Back on land with a new ship to my name, a dumb earring in my pocket and slightly less homicidal rage than before, I was starting to feel like maybe the dark cloud was lifting. In this business it wasn’t easy for someone to get their head straight, especially when the stakes were so high, all of the time, and I knew I wouldn’t get a second crack at it. I couldn’t just rush back, I had to take my time and despite the progress I felt like I was making, I still wasn’t ready. I knew it. I wasn’t myself, not yet.

It was an odd feeling and one I didn’t really know how to process. I’d had a target on my back my entire life, ever since the old man died (like a bitch) really, and hundreds of millions of dollars later, people were still gunning for me. Nothing really changed. They tried to kill me and I tried to survive. Night follows day and day follows night. They had farmed the job out to some chump from Delaware now because they were too busy playing dice and watching bad action movies to do it themselves. It hadn’t bothered me at first, something I could just brush off and carry on with regardless, but it was starting to weigh on me. How many more times could I dodge the Reaper’s blade? When would someone line me up in their sights for the very last time? Today? Tomorrow? Three weeks from now? Shit. It was enough to make anyone jumpy.

“He who fears death cannot enjoy life,” a quiet voice whispered in my ear.

“What the fuck?!” I yelled, whirling around, gun sliding into my hand on instinct. There was nobody there. Just me, the spalled bricks of the quayside warehouses and a puddle of particularly malodorous piss. I shook my head and resumed the walk towards my hotel, wrapping my coat tighter around my shoulders as the wind picked up.

“I literally believed I was immortal for a few years.”

The same voice again. It was familiar but not exactly how I knew it. A hint of recognition without being entirely able to put my finger on it. A bit like a FrankCastle dupe, except it wasn’t praising his own work or badgering Anton. I decided to ignore it as the wind howled through the alleyways of the dock; I had enough real fuckers bothering me, I didn’t need some sad-sack ghost stalking me as well.

“I think the belief in my own immortality started off making me feel that I was special and possessed of extraordinary powers,” the stupid voice continued to muse. “I did after a time realise that I probably wasn't immortal.”

Not exactly profound stuff that my imagination was conjuring by this point and I was about to tell my subconscious to fuck off, when I was struck square in the face by a dirty old poster. I spluttered ripping it off, spitting dust, grime and probably a little bit of that stinky piss back onto the gravel. It wasn’t my day. It wasn’t even my fucking week.

“FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT!” I shouted into the rapidly worsening and opportunely timed pathetically faulty storm. This was just fucking great. Sad, covered in alley shite and still holding on to the stupid fucking poster. I glanced down at it, an excerpt from The Reckoning of SpikeS, written by his self-proclaimed closest ally, DoctorBoom:

“Many, many people already saw first hand the Godfather's policy of murdering all opposition to him, made up or not.  Typically the leaders he has asked to cull their herd did so without question or much resistance.  Either their members had not communicated well with the bosses upstairs or the member came from questionable blood lines.  These were people that their leaders chose not stick up for because they feared or respected the Godfather, maybe both.  I saw this trend extending into the city of Chicago when SpikeS started to question the character of a few members here.  SpikeS has a special way of making demands, I have learned. He doesn't yell or hold pistols to heads.  He uses a mix of lawyer-speak and unrelenting pressure to convince you that he is right about a person, and that they should die.  Anyone who has been on the receiving end of this deluge will know it to be true. Even before any proof could be found and brought forward in many cases a judgement had been rendered already.”

I sighed and peeled the last residue of it from my fingers, flicking them back into the muck where they belonged. That guy sounded like a piece of shit. The type of piece of shit whose hypocritical children probably wouldn’t even be able to manage the lawyer-speak anymore, instead they would barely manage to use terrible miss-the-mark analogies in try-hard attempts to be funny. Except they wouldn’t be funny. They would just boringly run from corner to corner trying to incite a revolution for the actions they championed, patting themselves on the back like some sort of misunderstood genius for every tip their buddies gave them to appear popular. “Queen to King’s Rook 5, Spike,” they would praise themselves. Oh, how clever we are with our 14 paragraphs of mundane bollocks. Ho hum. Only the people wouldn’t be interested in their message. A) because it was being spoken by a transparent dullard who didn’t leave the sanctuary of his rock-shadow until precious Anne_Nicolle got shot in an act of the most vile subconscious misogyny and B) whose speeches looked like they had done 12 rounds with a thesaurus before being tied up with a monotonous little bow and vomited on the public.

“Jesus Christ,” The exasperated voice spat in my ear. “I would give anything for you to fucking stop!”

“Even leave me alone?”

“Well,” said the voice, sounding a little hurt. “Maybe not anything.”  

I sighed, resuming my walk.

Ah, Grin-08, I see you’re a silly boy, old chap. Still making light of the Anton/FrankCastle situation? Seems in bad taste. Maybe you should shy away from talking about that. Kinda made you look bad. People noticed. They judged you for your being a patron to that behavior, arguably moreso than a patron at this point.

