Marston woke from another slumber, finally feeling back to normal after the tiresome events of the week. Marston was hoping that this wouldn’t become a regular occurrence, while he was in his element, revolver in hand, outlaws by his side, laying waste to his enemies… War is like Christmas, it would soon lose its magic if it was celebrated every week.

Things had clearly occurred since the war that shook the country just two weeks ago, and these events had led to another huge war, which once again had left the country ravaged. Marston washed his face, threw on a loose shirt and shorts, pushed his hair back with a set of sunglasses, then walked barefoot in the sand as he left his surf shack on Redondo Beach.

The beach was busy, summer was here and activity had picked up since Cork and SpaceCowboy had set up their headquarters in the city. There seemed to be a large gathering on the beach, they were waiting for Marston, expecting him to tell them what the hell had happened. Marston was not one to disappoint, so he walked into the centre of the crowd to find an old soapbox had been placed for him to sit down on…

“Well… Where do I begin? I guess back to immediately after the previous war, where we discussed who goes where... My thoughts after the war were, even though we had worked together well on the battlefield, there was a clear us & them. Us, meaning Philadelphia and the Outlaws, and them meaning Las Vegas and Los Angeles and I was happy to move forward, rebuild and have a working relationship with them with this east/west division."

"I wanted us to have a secure east coast so set my sights upon the vacant New York immediately and made it known that my plan was to leave Detroit and head back east. At this point, the Outlaws were a small team and Balls’ Sack was pretty much empty, we didn’t have the manpower or resources to commit any further. Back in Philadelphia, Stiffler had made it known to me that he didn’t want to take on the mantle of Godfather - Chairman. He had turned down the position several times when offered by the late GFC quiet, but preferred a role one step below in the hierarchy. He suggested and endorsed either myself or Balls to become Godfather Chairman of Philadelphia."

"From the other end of the table came some odd suggestions from the leaders. Craven suggested that TheJeweler move to New York, and luciano_lucky mentioned something about sending one of his guys to take Godfather - Chairman of Philly. It seemed ludicrous to me, a city that was highly inactive and had repeatedly had mishaps resulting in disappearing HQs, wanted to stretch their manpower even further… I shut these ideas down and pushed my plan to take New York and Balls to lead Philadelphia. (Ideally I would have liked to have taken the lead myself, back in my home of Philadelphia, however, I felt that Balls hadn’t yet established enough authority for the other city heads to accept him being given an empty city). This was accepted and we moved on to the subject of Detroit, I assumed they would suggest moving TheJeweler there, but instead they suggested they would send someone to Detroit that "when they fuck up in a month we can kill them". I agreed, just as they had agreed with my plan of action, and Detroit wasn’t my concern."

"Following the meeting TheBeast reached out to me and extended an invitation for me to be allied with Chicago. My former Godfather had told he was 'the most loyal motherfucker you could ever wish to have on your team' (or words to that effect) so of course I told him I would be honoured to be his ally, and would show him the same loyalty he had shown to quiet, and I meant it."

"Things began to start moving along, crews were established... Las Vegas moved their newest and most active family to Detroit headed by Alexia50210. New York and Philadelphia were rapidly flourishing, crews were filling rapidly, and becoming hives of activity. It seemed like smooth sailing, and maybe a golden era of peace and prosperity but it didn't take much time at all for rumours and events to occur..."

"One of the first things that was brought to my table was that the bloodline of Skorpeon was offering credits for the head of Stiffler, this was mentioned to me by a handful of people. The bloodline of Skorpeon had joined my crew by the name of RocMarciano. I thanked my sources for the information, and booked a hitman to take out the trash in a month's time."

"A few days later, the young associate RocMarciano knocks at my door and tells me he’s spoken to luciano_lucky and would leave the Outlaws and join his crew in Los Angeles. I accepted, but I immediately arranged a meeting with luciano_lucky to inform him of the situation and the bounty that he had placed on Stiffler."

"At the meeting I informed him of the bounty placed and he laughed and told me he'd also heard that from Craven, which I found odd, and made me question why he would want him in his crew. He told me I should just kill him immediately, but I told luciano_lucky he should take RocMarciano into his crew and keep him occupied and in sight until my executioner came to visit him in roughly a month, and he accepted."

"Following the meeting I asked Stiffler if anyone other than me had warned him of this bounty... They hadn't."

Marston shook his head in disappointment

"The next day I heard RocMarciano had dropped from the Luciano family and retired, it was almost as if he was warned that the hangman was going to come knocking for him. I think potentially at that point a very small jump and I could have concluded that the aforementioned bounty had been accepted by luciano_lucky, but it still seemed ridiculous, surely no-one that leads a city is that easily bought... Surely?"

"A night passed and a reliable source, of a reliable source, tells my brother’s mate’s sister’s boyfriend’s cousin that Philadelphia is going to be attacked at the weekend. I played devil's advocate in the conversation we had about it, as we had plenty of time, and I wanted to be certain we weren't being played. One realistic possibility I considered is that a group were releasing rumours to get east & west to destroy each other, and rise up in the ensuing power vacuum, and I had to rule this out. Later that evening I also receive two tip-offs with identical information. Then I hear from other reliable sources, Saturday lunchtime LV/LA/DT are gonna hit Philly and pals. Another reliable source tells me that on Saturday at 1pm they’re planning to attack and confirmation came from my previous sources with the same information. I then receive a manuscript of a conversation where a crew leader from the group asks their men if any of them are proers and if so to make sure they request permanent shot authorisation as soon as possible. There was further damning evidence that I will not reveal. It was all genuine, and comically badly planned."

