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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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Caleb stared at him. His expression remained entirely blank, devoid of any mercy or forgiveness. He then nodded his head slowly, raising his right M1911 pistol and pointing the heavy, dark steel barrel directly at the center of the man's chest. "You have done great work," Caleb said to the man, his voice a cold, empty whisper that offered no salvation. "I said maybe."
Before the mercenary could even process the betrayal, Caleb squeezed the trigger.
BANG.
The heavy .45 caliber slug struck the man right in the heart, ending his pathetic, agonizing life in a fraction of a second. The mercenary's head fell back against the muddy cobblestones, his eyes glassing over, joining the rest of his slaughtered team in the dirt.
Caleb slowly lowered his smoking pistol. He hit the thumb safety with a soft click and holstered the weapon perfectly beneath his tailored, ruined suit jacket. He had exactly what he needed. The rest was just garbage to be swept away.
Right at this time, the shrill, frantic blowing of brass whistles cut through the thick fog.
The Saint Denis police force had finally arrived.
Dozens of heavily armed, blue uniformed officers sprinted around the corners of the brick warehouses, their service revolvers drawn and their batons gripped tightly in their sweating hands. They had heard the massive, terrifying eruption of rapid fire gunshots echoing across the docks and had rushed to the scene, expecting to find a massive, ongoing gang war between rival factions.
Instead, what they found brought them to a dead, horrified halt.
The police officers skidded to a stop on the slippery cobblestones, their eyes wide with absolute, unadulterated shock. They saw the heavily damaged, bullet riddled luxury carriage resting against the shipping crates. And then, they saw the bodies.
Six heavily armed mercenaries were scattered across the alleyway and the street, lying in pools of expanding blood, completely and utterly decimated.
And standing completely alone in the absolute center of the street, surrounded by a glittering carpet of empty brass casings and the settling gun smoke, was Don McLaughlin.
Seeing Caleb standing there, perfectly calm despite his ruined charcoal suit being splattered with mud and blood, the police officers visibly trembled. They slowly lowered their revolvers, aiming them strictly at the ground. They swallowed their saliva hard, the audible gulps echoing in the eerie silence of the docks.
They were looking at a ghost. A monster of the American frontier made flesh. They were thinking to themselves, exactly who in the absolute hell had the sheer, suicidal audacity to do this?
Who draws weapons to do this to the Don, a man who was not only the billionaire ruler of their city's underworld, but who was also formerly known as the absolute best bounty hunter and the most terrifyingly lethal gunslinger to ever step foot in Saint Denis?
The sheer body count, six professional killers wiped out by one man armed only with handguns in a matter of seconds, was a horrific, undeniable testament to the rumors surrounding the former bounty hunter and now the Don of his supernatural lethality.
The ranking officer on the scene, a seasoned police captain with a greying mustache, nervously holstered his revolver and cautiously stepped forward. He took off his police cap, approaching the mob boss with the utmost, terrified respect.
"Mr. McLaughlin! Sir!" the police captain called out, his voice shaking slightly as he looked at the carnage. He stopped a respectful distance away, asking Caleb if he was okay. "Are... are you injured, sir? We heard the shots from the precinct! We came as fast as we could!"
Caleb pulled a crisp, white silk handkerchief from his breast pocket. He casually wiped a small speck of blood from his cheek, his sharp blue eyes sweeping over the nervous police officers.
Caleb nodded his head, his demeanor shifting back into the cold, untouchable corporate authority of the Don. He was completely unharmed, and he needed the city's law enforcement to handle the cleanup so he could focus on the impending war.
"I am perfectly fine, Captain," Caleb said smoothly, his rich voice echoing in the alleyway. He gestured casually with his blood stained handkerchief toward the six dead mercenaries littered across the mud. "But as you can see, I was interrupted. I would appreciate it if your men would take out these pieces of trash that are currently dirtying the scenery of my city. Bag them up, throw them in an unmarked wagon, and dump them in the river. I do not want their faces in the morgue, and I do not want this in the newspapers."
The police captain nodded frantically, entirely willing to bypass every single standard legal procedure in the book to appease the man who paid their precinct bonuses. "Of course, Don McLaughlin! Consider it done! We will have this entire street scrubbed clean within the hour! No reports will be filed!"
"Excellent," Caleb replied. He then stepped closer to the police captain, his height and sheer physical presence forcing the older man to look up at him. "And you will also personally deliver a message for me. You will go directly to the Chief of Police, Leclerc."
Caleb locked eyes with the trembling captain, delivering a stern, uncompromising warning to the city's highest legal authority.
"You will say to Chief Leclerc that he had better keep the security of this city extra tight starting tonight," Caleb ordered, his tone dark and heavy with impending violence. "Tell him that some pesky, arrogant outsiders from the south have come in to create some trouble. They have stepped far out of their jurisdiction. And if the Saint Denis police force cannot keep the borders of my city secure... then I will deploy my own men to do it for him. And it will be incredibly bloody."
Hearing that veiled, terrifying threat, the police officers standing nearby swallowed hard again. The police captain nodded his head rapidly, while beads of nervous, cold sweat poured down from his forehead.
"I will tell him, sir! Word for word! We will double the patrols at the rail yards and the southern bridges immediately!" the captain promised, his voice cracking slightly.
With the municipal cleanup secured, Caleb turned his attention back to his ruined carriage. He walked over to the side of the vehicle, his expression softening just a fraction as he looked down at the muddy, lifeless body of his driver.
The man had been a loyal employee of the family, a hardworking father who simply drove the carriage to put food on his table. He had died because someone had tried to kill the Don.
Caleb possessed a ruthless mafia code, but he fiercely protected those who served him.
