Two years in the stacks had not moved quite like Eddie, Vox and the other had thought. There were just so many people within the the buildings. Gangs everywhere. People far to broken to be able to stand up for themselves in nearly any capacity.
This left Eddie in a strange Capacity. He could reap and sow as many of these mafiosos as he wished. But it truly wouldnt begin to make any difference. Besides just lessening the burden of the people around him.
"This is honestly really boring Eddie…" Vox hunched over near Eddie. Invisible to everyone else as they were merely a soul tied to Eddies own.
"What have we done in the past two years?" they asked.
"Developed Armament Haki. Tapped into conduit. Refined my lowly observation. I already knew my Affinity was Observation and Augmentation." He sat on a metal barrel. Long loose wises hanging from the ceiling.
Strumming a small melody at his guitar. Idly tunning it slightly to bide his time. "We took down the Mercer Family. Got the Corleons down too." He said. His supernatural skull warping and flexing into a subtle smile.
"True…Ha…Each of those fights are pretty boring…" Hook said. Arms crossed as he is sat on the ground. "Each of the fights are boring. Especially when we can't really help you." He rolled his eyes.
"You help plenty. Hook handles channeling melee attacks. Vox is general elemental stuff. And riff handles the guitar." When they fought. The three sonorous had began imbuing themselves into the attack to help channel efficiency.
Appearing like an apparition during the attacks.
"Yeah Hook. Keep your ghost chin up." Riff snarked. Hanging upside down from an empty crate.
"Well I guess we can talk about some of the music you've been writing." Vox suggested.
"Hmmm Maybe. The most recent one was an Ode to Leroys birthday. Since I've missed the past two." The melody was light on the strings but had deep metal stings, a slight deep boomed bass to underscore the moments. Something Eddie had been told by Leroy himself.
"I was thinking a lighter motif. Some deeper stings. Something that would really get cap'n moving when he heard it even if it was just so bobbing and head movement." Eddie played out the first upper notes. Skeletal thumb down on the fretboard. Letting the metal, hair thin string singing like a metallic bird chirp.
"Oh! I like that one!" Riff said pointing. The four going back and forth as they continued to strum away. This was how the days in a singular desolate place like the stacks went. Wandering. Reaping. Watching. Looking over the people no matter their horrid and miserly conditions.
The people he passed. Slept under rags. Nestled up to a dank corners of rotting cement covered in murk and muck. Their eyes shallow. Cheeks hallow and deep with shadows. People tirelessly toiling away at construction for scraps like they were nothing but corpses as machines. More dead than the dead man among them.
"Eddie. What are you going to do for these people?" Vox asked. Draping themselves over eddies shoulders like one would if behind someone sitting down. Arms around his neck.
"I don't know…Theres enormous resources here. But all controlled by the Mafia…Theres people here, but this is the only place they have. They have nothing to move anywhere else even if I were to bring the entire thing down somehow…"
He came to a stop at the end of a hallway that dropped massively into a chasm of pitch blackness. An unused and underdeveloped part of the stacks many just deemed 'the void'. Where they came to dump their dead. Dump their shit. Dump their trash. And anything they wanted to be left forgotten…Forever…
A loose wind howled. Whistling through his clothes. Grazing against the side of his skull. Blazen blue eyes holding a sadness as they peered into the dark.
"Do you feel it, Eddie?" Riff said.
"Their gaze. Or it." He cocked a eye to behind him. Dozens of people were gathered around the other end of the Hall. Watching with a trepidation as someone. No…The Reaper. The Same Reaper that they had come to know as nothing but a apparition of legend amongst each other, stood at the precipice that many saw as a hallowed place many dared not go.
"Yes." Riff looked down. Vox behind Eddie. And Hook up.
"You asked what I wanted to do…What more I wanted to do…Why?" He slowly raised his bone hand out. Fingers limp.
"Its our job to question you, Eddie. We did it for over a decade. And now were apart of you till death do us part. Just because you know and planned this ahead of time. Doesn't mean you won't hear us make sure you got other things going on."
"Phew…." He closed his eyes. Bones morphing to seal shut like eye lids. His hand began to glow with the power of his fruit. Small faces of mouths and eyes that were beady and round. Like cartoon ghouls far to real to be a drawing. They leaked and dripped like viscous syrup from his body before forming amorphous globous arms.
A stream of these souls flowed like a water fall down through the pit. The pale sickly glow of the energy and Ectoplasm oozing, spreading and expanding. It took minutes that past in a blink before it reached the very down. That glow continuing to radiate.
And then–
Grow. More and more.
Colors started to expand and glow mixed from within. And Eddie could feel it, before the image fully came into view. It was the souls of all those that had died from during the construction. Died from starvation. The Gang members from the turf wars. All were being lifted from the depths in a massive tempest of swirling residual energy of the souls. They weren't full souls. But the small bit left in the material world. Emotions, feelings, 'thoughts' in the roughest form connected together.
"Grand Rend: Soul Slaying Tempest….!" He whispered and allowed the energy to spew upwards! Firing through the expanse and straight in through the darkness! The glow of ectoplasm showing the murk, dried ichor, and decaying rot of metal and infrastructure of the megastructure along the side! Only to slam through the top floor!
"Let them fester in the souls of those they abandoned on those top floors. And once they are in deep enough. It shall be I that delivers their final blow, and send them to the depths in Jones' Locket myself!"
Screams filled the stacks as the trash at the top floors, the mafia families, their henchmen, and those that sought to leave those below in nothing but squalor could hear the vague last moments and thoughts of those they'd tossed away.
