprint. The three pistols, awkward in his pockets and chafing in his waistband. The LMG, heavy and unwieldly and so very deadly.

The roof, the roof, the roof was on fire…

Beats turned from the path in which he came, unsure where his newest enemy lied. Ace didn’t bother to take aim. The only thing that mattered when you had a gun out was using it. A shot was much louder than a scream.

The roof, the roof, the roof was on fire…

Ace didn’t need no water. Beats let that muthafucker burn.

BRRAT-BRRAT!!!

[Maraoone]

((This was not an accident.))

This was not self-defense. This was not impulse.

All that had happened was that Diego had seen two boys on the house on top of the hill. All that he knew was that the tall one, Ace, and the short one, Marco, had been on the announcements about as many times as Diego had been.

And that was all he needed to know.

That was all he needed to know as he double-checked his ammo, made sure it was loaded into the grenade launcher. That was all he needed to know as he hoisted the launcher and aimed it at the porch where the boys stood across each other. That was all he needed to know as he pulled the trigger.

This was not self-defense. This was not impulse.

This was intentional.

Diego had told himself that several times before. He'd meant it several times before. But this time it was true. This time he meant it.

Henry hadn't been an accident, but he'd posed a threat. He was self-defense.

Lorenzo hadn't been an accident, but he'd already been a corpse by the time Diego got to him. He was merely a symbol.

Morgan and Kelly hadn't been accidents, but they'd come for him first. They were self-defense.

The process of checking the ammo, pointing the launcher, firing the launcher had taken thirty seconds. Many changes of heart could happen in that time. Diego could've blinked many times in that time. He didn't.

Not that all his intent mattered, anyways.

His aim had been off.

It had jerked upwards a few degrees when the trigger had been pulled. He was a football field away from the boys, leaning out from behind a tree choked with devil's ivy. A few degrees meant a few meters up, meant the obliteration of the bedroom he and Marceline had slept in instead of the porch Ace and Marco stood on. It didn't matter. Marceline was long gone. The same would be true for those boys soon.

Had he flinched? He'd blinked, right before, saw a cloud of red mist before it was realized. He'd been so steady with Henry. Why hadn't he managed that here?

He ducked back behind the tree as bullets ricocheted past him, high zipping sounds in the air. His hands dug into the vines, nails penetrating the stems.

It didn't matter now. He still had three more grenades.

Marco had disappeared into the house. Ace stood loud and proud, brandishing his gun, almost shouting and beating his chest as if the island hadn't humbled him. As if he hadn't been at the lake the first time Diego had fired.

He could spare another round.

He pulled the trigger again.

[Emprexx Plush]

Marco curled in behind the chair at the rattling of Ace's machine gun, expecting to hear wood chipping from the doorway all across to the halls. He didn't hear the impacts at all though. In the chaos it was hard to pin anything down by sound alone but he seemed further away from the porch than he'd started, not closer. It didn't sound like the bullets were hitting the house at all; what was his play? Had the explosion shaken him up so much he'd lost track of Marco's retreat? It'd be suicide to try and trade shots out in the open after the second floor was demolished unless, unless someone else was involved, somebody to take his attention off Marco or pin him in from advancing on the manor. Marco closed his eyes and behind them he saw Katelynne with her rifle raised towards the path. Exposed again. Bailing him out again. The chatter of gunfire stilled, replaced by the whistling of another grenade falling towards her head.

It was almost enough to make him dash towards a more active position by the door until he realized the whistling, unlike Katelynne, wasn't imaginary.

An indirect hit still left the manor rocking. Under the explosion Marco heard the porch splinter, the door squeak on its hinges as chunks of shrapnel bit into the frame. Something heavy hit the floor but he was too paralyzed to peek out. Had Marco been exposed, even just around the corner, would the blast have caught him? How close was it really? Was Ace hit? Dead? Spotting? Circling the house? There were so many variables with no way to be sure what was happening outside without risking the next shot blowing up in his face. Marco took a deep breath and pushed the questions aside to focus on the answers he had to operate on:

They were working together.

They knew where he was hiding.

They wanted to lure him into a vulnerable position.

They would kill him if they caught him.

Marco was certain that at least the last assertion was fact. Everything before it formed a worst case scenario he had to assume was closing in on him; if any of them were incorrect he could adapt, but he had to believe they were both coming for him until they proved him wrong. So what was the next move?

Ace had been keeping his distance. The first shot could have gone wide because he was too close. The second sounded much closer to the front door. A third might come straight through to demolish the front room.

Marco wouldn't be there when it did. He waited only long enough to be sure another round wasn't already on the way before sprinting from behind the chair into the kitchen to slam his back into a corner.

Katelynne's corner before she ambushed Abraham, if he remembered right. He swallowed and blinked quickly enough to keep the mental image of her bleeding out on the lawn from forming. If for no reason than to give himself a solid picture to focus on, he peeked down his sights into the front room.

There was a body on the floor.

Before he could process it something shifted in the smoke around the doorway.

[Buko]

You scored three touchdowns, three separate ways kid--one receiving, one rushing and one special teams Ace. Who the fuck does that? That’s NFL Papo--you’re special. You’re going to do special things, I knew the moment I looked at you...you took to football like a fish to water. You were born to do this. You’re my boy. I made you. I know what you can do.

