7Disclaimer: Refer to chapter 1.
There were only three of them at the table. It was strange. It was weird.
It was a reminder.
It showed who was missing now. It showed who would never come striding through the doors with a grin, with a drink or a blunt in hand. He wouldn't drop into his seat anymore, laugh at all of their worries, Pierce getting told money wasn't a problem because they were raking in too much to even put to use, Johnny getting told not to worry about their rep when no one in Stillwater was stupid enough to even think about fucking with them on a bad day, and Shaundi getting told to treat any loser who thought it was smart to try and cop a feel like the dumbass he was no matter what the network kept bitching for her to do when it happened.
He wasn't going to come striding in and be the Boss anymore.
There were four seats but they could only ever fill three of them now.
They didn't start for a few minutes, going over the papers Shaundi had thrown on the table. The Morningstar she had killed was carrying too much information to be somebody unimportant. He was trying to make a deal with someone it seemed, someone who wanted to know all kinds of information on the Steelport Syndicate.
He was either heading to a meeting like that or he was one incredible snitch. Like the snitch all other snitches looked up to for how good of a snitch he was. The Snitching God even.
Either way, no matter the reason he had, all the info he was carrying was theirs now. And they were going to make good use of it.
The Syndicate was going to be torn apart by the Saints, they were going to make sure everyone knew who they were by the end of this. Everyone would know exactly who the Saints were and they would know not to fuck with them.
They just had to come up with a plan first. A good one too.
"Alright…we all got some shit to talk about." Gat was understating it. They had an almost impossible amount of shit to talk about. They had gone past "some" a while back and had raced past "a metric fuck ton" all the way to "everything has gone wrong and now we have to talk about what the hell we're going to do about it" type of shit. "A lot of shit went wrong today. A lot of people are going to learn what happens when you fuck with the Saints, learn exactly what happens when someone thinks they can take one of us out, decide that we're not important enough to be feared. We're going to take all the shit we've been dealing with and throw it back at the fuckers who did this. Only questions we've got to ask right now are how bad are they going to regret fucking with us when we're done with them and how much they're going to wish they ran for it the first time they saw guys wearing purple?"
"Yeah…we gotta send a message about this." Pierce ran a hand through his hair, his mind still wasn't exactly agreeing with what had happened. It just wouldn't agree with everything that had happened to him, to the Saints, all in less than a few hours. "People are gonna start thinking we're nothing if we don't do something. We raided the SNG Armory and all but it isn't enough. That's not showing these guys who they've fucked with. That wasn't even worth being called the opening shot."
"We don't have a lot to go on when it comes to targets. Not anything beyond what I handed B…what I handed Boss earlier." Shaundi had thrown her jacket off after a Saint in the Oppressor her and Gat came in on had finished bandaging her up. "We need to take out their attack dogs, their muscle. If the Luchadores are down, they lose out on anything that can match us on a bad day. And then we make each and every one of those fuckers pay for what they did. Deckers go next and then we rip Morningstar apart."
"Killbane…he's a guy in a mask?" Pierce looked at one of the pictures taken from the case Shaundi had taken from some Morningstar and he took out his phone. "He was trying to buy a few places, tried to act like some Mr. "I'm Big and Tough So Listen to Me" kind of guy. He was like some guy out a bad movie, acting like he was tough just because he was on too many roids."
"Really?" Gat raised an eyebrow beneath his shades at the news, tossing away the paper he had picked it. It was going into some numbers or something on how much Morningstar's guns brought in and where they went. He would finish it later. This sounded more important.
"Yeah. The guy kept showing up so I pulled up some info on him. His name's Eddie Pryor and he's some lunatic. Real big on Mexican wrestling, got some event called Murderbrawl we were supposed to be guest starring on." His eyes turned dark but he was smiling. "If he's stupid enough to let us waltz right into his little setup, we can show him how stupid his boss is. I already brought some tickets, a good hundred we can hand out to some Saints and cut him down the second he steps out for his stupid fucking match."
"Nah, we're not doing it that way." Gat got the attention of both of his fellow Saints, his two Lieutenants. "If we play like that, it doesn't bring us back any of the respect we're missing now. It doesn't change anything but put that guy and a bunch of his steroid junkies in the ground. We can kill all of them right then and there but it won't mean anything." Gat drew his knife from his side, stabbed it into the table. "We need respect. We can't wait weeks to take any of these guys down, to fuck them up for what they did. The longer we let them think they got away with this, with treating us like some bitches, the more and more people are going to think we don't have what it takes anymore to run Stillwater. And then we've got more problems, bigger ones at home."
"I can make a couple phone calls." Pierce offered up his suggestion, two sets of eyes turning to him as he spoke. "Troy is the goddamn Chief of Police. He knows the guy in charge of Steelport, knows how much it takes to pay him off. He can give us a window to do whatever we want as long as we keep collateral to a minimum."
"That isn't going to work either." Johnny leaned forward in his seat, wrenched his knife out before driving it back into the wooden table. "No matter what we do, even if we kill all three of the gangs off, it won't change the lack of respect that caused this in the first place. We got treated like celebrities for so long, people forgot we own Stillwater. People forget we've done the impossible twice, owned Stillwater when some other gangs decided to say 'Fuck you this is our turf'. We told 'em all to bring it and we beat 'em. We beat 'em and then we let this Ultor shit go to our heads."
