For Adei (I'veMadeItMyOTP). Fun-loving, crazy, beautiful soul. My best friend. May you rest in peace, darling. All my love, R. K. Iris.

Chapter 1

The world's greatest power

"Freddie! Whaddya doin' there, wastin' yer time?"

He hated that man's voice. It didn't matter whether he was his father—he hated that man's voice with such intensity that he was convinced he was born with this loathing towards that…that animal. That man was a miserable animal, and he took intense pleasure in making those who were forced to live with him also miserable.

He heaved up the basket laden with coal onto his shoulder, the muscles in his arm straining, but not aching, the way they used to just a year back. He was a spindly lad, tall and lanky, the muscles hidden and developed over the year. Hunger burned holes into his stomach and soul, a demon with a voice so intense there were nights when he just couldn't block out its voice, and had to curl up and scream in the pain. The demons ate into his stomach, ate his insides, drank his blood if he didn't meet their demands. And meet them he had to, the price of not doing so he knew all too well.

In retrospect, his father was just as bad a demon, just in another way—they were all demons. They were all slaves of circumstances, and the free spirit that existed in every one of them turned against this kind of slavery, and in their demand for freedom, they would exercise their power on those whom they could—their wives, their sons, their daughters. And they would never be at fault. It was always the Company's fault. It was always the job's fault. It was always their wife's fault, their son's fault, their daughter's fault, their sister's fault.

He hated this life.

He walked to the tram, dumped his load, and walked away before the dust hit his face. Alfred F. Jones' usually fair face was blackened with soot, and his honey-golden mane, tied at his nape, was also turned black. The only thing that the soot couldn't touch was the intense blue of his eyes, the colour of the electrified sea. Poseidon's eyes. That's what Debbie had called them. His eyes were the colour of the water bubbling at the tip of the Greek Sea God's trident—that's what she had said. He'd laughed, trying to hide his confusion and ignorance. He would never let anybody see those qualities in his eyes. He would never let the soot blacken the burning belligerence, the free spirit in his eyes, like the rest of them had.

He was going to be free of this coal mine, of this war, of this wretched colony. He was going to walk away from this place, and never come back. He was going to become someone, something. He wasn't going to be a man who worked in coal mines, drank the evenings away, beat his wife and son at night. No, he wasn't going to be that man. He was going to be a big man, a bigger man than the bastard who ran the Company. And these weren't idle dreams—he was planning for everything. Every single thing in his life, he was going to plan, and every single plan he was going to see successful.

"Freddie!"

And nobody, nobody, would ever call him Freddie again.

She looked around, and everywhere she looked, she could see his face grinning down at her. Creepy old man—he still had this town, no, city, in his old and wrinkly fist. But his grip was stronger than ever.

The fairs took place every two years, which was better, as compared to the previous decree that established celebrating that egotistical, bloated old man every year. Of course, at that time, he was at his prime, and people celebrated him every single day, just officially once a year. And as she looked around, she didn't see any of the old faces, but all of the old expressions—the joy, the awe, the celebration, the dazed look that all of these people seemed to carry. Some faces carried resignation, the grief, the darting look of trapped animals. Some others, whom Natalia assumed to have lived here longer than most, but not long enough, had a contented look, out of that initial stage of awe, where they knew what was going on, but not yet into the stage where they'd felt trapped.

Wild birds, whilst young, never knew the value of their freedom. It was only once the sparkle faded, and the golden cage became apparent for what it was—a cage—that the then older bird realised what freedom meant.

For Natalya Arlovskaya, priestess and exorcist, those stages were long gone, a life time ago.

People respectfully made way once they saw the colours of the House—the uniform of her monastery—blue-black over-clothes with gold trim, faded black pants and a white shirt. Of course, the whispers buzzed around her, as people saw those colours and symbols, as people remembered the incident that had taken place years ago. Natalya didn't care, and even if she had been anything like the girl of her past, she would have just ignored them.

The land runs red with blood, Natalya. You just need to look hard at the ground to see it.

The words he'd written in his letters still haunted her to date. He was right, though—this city was built on the blood, sweat, tears and bodies of many men and women, all orchestrated by one man, by one power.

By one Alfred F. Jones Sr.

