"This girl is slippery. There is no way of knowing whether she is being honest or not, so keep the questions simple. Your main focus for today is the frequent missions the school sent her on, and the formation of the "Death Duo." You will have three days to speak to her. No more, no less. Understood?"
Yet again, they found themselves agreeing.
Notes:
Star
Questions
The Death Duo? Um… well… I didn't really agree to the name, but it seems accurate, now that I think about it. We weren't always a duo, so it didn't seem right to start with – in fact, we were a group of four.
Marco called us his family. I don't think he remembered his parents very well. Anyway, every mission we were sent on broke some sort of law – sometimes we would return to Echo Creek, or we wouldn't be on Earth at all.
One time, we were sent on a mission to rob a house – it was the early days of our group of four. It involved me, Marco, Janna, and Brittney. I didn't like Brittney or Janna, to be truthful, but it seems sad that one of them is probably dead now.
Marco was very brutal. He murdered the children in the house very cruelly. Janna told him that he needed to "chill," and I didn't say much. I just wanted to go in and finish the mission – but then, they both started fighting.
I didn't see that much of the fight because Brittney dragged me upstairs, claiming she could hear footsteps. It turned out that she was correct – the children's parents were home, which meant we needed to get those two to stop.
Brittney said she would sort them out, and told me to take care of the parents. At this point, I had never killed anyone. It was always Marco who did the killing, so I was scared when I was told to take them out.
She had handed me a sharp knife before disappearing downstairs, and slowly, I had ascended the steps to get the parents. I saw the father, and I hesitated for a second too long. I was stood near the top of the staircase.
Just as I stabbed him in the stomach, his wife ran at me, pushing me down, which really hurt – I wasn't knocked out though, but I couldn't move. I yelled for help, and Marco came running. He seemed really panicky, but I think it was because the wife was running down the stairs with a vase in her hand.
So I gave Marco my knife, even though my wrists were sore, and he jabbed her in the side. It was not a nice sight – he put his foot on her face, sinking his foot further in until there was this horrible crunching noise.
And then he stabbed her repeatedly in the stomach, until she bled out onto the floor. I cried when he helped me up onto my feet – he was covered in her blood, and had dislocated her thumbs. Brittney and Janna got there with the money, and we all realised what Marco was doing.
He was chewing the flesh off the dead woman's fingers. It was disgusting, and both Janna and I tried to tell him to stop, but he wouldn't listen to us. If it wasn't for Brittney, I think we would have been caught. She told us both to go downstairs and set the timer for the bomb, then wait outside.
Janna and I listened, waited outside, but we were frightened. Neither of us knew what time to set the bomb to, so we had given Brittney ten minutes to talk some sense into Marco. I am sure it was the scariest ten minutes of my life.
But it soon turned to the ten most relieving minutes of my life, when Marco walked out, with bloody lips. I admit, even I thought cannibalism was going a little far.
But things only got worse from there, if I'm honest.
For the second mission, Janna and Marco entered the building, followed by Brittney and me. I asked Brittney what she told Marco to get him to leave, and she simply tapped her nose, telling me that what I didn't know didn't hurt me.
I still have no clue what she said to him, and when I asked Marco, he snapped at me. I didn't probe him any further, because I didn't want to be like the dead woman who had her flesh chewed from her body.
Our instructions were much simpler that time. We had been told to destroy the entire house, and kill everyone we found inside. Our handlers never told us why we had to destroy the entire house, but we looked around for stuff we liked.
Brittney stole some jewellery, Janna took money, and I helped myself to their electronics. I was still scared what Marco would do to them, since we hadn't been told how to murder everyone inside the house.
Janna stumbled across two toddlers, twins, I think, and she grabbed one, throwing it into the aquarium in the living room. After it drowned, I fished the corpse out, because I wanted to dry the baby and show it to the parents.
The other twin was my responsibility, and Janna told me there were no limits. So I cradled the baby for a few minutes, wondering if I could take it back to school and nurse it, but then it occurred to me that looking after babies is hard, and time-consuming.
I just lost interest.
So I dropped the baby on the floor, headfirst. That didn't kill it, though. It was still mewling pathetically on the ground, so I drove my foot into it. Stomped on it until its cries ceased, and it stopped breathing.
It was very messy. My shoes got incredibly dirty – I had to wash them in the bathroom sink.
Brittney was trying on jewellery in the master bedroom, with the corpses of two men lying on the bed behind her. She didn't have any blood on her, but they had suspect scars on their throats, and the bedsheets were soiled.
I asked her where Marco was, and she told me that he had taken one of the babies. I went back down to check on Janna, and it turned out she was watching Marco bite into the baby's throat. I can't say that I was angry, because the baby was clearly dead.
It was the same baby that I had removed from the aquarium, before it sunk to the bottom. And now he was eating it. I turned away, and decided to look around upstairs. I had a look in the children's bedrooms.
What I found made me feel slightly guilty.
