Disclaimer: Refer to chapter 1.
The purple and gold Oppressor began to circle around a warehouse awash in the same two colors, even a few fleur-de-lis hanging out of a few broken windows. Purple lights lit up the windows and more Saints than he could count loitered around outside and probably more waited inside. They checked their pieces, some just laid out in cars, leaned forward on bikes. It was a small army that was armed better than most. Crates were popped open and ransacked, SNG weapons put to good use in the hands of the Saints. It was almost normal.
Almost.
The Boss wasn't here anymore.
He wasn't drawing every single eye to him, he wasn't getting high, getting drunk off his ass, and he wasn't the guy with first dibs on all the cool shit. He wasn't here to do any of that anymore. He was gone. He was gone and everyone knew.
He didn't need to have the bird land to know what was happening out there, to know no one was partying, no one was drinking. No one was doing anything down there because the Boss wasn't here anymore.
No one was doing shit.
No one wanted to do shit.
It had set in finally. All of it. It had hit. The fun at the armory, what had kept it at bay until now, was gone and everybody knew, everybody had been hit with it by now. The Boss was gone. Everyone had to know what happened now, everyone knew he hadn't gotten to see the end of the day, killed by some red wearing French asshole.
Some soon to be dead French asshole.
A French asshole who was going to scream when he finally got his hands on him.
A French bitch who was soon going to wish his mother had thrown him out a window.
He was going to wish he had never gotten into crime when Johnny Gat finally got his hands on him.
Phillipe Loren was a dead man. He was going to die. And Johnny Gat was going to make sure he was going to die screaming. He was going to know exactly who he pissed off when Johnny was through with him, when he made him pay for everything he did on that plane. He was never going to forget the name Johnny Gat, never going to look at the color purple again, and he was going to regret the day he had been born. He was going to wish he had never heard of the Saints, never heard of Steelport, and never held a gun.
He was going to regret his entire life because it put him on Johnny Gat's hit list. He was going to regret becoming the number one priority to put in the ground.
But that could come later. It had to come later.
Right now, right here, he had to get out of the damn bird. It was still looking for a landing space, looking for somewhere that wasn't covered with Saints or rides or empty crates. It was circling and it gave him time to just sit. Just sit and watch everything out there.
It was time for him to sit and think about it. He could just sit and think about it all. He could think about that stupid stunt for some fucking nonsense he didn't even remember anymore. He could think about that idiot Josh Birk tripping the alarm and making everything go to hell. He could think about that plane.
He could think about what he should have done.
He could think about what he would do now.
But, most importantly, he could think about one thing above the others:
How he was the guy in charge now.
"Boss…looks like all eyes are on you." Shaundi laid a hand on his shoulder, squeezed it. She wasn't going to let him do this alone. The thought hadn't even crossed her mind. She had tried to stab some jackass with her heel when he told her she needed to take it easy when they finished patching her up on the bird, tried to tell her to sit out the next few days. She wouldn't leave his side. Not after what happened with the Boss, not after what happened when she left him.
She wasn't going to let him die on her too. No way in hell.
"Yeah…looks like it." He reached a hand up, grabbed hold of his always present shades. His hand wasn't shaking. Nothing really made him afraid anymore. Nothing really could pull that feat off. Not with all the crazy shit he had done, not after all the crazy shit he had been a part of since he started rolling with the Saints.
Since he had started rolling with the Boss.
He took them off, let his hand fall on his leg. This was all different. Somehow it was all the same but it was all different now too.
"Shit…" He didn't know what else to say. He ran a hand up to his hair, fucked with it to try and un-fuck the mess running through his head. It didn't work. He wasn't scared, he was Johnny Gat. He wasn't afraid of anything. He was a one man army, he could fucking make the Devil afraid of him, would whoop the Devil's ass when he finally died.
He didn't get scared. He got results.
Tell him to go take on twenty fools wearing the wrong colors in the wrong place? Got it.
Tell him to do that same shit with just a knife? Hell, it must be his birthday cuz' that's just fun.
Tell him to fight some ninja-wannabees? Didn't even have to ask, he was going to do it anyway.
Kill a bunch of cops too stupid to get the message that the Saints run Stillwater? Sign him up!
Take on some crazy paramilitary group that was trying to kill him and a bunch of his friends because a bunch of rich assholes hired them? That's the kind of stuff better than every Christmas he'd ever had.
But this shit was something else. This shit was really something else.
He wasn't a leader.
He never planned to be a leader. Yeah, he could lead a few guys easy enough. He had done that ever since he started wearing purple. He was Julius's go to guy for everything and he always had some tagalongs. He could even run the Saints, did it most days when the Boss was already high off his ass and not getting up to do it himself. But he wasn't a leader, not like this. He just killed people. He loved killing people. Fuck, the only thing he loved more than killing was doing it with his friends. That was just fucking straight brotherhood right there. But this? He wasn't the Boss. No one was like the Boss and that was what everyone out there was going to be looking for.
The Boss.
They were going to be looking for him and that wasn't Johnny Gat. He couldn't be the Boss.
