V

There could have been a lot of things running through Double D's head. How far up the tower was Eddy? How long would it take until Double D's body finally broke? But there was only one thought in Double D's sock head.

"It's a good thing I installed an elevator."

The makeshift elevator groaned and shook as it slowly moved up the machine's body. Pipe and wire created a strange maze like visual in front of Double D, drops of oil from above speckling the spectacle black. To Double D, he was only gazing at a mechanical monstrosity, one that Eddy had misused, one that destroyed his home, his life. And now it was time for revenge.

Suddenly, a shot fired out from above. Just as Double D saw the feet of his former friend, the elevator's cable snapped. Double D jumped, the Model 1887 clenched in his right hand, and desperately reached for the metal platform. He tried to pull himself upward, but do to his wounds and weak upper body strength, he could only hang.

The model 1887 was kicked out of Double D's hand by a familiar red shoe. With a free hand, Double D used all of his might to pull himself up, and face the person he had killed so many to find.

He faced the front of a Colt Anaconda.

"Sock head! You finally made it! Here to kill me like you killed everyone else?"

Double D looked around the area for something to take advantage of, but made sure to keep Eddy talking and not shooting.

"Killed everyone else!? Eddy, the machine destroyed this whole Cul-De-Sac! And we all know who made the machine do it!"

"We sure do, Double-D, we sure do."

Eddy's familiar sadistic smirk cracked on his face.

"So why'd you do it, Double D?"

Double D jumped back, almost slipping off of the platform.

"Eddy, you were the one who set the machine off! You killed everyone, not me!"

"Don't you remember, Double D? I wasn't even in the machine when shit hit the fan. I was outside promoting the damn thing! Ed was outside too! The only one who could have possibly pushed the button was you, sock head!"

"You liar! I couldn't have pushed the button! I told all of you not to push it! I'm the responsible one! I'm the good one!"

"What's the matter? You make one mistake, and now you need to blame everyone else for what you did? You fucked up, and you killed everyone trying to get revenge. Tell me, who haven't you killed to get here?"

Double D, dumbfounded, insulted, and furious, froze. Eddy's question was something that Double D needed to think about. He didn't have time to think about it though, as Eddy had fired right into his arm, and began to climb his way farther up the machine.

"Don't follow me, Double D! I don't want to kill you."

"So I guess shooting at the elevator was just to scare me?"

Double D tried to follow, but due to the excruciating pain, he could not follow. The most he could do was to shake at the pipes, in hopes of shaking Eddy off.

"You set the machine off! You pushed the button! Just accept it and go home!"

Double D fell to his knees. His attempts to shake off Eddy were futile. Double D had lost. Everything that Double D had fought for, to prove his innocence, to get revenge, had not only failed, but could have been figments of his imagination. Double D contemplated jumping to his death.

Maybe he didn't need to, though.

As if an earthquake had just hit the Cul-De-Sac, the machine began to tremble. Shards of metal fell from above, and the dripping oil began to come down like a stream. Double D looked down to see that his other former friend, Ed, was still alive. Alive and angry, Ed slammed his head into the base of the machine over and over again, until it could no longer support itself.

The flaming, oil seeping head of the beast cracked off from the rest of the machine, and slammed into Eddy. The platform was the next to fall, followed by most everything else. The fall to the bottom of the machine seemed to be slowed down in Double D's eyes. If this was how Double D had to die, gazing up at the moon as he descended, it would be a good enough way to go.

Eddy was crushed by the oil container as he hit the ground.

Ed was impaled by metal poles.

And Double D was the only survivor.

As he pulled himself out of the rubble, and saw the battered and butchered bodies of the Eds, Double D had only one thought in his mind.

"What now?"

END OF CHAPTER