I know I could have saved a girl's life, but I didn't. Instead, I went to the toy chest and opened it, finding her in there. It was rather sad to think that she was so close to escaping death, and now it was my choice to let her live or die.
She had very sad eyes. I think she might have cried if I hadn't clamped a hand over her mouth and told her to be quiet, as I dragged her downstairs to face judgement from Marco and Janna. Brittney was still trying on jewellery.
Janna didn't seem interested, and asked if I saw anyone else. I said no, and she said she was going to turn on the gas, so the house could be set on fire.
Before I went to get Brittney, I heard the girl screaming. Well, I don't know if I would class it as screaming, because she was being flayed alive – the screams were guttural – I think Marco had taken her tongue out.
She probably drowned in her own blood. I'm not sure, because again, we all left the house calmly, but this time, Marco had severed a hand off one of the children's bodies, and was yet again chewing the flesh.
This time, none of us told him to stop. If it made him happy, it didn't matter anymore. But it was turning point for our group – because he was becoming dangerous.
What happened to your group after that?
Well… our group broke up quite quickly. Brittney said she didn't like the fact Marco ate parts of the corpses, and neither did I, but she was allowed to quit, so from there we became a trio. However, without Brittney, our group started to fail.
Janna left us, and I realised that I didn't work that well with Marco. So I asked Axel if he would take me in, and he agreed – we formed a temporary group with Brittney again. We were a trio, and we worked amazingly together.
Unfortunately, Marco became really jealous. He'd found a new group too, with Justin, Pony Head and Ed. I was starting to… get along… with Axel, but then our group suddenly fell apart – Brittney started to hate Chantelle, because of…
Well, that's a long story for another day. But she departed, so that she could fight back against Chantelle, and Axel… I don't know. He just stopped talking to me all of a sudden. I knew I was kind of useless to the school by myself, so I had to go back to Marco.
I'm sure Marco was involved in the dissolution of our group, but he only became more violent, so I wasn't willing to look into it too much. He started being nicer to me, but I was still slightly scared of him.
He told me we didn't need anyone any more, and that we could get revenge on Echo Creek by ourselves. And that's how the final Death Duo was formed.
Star finished talking, her eyes scanning the entire room. She wondered how everyone felt, knowing that she had murdered, stolen, committed atrocities without blinking an eye.
Other prisoners claimed that there were riots after John's first day of questioning.
It was no surprise to her. Perhaps her words would also cause a riot.
She changed her face, from a cold glance, to crumpling, streaked with tears. And the sad part was that they fell for it. They saw, they pitied the monster he had made her into.
Not so much of a flicker of a smile appeared on her face, as she was ushered out of the room. Her audience had not been loud – she could hear quiet mutters, a few sniffs, but mostly, just sad sighs.
Perhaps she would live.
I've been getting a LOT of questions lately, and at first, I had no idea how to answer them. However, because the story is actually more as I envisioned it, I can finally answer some FAQs. (Though a lot of them are: "Who's John Doe?" when I'm 90% sure I've already revealed it, but we'll see if anyone picks up on it).
Q: Is this all flashback?
A: Flashback seems a little too easy (somewhat... cheaty, if that makes sense) for this story, which is why I introduced "questioning chapters." So my answer to this, is mainly no, with the exception of two chapters. The concept of flashback is nice and all, but I simply feel like it doesn't always fit in with the story. I'm unsure if I'll use it again in the future.
Q: What inspired this story?
A: To be honest, just looking around at the archive and seeing all the formulaic stories (as in, Marco/Star develops a crush on Marco/Star, but Marco/Star like someone else, but then Marco/Star discovers they like Marco/Star and kick their crush to the curb) made me wonder if I could twist ideas out of shape. To start with, I imagined what a yandere!Starco story would be like, and originally started a oneshot on that. From there, I thought of making Star and Marco mentally unstable. From there, I came up with the concept for the "Diaz Death Duo," and started to come up with new ideas. My main inspiration is definitely seeing the fluff stories, and thinking how I could twist them.
Q: What does the title mean?
A: That's a good question. To be honest, the title means more than one thing to me, as the author. I don't intend to spoil anything, but the title focusses on the trial and... well... execution of the "Diaz Death Duo." I... literally cannot explain that any further. I mean, the story is based around their trial, how it affects them, and what they actually did to be put on trial.
Q: Does Star love Marco? (otherwise phrased as: "Is there Starco?")
A: Does Marco love Star?
Q: Who's the antagonist of your story? (otherwise phrased as: "Is John Doe evil?")
A: That's the point of my story :). The main characters are meant to do bad things, but the "Big Bads" also have moments of doing good. The point of the story is kind of like a character study of several characters' in this series dark side. Personally, I consider everyone an antagonist in this story. But like, not completely antagonistic. (I really hope that made sense).
Q: Are Marco and Star reliable narrators?
A: We'll see.
Thank you for all your questions. Feel free to ask more (providing they're not too spoilery)!