The Boss was that crazy guy who was fucking terrifying, who made you want to just fucking do shit, the guy who made you just want to get the right colors on and get out on the street! The Boss made you want to scream "Fuck it!" and do whatever he said. He was the guy you just followed and never even fucking realized it. He was the Boss. There was no other way to talk about him. He wasn't anything but the Boss.
And some French bastard killed him.
Somebody killed the Boss and now he had to be the Boss.
He had to be THAT guy. He had to try and be the Boss like the Boss.
He couldn't do that shit. He wasn't the Boss, figured that out when the Boss ended up in a prison hospital after the cops fished him out the water when somebody tried to blow him up. Nobody was like the Boss. He sure as hell wasn't. He couldn't keep the Saints together, couldn't keep them from breaking off, couldn't stop them from fighting with each other for no damn reason. He couldn't keep the turf they won, that the Boss worked his ass off to take. He couldn't keep any of that shit when he was suddenly the guy in charge. He lost it and eventually got caught when he went after one of the assholes who needed to be put down for fucking with the Saints. He had ended up on death row, in a fucked up situation in every way, until the Boss came back.
And then he had done some crazy shit. The Boss brought the Saints back. He brought them back to the top, put them in charge of Stillwater. Not the police, not the Brotherhood, not the Sons, not the Ronin, and not Ultor. He put the Saints back at the top and he kept them there. He was the one who took down every fucker who got in his way, he was the one who made Stillwater his city. The Boss was the guy who brought him, Shaundi, hell, even Pierce together and turned them into the top three in the Saints. It was all the Boss.
And now he wasn't here.
He couldn't do it again.
He had to do it now.
He had to be the guy in charge, the guy everyone looked to for answers, for what to do. He had to be more than just the guy who went in shooting anything and everything. He couldn't just be some asskicking machine anymore. He had to be more than that.
And he wasn't that kind of guy. He couldn't be that guy because he was just awesome at killing. He wasn't awesome at being the guy who was in charge. He left that to Julius, left that to the Boss. He was their go to guy to get any kind of job done but he wasn't the leader. He never had to be the leader. He never thought he would be the leader. He always figured he would the guy at their shoulder.
He always figure he could just be Johnny Gat.
Until now.
All because the Boss was dead because he wasn't there to back him up on that plane.
Because he had left him, followed what he said and bailed when he got told to bail.
He had listened when he shouldn't have. He should've stayed. He shouldn't had left. But he did. He did what he thought he had to and now here he was.
He was the Boss because the Boss was gone.
All because of him.
"Fuck." It was all he could say. "This is some heavy shit…you know Shaundi?" He tried to laugh, tried to joke, tried to do anything but he couldn't. "This is some real heavy shit."
He felt fucking heavy.
He was the guy in charge of the Saints now. He had to do what the Boss had done for so long. He had to be the boss just like the Boss had been for so long.
"I've got to be him you know…I've got to be him…" He didn't know what else to tell her. He didn't know how to deal with this heavy fucking load that was just crushing him. He wasn't the Boss. He would never be the Boss because there was only one Boss. And now he had to be. He had to be the Boss and he couldn't fucking do it.
"Boss…No. Gat…you don't have to be like him."
Shaundi reached out, turned him to look at her, when she spoke up. He did and his shades were off for once. She was looking at him and it wasn't like with the Boss. She wasn't looking at him like she was trying to make him the Boss, she wasn't looking at him like everybody out there. She didn't want him to be the Boss.
"He wouldn't want that." She managed a smile. "He would kick your ass if he thought you were copying him. He always hated those posers that dressed like him, that said they wanted to be like him. Fuck, you should have heard him when he went off. He wouldn't want that kind of shit from you, from me, and nobody else in the Saints."
Somehow, hearing that, was what he needed.
"Yeah, he would hate that." He slid his shades back on.
The bird touched down.
He slid open the door.
All eyes were on him. He wasn't the guy on the side anymore. He wasn't just "Johnny" or "Gat" or "that psycho". He couldn't be like that anymore, not with where the Saints were at right now. He had to be the guy out in front, the guy everybody looked to. Fear, trust, loyalty. They had to look at him with that kind of stuff now. He couldn't just be the guy in shades off to the side. He had to be the guy in shades out in the front. He had to lead the Saints. He had to step up.
He was cool with it.
He didn't need to be the Boss. He didn't want to be like the Boss because he was Johnny motherfucking Gat. The Boss would definitely kick his ass if he ever tried to be like him anyway, kick his ass and make him wish he had never thought up such a stupid idea.
He stepped out the bird.
Pierce was waiting for him with his suit thrown around by the wind, the Oppressor's blades still spinning while Shaundi hopped off, straight up refused any help. She didn't need it and didn't want it. She was sticking with him anyway, wouldn't let anything get between them for a while.
"Gat. Shaundi" Pierce was shouting over the sound of the blades but it didn't change what was in his voice. "I heard what happened."
"Yeah." Johnny dropped his hands in his jacket while he and Shaundi walked forward and out of the wind. "We got a lot to talk about."
"Yeah, we do."
AN: To be honest, I don't know how well I handled Gat's whole inner turmoil about replacing the Boss. I figured I went in deep enough with how he saw the Boss, what's he's thinking, but never really know. Figured this was the best it was ever going to get.