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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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"Pack the damn ledgers, Sterling! Leave the clothes!" shouted Mr. Vance, the lead bodyguard. He was a massive, scarred man wearing a reinforced leather vest, currently shoving shells into a double barreled shotgun. "The situation out there is completely compromised! We have to leave right now, or we are going to be slaughtered in this room!"
As they were frantically preparing to flee, throwing open the backdoor locks and securing their briefcases, some of the executives began to talk about the Grays, spitting venom and sheer, unadulterated contempt for the Southern family they had just manipulated.
"I cannot believe how utterly stupid those bunch of upstart farmers actually are," Sterling hissed, snapping the brass latches of his briefcase shut with a sharp click. He wiped the terrified sweat from his forehead with a silk handkerchief.
"Tavish actually believed we were going to help him build a city. He actually believed the board of directors wanted to share power with a family of inbred, tobacco chewing hicks!"
Another executive, a younger man in a pinstripe suit, grabbed his coat from a rack, his eyes wide with panic. "The bosses backing us already explicitly ordered that the Grays were nothing more than disposable puppets to be used! They were bait! We were supposed to use their money to hire those hitmen, throw them at Don McLaughlin, and let the two factions bleed each other completely dry!"
"Well, the plan failed!" Sterling shouted over the sudden, terrifying sound of automatic gunfire tearing through a building just a block away. "The puppet didn't bleed the target! The puppet actually managed to piss off the devil himself, and now they have brought the target right onto our absolute doorstep!"
Sterling grabbed his briefcase, clutching it to his chest as if it could stop a bullet. He looked at the heavily armed bodyguards, his aristocratic arrogance completely masked by raw, primal fear.
"The Grays are dead men walking," Sterling declared, moving quickly toward the rear exit of the parlor. "It is time to leave. We get to the private carriage out back, we ride to the Saint Denis border, and we charter a private train back to Chicago before the Don realizes we were even here."
It was a brilliantly selfish, perfectly corporate exit strategy. They had lit the match, burned the house down, and were now planning to quietly slip out the back door while the Grays took the entirety of the blame.
But it was profoundly sad for them, because their arrogance had blinded them to the reality of the man they were fighting. They did not realize that Caleb Thorne's intelligence network was flawless. They did not realize that John Marston had sat in the corner of this very saloon, listening to every word they said.
And they absolutely did not realize that the parlor had already been completely, hermetically surrounded by the most lethal killers in the McLaughlin syndicate.
Vincenzo, the scarred Underboss, had not attacked the sheriff's office first. He knew exactly where the true prize was hiding. He had silently deployed his twenty capos in a tight, inescapable ring around the parlor saloon. They were positioned on the rooftops of the adjacent buildings, crouching behind the rain barrels in the back alley, and standing completely still on the wooden boardwalk right outside the front doors.
Inside the parlor, Vance, the lead bodyguard, stepped up to the heavy oak back door. He pressed his ear against the wood, listening for a moment. Hearing nothing but the distant gunfire, he nodded to his men.
"Alright, the alley sounds clear," Vance ordered, gripping his double barreled shotgun tightly. "We move fast. Keep the suits in the center. If anyone gets in our way, you shoot them to pieces. Open the door."
One of the bodyguards reached out, turned the brass handle, and threw the heavy back door open, stepping out into the foggy morning air of the alleyway.
He didn't even make it a single step.
CRACK!
A high velocity .30 caliber spitzer bullet, fired from a Vanguard rifle positioned on the roof of the general store across the alley, punched cleanly through the top of the bodyguard's bowler hat. The sheer kinetic force snapped his neck instantly, dropping his lifeless body backward into the parlor with a heavy, sickening thud.
"AMBUSH! GET BACK!" Vance roared, grabbing Sterling by the collar of his expensive suit and violently throwing the executive behind the thick mahogany bar for cover.
Before the remaining bodyguards could even raise their weapons to return fire, an absolute, blinding storm of gunfire erupted from every single direction. The trap had officially sprung, and the exchange of gunfire that followed was not a battle, it was a localized, industrialized execution.
The heavy glass windows at the front of the parlor suddenly shattered inward in a massive explosion of crystalline shards. Vincenzo and three of his capos kicked the swinging saloon doors off their hinges, stepping into the establishment with their weapons raised.
"Nobody leaves!" Vincenzo bellowed, leveling his M-1911 pistol and firing rapidly.
The bodyguards, to their credit, fought back with the desperate, cornered ferocity of highly trained professionals. They flipped over heavy oak poker tables, using the thick wood for cover, and began pumping their repeaters, sending a frantic volley of lead toward the front doors.