"We began our own preparations for a pre-emptive strike, which no matter how we skinned it, it wouldn't be clean. I went to TheBeast in good faith and told him everything, there was no deliberation necessary, and he offered his full support in our attack. As the planning progressed that night, it began looking like a golden opportunity to strike. We began informing hitters and proers to hold shots and tried to get our best shooters awoken. Unfortunately by the time we had managed this, conditions had worsened significantly. At this point the risk of our plans being revealed were too high to postpone, so we had to go ahead with it..."

"The battle raged from 07:50 on the 9th of June to 19:48 the following day... 36 hours of dedication, hard work and professionalism from all of the New York, Philadelphia and Chicago troops on the ground. I won’t go into an exact play by play of shots, but we had to adjust our tactics mid-war. There seemed to be a lot of problems with our weapons, for some odd reason the further we were from our home cities, the less accurate they seemed to be. Even my own revolver was missing shots on targets at point blank range, so the remaining enemy combatants used this to their advantage and stayed hidden in Los Angeles. We decided that I would buy a new headquarters for the Outlaws closer to our targets, and the tactic worked as the western cities were no longer a safe place for them to hide. They were driven out of their hiding places, and through hard work and perseverance we eventually only had one target left to kill. The weapon problem made it very easy for luciano_lucky to give us the runaround, and gave him the ability to pick off individual targets as they slept, and it was taking constant vigilance from our forces to get anywhere close to catching him out."

"Eventually we destroyed every option to luciano_lucky had to find protection, leaving him nowhere to hide. The cities were marked by capable shooters and it was just a waiting game to deliver the fatal blow. Philadelphia is where he emerged, and unfortunately this meant luciano_lucky had the chance to take someone out before exposing himself… It wasn’t long before two shots rang out in Bella Vista, and at the scene HarryDresden was found dead, but lying next to him was the slain luciano_lucky."

"The following coalition forces died in battle: NancyDowns, Terry, Zlatan, LilyLaralei, TasyCryBaby, BigHurt, DaDip, Lucious-Lyons, Horsasab, Jason_profitt, Deployable, APerfectCircle, Bwana, Dwight, Volpe, Michael-Corleone, BrandonHeat, Code, SteveEarle, Wellerman, TheBoss, Michael_Corleone, Robin, Typhon, MarissaVixen, Paul_Finch, RalpieBoy, Chad_Muska, LonelyWolf, Heston, BabyShark, SpikeSpiegel, MarkCorrigan and HarryDresden."

Marston brandished his hip flask and stood up, he unscrewed the cap and turned it upside down until all of the contents had drained into the sand.

"TO THE FALLEN!"

The crowd falls silent as Marston bows his head to remember those that he had lost, from LilyLaralei who had befriended him and halted his return to retirement, the boys from Dog Years - Terry, Wellerman, Paul_Finch and HarryDresden, and the brave Outlaws that had recently taken their sacred vows, and had already died under his command. He felt a wave of disappointment as he remembered the enthusiasm and gratefulness NancyDowns had shown when he asked her to lead the Bronx, then raised his head to finish what he had came there to do.

"To summarise, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Detroit were home to some genuinely good hardworking mobsters that would be an asset to any boss. Unfortunately for them they had been working for leadership that had been uninspiring, passionless and lacked the spine to do anything other than what they were told for a very long time. A city leader that when asked who his own right hand man was, pretended he didn’t know, then quickly ordered his death in a vain attempt to cover up the lie. However, these traits had served them well in survival, as for this time it kept them below the threat radar, and their actions were decided for them by more capable decision makers. Following the war when these decision makers were no longer around, the small council that governed LA/LV/DT got either greedy/paranoid/brave/double-stupid or a cocktail of these, and made their own decision to attempt to destroy us."

"Now don’t get me wrong here, I respect a soldier that follows orders without question, and the majority of the LA/LV/DT were doing just that, anything insulting you’ve heard from me is aimed solely at the few men who decided to order this attack. The top tier, the Godfathers should absolutely not be ‘yes men’, and should offer their opinions, and better solutions if they have them. Nobody was more aware of their ineptitude than their own lieutenants and trusted men, several people in this loop had no faith in their leaders’ decision, and immediately became informants, not only giving me exact details of the planned attack but also exact capabilities of every gun in the three aligned cities. There was so much information leaking to us it became a worry that one of their leaks would be noticed, and this was a risk we could not take, so our pre-emptive strike was planned and launched on the same night."

"It was by no means a glorious victory, and unforeseen obstacles made it far more complicated than we had initially envisioned, but we adapted, we overcame and eventually decisively defeated our enemy..."

“That’s about all I have to say about that, unless anyone has any questions for me?”

Sounds like the opposition broke every rule in the book involving planning and executing a war and Godfather Chairman Marston was able to capitalize on it.

To the victor goes the spoils as they say and I look forward to seeing what comes with the new chapter that shall follow in this thing of ours.

I have many questions:

The late MrKuku made two decisive strikes against prominent crews, less than 12 hours prior to the war breaking out.

Simple chance?

A leak?

A contributing factor?

And we expected to believe that a man for whom making a public spectacle of himself is commonplace (TheBeast) was an integral part of the secrecy and success of this attack?  Really?

Where do the deaths of Billy_Costigan