“Well, now. If it ain’t my old pals. Thought I was done for, huh? Thought the union was dead?”
He chuckles, shaking his head.
“See, that’s the thing about workers like me an’ my boys—we don’t just lie down when someone tries to crush us. We organize. We regroup. We come back bigger, badder, and madder.”
He gestures to the massive brutes standing behind him, their dull eyes watching the players, waiting for an order.
“Now, I know what you’re thinkin’—’Sal, what’s with the new hires?’ Well, turns out, ogres an’ trolls? Real union-friendly. They don’t like workin’ for scraps, and they hate greedy little upstarts tryin’ to take what’s theirs.”
He leans on his spectral pickaxe like a cane, his grin widening.
“So I made ‘em an offer—good hours, better pay, an’ all the skull-crackin’ they could want. An’ guess what? They signed up immediately. So now? Now I got muscle. Now I got protection. Now, if you got any bright ideas ‘bout takin’ back what ain’t yours…”
His eyes flare, his voice lowering into a dangerous whisper.
“You’re gonna have to go through them.”
He steps back, raising his arms like a showman presenting his grandest act yet.
“So! We got two ways this plays out. One—you walk away. You let the union do its work, let the mines run like they should’ve been run all along, an’ everyone walks outta here with their bones intact.”
His grin twists into something sharper.
“Or two—you make this a fight. An’ I promise ya, boys… this time, we ain’t goin’ down easy.”
“Hah… well, now… look at you.”
He glances up at @ZOD, shaking his head with something that almost looks like pride. Almost.
“Guess I gotta hand it to ya. You fought harder than most. Really made me work for it.”
His hand clutches at his chest as cracks of blue light snake across his form, his essence coming apart at the seams. But even in defeat, his voice doesn’t tremble—it stays steady, knowing.
“But lemme tell ya somethin’… somethin’ important.”
He leans forward, voice dropping to a whisper, eyes gleaming with one last warning. One last promise.
“Unions? They don’t die. They don’t vanish just ‘cause you crushed one strike.”
“You can tear me down. You can break my boys. But you know what happens when ya do that?”
His grin widens, eerie and unshaken.
“We come back meaner. We come back smarter. We come back when you least expect it.
“‘Cause the fight ain't over. Not yet. Not ever.”
His form begins to unravel, fading into the darkness, into the stone, into the very walls of the mine. And just before he disappears completely, his last words hang in the cold air.
“You ain’t seen the last of Sal Pickett.”