I was about to kill the hero, as usual. He was bleeding out, his bones were all broken, and there was no way he could beat me. But, as always, that son of a bitch didn't take the hint and got back up. He must have been yapping about who knows what about protecting his friends, stopping me, not allowing me to take another victim. And, as always, he unleashed the greatest power I'd ever felt. A golden aura covered him and healed all his wounds too.
The power of friendship in all its glory.
But for the first time he was so desperate he attacked me first. He ran towards me as fast as he could, and with just one punch I beat that motherfucker's ass and almost killed him again.
So much power of friendship and it didn't do shit for him.
Ha. What an idiot.
Did you think I couldn't make a friend? Did you think I couldn't use the power of friendship too?
But a lot of things happened before that, so let's start from the beginning:
I was about to kill the hero, as usual. He was bleeding out, his bones were all broken, and there was no way he could beat me. But that asshole got back up and said all that shit about protecting his friends and unleashed the power of friendship.
"Why didn't I kill him before that?", you ask. Well, at that moment I was wearing the legendary XyzqvqzyX armor set, and I've never had that much power. Almost killing the hero was just too easy, and according to the prophecies, there shouldn't be anyone more powerful than me.
But that was a fucking lie 'cause I, as always, attacked the hero first, I threw my most powerful spells at him and tried to hit him as many times as I could, but all he did was create this bubble-shaped shields to protect himself. He deflected all my spells and stopped all my blows like they were nothing. I yelled at him:
"Fight, you asshole."
Or:
"You think you better than me, you son of the bitch?"
But that piece of shit didn't even bother to answer me, as if I was nobody.
And that's why I gathered all my power to cast a spell so powerful it could destroy an entire city, but, as I was about to cast it, that son of a bitch trapped me in one of his bubbles. The spell hit it, and it exploded.
When I woke up, I was handcuffed in the back of a police car and wearing a Bephelometh collar. This collar is a real pain in the ass 'cause it doesn't let you use magic, like if you didn't have any, like if you were just another magicless idiot. So, I yelled, cursed, punched and kicked the bars protecting the police officers in the front seats until I grew tired and lost my voice.
Then I started to think. Why was it always like this? I was stronger than that fucking hero, but he was always spouting his bullshit about friendship and then kicking my ass. The full XyzqvqzyX armor set, while its individual parts weren't supposed to give you that much power, should have made me the most powerful guy in the world, but still I couldn't beat him.
In this world, magic is fueled by your emotions. The more intense they are, the more powerful the magic. So that desire to protect his friends must have been stronger than even my armor.
Does that mean the power of friendship is the strongest power of them all? That sounded like bullshit at the time, but if the hero could always defeat me with that, then making friends was the way to go.
The cops then stopped in front of Saint Money State Prison. They took me to a room with pistols, machine guns, grenades, rocket launchers, and who knows what else piled up on the floor. They put me in the middle of all that, surrounded by cops and soldiers, and took some pictures. I'd never seen those weapons, but photos like that look great on newspapers' front pages, even if they're fabricated, and with them the government can make it seem like they're actually doing something for their people and not just stealing their tax money.
After that, the cops took me to a room with twenty other guys they'd arrested that day. As always, they took all of us to a place where they took our mugshots—mine said 07156431 – Miguel Ramírez "Dark." Then they stripped them, inspected even their cavities, and hosed them with cold water while mocking them. Protocol. But while they were hosing down one of them, he looked at me and asked the cops:
"Why you don't do anything to him?"
Yep, they didn't strip me down or inspected my ass or anything. I wasn't wearing my armor anymore, but they didn't take away my black clothes, my eye patch, my gloves, my skull necklace. They even gave me a whiskey on the rocks, like they always did. And that's 'cause I paid them a $10,000 fee each month for the VIP treatment.
The cops, after beating the shit out of that guy for speaking without permission, told him that they inspected everyone else 'cause they might be armed.
"He might too", said that idiot.
The officers turned towards me.
"Are you armed, boss?" one of them asked me.
"Nope," I didn't lie.
He then pulled out his gun and gave it to me.
"Here—prison is a very dangerous place."
I looked at the gun, took the safety off.
And shot that asshole who was just asking questions right in the fucking face. That idiot collapsed on the floor and finally shut the fuck up.
"Self-defense. We all saw it," one of the cops said, and the others carried the body away to dump it who knows where.
I then gave that cop his gun back. I don't need guns.
"Hey, can you take this shit off me?" I asked, grabbing that Bephelometh's collar on my neck, and they took it off me.
But anyway, from then on, they gave the others those shitty prison clothes and took all of us to our cells. Obviously, mine was the VIP one, the largest of them all. In fact, calling it a cell is just a formality bc it actually had a big guarded door instead of a bunch of private-violating cell bars. Inside there were several rooms, a kitchen, a dance floor, a game room, and even a fully-equipped armory. When I walked in, thirty of my men were already there. I barely remembered any of them. I'm sure most of them had just been recruited. They all had skull tattoos or necklaces to represent our gang, Death. And there was also food, drinks, waiters, a bunch of hoes, and a live band playing. The usual stuff.
When my men saw me, they came to greet me. They also smelled like booze and sex.
"Welcome, boss. Come in. Can I get you anything?" They were all saying shit like that. No one even thought to tease me with that hero-kicked-your-ass-for-the-umpteenth-time shit. And I wish someone had the balls to do it, just to teach them a lesson.
Anyway, since I had all of them so close, I asked them:
"You're my friends, right?"
And at that very moment they all played dumb.
"Yeah, sure, boss. Whatever you need, just tell us," one of them said a little too late.
"I don't know what they told you out there, boss," another said after that. "But we'll be loyal to you until death."
Until death? You sure?
"Well," I told them. "You're my friends, and you always risk your lives for me, right?"
"Yes, boss. We'll never betray you," said someone.
"Well, that's good, 'cause I want you to kill each other right now. For me. Whoever wins will be my right-hand man", my plan here was pretty simple: the hero always unleashed the power of friendship when he was about to die. If any of my men, who were fighting for me, unleashed that power too, that means they were my friends. I needed friends for that power of friendship shit.
And if they didn't unleash it, well, they could just die, for all I cared.
As expected, they didn't know how to react to what I said, so I grabbed the nearest-idiot's skull and slammed it against the wall once, twice, three times, ten times until all I could see was blood and flesh where his face should be. I dropped that bastard and said to the others:
"Here's the deal: either you kill each other, or I'll kill you all."
And as soon as one pulled out his gun, all hell broke loose. Gunshots and beatings everywhere. Someone was choking some other guy here, someone was jabbing their thumbs into another guy's eyes there. The waiters, hoes, and the live band hid behind walls and furniture.
A good ol' fight, one of those that you can't look away.
More than a couple bullets came towards me, but I only needed to create a shield to protect myself. Maybe those were stray bullets, or maybe someone was actually trying to kill me. Either way, they couldn't even hurt me if they tried.
But the funniest thing of all was that no one outside heard a thing. The cell was right above the storage room, where all the inmates' belongings were kept. Cops were always there, but no one ever came to calm things down or to see what was going on.
My men were dying one after the other, and none of them unleashed even a bit of power of friendship. I let them kill each other for another bit, but nothing changed.
What a fucking disappointment.
"Stop it!" I shouted and released some of my power. The few who were still alive stopped killing each other and just stared at me, trembling with fear. Of all thirty, only about eight men were left, but it wasn't that hard to recruit more, especially in a prison.
Yes, I could have let them all kill each other, but I still needed some cannon fodder, you know.
Besides, probably a couple of moles and traitors died in that fight, so that was a plus.