One Powerful Saint

"You're going to die here son, make no mistake about that... but if it makes it any easier on you, I'll be sure to thank you in my acceptance speech. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a party to attend."

Those were the last ever words that Vee aka Playa would have ever heard that night as he, the boat and Alderman Hughes all vanished in a bright light and a ball of fire when the boat they had met on was bombed. No one really knew what was the true reason for this was or who even did it, all people knew was that there were multiple people to point at and their Mayor in waiting was at the bottom of the sea along with the Right Hand Man for Julius of the Third Street Saints.

By the time that he woke up, Vee found himself surrounded by nothing but white and wearing what looked like a pure white tuxedo; "What is this?! Where the fuck am I?!" He yelled out as he tried to look for a landmark; A shop, a restaurant or anything that he could….But nothing. "Maybe my eyes are still sore from what happened back there but I can't see shi-"

"Been a while…Huh, Vee?" A feminine voice said to him from out of his field of vision.

Vee looked around as he recognised that voice, but with the circumstances that he last heard it was something sad, mournful and something that he'd rather not remember what it led to, he tried to dismiss it as a concussion but that all changed when he saw…Her. "L-Lin?"

The woman in front of him was clad in an all white version of her Rollerz Disguise though he could see the Third Street Saint's Fleur du Lis embroided on the right breast of her top. "Surprise…." She said with her usual cold expression, though seeing him here brought a sad smile onto her face; "I guess it just took a little longer for you to come join me…The Rollerz got you in the end too, I'm guessing?"

Vee shook his head as he finally calmed down enough to talk; "Nah, you should know by now that I'm too stubborn to get offed by some grey haired prick in a suit…" He remarked dryly as he sat up with Lin sitting in front of him, "I'm…I'm sorry I couldn't help more…If I had known how things would've gone down then I would've spoken up back then…."

Lin was surprised, Vee never actually talked all that much around her and even he spared few words for Julius or Johnny Gat, "Honestly? It was my fault that we got in that mess to begin with…Julius wanted results with the Rollerz and trying to get cosy with Donnie wasn't working like I thought it would, playing hero and making it look like I was saving their ass was gonna catch up on me when a crooked lawyer like Sharp starts seeing the cracks…" She elaborated and the guilt started spreading across her face. "But you seemed to have turned out better than I did, in any case."

"Yeah, speaking about that…Where the hell are we? All I see around me is white so if you're here and I'm here than we're in…Heaven, I guess?" Vee asked in confusion as he realised that besides him and Lin; there was practically nothing else around them.

"Actually…The place we're in is called the "Nowehr"…Somewhere that people like you and me go, where you ain't exactly good but you're not entirely bad either." Lin explained as she looked around; "The good part to all this is that we're not stuck in the nightmares and unending torment that the Downthehr is all about, however we can't get the basking in eternal light and bliss that the Upthehr promises…Kinda fitting for fucked up Saints like us….Well, me moreso."

"But I'm here too, what do you mean moreso you?" Vee asked her with a more dumbfounded look but then started to get nervous when he realised that his body was starting to look a little more see-through than it usually did.

"Because unlike me, you're not dead…Well, not entirely anyway; if you were dead then you'd be fully solid…" Lin pointed out and took his hand by the wrist gently and placed it on her chest where her heart would be. "Like this...I know it's selfish but I wish I had the chance to do this before…" She mentioned with a note of regret in her voice, the fact that since he fought tooth and nail through dozens of Rollerz to save her from Sharp had her develop a form of deeper respect for him and even a hint of something more…Though the circumstances into the afterlife made sure that this wasn't pursued.

Vee was a little surprised that Lin was taking this so casually about the talk of mortality, but he was also trying to not freak out at the fact that Lin didn't have a pulse….Then again, she was dead so why have one? "I…Okay, you are throwing a lot at me right now….I mean, Nowehr? Upthehr? are there any more things about the afterlife that I don't know about?!" Vee asked as he was literally questioning every single thing in his life.

