The woman was small, even in her battle armor which clung to her like the shell of a beetle. In hand to hand combat she would have had no hope against Dio. But she had a gun and the laser eye of his war-hammer was damaged, it was charging up slowly and it would be several minutes before he had a hope of using it.
So Dio fell back on his well tested strategy of stalling. Emotional Manipulation.
"You're hesitating."
She didn't answer, just kept up with that stare that showed off the whites of her eyes as she gripped her weapon too tightly.
"If you were going to kill me, you would've done it already. Unless you have something to say?"
They almost always had something to say. Typically the angry rants bored him, but today he was willing to listen.
She was on the younger side. Naïve, and falling for it.
"You ordered the bomb strike that killed my friends."
"I've ordered a lot of bomb strikes."
"It was in the middle of a city. You only killed civilians."
"I do that sometimes."
She was going red in the face and the gun was swaying back and forth in her trembling hands as she fought to keep steady "You said you were a champion of the people! You said you were going to revolutionize the lives of the downtrodden and instead you revolutionaried my friends to death!"
"Omelet and eggs, darling," out of the corner of his eye Dio tracked the progress of his hammer, another minute or so and he be able to atomize her."
"The end does not justify the means," Dio's comment seemed to harden something within the woman, she pulled in a breath, her face settled into a mask-like calm, and her aim steadied.
He laughed.
"Then kill me and become me. What's the difference between us, if we're both killers?"
She paused, her eyes going wide again as she realized she was caught out.
"Besides," Dio continued pressing his advantage while she was still trying to recover "Neither you nor your friends were long for this world beneath the previous system. They died so that the oncoming generations may reach their fullest potential."
She still looked torn and for a moment she lowered the gun.
The hammer had reached full charge, but Dio waited, for just a moment, curious now to see what her reply would be.
"Maybe you're right, maybe they would've died anyways, but I don't think anyone's going to reach any kind of potential beneath you, I think you're going to just keep killing. Until someone stops you."
"You shoot me and you're no hero."
"You don't get to decide that."
"Darling neither do you."
She readjusted her stance and her aim again, lining up directly with his face and her finger tightened around the trigger.
In the same instant Dio swung the warhammer forwards and a laser, bright and hot as supernovae, spring from the iris embedded in the hammer's head.
Weapon fire drowned out any further words.
