No matter how you looked at it, Paris on the map, was still the majority of the space taken up in France, the massive city that ate up lush pastures and towns and united it under one city. Then Justice came and wiped out Paris, working from the outside in, ruining nearly everything sacred to the people save the dead center of the city, which still remains. Up to now, the power of the International Police Force, or IPF, and the European branch situated there, has kept the city today safe, as the people slowly rebuilt the ruins of the city that surround them.

But the further towards the edge of the city you go, the less concentrated the IPF is, and here crime rules, as kings in the ruins and slums of Paris, trapping the City of Lights rebuilt in a moat of its own evil, on the verge of separating the it altogether from the outside world, save the fact that both crime and peace needs the same thing to survive.

Money from the outside, which is why foreign people still manage to make it safely through the Paris slums, into the center of the rebuilding city.

And also the reason why Trace, big time crime informant, was literally running for his life through the ruins of the half gutted crime city of Paris. His aging body, heading into its thirties, heaved and gasped as it drenched his clothing in sweat under the bright sun. He had to get away, had to escape to the inner city, where people had a problem with people killing other people. He had to get away from that… freak, after what he said.

Trace watched in fear as his bodyguards got ripped to pieces in front of the Bounty Hunter. His crystal cold brown eyes under his hat stared intently at the informant.

"Crime only wakes up at night, so there won't be any eyewitnesses, and I'm quite sure I'm not letting you get away either…"

Thunk.

Brick exploded in the wall, as Trace stopped in front of the purple long blade imbedded in front of him. Looking down the length of the weapon, he saw the blade disappear into the shadow of an alleyway, with the silhouette of the man's figure inside.

Trace, whimpering and panting, looked around for options of escape, and managed to see that the blade imbedded into the wall of an abandoned apartment building, of which he was lucky enough to be a few steps from the entrance. Immediately, he threw himself inside and continued to run as far as he could, hoping to get himself lost from his hunting adversary.

Though impossibly dark, the informant continued to feel and bump his way through one hallway to another, making his way through rooms without walls and corridors connected by lack of ceilings or floor sections. Trace simply just ran in order to get as lost as possible, hoping that the sheer size of the location would be enough of a shield against the bounty hunter. Eventually he stopped in the middle of the void he was running in, and simply sat down exhausted and convinced enough distance was crossed to be safe.

The sounds of hinges came upon Trace suddenly, as the door he was leaning his back against disappeared behind him. The entire hallway shone with sunlight from the ruined and world exposed flat behind Trace, as the shadow and attached voice of the man who opened the door loomed over the poor escaping soul.

"You know, your breathing is so damn loud it echoes throughout the entire building, and you step so loudly, too."

Trace immediately gave a hoarse shriek of horror and scrabbled into a run away from the sunlight. Though he ran fast, something immediately wrapped around Trace's ankle, and firmly tripped the informant up. Before he knew it, he was being smoothly pulled back towards the sun and shadows, clawing like a primitive beast in fear of death, fingers attempting to dig into the rotted wood floor. Trace was then thrown onto his back in front of the doorway, the man in it doing little to block the sun's rays from ruining Trace's eyes as something stabbed through his limbs, pining him down to the floor. Trace managed to give a strangled cry of pain before a booted foot landed on his chest, forcing up a few coughs before the bounty hunter leaned forward and talked.

"So then, are we going to have a nice simple talk, or do I have to beat shit to make you understand?"

"Wh-what do you want?"

The sun-lit figure twisted the foot on Trace's chest a little while humming in thought. In response, the objects in the informant's arms were also twisting around in tandem. Trace emitted something between a gritted growl and another whimper.

"Just a few answers to a few questions…truthfully of course, knowing you damn syndicate people."

Trace twisted his face in anger up at his captor. "What the hell would you want to know?"

"Well, most of your payroll comes from being the Corisione Family's little snitch…" The man leaned down with a sneer, "Why don't you be helpful and do a little snitching for me too?"

"About what?"

"Oh… like where the Don's going to be tonight."

Trace growled "Fuck yo-"

Immediately, flashes of purple were everywhere, and the Corisone Snitch felt dozens of sharp blades firmly pressed against every angle of his head.

The captor's sneer widened a little. "Come now, be a little more courteous, and I will too. Ruin my mood, I ruin your face." He then proceeded to withdraw a capsule from the rest of his silhouetted form and consume several pills within the bottle. Trace was at nerve's end already.

"Lo-look, I can't betray the Corisione's! They're going to know, then they'll kill me!"

"And if you don't tell me, I'll be the one killing you. The difference is I'll kill you right now, but if you piss the Corisione's, at least you have a chance to get away. So… are we going to play Twenty Questions or Russian roulette? I have time enough for both." The figure announced, dropping the empty aspirin bottle and replacing it with a gun in his hand.