"Well, there is a warehouse full of good shit for people who wanna redo life on their place or in somewhere else….Y'know…Stuff like magic cell phones or bottles of weird mystic powers….SecondLife, I think it was called….But I managed to sneak in and grab a goody." Lin said with a smirk as she reached into her pocket and pulled out an intricate looking orb that had glowing runes all over it; It was barely the size of Vee's palm and on looking closer, each "Rune" had an # followed by a number. "I didn't get a chance to read the full label but this thing is supposedly called an Engine…I think if you can take this back with you like those other people can, it might help you out."

"Hold up…Do you even know what it does?" Vee asked but before he could get an answer from her, the light around him started to dim and Lin's voice started to fade out, "W-Wait, wait! Lin!! The Hell am I supposed to do with this thing?!"

"Keep yourself safe…for me…"

"LIIIIIIIN!" Vee yelled out as everything started to fade out like a dimmer; the white skies faded into black and the sounds of the wind went with it. Even though it was for a short moment, Vee had some small relief that he could get those last few questions.

"Okay, I'm going to take off the bandages….now…." A new voice said as a new sound started to pick up; The sound of a heart rate monitor.

Vee suddenly felt like he had just been asleep in the most vivid of dreams as his body felt both incredibly heavy and tired out. His eyes opened up but then squint again as he was staring up at a bright light so he assumed that he was in a hospital.

"Well…I have to say, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of damage from the explosion…And even then it looks like the only lasting damage is that blast scar on his back." The Doctor would mention as he wrote down in a clipboard. "Though it's the darndest thing, most coma patients tend to suffer atrophy but it looks like his musculature hasn't diminished at all….Even after all this time."

"Let's get the Chief on the horn, he's gonna want to hear this…" One guard mentioned to the other as they headed for the door; "If you got anything you wanna say, you better start thinking about it because the judge's got a lot of questions for you."

"Keep an eye out for him, Doc…He may be a patient but he's still a Saint, those fuckers are slippery." The other guard warned as they both left to go contact Stilwater's Chief.

Vee felt his chest; thmp-thmp, thmp-thmp… "Well, I guess I'm back if I got my pulse…Though where'd that engine thing go? Maybe I just dreamed that part." He thought to himself as he checked his pockets but found that he was wearing a prison uniform. "Great…Just my luck…"

"Psst, hey!" A fourth voice said from behind a curtain, a new face peeked out as the curtain was pulled back to let Vee meet face to face with another inmate known as Carlos. "It's you right, you the guy?" He asked like a kid meeting his favourite football star.

"Sorry buddy, do I know you?" Vee asked in confusion since Carlos didn't exactly look familiar to him, barring the fact that he had been out for an inordinate amount of time.

"My brother was in the Saints with you, he told me all about you…He said you were a quiet guy but you seemed alright for a gangbanger." Carlos tried to elaborate and see if he could ring a bell but then focused as he remembered why he risked himself to get here. "Anyway, we gotta get you outta here. You heard those guards, you're going up to a judge now that you're out of that coma and I'm pretty sure they're gonna try finding a nice cushy chair to go alongside Johnny Gat since you're a Saint too."

Vee sat up as he propped his back against the wall; He was still aching from moving after a while but there was something else nagging at him, dozens of phrases managed to float through his head rather loudly and it was like hearing a mosquito right by your ear but you can't catch it.

Thine body and thine arms runneth over

Thine vigor persists unending

Thine purse will never bare

"You okay, man? You lookin' a little out of it." Carlos asked as he was still trying to recover from his own stab wound; "Look, if you're worried about it then don't sweat it, I've got a plan to get out of this."

"Well, I'm sure if we asked the guards nicely…" Vee replied sarcastically as he rested his head on his hands; "Besides, how do I know that this plan'll work?"

Carlos looked offended at that and gestured to his stomach; "Come on man, I got myself shanked to get the chance to talk to you…Surely that'd prove I'm loyal…Or at least sure."

