"Goodbye Curly Head"

"Song For The Dead"

“Buuuullseye~!”

A grand explosion shook the canyon, sending clouds of fowl into the air, cawing and flying for their lives. The little maniac cackled in sadistic glee and grabbed another grenade from her basket.

“Woop~!”

With a swift jerking motion, the pin left its place, sending the safety lever falling to the side. She took a run-up and threw the deathly contraption towards a pile of corpses. Glistening in the morning sun, spinning gracefully in the air, it landed right in the middle of the dead human hydra with a soft thud. A moment later, another boom shattered the last one’s echo and sent body parts flying all over the ravine. Amidst the rain of blood, the fiend’s feet moved along to a rhythm of pain and misery inaudible to anyone but her. 

Andy stood by her side throughout the whole ordeal, thinking through his life decisions. He was already here, too late to back down. He cleared his throat.

“Yeah, yeah, I know you’re here. Can smell the holiness on you from a mile away.”

“Oh yeah? And how does it smell?”

“Like shit. What do you want?”

She turned to the boy, her hair now red and sticky from the falling blood. If he wasn’t intimidated by her “throwing practice” before, he definitely was now.

“Just wanted to say hello? Exchange names?”

“I don’t do names. Names are a luxury, angel-boy.”

“No name, then? Nothing at all?”

“If you really, oh so desperately need something to call me by, just use W. Not like that old fart would mind, I think. Wasn’t looking so bright when I found him, anyway~.”

Andy felt a light sense of discomfort creeping into his stomach. That was his, dead W, after all. He couldn’t deny, though, she was quite similar. She was exactly like him, but… With more curves. A bit more mean, too.

She snapped her fingers right by his face.

“Hey! Eyes up here, Lawdog. Catch.”

Before he knew it, an unpinned grenade made its way into his hands, resting there like a wounded pigeon. A gasp escaped his lips in shock.

But it didn’t blow up. It simply shot out a deep, murky cloud of smoke from its side, right into his face. It got into his windpipe, traveled down his system and tickled his lungs. He coughed and coughed, almost coughing out his throat. W tilted her head in genuine amusement.

“My… Never seen a smoke grenade cause this much harm. Maybe they’re not so useless after all~?”

“P-Probably not.”

“Mmm. You certainly are, though.”

A few more rough wheezes left his lungs before he gathered himself, holding onto that fuming cylinder. 

“Tell you what…”

She took a grenade from her rig and flicked it into his arms.

“... I’ll let you have this one, too. Fair? In exchange, why don’t you clean up all this bloody mess, hm~? You people love upkeeping purity and all that holy bullshit, right? Scrape ‘em off the walls, then.”