"O-okay… just don't kill me… I'll-I'll talk…"

"Then, where is he going to be tonight?" The man's tone became dangerously serious then. Trace just began throwing out everything he could remember then.

"The Don's throwing the biggest drug smuggling run ever he's holding it in the warehouse South side of Paris he's personally looking over this it was his own idea don't kill me I'm married…" the voice spluttered out in fast intervals as fast as the hurried breaths would allow.

Man, he must be new to this business…or something… either that or he's a really good actor…Still, even if he wasn't I'd still have to make sure he doesn't sound the alarm.

"C-come on! Let me go! I- I won't tell anyone!" Trace continued to plea.

"Yeah, yeah, that's what they all say."

"No! I really won't-"

Trace's head rolled away from the pinned body after that. As the weapons pinning the informant's body disappeared on command, Jeremy walked back through the door and closed it behind him.

-

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-

In the South side of the Paris slums in the dead of night, only Colt walked. Like the late Trace said, this was going to be one of the biggest operations by the Corisione Family yet, and anybody with any semblance of logic would leave the criminal hotspot. No matter how strong you were, dealing with the Corisione Family was simply no.

But Colt continued to pace his way through the deserted dirt streets. The moonlight was particularly strong this night, so no need of any illumination by the Bounty Hunter's own devices.

Then came two voices of cheap laughter. Jeremy stopped. Just ahead, two young boys holding quality long swords based on Seikishidan models walked out of the shadows, chuckling to each with good jokes.

Sentries… figures… "Oi" The two guards turned around at the beckon, facing the shoulder slumped Colt. "You with the Corisiones?"

One of them gave a sneer and rested the sharp blade on his shoulder, "And who the hell is this loser?" He spoke in a tone that seemed to touch upon the stereotype "Ghetto gangstas" from Colt's memories.

"Where's is the warehouse of the major drug trade?"

This alarmed the two, as they grabbed unto the handles of their blades with both hands "How the hell did you know that?"

"…Small birds… Where is the warehouse?" Colt continued.

"Fuck man! Like we're going to tell you!" The two closed in on Jeremy as he glared at them.

"Don't make this hard on yourselves. I'm giving you a chance to get away."

"Oh yeah? I think we should be the one to give you the fucking run for your ass!"

Jeremy snorted at the ignorance in front of him. "You people swear too much…"

But even though he said that, the Bounty Hunter had a strange feeling he wasn't exactly free of the same accusation himself.

-

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-

All activity ceased at the sight of the gigantic double doors, the main entrance to the crate stuffed warehouse, being forced to swing inwards from a force outside. Obviously, this was cue for every muscle-bound idiot to drop their current possession in favor of a good sword or likewise weapon nearby. While a good sized crowd of defense gathered in front of the door, a well dressed and rather fattish looking Italian, with signs of sitting too much, and graying hair, took up the back with more protection around him.

The door then stopped being pushed inwards, leaving a narrow gap between the doors that allowed only one man to pass through.

The only one man who would pass through that night did so.

"Evening, everybody." Jeremy chimed as he slid between the two doors.

The fattish man responded as the voice of the majority, with his overly exaggerated and slurred Italian accent. "And who is this we owe the honor of this visit?"

Jeremy shrugged as he marched forwards through the barrier of blades that surrounded him with every step. "No one particularly. Just hoping for a few questions from the Don of the Corisiones. Guessing that's you."

"And what would this question be…?"

"You've been managing to find a way to track the Jellyfish Pirates. I want in on your intelligence network."

The Don's face seemed to wrinkle up in some unreadable emotion at those words. "I am sorry, but the moment you said those words, you have doomed yourself. Also, I don't want eyewitnesses of this operation. You are going to have to die now."

"Heh, that's funny. Looks like I stumbled into some big-ass shit now." Colt sneered. "But you should know, if you follow through with what you say, you'll be dooming yourself as well."

The Don snorted indignantly. "I believe you are confusing yourself. There are over twenty of us, and only one of you. No matter how good you are, or what you might be armed with, the numbers always win."

Colt shrugged and pulled free a medicine bottle for his headaches "Well, your bad…"

"You can kill him now."

A bald, shirtless one in front of Colt attacked first with his Seikishidan model weapon.

Then he died.

A lone purple blade, flat as paper, crossed the distance between the two, entered the mobster's face, and exited the other side. The thug's face jerked back as his face stilled in his last emotion of shock before he toppled downwards, falling through the blade, his own body weight cutting his head in half. The blade that smote such foe then pulled itself back into Jeremy's outstretched palm. Reactions were as expected.

"What-what the fuck?"

"What are you?"

"Who are you?"

"Jesus! He killed Billy!"

Jeremy stuck out his arms then. "Well, you want to give up now and give me my answers? There's going to be no eyewitnesses tonight… I can go all out if I want to."

The Don still remained defiant "Kill him! You still out number him!"