I told you that you didn’t know much about me. That thread you quoted was about my old-ass ancestor warning DoctorBoom that he had an underground under him that was building to kill SpikeS. SpikeS had asked him about certain people under him due to intel. It was not a purge situation. It was not binary. It was even more than just instinct or bloodlining. As it turned out, if you had done your research, which you tend not to do because you’re, well, sloppy, there is a followup speech in which DoctorBoom executed the lot of them, because “SpikeS had been right.”

"Back when Godfather SpikeS was around he warned me of "cluster" that was out for vengence and were dead set on fulfilling a grudge against him.  I dared not believe him and it caused much strain on our personal friendship, which eventually blew up into the massive war between myself and the late Godfather and his affiliates.  You have to imagine my surprise when Don Shogun revealed to me weeks after that there was indeed a "group" that had been formed with a sinister plot.  They even had a cute name for it.  SpikeS had been right all along about them."  

The Follow-Up Speech

You can try to put me down. You can try to malign my character. This is a common lowly tactic people try to use in debate. This is not going to undo the fact that you are binary in your purging. While whenever my line is suspicious of anyone, they would play detective and do research. Instead, most egregiously, without intel or anything oftentimes, you expect leaders to just take it. A leader rarely has much power to vouch within your world. But you ignore the fact that I have said no harm no foul several times about your strategy for self-preservation. I can criticize the way you go about it though, and in your anemic attempts to reply, you've never once touched that topic. Why?... I'm glad to play entertainer, and explain.

What I wrote was not for you. You and I do not need to debate on anything regarding your purging. It’s for other people to read. You can’t rebut it. It’s fact. However, it’s up to them to decide if the leaders’ll continue to act as your cattle. The cattle-leaders that are meaningless to you other than to fill space, that you’ll execute if they go off the trail.

Also, as an aside, why did Cohle leave Las Vegas and go to Philadelphia only to end up in Chicago, Clarkson?

As for Anne_Nicolle, my silence was to protect her, but I had been watching the way you guys treated people and how they were just taking it like cattle. I was relatively nice to you as well, to give some benefit of the doubt. Your line is one I always respected, but at a certain point, it became clear what you and yours are: Fascists with no moral compass, only pure pragmatism, basic kindergarten math, and no care for the community or really even your friends except the core, Trio, or whatever we’d like to define it as, as plain old usurers. Grin-08, pump and dump extraordinaire.

There’s no technical skill in any of that; it only takes a certain type of charm, and that doesn’t last forever. Machiavellianism only works so much, and God knows I’ve quoted it plenty in terms of strategy in this thing of ours.

You can only abuse your cattle so much… and that is my main point in all of this. There are many more people than just you and your few cronies. If you think a good portion of our community aren’t reading and agreeing with me, you’d yet again be mistaken. They will mark themselves as disloyal, at minimum. Leaders should not be cattle. Leaders should be fellow farmers. 

Finally, I knew you’d come for Anne_Nicolle at some point. But as far as I can tell, that was a quid pro quo exchange in your purge alliance. Her gun was pretty weak though, and her line not one of rogues, never has, never will, and I’ve personally never suggested that it should now or any time in the past against anyone, not even Disorder. His rage sending him into the obits was funny enough to have no regrets.

Was it worth it to kill her and free me from silence to help ensure you look like a silly drooling Grin?

Aren’t you supposed to be taking a step back or something or do you get ANGEREY like Curtis? Good boy. Dance for me. Dance child. Babylon sister, shake it. 

does anyone else see the irony of '14 paragraphs of mundane bollocks' being quoted within 13 paragraphs of mundane bollocks?

oh irony, what a fickle mistress thou art.

What I wrote was not for you. You and I do not need to debate on anything regarding your purging. It’s for other people to read. You can’t rebut it. It’s fact. However, it’s up to them to decide if the leaders’ll continue to act as your cattle. The cattle-leaders that are meaningless to you other than to fill space, that you’ll execute if they go off the trail.

Well that is one dramatic way to prove his point. Grin’s cattle obviously meant nothing to him. I wonder if Curtis feels the same about his cattle?

Nose watched the young lady talking and wonder how the hell that girl still believing at fantasies.

I'm from old times sweety, when you used to protect those kids under your regime instead to kill because someone from other lands asked for it. When had glorious wars instead kids and young people genocide but I'm only an old man. Let the gods to play around and keep you alive while is useful. Ciao bella, open your eyes while have time for it because no one in power is innocent here.

Nose walked back to other lands wishing the best for the young lady.

Selena, it is adorable how bright eyed and bushy tailed you are. I hope you get to stay that way. 

I almost feel sad for Selena. 

I do feel sad for Selena. She's on the unpublished hitlist and doesn't even know it. It won't be too long now. What a shame.

Someone send xyz 500k

Done

Tutte shook his head and wondered where the respect to others gone to, sad to see so much anger and missbehaviour agains some, please try to act a bit more respectfully and honuorable to others or just keep the mouth which is the best way if not be able to be a bit more polite with words instead of what we see here above, please.

Don't bring Curtis into this. His 'cattle' as you put it is nothing to do with anything. Stop trying to drag Seattle into the mud that's not fair.

You were saying?