Johnny Doe, Natalya remembered the nickname he'd given himself. This was his city, and in his city, students of all ages were taught the story of their founder, as a part of the curriculum. Parents were advised to tell their children the story of their city's founding father, the man who gave them bread to eat and clothes to wear and a place to live, before going to sleep. In fairs like this, where he was celebrated, his greatness roared out of the loudspeakers they'd hung from the top of tall poles.

Alfred F. Jones Sr., or Johnny Doe, had been a coal miner before he hit it big with the shipping industry. A business genius, it wasn't long before he commanded one of the largest merchant fleets, and not long after that, he got into building warships, a line of business that meant minting money in those times of the Wars. A couple of strategic proposals had both sides fighting the Wars eating out of his hands, and when he called for peace, a treaty was made in the blink of an eye, and Johnny Doe was declared a War Hero without having ever stepped into the warzone.

As a gift of gratitude, the newly formed World Government handed him a piece of land large enough to be a small state, and Johnny Doe created an industrial-based town on that piece of land, starting with textile, agriculture and metallurgy. Within no time, business was booming, people were pouring in, and a city was established, the city of Fitzgerald. And now, Johnny Doe, sixty five and off his prime, was enjoying the fruits of his long and exciting life, the pleasures that successful business deals of the past had gotten him now.

She slipped her hand into her backpack, took out a bottle of water. She didn't trust anything of this soil. She looked around, watched as many people walked around, dressed up as Alfred F. Jones Sr., as tribute to the great man. It worked both ways—it allowed the real Johnny Doe to roam around without his usual security, and it got more people to prepare for the competition where the winner would be the best Johnny Doe doppelganger, picked up by Johnny Doe himself.

But the man didn't need security. Johnny Doe was the fastest shot, probably in the known world, and he was always loaded with ammunition around his waist and shoulders. Still, he wasn't one to deprive people of jobs.

Natalya, he deprives people of their lives, of their freedom. He's a monster.

He was a monster. She took a sip of water. And she was here to confront the monster.

She took another sip of water, turned the cap, slipped it back into her backpack. Nobody ever questioned the contents of a priestess's bag, which allowed her to smuggle in whatever food and water she needed for as long as she'd intended to stay here. She dipped her hands in her pockets, and walked around, looking curiously.

"Alicia! Stop!" yelled a boy as he crossed Natalya's path, chased by a small girl holding a gun, squirting water all over the boy as she chased him. Natalia stopped, and a small smile played on her lips as she watched Alicia bring out another gun and squirt coloured water all over the boy, turning his shirt red. People paid no attention—children always had fun like this at the fest.

The boy turned around, and threw a water balloon at the girl. She dodged, and Natalya was impressed by the girl's agility, having dodged a close range shot at such short time. Soon enough, the water in the second gun was also over, and she held both the guns to her, frowning at them. The boy rejoiced, clapping and jumping and laughing at the girl.

"Haha! No more water! You can't shoot at me anymore!"

"Shut up, Sid."

The boy continued to laugh and rejoice, while she frowned at her guns.

Nat took a step forward, and would've taken a second one, if she hadn't seen the shadow fall on the little girl. She stepped back, and watched as a large man stepped out, dressed in brown slacks, white shirt and a brown waistcoat, wearing a thick belt around his waist with various holsters. His golden mane was tied back, his thick beard trimmed to give him an aristocratic look, and his glasses shielded his blue eyes.

Nat's blood simmered as her heart slowed down inch by inch. For some reason, she had trouble believing that that was a Johnny Doe doppelganger.

And when the man removed a gun from his holster, and held it out to the girl, Nat found her hands slipping beneath her blue-black coat, to the guns she'd fixed there. That was a real gun, and there was no doubt that that was the real Johnny Doe—no other idiot would have the guts to prance around with a gun, much less hand one to a little girl.

Unless that durak is me, Nat thought wryly as she slowly moved towards them. And even though he spoke in a whisper, his voice was clear in her ears.

"Well, you can still shoot him, with this," he said, as he kneeled and held out the loaded weapon to her. The girl looked at the gun, and she knew, instinctively, it was not a toy like the ones she held in her hand. And when she looked into those electric blue eyes, flat and deadly, she grew even more fearful.

