Huh?? Who the hell are you? One of the thugs asked. "I'm the guy who'll crush you maggots." Eitou replied.
Eitou, the self-proclaimed "guy who'll crush you maggots," stood before the group of thugs with a confident grin on his face.
"You think you can take us all on by yourself, pretty boy?" one of the thugs taunted.
Eitou struck a dramatic pose. "Pretty boy? How flattering! But I prefer the term 'ruggedly handsome.'"
The thugs snickered, but Eitou didn't back down. "Oh, I'm not? Well, let me ask you this: do you know why they call me Eitou?"
The thugs exchanged confused glances. "No, and we don't really care," one of them said.
"It's because I always go all-out!" Eitou declared. "You might say I'm an 'Eitou-talist'."
The thugs rolled their eyes, but Eitou continued. "It means I'm going to crush you like a bug! And if you try to fight back, I'll 'Eitou-tate' you!"
"You're not making any sense," one of the thugs grumbled.
Eitou just grinned. "Well, that's because you're not 'Eitou-cated' enough to understand my superior wordplay."
The thugs grew more agitated, but Eitou remained calm. "Don't worry, I'll take you down 'Eitou-matically'."
"Enough with the puns!" one of the thugs shouted. "Let's just fight!"
"All right, let's 'Eitou-gage' in battle!" Eitou replied with a smirk.
With that, the thugs charged at him. The fight was on, and Eitou held his own, exchanging blows with the thugs. But even as sweat dripped down his face, he couldn't resist one final wordplay.
"Looks like you're 'Eitou-tered' now!" he exclaimed as he dealt the final blow.
Eitou looked over to Joey,bent over to lift him. "We're really lucky," Eitou had said, his voice filled with the kind of optimism that Joey admired. "We may not have much, but we have each other, and that's all that really matters."
But before Joey could respond, there was a loud bang that echoed through the neighborhood. In an instant, Eitou was on the ground, his body lying in front of Joey.
"Eitou? Eitou!" Joey screamed, but there was no response.
As he looked up, Joey saw a hooded figure standing in the shadows, a smoking gun in their hand. The figure vanished into the night, leaving Joey alone with the body of his friend.
Anger burned within Joey, and he crawled towards the direction the shooter had come from, despite the tears streaming down his face and the searing pain in his back. He didn't care about anything else but finding the person who had taken Eitou away from him.
As he crawled, thoughts swirled in his mind. Why did this happen? Who was the shooter? But reason had long since fled his mind.
The world around him seemed to blur as Joey continued his pursuit, until he finally collapsed on the ground, exhaustion overwhelming him. But even then, his eyes remained fixed on the sky, as if searching for answers that he knew would never come.
Joey lay on the ground, the rain pouring down around him as he struggled to breathe. His mind was hazy, his thoughts scattered as he tried to make sense of what was happening. But amidst the chaos, he heard a voice - a voice that sounded like it came from beyond this world.
"Hehehe, hahaha," the voice chuckled. "Guess I'll see how this plays out."
Joey's heart pounded in his chest as he realized that he wasn't imagining things. The voice was real.
"Am I dying?" Joey asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
The voice didn't respond, but Joey could feel a sense of amusement emanating from it.
"That didn't sound like an angel though," Joey continued, his mind racing. "Am I going to hell? What could I have done to go there?"
The voice remained silent, and Joey felt a sense of despair wash over him. Had he really lived his life in such a way that he was destined for eternal damnation?
"Well, I did tell mom things were alright when they weren't," he muttered to himself. "Guess lies can take you to hell, huh?"But then, something strange happened. A wooden stick fell from the sky and landed right beside Joey. It was glowing an ominous shade of pink, and as it touched the ground, the wind stopped, and the rain seemed to slow down.
Joey's eyes widened as he looked at the stick. It was like nothing he had ever seen before, and yet, there was something about it that felt familiar.
"But really, does God exist?" he asked, his voice trembling.
Without thinking, he reached out and touched the stick, and in an instant, everything changed. The rain stopped completely, and the clouds parted to reveal a sky filled with stars. A bright light shone down from above, enveloping Joey in a warm embrace.For a moment, Joey forgot about everything else - the pain, the fear, the uncertainty. All he could feel was a sense of peace and belonging.
And then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the light vanished, and the rain began to pour down once more and Joey blacked out from sheer exhaustion and pain.