Spurred on by his words, again a few more nameless gangsters, with their weapons, charged.

Colt then let the blades emerge from all over his body.

-

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-

After months of planning, everything was ready. After months of spying, intimidating, study and research, it all came down to this.

Tonight, the International Police Force would find the alleged organized criminal group, known as the Corisione Family, caught red-handed in the middle of their own drug trade.

Ky Kiske, obvious best choice for leading the operation, led his group of likewise police officers through the slum streets of Paris. As always, the French officer was wearing his old blue and white Seikishidan trench coat like uniform. Also on hand was his weapon.

The Thunderseal, one of the eight weapons of the Outrage set, purposely designed to harness magic for the purpose of fighting the now non-existent Gears. Ky's Outrage blade came in the form of a white rapier like weapon with peculiar blue hilts on the sides of the weapon.

Of course, things began to go wrong the moment Ky turned the corner onto a particular scene.

"What on…" Ky's shock was shared likewise with his team.

Ahead of them lay pieces of body parts. There was not even enough cohesiveness to make out a singe corpse. Just body parts sliced cleanly apart everywhere, and the blood being spilled freely on the ground.

What… what caused this to happen? Ky was no stranger to gruesome death, but other officers with him, new and expecting a clean operation, let shock consume them in varying ranges of trembling, and release of body fluids, be it bile or urine, or something else.

Ky's head turned to a source of a deep scream in the distance, alerting the officer to related troubles. "Let's move!" He commanded and rushed past the pieces of bodies towards the source of the outcry.

Be it criminal or not, God still commanded 'Thalt shall not kill humans.'

-

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-

One mobster managed to live one second longer than usual as he was carried upwards on one blade before velocity and gravity cleaved him in two. The lengthy purple tendrils whipped around, attached to his body, ripping through whatever Colt desired.

"Ah, fuck." Jeremy muttered as he accidentally cut through a man's major artery before outright killing him, leaving a smear of blood across the Bounty Hutner's face.

Some of them tried to run, but more tendrils merely caught up with the men, and wrapped around various vital body parts before jerking hard back towards Jeremy, shredding them into un-proportional halves.

It's really been a long time since I resorted to an all out human bloodbath. I almost remember that day…

Jeremy looked down on one certain teenager, completely frozen in fear against a crate, shaking and staring at the creature in front of him.

"Don't-don't want to die… Don't kill me… please…"

"Don't! Please! Mercy!"

I impaled that scientist through the head, and left him attached to a computer terminal for a while before I withdrew my tendril.

Jeremy heard something behind him, and grabbed the psychic appendage and ripped it out of the dead punk's head, and swung it around behind him like a whip, cutting through debris, inanimate or human alike.

"Fucker! I'll kill you!" another seemed to appear from nowhere and charged towards the Bounty Hunter.

"Die!"

The scientist behind me with a chair in his hands fell in two, as one psychic blade instinctively flew out of my back to attack him.

Jeremy watched on as the scant few remaining kept their weapons between them and him, as they continued to back away. Colt's weapons disappeared and lost solidity like violet mist, letting the blood staining them to fall the ground. Holding his arm in front of him, a sizable purple blade pulled itself out of Jeremy's sleeve and affixed itself perfectly aligned to his wrist like a rudimentary sword.

The ones with guns in the far room, I flew at them. I thrust the blade on my wrist into one man's chest, and ripped it out of him and spun a circle, making blood spray unto the metal world around me, and all over me. It wasn't that I liked bloody deaths, just that people seemed to die faster that way.

Jeremy saw no one left alive amidst the blood pooled around his feet and painted across every imaginable surface.

Damn, don't tell me I killed EVERYONE. I needed to ask Donny a few questions. As soon as the thought completed itself, Jeremy heard footsteps on metal sheets to the right of the building. Making his way over, he found a staircase that traveled up to a suspended pathway hanging under the corrugated tin roof. Following up the path, Jeremy found it continued towards some sort of office attached to the side of the warehouse, where bosses, managers, foremen, whatever you called them, spied upon the activities of their servants.

Entering the room, he found it immaculately dressed up in richness, the room golden with the warm light of a lamp nearby, with the Don sweating behind his desk, seated and brows furrowed in lack of options. Two windows flanked the rectangular room, lengthwise. One faced the outside world, the other connecting into the warehouse. Two glasses and a bottle of Bourbon were also sitting on the glass expectantly.

"So we gonna finally talk?"

"You…killed them all?"

"Yeah."

"…All this for a mere question?"

"When it all comes down to it. So, it's all down to you now. If you want to live, just be a good boy and answer the questions…" You know, when the boss sits behind the desk, there's usually a gun in the drawer as well.

But he won't. This isn't the 80's, you know.