He looked back at the police captain, his voice dropping the threatening edge, replaced by a solemn, deeply respectful mandate.
"And Captain," Caleb then also ordered them, pointing to his fallen employee. "You will carefully take the body of my driver. You will ensure that he is handled with the absolute utmost respect. No rough handling. Take him directly to the finest undertaker in the French Quarter."
Caleb reached into his pocket, confirming the financial reality of his protection. "I will have the family wire a significant amount of money to the undertaker this afternoon to be given for a proper, high class funeral. He will be buried with honor. And as for his family... the mafia will take care of their livelihood. His widow and children will never want for a single thing for the rest of their natural lives. Am I explicitly understood?"
"Yes, Mr. McLaughlin. Handled with absolute respect. We will carry him ourselves," the captain swore, motioning for several of his officers to gently lift the fallen driver from the mud.
After that grim duty was handled, Caleb adjusted his ruined overcoat. He had no carriage, and he was covered in the muck of the docks, but he had a war to plan. He turned his back on the carnage and went to leave the docks entirely on foot.
He walked back toward the wealthy, pristine streets of the political district, heading steadily toward the Mayor's mansion where Mary-Beth and the girls were still enjoying their afternoon tea.
As Caleb walked, his heavy leather shoes striking the cobblestones, the sheer, terrifying efficiency of 19th century word of mouth communication exploded across Saint Denis.
The shootout in the docks did not stay a secret for long. Despite the police scrubbing the scene, the terrified dockworkers and civilians who had witnessed the massacre scattered into the saloons, the telegraph offices, and the markets. The news of the attack spread at an incredibly fast rate to the entire city.
Within thirty minutes, the whisper had morphed into a roaring tidal wave of urban panic and awe.
"The Don was attacked! Six hired guns ambushed his carriage down by the eastern docks!"
"Is he dead? Did they kill him?"
"Kill him?! Are you mad? He walked out into the open and slaughtered the lot of them with those new gold pistols! He didn't even take a scratch! The man is a demon! He is untouchable!"
The criminal underworld held its collective breath. The rival gangs that still operated in the shadows realized that if six professional mercenaries couldn't put a scratch on Caleb Thorne in a surprise ambush, then absolutely no one could. His legend grew exponentially, cementing him not just as a mob boss, but as an invincible warlord.
Unbothered by the whispers and the shocked stares of the wealthy citizens as he crossed into the Garden District, Caleb maintained a steady, purposeful stride. His suit was ruined, his hands were stained with gunpowder and blood, but his mind was crystal clear.
Finally, after walking for several miles, Caleb arrived at the sprawling, heavily guarded estate of the Mayor's mansion on foot.
As he turned the corner and walked up toward the grand circular driveway, Caleb was met with a sight that brought a dark, fiercely proud smile to his face. The intelligence network and the rapid response time of his syndicate were absolutely flawless.
He didn't have to wait for the tea party to end in a vulnerable state.
Waiting for him at the base of the Mayor's marble steps was a heavily armed, terrifyingly lethal extraction team. He found Arthur, Vincenzo, and Silvio already there.
They had received the urgent reports of the dockyard ambush within minutes of the gunshots, and they had mobilized the family's absolute highest tier of security.
Standing behind the three massive lieutenants were a dozen of the most elite, heavily scarred Italian capos, their hands resting menacingly on the grips of their hidden Sweeper submachine guns.
They had brought a brand new, massive, and heavily armored black lacquered carriage to safely transport the Don and the women back to the estate. And ensuring absolute security, the driver sitting on the elevated bench holding the reins was not a civilian employee, it was also one of the most trusted, battle hardened capos in the family, his eyes scanning the streets with lethal intent.
Arthur Morgan stepped forward as Caleb approached, the big enforcer's green eyes sweeping over Caleb's ruined suit and the blood splattered on his shoes. Arthur's jaw was tight with barely contained fury at the fact that someone had dared to strike at his brother.
"Caleb," Arthur rumbled, his voice low and dangerous as he stepped up to him. "Antonio sent a runner s weak of us around the city. We heard about the docks. Are you hit?"
"Not a scratch on me, Arthur," Caleb replied calmly, walking up to the group and patting his brother reassuringly on the shoulder.
Vincenzo, the scarred Underboss, looked absolutely livid. His dark Italian eyes burned with a fiery, unadulterated rage. "Who did this, Don McLaughlin? Tell me who paid for this insult, and I will have my men burn their homes to the ground by nightfall!"
Silvio racked the heavy action of his Auto 5 shotgun, a silent, terrifying agreement to Vincenzo's promise of violence.
Caleb looked at his three most trusted commanders. The loyalty radiating from them was absolute. He knew that the Gray family had just awoken a sleeping giant, and they were entirely unprepared for the sheer, industrial scale violence that was about to descend upon their dusty tobacco fields.
"Hold your fire, Vincenzo," Caleb commanded, his voice cold, calculated, and ringing with absolute authority. He adjusted his ruined jacket, his piercing blue eyes locking onto his lieutenants. "The men who pulled the triggers are already dead in the mud. But the men who paid them are sitting down south in Rhodes. Tavish and Leigh Gray."
Arthur's brow furrowed in sheer confusion. "The Grays? Those arrogant tobacco farmers? They don't have the stomach to pull a hit on a mob boss in the middle of a city."
"Exactly, Arthur. Which means someone with real capital and real tactical knowledge is holding their leash," Caleb stated, a dark, incredibly powerful smirk crossing his face. The anticipation of a new war thrilled him. "When Mary-Beth and the girls are finished with their tea, we are going back to the mansion. We are going to lock this city down. And then, gentlemen... we are going to plan a hunting trip to Rhodes. It is time we officially expand our empire to the west."
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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: -