Falling Off the Deck
Author's note: Hello. It's been quite a bit since I last updated this. I didn't forget about it, lose touch, or anything like that. I have been mostly focused on other stories, like my "Dead to Rights" story for instance. I also have been trying to find a way to set up this angle.
Days had passed, nearly a week at that. After taking down Matt Miller in the virtual world, the Deckers had been less of a threat to the Saints, enough that they wanted to shift their focus on STAG, and maybe the rest of the Syndicate, particularly Killbane and his Luchadores, as well as Phillipe Loren and any Morningstar members he had left.
But to Vince Shane, the leader of the Saints, something just felt missing. He knew that the Deckers were not done completely. But to him, at least Matt kept on his word in having the Saints buy off Friendly Fire as an asset in exchange for his life. Suddenly, ammunition and weapon upgrades were much cheaper than ever before.
Vince had taken off with Shaundi, Johnny, and Pierce to Smiling Jack's to have themselves something to munch on. They all dressed casually as it was just a simple breakfast that they went to have. Usually those diners will serve a rather large portion, so they were willing to save some of the food for later as they didn't want to be overly stuffed for the rest of the day. Also, being that they were the main members who had been there since the Saints had been resurrected three years prior, it would only be rational for the main four to discuss things. They all sat in a booth waiting for the server to bring them boxes to put the rest of their meals in.
"So what do you think we should do next?" Shaundi said. "I mean the Deckers should be done if you had taken on their leader in cyberspace. They're gone, aren't they?"
"If only it were that simple," Vince said. "Back in Stilwater shit was easy because we took on all the gangs and it mattered if we just killed some members or did stuff to fuck with them a bit and a district they owned, we just took it like that. But Kinzie had filled me on some stuff."
"Like what?" Shaundi said.
"Well, Pierce and I mostly took some of the Syndicate's businesses and stuff," Vince said. "Johnny and I went to look for any of the areas where the Syndicate's gangs be patrolling. However, lately shit hasn't been so easy with STAG getting involved."
Johnny sighed. "I can't wait to fuck up those STAG assholes some more. I know I love me some killing, but they be using some of those laser guns and shit."
"Well, we got to find a way to way to lure them to us," Pierce said. "Besides, they haven't found us yet."
"Well, they couldn't have given up if they know that we still have Birk, right?" Johnny said. "That way I could go out there and blast their fucking jets out of the air."
Shaundi sighed in annoyance. "Don't remind me that we still have that guy. He's been trying to join me in the hot tub a few times and also in the pool when I would have the water heated. I've even seen him try to get at Viola and Kiki."
"Come on, he's our bait to them," Vince said. "Besides, if it's been a few weeks since we took him, then either STAG doesn't give a shit, or they haven't given up. Either way, he really made himself at home at our crib."
Vince paused for a bit. "On top of that, if STAG doesn't give a fuck, then why did they come after me, Johnny, and the twins?"
"Speaking of which," Shaundi said. "I'm still not sure about those two being with us."
"Now why are you just telling me this?" Vince said.
"Well, they worked for their asshole, Loren," Shaundi said. "We all thought they killed Johnny at first. Then they came to us for help? I still don't trust them."
"You got to remember this, Shaundi," Johnny said. "They helped free me and they also fed me while they held me hostage. They're not so bad. Besides, I'm still here, remember?"
"Look, they're on our side," Vince said. "They came to us and they have a lot of knowledge about the Syndicate. Sure, we may have Kinzie, Zimos, and Angel, but these ladies worked with them. We're all in this together."
"So what should we do?" Shaundi said.
"I know we'll figure out something," Vince said. "Besides, Derek had called me a few days ago and talked about 'some guys in gray armor walked by our old crib' lately. He said they've been him a weird feeling."
"Well, maybe we can go to the apartment and trap them there," Shaundi said.
Vince replied, "Look, I may kill people, but I'm not about to let some guys that look like they're straight out of a fucking first-person shooter game that involves shooting aliens go and try to shoot up the place, especially with businesses right there and cause some collateral damage. I mean, seriously, that day when STAG first arrived in Steelport, they clearly didn't give a shit about collateral damage or even property damage."
"I hear you, Boss," Pierce said. "But we will get our shit straightened with them soon."
Suddenly, a waiter came by with four boxes so that the four Saints can put their leftovers in. "Okay, here are your boxes, and here's your card." The server handed Vince his credit card.