The Don remained grim, but reached for the Bourbon, "I see… Bourbon? It's an import from Troy"

Jeremy slid into the chair in front of the desk. "Kindly, but doesn't Troy Bourbon suck?"

"It's been improving, but mostly for nostalgia's sake. I was raised there."

Glasses were poured out like old comrades. One dressed richly in a silken suit, the other dressed richly in blood. The Don tentatively took his for sake of keeping sober, but Jeremy showed no regard, taking down the entire glass in one go. Jeremy then began.

"I want the entire truth. How do you track the Jellyfish pirates?"

"…Do you know of the Post War Administration Bureau?"

"…No? Care to explain?"

"They are a very, very powerful underground organization. I do not know their motives, but they came to us with a deal."

"That was…?"

"You see, the Jellyfish are constantly harassing several of my enterprises… they came to us saying that in exchange for equipment, and the tracking system, we were to do… errands for them, if you will."

"Like what?"

"They suspected that the Pirates were in possession of a working Gear and a Japanese, they said that if we were ever to destroy the pirates, we were to capture both of them alive."

"I see… you became a little bulldog for these Post War guys, doing their job for them while they stay in the background."

"Please, I do prefer you not call the Corisione Family a 'little bulldog'"

"Whatever, you still haven't answered my main question, how do you keep track of the Jellyfish?"

"The Post War Administration's Intelligence network in simply mind boggling. They use a Black Tech radio network… one needs certain radios and frequencies to hear their banter."

"And do you have these frequencies on hand?"

The Don opened up one of his drawers and pulled out several manila folders, each chock-full of papers. "Here."

The Bounty Hunter thumbed through one of them, holding specifications. Ah, good, I have these types of radios stuffed away… The mafia boss's voice cut in then.

"You know… you seem very trusting that I won't attack you."

Jeremy's kept looking through the paper "And what can you do? As you can see, I can handle any blade."

Click.

Ah, fuck. Jeremy stared into the handgun that the Don removed from the desk.

"Ah, but you see, the Post War Admin are very fond of Black Tech. They even gave me this souvenir."

"… A Beretta… haven't seen those in a while…" Jeremy managed to comment, though he felt a bead of perspiration fall of the side of his head.

"It's too bad you were so sure you'd get away with the information I gave you. What, you'd think I wouldn't give this stuff without a fight?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, too bad, time to die."

A pause. The Don's face seemed to show moments of panic and frustration.

"Problems?"

"Shut up!" Don Corisione continued to struggle and force the trigger down; as per instructions, but the damned thing seem to resist movement.

Colt then smirked and stood up, looming over the Italian. "I think I see the problem." Roughly snatching the weapon out of his hand, Jeremy aimed the gun at the Don. "Safety's on."

A single shot rang out, as the Don howled in pain and collapsed out of his chair, falling to the floor and clutching his side.

"So in the end, I still win." Jeremy sneered, while the Don glared and panted.

"You… won't get away with this! I have the Pwab! I have the French Families! I have alliances all over the world! I can make you disappear forever!" was the final threat.

"Well, that'd be mighty kind of you to kill me, but you see I promise myself to die fighting, and that gives me a rather nasty knack for surviving. In fact, that's what I seem to be famous for sometimes. Some idiot said I had the luck of the Devil and even came up with the nick-name 'Six-Six-Six-Lives Colt'"

The name seemed to strike certain chords in the Don's memory, as his eyes widened in disbelief. "Jeremy Colt?"

"Looks like I'm a little too famous…" Came the reply with a shrug.

"No…no! You don't remember us? You don't remember the Corisione Family?"

"…no?"

"Damn it! You took help from us! You were so pathetic you needed help from us to track down that Seikishidan spy Quint Darton! You don't remember? Back in Troy! Back in the final years of the War!"

Colt sneered. "…When you lived through what I have, you tend to be quite forgetful…"

The Don seemed to reach a sort of enlightenment then, as he noticed something.

"What… what are you? How many years has it been since I last saw you? You still look the same as before!"

Jeremy was silent for a few seconds. "I'm mostly human. But I prefer to be addressed as 'Monster'. You're going to have to die now, since you remember me." The Monster pointed the Beretta at the Don's head, which had him chuckle in his death throes.

"Funny… I remember out last meeting… I said the that I had a feeling that next time our paths would cross, we would have a different type of conversation and friendship… funny how things turned out…"

"Yeah, funny how they did."

-

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-

As Ky rushed into the warehouse, the first thing his senses picked up was the smell of copper and the sounds of several gunshots before a silence. Then he saw the chaos about him, the death around him exactly like in the street.

The one who did this is still here.

Ky's eyes narrowed as he gripped his sword, and electricity began to dance upon the surface of the blade.

And I must bring him to justice… criminal or innocent alike; he should know it is written… "Thalt shall not kill humans"

A/N: Have to break chapter into two. You get "Kliff-hanger" now. (guffaws)