"N-No…I d-don't…" she whispered, stepping back, nearly tripping on her feet as she backed away from him. The boy also inched away from them, wanting to snatch away his sister and run away with her. This wasn't fun, this wasn't a game. This was scary, and they were afraid.

Sid's eyes darted around, trying to find a way to save his sister, and when he saw the priestess in black walking towards them, he couldn't understand what she was mouthing. He frowned, peered closely at her lips.

Go. GO!

He shook his head. He wasn't leaving his sister.

Nat rolled her eyes, but silently congratulated the boy's guts. Oh well. She'd have to save them both.

"Well, at least hold it," Johnny Doe said, and took the girl's hand, placing the heavy butt of the gun in her small hand. She couldn't look out of those blue eyes, and when that broad face broke into an amiable smile, her grip around the gun tightened. He let go of her hand, and the gun seemed to grow a lot heavier in her hand.

"There are a lot of baddies in this world, little girl. You need to know how to shoot," he whispered to her, running his calloused thumb over her cheek, and she felt a chill down her spine.

"B-B-But I d-don't want t-t-to shoot," she stammered, her voice barely a breath, her breath barely present as he rose before her.

"But," his voice played in her ears, "what if someone wants to shoot you? What if...they hold a gun to you?"

Nat saw the man hold a gun to the girl's head, and did the only thing she could think of—she brought out her gun with one hand, grabbed a bat from the nearby stall, and sent it spinning across right above the ground. The bat hit the girl's legs and knocked her out just as Johnny Doe pulled the trigger.

The gunshot echoed through the fair, over the roaring loudspeakers, and, for a heartbeat, everything stopped. And when people began running, Nat stayed, and waited for those blue eyes to turn to her and see her. From the corner of her eyes, she saw the boy picking the girl up and running away, lost in the crowd. Nat pulled out her other gun, and felt Johnny Doe's blue eyes on her.

Electric, deadly, apathetic. And that smile wasn't on his face anymore, either. "Why did you do that?" he asked her.

People ran around them, away from them. "Why did you shoot at her?"

He took a good look at her, and let out a loud, roaring, booming laugh. "Well, well, well, if it isn't déjà vu."

Nat schooled her features with years of experience. "That doesn't answer my question."

"Well, priestess, you see," he said, tucking his thumbs in his belt, "for every person born, one person has to die. It's the law of the land. I'm just trying to help…facilitate the process smoothly. And since she hasn't died, well…one of us has to die. And I'd rather it be you."

Within the blink of an eye, two guns were in his hand, but Nat had already started shooting at him. That didn't seem to faze him at all, and as Nat watched, he walked towards her, and she saw her bullets bounce right off him.

"That's how you've managed to live for so long, ublyudok," she muttered, grabbed a stall and dragged it in front of her. She flipped a small flap on her gun, pressed the switch, and placed it on the stall, running as fast as she could in the other direction.

The gun blasted, taking the stall along with it in a whoosh of flames, and Nat felt the heat wave hit her with a force that nearly brought her to her knees. But she knew, somehow, that the old bastard would've survived that, too—it was just to stall him.

Nat pulled out a special gun from her belt, handcrafted by her. It wasn't a true gun, but it would have to serve the purpose of killing him. If it didn't, she'd be dead.

She turned around, watched him walk through the wall of flames—the explosion had set the nearby stalls on fire as well. Nat took aim, and started firing with both kinds of guns.

The metal bullets just seemed to bounce off him—they didn't even leave an impression on his charred clothes—and Nat knew it wasn't her imagination. But her special bullets were a completely different story.

One bullet ripped through him, and the force jolted him back. He looked at her, and she saw the momentary surprise at being hit.

"Weren't expecting that?" she whispered to herself.

The surprise didn't last long, and his eyes grew focussed again. He began walking towards her, not only with the intention to kill, but also to make her pay, and Nat knew if he got to her before she got to him, her dead wouldn't be a quick one.

Her metal cartridge was out of bullets, so she stowed the gun away, and pulled out another one of her special guns, and continued to shoot. Five more bullets hit him, went through, and gave her enough time to escape his line of fire. She hid behind a stall, took aim, and began shooting, diving behind the cart when the bullets whizzed towards her. She had to quickly change stalls, because it didn't seem like he was running out of ammo, but she was going to. Her jacket was good enough to guard her, but she didn't want a single one of his bullets to touch her.