"Here," Vince got out about $10 and handed it to the waiter. "Here's your tip."
"Thanks," the waiter said.
The quartet of Saints left the diner. Vince had his purple Criminal parked outside.
"We'll discuss more about this soon," Vince said as he put the boxes in the front as Johnny was about to ride shotgun, while Shaundi and Pierce would sit in the backseat.
But from a distance, two ladies in neon blue, black, and pink outfits skated up and went to a stop. The two ladies had a gothic look about them and had shock hammers strapped to their backs. They were none other than Kirsten and Grace, the current leaders of the Deckers, as they had assumed full control since Matt Miller's departure. In fact, they mainly had control in the combat department, while Matt handled matters in the cyber world.
"There they are," Grace said. "Let's do this."
"I'm with you on that," Kirsten said. "If Matt couldn't take out the Saints leader in cyberspace, we can take him out in the real world."
"Should we call for backup?" Grace said.
"More should come, but this will be quick and easy," Kirsten said.
The truck was parked facing north, as it was close to the front entrance right at the corner and adjacent to the brick wall with a payphone right there. Kirsten was closest to the wall. She quickly started skating faster than before, as did Grace, who was on the street. Shaundi stood close to the wall, ready to get into the truck, quickly looked to her right.
"Um, Vince?" Shaundi said.
As the sounds of skate wheels became clearer, the other three Saints looked up and saw the two heads of the Deckers coming closer. Grace quickly drew two D4TH Blossoms as she started to slow down a bit, while Kirsten jumped and grinded sideways on the brick wall and front flipped as she picked up her shock hammer.
"Oh, fuck all of us," Vince said. "FUCKING RUN AND DUCK!"
The four Saints ran and spread out across the street. Kirsten skated closer while she was in the middle of the road as the four Saints hid behind some parked cars. Kirsten had her shock hammer drawn and jumped up high into the air and spun around a bit before smashing the hammer right to the ground.
BAM! A massive shockwave came right towards the parked cars. The eyes on all four Saints widened, even one could tell through Johnny and Vince's shades that they were wearing. A shockwave like that will likely to get those vehicles off the ground. Vince, Johnny, Pierce, and Shaundi all got up to run away quickly down the sidewalk. The shockwave managed to knock a Churchill that was parked there over, as well as a Cosmos. There was no question that they could have been crushed by the cars if the shockwave didn't hurt the Saints first. It didn't help that a light pole was knocked over, too.
"Shit, the guns are in the fucking truck!" Vince said.
"I'll go get them," Johnny said. "I could take them out when I get mine."
"Johnny, wait," Vince said. He followed Johnny to the Criminal that was still in one piece, much to the surprise of all four Saints.
Johnny and Vince ran as fast as they could to the truck while Pierce and Shaundi stood and kept watching the two Decker enforcers and ran from them. Both ladies fired their D4TH Blossoms out in the open. Pierce and Shaundi ducked for cover behind other parked cars in the vicinity. Some innocent pedestrians dropped from the gunfire and from the shockwaves of their shock hammers.
"Come on out, Saints!" Kirsten said.
"We're finishing what Matt started," Grace said.
Kirsten saw what looked like brown hair peeking out from the bottom of a window on the passenger side of a Hammer that was parked across the street on the other side of the intersection. Kirsten got out her D4TH Blossom, as she knew that one of the Saints was right there.
Shaundi sat there and heard some minor rolling sounds of skates. The skates rolled a bit slowly. Right then, she knew what was close by. Suddenly gunfire went off, but not right at her. She slowly peered above her. Pierce did the same as he hid behind a parked Keystone. Vince and Johnny had their AR-55 rifles packed and fired. But no matter how much they fired, the two ladies were two quick as neon blue flashes went off, causing the two ladies to boost a bit, making it look like they teleported, but they were quick to evade any gunshots.
"Shit, who the fuck are these girls?" Johnny said. "Some of these bullets would have taken them down already."
"Viola and Kiki were right," Vince said as he reloaded his gun. "These girls are the real deal."
"Shit, I ain't gonna give up," Johnny said. "Bullets still kill motherfuckers, right?"
"Damn right," Vince said.
Meanwhile, with the two lady enforcers/leaders having their focus mainly on Vince and Johnny, it was time to seize the opportunity. They quickly ran forth to the Criminal and went to the backseat to go through the special case that had their weapons behind the seats. Shaundi picked up a TEK Z10, while Pierce picked up an AS3 Ultimax shotgun.