Eddie had lived nearly two hundred years. Longer than almost any human in history before or since. He had all the time in the world to wait. Wait for them to either be smoked out by the tormentation, or wait until the moment was ripe to rend and rip their souls from their shriveled husks they called human bodies.
Eddie. Could Wait.
Murmurs spread quick through the stacks. Rumors. Whispers. Shallow voices from those that worked at the top of the stacks but lived on lower ends. Rumors of just what was happening on the top floors.
"The Reaper cursed them. Hexed them! I swear to Rubito, I heard Danny's voice! I think…I think all of the souls of the Lost are haunting them. The Reaper has roused their Memories to be a spectre."
But it was far more than just that. On the highest level of the Stacks. Where the rest of the Crime Families play their pawns in the War Game. Hundreds of Meters of the floor was covered with thousands of ghosts, spectres, ghouls, spirits and souls permeating through the walls, whispering, screaming, mass puppeteered and let loose by Eddie.
It'd already been a 3 months.
Constant wailing. Constant distress. Many of the men and Gangsters that occupied those top levels have already begun with their exodus to the lower level. But none of the Family Leaders.
"Have you seen him?" A street urchin asked.
"The Skeleton man?" Another said. Surrounded by a far more clean and…Warm surroundings? Without the constant turf wars, racketeering, and extortion. The people, despite what Eddie had thought, had done something. Even just slight improvement seems to have awoken something deep within at least a sliver of them.
"Yes. I saw him. Apparently he's been here for nearly Three Years. But no ones been able to actually talk to him. He's always on the move! Whispering to himself. That music that he constantly plays noting his arrival. I hear that even some of the people on the lower Stacks have started to play it themselves in hopes that he arrives for them."
"I wonder where he is right now…"
In a flash! Eddie, all the way at the top floor, skid backwards against the fine rug! Its large ornate design and embroidered rim crumpled and bunched together, the wood beneath shattering into splinter!
In a split second Riff came out and around from behind Eddie! Snaking up his captains enormous bass! The axe lighting up in a green flame that was ghostly illuminated!
"Soul! SHREDDER!" His hand raised into the air! Head thrown back as his skeletal hand slammed into the cords! An enormous blast spewed outward! Riff's ethereal body grew! Arms spread wide as he went speeding outward! Air rippling and crackling against the phantasm! Gigantic wall of pressure and sound amplified fired from his chest and into the Head of the Pelagia Family!
"GRAH!" The Enormous Zoan Fruit user, standing at Eleven and a Half Feet Tall! Skin a dark grey spotted slicked down fur. The Pashi Pashi Fruit Model; Leopard Seal. His face half way morphed between a human head and a seals muzzle. Body large and fatty. Hands webbed and large like partial flippers.
"Hssshh–!" 'Big Spot' Pelegia breathed in through his sharp teeth! An enormous click sounding from deep in the back of his throat! Leopard Seals clicked underwater to communicate. Their vocals so deep its nearly inaudible and near lethal limit in the right conditions! This was what was shot out! Supernaturally Empowered! An Opposing wall of pressure, air thick, jagged and visible as it ripped against the ground!
"Hrah!" Eddie bounced to the side! "Vox!" He screamed! Hand extending outward! Vox shooting out! Ball of electricity bottling into their palm and shooting out! The power streaked through the air! Crackling and snaking across the air! Burning the Seals leather! Forcing him backward!
"So! Wheres the other Dons at Pelegia?" The Skeleton screamed! Guitar swirling around his body by the strap, pulling it off and into a useable axe position! Hook doing just what the other three Soronous had…Snaking out of Eddies body. Imbuing into the axe. Eddie using Conduit to Augment and Strengthen the Axe Blade. Hooks body forming into a ghostly secondary edge layered and extended from the guitars main.
Pelegia slashed up! Eddie blocked! Attempting to infuse his axe with Armament! "After that stunt you did!? Gave Me the perfect cover to go and split that Steele Cunt's skull in two! I've always been tired of playing the War Game! It wasn't going to last forever! Our families have fought over the same island for nearly 50 years!" He paced around Eddie at a distance…
"As for Thompson and Mercer? Probably killed each other. Or the pussies up and retreated!" His shoulders rose in a boast of strength.
"So. It's been only me for now. Dealing with all these fuckin' poltergeists!" He snapped at the ghosts flying near him. "But when I'm done with you?" A finger out reached as he came to a stop.
"I'll be the only family in charge of this wretched place! Maybe I'll kill every sack of shit on every floor myself and turn this place into a luxury hotel! Good ol shell company joint!" He pushed his chest out!
"Now! I as the Family Will Crush you! It will be my pleasure!" He slammed forward hands blackening! Feet bulging and cracking into the ground! Pelegia's aura flared! It was…Charging! To boost his strength as much as possible to lunge forward like a seal diving into glacial waters for the kill!
Eddie sensed the incoming danger with Observation….
"Conduit…Negative Flow of it into Element. Allows for it to chill…Not Ice…But the Cold WIND OF HELL!" A Torrent of silvery white wind swirled against the two blades! The Cold Air Radiating!
Eddies own aura, a blackish purple ghostly layer empowered him!
"Encore! Phantasmic Tear!" He gripped the neck with both hands! Pelegia launched forward! The room exploded! Pressure wave rending and tearing apart the walls and furniture!
"Leopard Dive!" Both hands tucked in, fingers furled, Eddies axe swung forward at the same time the Mafiosos palms did!
The Explosion was so monumental, that the entire floors walls gave way! Exploding outwards! Followed by all the floors under construction above! While they were merely supports, began to buckle and collapse and travel back down Three Dozen floors all suddenly exploding and shattering!