Slate
Member
The room around him was a war zone. Bodies laid out across the floor, some with obvious knife wounds, some broken and battered. None of them, moving. It had been an absolute massacre. It was rare that Obsidian felt he had to make a point like this, but some of the upper gangs in Pittsburgh had been putting up too much of a fight. They’d been resisting just a bit harder than he would have liked. Honestly, with the kind of reputation that Slate had, and he himself had, you would have thought it would be common sense to just hand over the keys to the kingdom, so to speak.
But no. They had to be a problem.
Obsidian nudged one of the bodies in front of him with his foot. Eight men in total, one woman. All dead. The Downtown, the North side, the East side– they’d all had a choice. They’d all been given a chance to save themselves.
Maybe now that the gang leaders were all dead, brutally murdered in front of the two heads who remained, the rest would fall in line. With their lieutenants to report back, maybe this would send the message he wanted. Obsidian looked up from the body of the man in front of him to where the others were held at gunpoint, kneeling, with their hands on their heads. He found it distasteful, all things considered. Killing people was beneath Slate. But sometimes, you had to do what you had to do.
The rest of the Pack lined the walls, and Lapis and Hematite held the guns that pointed at the rest of the men. The men were shaking, and one had even started to cry. It was understandable, given how quickly and violently they had taken out all of the men, who had outnumbered them. This was just more evidence to support Obsidian’s belief that metahumans were simply better than regular humans.
They were the next step in the evolution chain. They were the future. And it was time the world started acting like it.
He stepped forward and crouched down in front of the men, his long coat dipping into the blood that was pooling across the ground. He smiled, long and slow, at the remaining men. His face was mostly hidden in his shadows, but he let just enough clear away so that they could see the white flash of his teeth. He breathed in deep, feeling the buzzing beneath his skin of the energy he had stolen from the others.
“Now then. Does anyone else want to get smart with me, or do you all want to return home to your families and friends tonight?” The one who had started crying began to cry harder, while the others all shook their heads. “Good. Glad we’ve come to an understanding now. I’ll see all of you bright and early tomorrow for negotiations, won’t I?”
A lot of nodding ensued as Obsidian stretched lazily and rose to his feet. He kept the smile on his face as he chuckled, the sound higher than you would have expected from a man like him. His voice was soft when he spoke again, and full of good humor.
“Good! I’m glad to hear it. Now, go.” No one moved, even as the guns were casually tucked away. “Didn’t you hear me? GO!”
His voice echoed through the room as he shouted, turning on his heels to point toward the door as he did. The men who had been kneeling all scrambled to their feet, some slipping in the blood of their previous friends. Obsidian laughed, the sound happy and light, completely at odds with the situation at hand. He couldn’t help it.
It was just too good to be king.