"We're a joke here. Just some fly clothes and some shitty ass drink." Pierce ran a hand down his face. "We're pulling in all the cash we could ever want, moving all the product we can, and run a fucking private army but we lost all the respect from fuckers like this." He wanted to let his head slam into the table in front of him. "People don't see us as the gang that took on Ultor in broad daylight anymore. They did this shit because they forgot who we are." He looked at his suit. "They forgot we're not just some corporate suits or international celebrities."
"Yeah, they don't respect us, nobody in this city does. They don't see us as the same gang who beat the Brotherhood, the gang who took out the Sons and took over their shit, the guys who fucked down the Ronin when they tried to push us out." Shaundi looked to Gat. "They don't respect us anymore. Not even in Stillwater, our home turf. Definitely not in a place as fucked up as Steelport."
"City's right next door and they probably don't even know we're a gang. Probably think we're just some celebrities talking out their ass about the hardcore shit they used to do. I want to say this is bullshit but it ain't, not after all the stuff we got talked into. Endorsements. Clothes. TV shows. Movies. A energy drink that tastes like piss. All that stuff, it put us here." Gat wanted to hate what had happened but he couldn't. "It's our fault for letting this happen. We let this Ultor takeover and this crazy Media Group bullshit go to our heads, let it get to the point where we're not even a street gang anymore, just a bunch of posers to everybody out there. We're like those fake ass rappers you hear about all the time, guys who say they've done time, that they used to wear colors. There's no fucking respect there, not with people thinking we're something like that."
"Then what are we going to do? Go on a rampage out there?" Pierce was immediately met by a smile from Gat.
He only had it when he knew there was going to be a bloodbath. And it was going to be a big one.
"We're thinking too out the box, trying to make this shit too hard. We're sitting here thinking about all this crazy shit like bribing cops, doing some fucking video game shit to get close to these assholes, playing by some stupid rule book. Fuck that. We're the Third Street Saints before anything else and we forgot that. All the guys out there forgot about it too with all the stupid shit we do. So we're gonna do this old school. We're gonna teach them a lesson they're not gonna forget." He pulled his knife out again but didn't plunge it back into the table. He stood up and used it to point towards Loren then Eddie and then the kid wearing makeup. "All three of these fucks are going to pay. Nothing's going to change that. They're going to wish they never messed with the Saints, never even heard of us, when we're done with them. If we let any of them live long enough to regret this shit in the first place. We're not gonna keep talking about some fancy scheme that takes a couple days, we're not gonna bribe a bunch of people, we're not gonna go hit 'em now. We're not doing any of that. We're gonna move in and take their turf. We're gonna head out in the streets and take as much as we can because that's what we do. We're gonna take it all and we're gonna hold it, show anybody who's wearing the wrong colors how stupid they are. We're the Saints and we're going to show everybody in Steelport how badly those three fucked up when they decided we weren't a threat anymore. Before we kill these fucks, we're gonna own the city. We gonna take every block, every corner, every road here. It's all gonna be ours."
Neither of the other two Saints in the room answered for a minute. Gat didn't back down. He wouldn't. He was going to stand by this.
"Old school…Sounds really risky, dangerous, and like everything can go wrong if we fuck it up. We won't have anything but a lot of motherfucking guns and luck on our side. I'm already liking it." Pierce grinned as he stood up and drew his Shepherd. He let it drop onto the table. "I'm in."
"I'm not going to stop until I put at least half these fuckers into the ground." Shaundi locked eyes with both of them, dared them to mention the bandages she was wearing. Neither did. Neither would stop her. They would be right there next to her out there. She drew her Shepherd from behind her and dropped it onto the table like Pierce. "I'm in."
"It sounds like we got one helluva plan then." Gat flung his knife into the table and dropped his Shepherd onto the table. He glanced at each of his Lieutenants before he took off his shades and dropped them onto the table with his piece. He looked both in the eye. "We're not gonna half-ass this anymore. The minute we step out this room, we go at this hard. We don't stop. We don't quit. We don't do shit until these three assholes, the top dogs of the Syndicate, are all on their fucking knees and begging us to stop."
All three shared the same grin, the same psychotic, bloodthirsty grin. They were all Saints at the end of the day and that meant they were all violent psychopaths in the end after all. They weren't going to waste their time anymore. They weren't going to spend any more time on the plan.
They had one.
And it was a good one.
"So Boss, what do we do after we take their turf?" Shaundi asked but she might as well had been speaking for both of the Lieutenants. They both had the same question in mind, they were both anxious to hear what the Boss had to say. What would they be doing after the fucking war they waged on Steelport?
Johnny Gat, the Boss of the Third Street Saints, reached out and picked up a picture.
It showed a dead man. Someone who was going to die screaming for what he did on that plane.
"That's easy. Then we're gonna really hate fuck these assholes."
AN: So...Sometimes, You Still Lose is not abandoned. I know it seemed like that (what with the years since updates) but I can assure you that the story was not abandoned during that time. I just couldn't get these chapters to work every time I sat down to write them. I always got locked up somewhere and that kind of just stretched on and on. I moved on to other projects to deal with it while returning irregularly.
But now it's updated! The story has progressed more!
That's good right?
If its not, totally cool to vent about it in review or PM. To all of you who reviewed this story: Thank you.
Until the next update of Sometimes, You Still Lose.
Peace.