Vee however wasn't exactly thinking in the same optimism as he gazed up at the ceiling; "Just proves that you're dumb enough to let yourself get stabbed…Besides, I got in this mess because I trusted someone."

"I'm trying to help you, besides you need me if you wanna get loose." Carlos pointed out as he argued his case. "you might be a badass but I don't think you got this alone fresh out of a coma."

"The hell I do! I still got the Saints watching my back." Vee snapped as he was getting annoyed with what looked like a kid out of nowhere trying to cling on him to escape.

"Sure you do…" Carlos responded with a flat and frosty sounding tone; "If you think that still then you're really out of it."

"The hell's that supposed to mean?"

"Dude, how long do you think you've been stuck here?" Carlos asked with genuine curiosity.

"I'unno, two…Maybe three weeks? It was kind of a blur…" Vee mentioned vaguely since adrenaline and meeting Lin again made it hard to track time. "But guys still fall down from a bullet or a fist right? Then I'm good."

"Look, I know you're a badass but do you even know where you're at? Without me around you'll just be wandering around the prison for hours." Carlos pointed out and sat up to face Vee with a serious look, "Even if you manage to hide from the guards that long or you kick their asses, AND if you actually figure out how to make it outside these walls you're just gonna find out that you're sitting on a goddamned island. And I'm pretty sure even you can't out swim the coast guard."

Vee thought on this, "Shit…He's right, but we can't just stay here until they take us out…" He then looked to Carlos after hesitating for a moment; "If you've come up with a plan for this then I'm assuming you have a boat to get us out of here, right?"

Carlos smirked; "Nope, but I know where we can steal one." He mentioned as he then rolled over to climb off of the bed with the intent on getting out when he noticed that Vee was starting to get on board.

"Then let's bust…I can wing it, no problem." Vee agreed as he then climbed off the bed and stretched himself out, that was when he paused in shock at seeing himself in a full length mirror used to help examine patients. Before the explosion; Vee had short black hair and was clean shaven but after five years of being stuck in a bed under a coma, now he had a thick mane of hair and a very coarse, unruly looking beard which made him look like a caveman with an attitude problem. "Holy shit…what happened?"

"That's what five years in a coma does to you, man." Carlos admitted as he heard a door creak open and ducked down behind one of the counters. "Down, now!" He yell whispered at Vee who did the same.

"Jeez…Can't even have lunch and a smoke break…This coma patient's got a real good sense of timing." The doctor overlooking them both came back in with an irritated scowl as he picked up the phone; "Yeah…Okay, I'll get a gurney ready to transport him out of here and into the next convoy out of here…This time tomorrow, that Saint's going to join Johnny Gat on the stand and in the Chair."

Vee grimaced at the idea but then looked to Carlos who had grabbed a nearby scalpel and waved it down. "Pass me that defib!" He mimed to his new escapee comrade as there was a defibrillator on top of the table that Carlos was crouched behind.

After grabbing it and sliding it across the linoleum floor, Carlos couldn't help but wonder what he had in mind as Vee started to open it up and adjust it's circuitry.

"Alright, Just pull this out…Up the voltage….And bingo." Vee smirked as he then placed the defib on his waistband and gripped the paddles before slowly creeping up on the doctor.

"Alright, Saint. Let's get you pre-Huh?" The Doctor announced as he pulled back the curtain to see that Vee was gone, but that wasn't the only shock he received as he felt something pressed on his back and a sudden burst of volts coursed through his body and made him seize up before collapsing in a twitching heap.

"Jesus, dude! You didn't have to kill the guy, he's a doctor!" Carlos yelled out in shock as he watched Vee get to his feet.

"Relax, I altered the voltage on the Defib so that it'd knock him out. Granted it'd be more effective if we had a taser so I had to get creative." Vee explained as he threw the now fubar'd defibrillator on the ground. "Downside is because I messed with it and changed the volt charge on it, the battery's fried so we should get moving now."