But their lever action rifles and standard revolvers were entirely, pathetically outmatched.
A capo stepped into the shattered window frame, hoisting the heavy, blued steel Sweeper submachine gun to his hip. He didn't aim at a specific man; he aimed at the entire left side of the room.
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT!
The deafening roar of the submachine gun drowned out the screams of the representatives of the rich executives. The interior of the luxurious parlor was systematically pulverized. The heavy crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling were chewed to pieces, raining sharp glass down onto the men below.
The expensive oil paintings on the walls were shredded into ribbons. The heavy oak poker tables the bodyguards were hiding behind were drilled with dozens of holes, the heavy .45 caliber hollow points completely ignoring the wood.
The bodyguards were gunned down with merciless, mechanical efficiency.
An veteran bounty hunter near the stairs tried to draw his dual revolvers, screaming in defiance. Vincenzo didn't even blink. He raised his Vanguard rifle to his shoulder, peered through the optical scope, and squeezed the trigger. The highlh velocity round hit the veteran dead in the center of his chest, throwing him violently through the wooden banister of the staircase.
Vance, the massive lead bodyguard, popped up from behind the mahogany bar, leveling his double barreled shotgun directly at Vincenzo's head.
But the capos were moving with Caleb's combat speed in mind. A mobster to Vincenzo's right instantly drew his gold inlaid M-1911 pistol, his hand a blur of motion.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Three heavy slugs slammed into Vance's reinforced leather vest. The sheer impact drove the massive bodyguard backward. He crashed heavily into the shelves of premium liquor behind the bar, sending hundreds of bottles of expensive whiskey, gin, and bourbon crashing down upon him in a torrential, glass filled rain. Vance slumped to the floor, his shotgun clattering uselessly against the brass footrail, completely neutralized.
In less than forty five seconds, the heavy, suffocating silence returned to the parlor. The air was incredibly thick with the gray, acrid smoke of burnt smokeless powder and the sharp, coppery scent of fresh blood.
The ten highly trained, incredibly expensive bodyguards lay dead or dying amongst the shattered wood and broken glass of the saloon. The Thorne-Marlin weapons had completely butchered them.
Behind the ruined mahogany bar, cowering in a puddle of spilled whiskey and shattered crystal, the representatives of the eastern backers trembled uncontrollably. Sterling had his arms wrapped tightly around his head, his bespoke suit completely soaked in liquor and covered in the blood of his fallen security chief.
The other representatives were sobbing quietly, their grand illusions of corporate supremacy entirely shattered by the brutal, visceral reality of the criminal underworld.
Heavy, slow footsteps crunched over the broken glass.
Sterling slowly, terrifyingly looked up.
Standing over him, looking down into the ruins of the bar with cold, dead eyes, was Vincenzo. The Italian Underboss slowly ejected the empty magazine from his M-1911, the metallic clack echoing loudly in the quiet room. He reached into his coat, pulled a fresh magazine, and slammed it into the grip with a sharp, definitive click. He pulled the slide back, chambering a fresh round.
Vincenzo didn't shoot them. Caleb had given strict orders to secure the intelligence.
"You rich and powerful boys thought you could play games in our city," Vincenzo growled, his voice a low, terrifying rumble as he pointed the barrel of his pistol directly at Sterling's forehead. "You thought you could pull the strings. But the Don of Saint Denis has cut your strings. Now, pick up your briefcases. You are coming with us, and you are going to tell the Don exactly who signed the checks."
The puppet masters had been captured. The town of Rhodes was completely locked down. And out at Caliga Hall, the true slaughter was only just beginning to escalate as Caleb Thorne set his sights on the plantation house.
Back on the sprawling, blood soaked grounds of Caliga Hall, the shootout continued with a ferocious, unrelenting intensity. The early morning fog had completely burned away, leaving the beautiful, meticulously manicured plantation exposed to the harsh, unforgiving light of the winter sun.
Caleb with his heavy leather duster snapping around his ankles in the freezing wind, led his men, the hardened boys of the Van der Linde gang, Sadie, and the elite Italian capos, in a slow, methodical, and utterly devastating march into the inner perimeter of the estate.
This was the heart of the Grays' power. The sprawling green lawns, the ornate stone fountains, and the perfectly trimmed hedge mazes were rapidly being transformed into a chaotic, localized warzone. The remaining ex Confederate mercenaries and the Grays' elite personal guards had fallen back to this inner ring, desperately preparing to make their final, bloody last stand.