If that wasn't bad enough, a blue and black Solar pulled up, as did a Kayak with the same color scheme. Some of the Decker mercenaries were called in. If anything at this point, the Deckers were likely mercenaries for the Syndicate, only they had the cyberpunk theme going.
Shaundi and Pierce hid behind walls of buildings and cars. They fired at anybody who tried to come out them. Several Saints soldiers came out and helped with any of the Deckers.
At this point, Vince and Johnny tried to fire any shots they could at Kirsten and Grace, but the bullets had a hard time landing. They were out of ammo. They could try to make a run to go grab some magazines from the truck, but the swiftness of these two ladies would likely be the death of these two men. They could just shoot them in the back, or worse, boost on their skates, give them an opening to use their shock hammers.
"You know," Kirsten said and put down her weapons, ranging from her two submachine guns and her shock hammer. Grace went and did the same thing. Both weapon removed the magazines from the weapons, as well as the bullets in the chamber.
"Shooting you would be too easy," Kirsten said. "I want to see what you two are made of."
Vince and Johnny looked at each other. While both men were adept at combat of any kind, these two ladies were unlike anything they had dealt with before coming to Steelport. Hell, Vince dealt with women like these two, but these two were something else. Even Vince figured that the DeWynter twins didn't exaggerate in the slightest bit. With these two ladies on inline skates, it would look a bit odd for them to fight on rollerblades, but they weren't about to go down without a fight.
Johnny rushed right towards Grace. He had his right hand fisted, ready to make a swing towards her, but Grace bent over backwards, like how a character did in a certain movie about dream world when bending over trying to evade being shot by bullets. Grace jumped up, despite wearing skates, and did a back-flip, bent over and kicked her feet to Johnny's shoulders, causing him to drop.
Vince had his hands full with Kirsten, who grabbed Vince by his shoulders and flipped backwards, kicking him right in the face, bumping it a bit with the wheels of her skates, knocking him backwards. Kirsten landed right on her wheels. She looked back at her partner. They both needed at each other. Vince and Johnny slowly got up to their feet, bruised and bloodied on their faces. Both ladies jumped up and spun around like corkscrews right towards them. After what they had just endured with both ladies today, nothing should surprise them anymore. But one thing that the ladies didn't count on was that both Saints quickly jumped and rolled out of their ways.
On the ground, Johnny saw Grace's D4TH Blossoms. Vince saw the same thing on his end. Both men used this opportunity to grab their weapons, only to be dumbfounded that they forgot that both weapons weren't loaded.
"Fuck!" Vince said.
"Did you really think I was going to leave the weapons loaded like that?" Kirsten said. She saw that Vince was still lying on the concrete face down. She raised her right foot and rubbed it on his back.
"AAAAUUURGGGHH!" Vince yelled as the wheels rolled on his back. The pain was only the beginning.
Meanwhile, Johnny tried to throw everything he knew towards Grace, but she was too fast for him.
"Who are you, lady?" Johnny said.
"Someone who trained really hard to be good at what she does," Grace said.
She jumped up, straddled Johnny's shoulders right in front of him and threw some punches right to her head. But Johnny thought ahead and grabbed a knife he had on him. He quickly punctured her right on her leg.
"AAAAGGGGHHH!" Grace yelled. But Johnny wasn't done, he quickly used that opportunity to powerbomb her right to the concrete. The knife had fallen to the ground; he immediately went to go pick it up to try to finish her off. Grace looked rather disoriented from the powerbomb. There was no way she was going to get up and continue fighting.
But suddenly, Johnny was grabbed. Kirsten was never down. She grabbed him and put him in a stranglehold. She didn't fully lock him in, though, as Johnny struggled to fight her off. Johnny still gripped the knife and quickly stabbed her in the leg like he did to Grace, and just like Grace, Kirsten screamed in pain. She let him go. Johnny was ready to finish her right then and there.
"Step aside, Johnny, she's mine." Johnny turned around and saw Vince holding one of the shock hammers.
Shaundi and Pierce looked towards Vince and Johnny. There weren't that many Deckers soldiers left. Shaundi and Pierce, along with some fellow Saints soldiers had taken them down as that particular street in Stanfield was filled with corpses and red concrete with blood draining on it.