"Man, where'd you learn something like that?" Carlos asked as he walked along with Vee while stepping over the unconscious Doctor.

"I took shop in high school so I know about how to handle voltage but chop shopping in Stillwater helped with the fine tuning of assembly." Vee waved it off; "That doc was talking about a convoy getting ready so someone's bound to come check on him…You know if there's an armoury somewhere we can defend ourselves with?"

"Yeah, downstairs but that's gonna be defended something fierce…We're gonna need something to keep the guards off of us like a fire or an explosion…"

"Or a Prison Riot?" Vee asked with a smirk; "Show me where the main station is for the prison and we can get ourselves a good one."

"This guy's nuts…But then again, what did I expect from a Saint…" Carlos then nodded and opened up the door to peek outside into the hallway, carefully sneaking out and along the pathway from the hospital.

Along the way, Vee was able to knock out a few Guards to snag their pistols and a night stick each; "Here, take one…We can't walk around here bare fisted." He warned as he got to the main control room and started whacking other guards to knock them out, he may have been a Gangbanger but he was more focused on escaping.

"Alright, now we just need to get these guys out of their cells….Try that button there!" Carlos suggested as he noticed the Master Control switch while Vee was searching for a camera feed to the Armoury.

"Heh, you got it." Vee grinned as he then smacked the button to bring about the sounds of an alarm going off followed by the loud clanking of the cell doors opening up.

The guards weren't sure why and how but all they could realise was that every inmate in the prison was now going nuts and causing mass mayhem ranging from long sought fights, grudges and general anarchy.

"Alright, now the guards are distracted so let's get to the armoury." Carlos mentioned as he headed out the door; "We should probably hurry, once the guards get the control back then they'll be on our asses even faster."

"Way ahead of you." Vee agreed as he grabbed two pistols and rushed out to clear the path of guards who were coming to shut off the alarm. "Coming through, pigs!" By the time they got to the armoury, Vee managed to grab them a Tombstone shotgun and an AR-40 machine gun; "Here, it might not be much of an army but we'll pump anyone in our way full of lead."

"Great, let's head to the docks! With everyone distracted and focused on the riot, we should have a clear path to the boats." Carlos mentioned as they sprinted past and knocked out one of the doors to the docks. "We're almost there, we actually have a chance now!"

Waves rose high as the Stillwater Penitentiary was on high alert, the guards levelled their guns and opened fire as Vee and Carlos ducked behind cover and started shooting back. "Awesome! Don't get lax yet though, we still need to get a boat." Vee yelled over the crashing waves as he aimed a headshot on a guard.

"I see it ahead! We just need to push farther!" Carlos assured Vee as he vaulted over and threw a tear gas grenade to disperse the guards before shooting them down.

The two pushed their way up until they finally grabbed the one unmanned boat and used it to speed off away from the prison and towards the mainland, though that wasn't what was on Vee's mind at the moment as the shooting stopped. "Five years…It's really been that long?"

Carlos nodded sadly; "Yeah; After what happened in that boat explosion, Ultor stepped in to pick up the pieces after all the old gangs got dissolved."

This was a new one; "Ultor? I thought they were just a clothing company." Vee asked in confusion as he saw Ultor's new symbol on a skyscraper.

"They expanded into other shit like real estate, cell phones and all other big brand stuff like that." Carlos explained; "So when you look at Stillwater, see all the glass buildings and fancy places there? Thank Ultor for that…"

"I was wondering why it looked less shitty, still I can't believe it changed that much."

The boat finally stopped at a dock on the outskirts of the city; "Look, you want my advice since you've been out of the game? Lay low for a while, grab a beer and soak up what you can…If you need me then take this." Carlos explained as he handed Vee a slip of paper with his number; "You call me if you get the Saints rolling again."

Vee watched Carlos head off into the city and left him to process everything but with one thought in mind as he grabbed a motorbike and hotwired it to ride into the streets.

"Welcome to Stillwater, I guess…"