Crovera.

{WARNING: TALKS ABOUT RAPE EVERY FEW CHAPTERS, ALSO STRONG LANGUAGE! THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING SO PAY ATTENTION!}

*BANG! BANG! BANG!* Shots rang throughout the hall. "AHHH!" I could hear the screams of other people. They were loud, oh so loud. I looked at the surrounding stalls. The yellow walls of the bathroom stared at me. Tiny bloodstains showed toward the opening. The blood stared at me, yelling at me to run away. I knew I had to get out of the building to survive. 

So I ran, kicking open the stall door, and bolting through the corridor. I ran fast, faster than I had ever run before. The hall rushed past me, seemingly begging me to take it with me, away from the hellscape surrounding us. Like me, it didn't want to be here any longer either.

"I'm sorry," I thought, tears flowing down my cheeks. I could only apologize in my head to the people I left behind to attempt an escape. 

Cries rang out in front of me, judging from the voice it was a young boy pleading for something…

"PLEASE! SPARE ME I'M SORRY!" he screamed. He was pleading alright, pleading for his life. I couldn't help, so I chose to grit my teeth and slide behind a locker to avoid the line of sight. I was so close to the exit, just fifty more feet. 

"Gah!" a small yelp escaped my lips, as my back slammed into the wall. Luckily, the sound wasn't loud. *BANG!* A single shot rang through the hall. It was deafening to hear from a close distance. *Splat.* The sound of someone falling into a puddle wasn't loud, but in the current predicament I was in, it might as well have been a rocket blasting off.

It didn't take much thought for me to know he was dead. "That's about to be me!" my brain screamed. My legs begged me to run, as did my head, but I couldn't move. I was petrified. "RUN DAMMIT!" I yelled in my head. The world spun around me. My breathing became worse, more ragged than before, and my heart didn't stop beating in terror. 

"I'm so dead, aren't I?" I thought. There were many things I had yet to do in my life. Yet all the things I wanted to do were much too far to grasp. At that moment, the very fabric of my being was overcome with fear. "Damn, this is a really bad way to die," I thought, a single lone tear falling down my cheek. I couldn't move. All I could do was pray for survival. 

"Hello," a feminine voice sounded out from behind me. "What-" I started before pausing. As I turned around, I met the barrel of a gun. Being the son of a former gun lover, I knew that there was no chance I could survive a shot from an M-16 at point-blank range. "Ah, shit…" I muttered.

"I don't suppose we could, maybe talk this out?" I asked, a desperate attempt I'll admit. She seemed puzzled by my reaction to a gun in my face, even more so when she saw my face. Oddly enough, she seemed to calm down when she met my eyes.

"What's your name?" she asked, despite the overwhelming fear I answered her, "A-Adrien." As much as I'd love to say I toughened up, I almost pissed myself in fear.

"What a pretty name," she muttered as she pushed the gun away from my face. It was now facing the hallway. "Okay, the moment she turns her body away, grab the gun, toss it down the hall, and then hold her down!" I planned in my head, it was much easier to think of than perform. But it was my only real option at the moment.

"My name is Crovera. You offered to talk this out, remember?" she answered, before asking when she saw my baffled face. She seemed tired and sounded utterly defeated. 

"Uh, yeah, I remember," I responded. I caught a glimpse of blood on her shoulder, which shocked me back to my senses. Although I responded like that, maybe because I pitied her, maybe because I was captivated by her. Regardless of the reason, it didn't matter.

"You might be wondering why I did all this," she started, pointing toward the hallway, which was stained with blood. Dark red blood, in huge puddles, the smell alone was enough to make me throw up everything I had eaten before the whole ordeal. Eventually, I looked back at her, and it dawned on me…

She was a murderer. What was I doing chatting with her? "Yeah, you could say that," I responded, holding back on throwing up with all my strength.

Her gun rested loosely on her shoulder and was barely clutched with her right hand. If I had the opportunity for even a split-second, I could tackle her down. But even taking that into account, I was too scared to move, let alone lunge at an armed person. 

"The people I killed were genuinely horrible, they stole from other women including me, they beat people for no reason, they groped women just because nobody would bother stopping them.

They were so bad, they even made comments about raping me and other women just because we had good-looking bodies, they said they would kill me if I ever spoke about it, but that didn't stop me from telling teachers," she had started speaking about all the things she was put through because of them.

It was the most gut-wrenching thing I had heard all day, the descriptions of what they kept attempting to do to her. I knew to experience it, must have been one hundred times worse. 

"The adults laughed about it, and played it off as 'young boy's playing.' Well, they're not playing anymore. In some cases, the adults talked about me being a 'good lay' rotten good for nothing bastards," she finished, I could only get mad hearing about it, once again making me think it must have been horrible for her. 

She was crying by the time she finished talking about it all. I couldn't even go through with my takedown plan anymore, even if I could, I wouldn't. Those bastards got every bit of what they deserved. Instead, all I could do was brim with anger at the very thought of scum like that walking the same earth as the rest of us.

"So after putting up with all of that, you killed them?" I asked I don't know why, but that was the only thing I could choose to ask. Instead of speaking, she nodded at my question. "I agree that they deserved to die, hell I think they deserved worse, but you can't be the judge, jury, and executioner," I continued to her, once again, without thinking, I was speaking. Her face grew visibly upset at what I said.

"What gives you the right to decide that I shouldn't have killed them?" she asked me, venom flowing through her voice. I hated to admit it, but even though she killed those people, and even when mad, she was strangely beautiful.

Her eyes reflected anger and sadness, yet a strange look of remorse. "You have no right to tell me what's right or wrong!" she shouted at me, as she raised the gun back to my face. "Me and my big mouth," I thought, annoyed at myself.

"THINK YOU IDIOT!" I shouted in my head, once again I had gotten myself into an inescapable situation. "You were right to do something, but murder is never just. Killing someone like this is not justice it is control," I said, hoping that my words would make some form of sense to her. 

"SHUT UP!" she yelled in rage, her finger pushing down very lightly on the trigger. "You're better than this, you can fix this eventually!" I shouted back, pushing the gun aside as lightly as possible.

"NO, I'M NOT!" she screamed, attempting to move the gun back to my face. Luckily I was stronger than her and I could keep it pointed away from me. Although kind of faint, I could hear police sirens rapidly approaching, she, however, was too focused on me and not the sound.

"COME ON! YOU'RE STRONGER THAN THIS CROVERA!" I yelled, in a last-ditch effort to buy some time. I also made sure to throw the gun down the hallway, toward the exit. "WHY?! WHY DO YOU HAVE FAITH IN ME!?" she shouted confused, yet also in terror. Silent tears fell down her cheeks as she shouted those words.

"Because everyone deserves a second chance!" I answered with a yell. Suddenly, she turned towards me, grabbed my head, and planted a kiss on my lips. "POLICE!"