Written by Mr. Mouseburger 18th Apr 2007

Kindly submitted by Pyro

While Romeo's friend (who happens to be the son of the city's main police chief) Mercutio awaits Romeo's return with the latter's cousin Benvolio, they are confronted  by Juliet's sociopathic cousin Tybalt, who is looking for payback on Romeo for crashing the Capulets' masquerade party. He demands to know where Romeo is.

Mercutio, however, isn't interested in Tybalt's bullying and instead begins to insult him. Despite his earlier lecture to Benvolio about Tybalt's violent temper and expert dueling skills, Mercutio seems to forget his own wisdom as Tybalt becomes more and more enraged and it is not long before a fight has broken out between them.

Romeo arrives at this moment and interves. Unbeknowst to the combatants, he is now secretly married to Juliet, and tries to heal the rift between the two houses. Tybalt, however, proves completely unreasonable and attacks Romeo, throwing him to the ground and kicking him repeatedly. Mercutio then attempts to save his friend by tackling Tybalt and knocking him onto a glass pane that shatters on his impact.

At this point, Romeo gets back up and attempts to calm Mercutio down, and it seems to work. Tybalt, however, isn't interested in ending the fight till someone's dead. Taking advantage of the distraction, Tybalt takes a cheap shot by reaching around Romeo and stabbing Mercutio with a shard of glass, fleeing afterward.

Mercutio does not survive for much longer. Mortally wounded for being in the crossfire of yet another Montegue-Capulet fight, he swears "a plague on both your houses" before he collapses to the ground and dies.