In high school football what separated the good from the great was speed and speed was measured in the 40 yard dash. If you could run a 4.5 forty, you were well on your way to eating well every day of the week and twice on Friday nights. Ace felt he had a chance at making it when he ran a 4.5—but that was wrong, wasn’t it? He had known he was special when he was eight years old and took to the field for the first time. Ace had found himself in that game. Ace had built himself by playing by its rules. Football was his way in and also his way out. Nobody worked harder than Ace. Nobody wanted it more than he did.

Nobody was faster than Beats with open field in front of him.

The LMG rattled and screamed in his hands and he may have as well—but Beats couldn’t hear shit. But that was wrong, wasn’t it? Ace heard the follow up shot come—not with his ears but with his gut. Beats turned around and began to run—not with his legs but with his heart. Nobody was faster than Ace in the open field. He was 1 in 1000 and don’t you forget it. Nobody was quicker than Ace. He had proven that with blood, sweat and tears.

Speed is what separated the good from the great and Ace had long established himself as great.

Beats turned to run towards the manor house. Running with long strides and in a full panic. His green eyes saw the "green" of the doorway—his heart set it’s sights on a goal. Beats was the fastest kid left on the island. Speed was his game. Speed is what made him special. Ace was fast…

But he wasn’t fast enough.

Half a sprint and half a leap. Beats was mid-air when Diego’s second shot hit. The force of the explosion launched him forward into the entrance way of the manor and the ensuing shrapnel ripped up his back and coated him with cuts too numerous to count. Ace made it into the manor—but lacking any grace. Beats landed well past the amazing entrance way and not so far from the main hall. The machine gun remained in his grasp but his hat hadn't made it through the door. So much for magic.

Ace landed with a loud thud. Then he was stone still.

[Maraoone]

It wasn't good enough.

The smoke dissipated and left behind nothing. No bits of gore, no warped pieces of metal, nothing to indicate he'd hit his target. Two of his grenades had been used up on the boys, yet he had nothing to show for it.

Diego could have cut his losses then. It would have been easier. He'd cut his losses with Erika, after all.

Behind him, in the distance, perhaps the gardens he'd left her in, gunshots sounded, the air of the island tearing apart once more.

Ace and Marco could be someone else's problem, yes. And someone else's. And someone else's.

And then it would be his problem once more.

When you set aside problems in exams, tough essay prompts, impenetrably dense equations, they didn't just disappear, of course. They would still lie there, waiting for you, even after you set aside all the trivialities and all the questions you already had answers to. You'd be more exhausted, you'd have less time to solve them, but they'd still be there.

There were less than a dozen kids left across the island. Less than a dozen standing between him and one, the final one, the most important number of all. If he set them aside for now, they'd still be around. They'd be around, and they'd have even more of a reason to come for him, the next time they encountered each other. He'd already shot at them, after all. He'd committed. Ace and Marco had killed other people already. They'd come for other people already. What was stopping them from coming for him once they licked their wounds?

If not now, then when? If not him, then who? He had the weapons. He had the surprise. He had the will. He had the determination. He had the advantage.

This was his. They were his.

He flicked the safety. He could save the grenades for others. He planned on getting closer.

He pulled Marcy's gun from his bag. It was loaded, he'd made sure of it. He flicked off the safety. And he walked towards the manor house, closing the distance until he was right at the threshold.

His heart beat fast, his chest tightened. The sun pricked against his bare torso, despite the cool of the air. The lingering dust in the air choked him.

He took some deep breaths. This was his. They were his.

He got this.

He set his back against the house, the coarse wood scratching against his back.

He hefted his gun, and he peered in.

[Emprexx Plush]

Marco remembered that face. Not because they'd known each other well. Without looking right at him he would have struggled to provide an accurate description. The image he had of Diego was hazy, good enough to approximate but unless he was really thinking about him he wouldn't have recognized him as anything more than familiar in a crowd. Marco had been thinking about him though. He'd decided to remember everything he could about him the morning Camilla had died, because he was the only person who could give Marco closure on the most senseless act he'd tried to process across the announcements, the only person who might have answers for why Camilla hurt Theo. How he of all people could have driven someone to murder, if she gave him any reason, if Diego had the chance to ask before…they were direct, obvious questions. As important as they'd felt, though, he hadn't put the time into how he'd go about asking them if he got the chance.

It turned out he didn't need to; Diego answered them anyway.

He answered them when he blew up Henry.

He answered them when he killed Morgan.

He answered them when he filled Ace with shrapnel.

He answered them with bombs dropped on sight.

He answered them with a gun held in the doorway, looking for his next victim.

Marco could spin a dozen stories about how Diego took revenge for Theo the moment he saw Camilla, or that he lashed out in fear at Henry or Morgan, even stand by his fiction that he and Ace were working together and pretend it was some horrible accident or betrayal that left him crumpled on the manor floor. They weren't his stories to tell, though, and the only version of them Diego was willing to offer? The only answers he gave to why he killed Camilla, killed Henry, killed Morgan, killed Ace? At the core of it they were all the same.

They were in his way.

It wasn't the full answer. It wasn't the only answer. The focus on Diego's face as he leaned around the corner made it clear it was all that mattered to him, just as the only question implied by his expression was whether there was anyone left inside for him to break through.

Marco answered him by shooting what was left of the doorframe to pieces.