Johnny ran away. Vince jumped up and spun in mid-air, as Kirsten sat on the concrete, as well as Grace lying there. It wasn't long until a shockwave emitted from the hammer when it hit the ground. Both Decker enforcers were sent flying towards the sidewalk next to Smiling Jack's. There was no way they were getting up from that. Vince took a deep breath and walked towards his three cohorts.
"Shit, Boss, are you okay?" Pierce said.
"I am now," Vince said.
"Who the fuck were those ladies?" Shaundi said. "Were they even human?"
"Fuck if I know," Vince said. "I know we had dealt with the Deckers' specialists before, but these were something else."
Right near the wall, Kirsten and Grace slowly started to move a bit, bordering on crawling. Kirsten put her hand out to try to help herself get up. Pierce looked over there and saw the two ladies barely being able to move.
"Fuck this shit," Pierce said, raising his K-8 Krukov ready to open fire to put those ladies out of their misery.
BANG! BANG! A chunk from the top of Kirsten head was blown off as the bricks were covered in her blood and brain matter. Whereas a chunk of Grace's chest was blown off as a massive hole was seen on her pink shirt with the skull. Blood and tissue were now covering the sidewalk and the bottom parts of the wall. On top of that, the shots seemed suppressed.
"What the fuck?" Pierce said.
"What, you didn't shoot them?" Vince said.
"No, those shots were from somewhere else," Pierce said.
Vince looked around. Could it have been that one sniper? If so, why wasn't that sniper targeting him or Johnny? No one knew, but it almost seemed like the Saints had a guardian angel, or could this sniper have an ulterior motive? Vince was still ready to figure out who that sniper was who could have had him killed that one day.
Until then, they all decided to go back to Sunset Park to the Saints HQ. They still needed to discuss some more matters about STAG. As of now, the Deckers were no more.
Right from above, Cypher looked through her McManus 2015 rifle as she was on top of a silo at a factory in Stanfield. She looked through the scope of her rifle and saw that a sniper in a STAG uniform looking through a scope. In fact, it looked like the sniper was aiming directly at the Saints.
"Not so fast, dickhead," Cypher said to herself and fired a shot right at the rooftop where that STAG sniper was, but not at the sniper himself, as she was able to tell that it was a man under the helmet.
"Get your own targets," Cypher said. "Those fuckers are mine."
Right after that, she got back on her hover-bike, which was called the "Ultor Interceptor" and ascended from the top of the silo and flew away. She still needed to find a way to take out her targets, but at the same time, she wondered if the challenge was worth it, or if those people were even worth killing at all. After all, she knew she sort of deceived her boss, Dexter Jackson about Vince Shane and Johnny Gat being dead. In all fairness, she thought she got them that one day.
Meanwhile, the STAG sniper, Sergeant Steiner was on the rooftop, also with a hover-bike of his own, except his was called the "Specter," got out his transceiver to contact his commander.
"Hello, Commander Temple, this Sgt. Steiner speaking," he said. "No, I couldn't find the Saints, but I'm still in Stanfield right now and I will try to look around. Some of our men had been looking around Brickston. Yes, sir, I will make sure we'll get them soon."
Sgt. Steiner got on the Specter and flew off. He still had an idea on how to get the leader of the Saints somehow, but at the same time, he wanted to challenge him to a duel. He had heard about this man and saw how proficient he was with weapons. It was time to see if he could take him down on his own.
Another note: And that was it for this one. I know I was on a hiatus for two months, but like I said, I got into one of my other stories and I had a hard time deciding on what I should do for this one as it was finally the battle with Kirsten and Grace. It was either do a part with them going to Planet Saints again, but that would be too much like chapter 36. So I thought having it be the main four going to grab some breakfast and then the two Decker enforcers finding them.
Regarding some references, I will level with you on that. I remember thinking that the STAG members looked too much like Master Chief from the Halo games with their armored suits. Of course, the part with Grace doing a certain move was a reference to The Matrix. Also, some of the moves that Kirsten and Grace did were similar to what the character of Eddie "Skate" Hunter did in the Streets of Rage games, which also happen to be among my all-time favorite games. Also, the part of Kirsten grinding on the wall was a reference to Jet Set Radio, which involves skating and graffiti.
Speaking of Streets of Rage, I had thought of doing a one-shot crossover of that with Saints Row as something to do with the versions of the Syndicate, as Streets of Rage has their own syndicate as the villain group. But I hadn't thought of it much. I plan for it to be a one-shot, or at most, two or three chapters.
Next up, the Saints take the fight to STAG. Stay tuned.