If the ublydok could live and shoot at her with seven bullets in his body, she didn't want to know where he was getting that kind of life force from.

This was not going to be easy.

And when she finished the last bullet of her specially crafted guns, it didn't seem like it was getting any easier.

There was practically nobody left there—the entire fair was on fire, it seemed, and the only two people left on the grounds were him and her. And soon, there was going to be only one person left standing, and that somehow didn't seem to be her.

She stowed her guns away, and grimaced. She wasn't going down, not by his hands.

She pulled out two normal guns—one empty, one loaded—flipped the flap, pressed the switch, and sent the gun, now a gun-shaped bomb, flying at Johnny Doe, and pulled the sleeve of her jacket up as it exploded. As soon as the heat wave passed her, she let go of her sleeve, and began shooting in the direction of the flames. And when he emerged, unscathed, not even a single hair on his beard singed, she knew she needed something potent, and fast.

But when her gun jammed, she knew the Gods were against her.

"Chert voz'mi!" she growled, and looked down at her gun. When she looked back up, he was right in front of her, two guns to her temples.

And she had no doubt they were loaded.

"That was a fun exercise," he said in a flat voice, and she dropped her gun. "Any last words, priestess?"

"Da. Which God do you pray to?"

"None."

"Khorosho. Then you won't have any last prayers."

She grabbed both his hands, drove her knee into his stomach, and used his falling backwards to turn his hands, turn the guns against himself. And she dug her nails into his trigger finger.

BANG!

The two bullets nearly blasted her eardrums off, and blood from his face sprayed all over her. She let go of his hands, and fell back herself, watched as his dead body fell to the ground. When he didn't rise again after ten seconds, she assumed him to be dead.

Johnny Doe was dead.

Alfred F. Jones Sr. was dead.

But her problems had only just begun.

She took out a kerchief, wiped the blood off her face. She tossed the kerchief into a nearby pile of burning wood, and crawled on her hands and knees to him—she hadn't recovered sufficiently enough to be able to get up. She sat down next to the body, and pulled her backpack onto her lap, rummaging through for a body blanket. She tossed it onto the ground on the other side of her, and shoddily managed to unfurl it.

She sat on her butt, trying to get a deep breath, but just got smoke and burning wood, lungful after lungful. Cursing everything and everyone at once, she pulled out a small flask, uncorked it, and took a shot of potent vodka, grimacing as the heat hit the system, jolting her nerves into action. She stood, tossed the flask into her pack, stepped over the body and began rolling it onto the body blanket. The ground pulled off the rest of the charred bits of clothing, and when the body landed face first in the middle of the blanket, Natalya got a good look at the tattoo on his back.

"A purple lotus?" she muttered to herself. "Chto za chert…What the hell is going on here?"

As she stared at the beautiful flower tattooed into his back, why the bullets had bounced off his clothes, why fire didn't seem to burn him, and how he'd managed to walk with so many bullets in his body, all made sense.

The bastard had gone and sealed a contract with a demon, and the purple lotus was the symbol of such a bargain.

A demon contract, a city, a chain of wives, a basketful of children, and the world under his feet—Johnny Doe had it all while living. And, because of the first thing on the list, Natalya's problem wasn't how her transport was going to reach her, standing in the middle of a huge field, amidst burning piles of wood.

No, it was how she was going to keep a dead man dead.

Nat rubbed the growing ache at the bridge of her nose. She could kick herself. Hell, she should've just let him shoot her—at least she wouldn't have an impending migraine.

What the hell had she gotten herself into?

A/T: This came out of a dream—a very huge dream, all of which I remember. I think. I've got a couple of names—I usually name stories at the end, but since I have to put it up…meh. I hope this name jells.

This entire story is for Adei a.k.a I'veMadeItMyOTP. I was told a couple of weeks back that she passed away, and this is my tribute to the most beautiful, fun-loving, crazy, caring, and talented person the world had to offer. She was there for me during my toughest times, and she was one of my biggest supports. Even though she won't get to read this, it is for her.

Well, I wonder what kind of crazy adventures I'll get into with this new baby of mine.

If you liked this, even a little, I'll be happy.

Love,

R. K. Iris.