They dragged heavy wooden planters, wrought iron benches, and marble statues across the pathways to create makeshift barricades, pointing their outdated repeating rifles and double barreled shotguns toward the advancing mobsters.
From the second-story windows of the massive, white pillared plantation house, Gray snipers were frantically knocking out the glass panes with the butts of their rifles, desperately trying to draw a bead on Caleb.
But Caleb Thorne did not give them a single, solitary second to breathe.
"Suppress the second floor!" Caleb roared over the deafening mechanical thunder of the battlefield.
He didn't just issue commands, he led by absolute, terrifying example. Caleb unslung the pristine, blued steel Vanguard bolt action rifle from his back. He fluidly dropped to one knee behind the shattered remains of a stone birdbath, raising the advanced optical scope to his eye.
He didn't even need to activate his Dead Eye skill for this. His natural, max level combat attributes guided his hands with robotic precision.
He found a sniper attempting to steady a rolling block rifle in the corner bedroom window.
CRACK!
The polygonal rifling of the Vanguard sent the high velocity spitzer round tearing across the lawn. The bullet punched cleanly through the wooden window frame and took the sniper squarely in the chest, throwing the man violently backward into the bedroom. Caleb worked the Mauser style bolt with blinding speed, the empty brass casing spinning into the dirt, and immediately chambered another round.
CRACK!
A second sniper in the adjoining window slumped over the sill, his rifle clattering uselessly to the porch roof below.
While Caleb kept the upper floors entirely pinned down with deadly, pinpoint accuracy, the rest of his squad pushed forward with apocalyptic violence.
Sadie and Arthur, having successfully flanked and cleared the curing barns, emerged from the tree line like heavily armed phantoms. Sadie let out a wild, adrenaline fueled shout, her Sweeper submachine gun roaring to life.
She swept the heavy barrel across a line of mercenaries hiding behind a hedgerow, the fifty round drum spitting a continuous stream of .45 caliber hollow points that shredded the thick bushes and the men hiding behind them into absolute ribbons. Arthur moved with the unstoppable, terrifying momentum of a freight train. He didn't bother taking cover. He walked straight down the gravel path, his gold inlaid M-1911 pistol barking with metronomic, deadly precision. Every time he pulled the trigger, a Gray guard fell.
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Name: Caleb Thorne
Age: 23
Body Attributes:
- Strength: 8/10
- Agility: 8/10
- Perception: 9/10
- Stamina: 8/10
- Charm: 8/10
- Luck: 9/10
Skills:
- Handgun (Lvl MAX)
- Rifle (Lvl MAX)
- Firearms Knowledge (Lvl MAX)
- Past Life Memory (Lvl MAX)
- Knife (Lvl MAX)
- Blunt Weapon (Lvl MAX)
- Sneaking (Lvl MAX)
- Horse Mastery (Lvl MAX)
- Poker (Lvl MAX)
- Hand to Hand Combat (Lvl MAX)
- Eagle Eye (Lvl MAX)
- Dead Eye (Lvl MAX)
- Bow (Lvl MAX)
- Pain Nullifier (Lvl MAX)
- Physical Regeneration (Lvl MAX)
- Crafting (Lvl MAX)
- Persuasion (Lvl MAX)
- Mental Fortitude (Lvl MAX)
- Cooking (Lvl MAX)
- Teaching (Lvl MAX)
- Trilingual Language Proficiency - G, I, & C (Lvl MAX)
- Inventory System (Permanent - 100x100x100)
- Acting (Lvl MAX)
- Alcohol Resistance (Lvl MAX)
- Treasure Hunter (Lvl MAX)
- Drugs Resistance (Lvl MAX)
- Business (Lvl MAX)
- Leadership (Lvl MAX)
Money: 2,772 dollars and 60 cents
Inventory: 283,392 dollars and 61 cents, 11 gold nuggets, 74 gold bars, 1 Double Action, 1 Schofield, 2 Colm's Schofields, 1 land deed (Parcel), 1 Mauser, 1 Semi Auto Pistol, 1 Lancaster Repeater, 1 Old Wood Jewelry Box, 1 F.F Mausoleum small brass key, 1 Ruby, 1 Braithwaites Land Deed, 1 Broken Pirate Sword, 1 Milton's Safety Deposit Key, Proof Of Marlin-Thorne Firearms Co., 10 Dynamites, 1 LeMat, 1 M1899, 1 Carcano, 1 Ownership deed of Doyle's Tavern, 3 Diamonds, & Important Documents & Deeds Of Cornwall
Bank: -