Statistically, around seventeen people lose their lives every minute in Kazdel. That's just barely above a quarter of a person each second.

Gathering it into a less tight, broader sack, we find ourselves with about a thousand souls snuffed out every hour. In comparison, let's take a look at Laterano's firearm production output - the market's one and only leader, keeping all other nations in a chokehold of metal and originium powder. With factories scattered even over the most unwelcoming terrains, the high mountains and stormy shores, the White City and the lands that surround it spit out a whopping four million and seven hundred thousand lead spewers per year, around eight and a half hundred per hour.

Yet, not even the might of the Law can keep up with the reaper's harvest in this little hellhole abroad.

With the two leading causes of death being steel and arts poisoning, firearms have long lost their shine in the quagmire of war, mercenaries and military forces alike instead opting for the cheaper, more common options available.

It was not the case, however, for a certain soul living by the Law's holy words. A reaper's accomplice, traversing the land and laying behind a carpet of spent lead and flesh.

In the great plains,

Amidst the tall mountains,

All throughout the torn, forgotten cities,

Or small cantinas in the middle of nowhere. Standing among rock formations towering high above even the tallest of men, made of creaky wood and mossy stone - a little oasis of peace for any devilish outlaws to stop by and rest.

With bullet holes lining the walls, inviting the sun's radiance inside to illuminate the bloody aftermath, the shack stood silent. Each patron inside the stuffy establishment remained slumped over their table, the bar or the floor, even. With drops of liquid running rampant across the floor, it was going to be a nightmare for the designated janitor of the night.

A figure clad in a trench coat that swept the floor with each gentle nudge stood from their seat, eager to leave the grim company in search for a better class of drinking buddy. As soon as the devil stepped away from the bar, they fell to the floor and face planted right into a pool of blood gathering by their feet. Must've forgotten about the knife stuck in their throat.

An amused snort arose from another patron, watching the giant's fall. With a lazy gesture, they uncorked yet another bottle of golden-brown liquid and latched their lips onto it. Down their throat went the happiness providing concoction, eager to desecrate the poor soul's liver.

They turned to the empty gun laying on the bar counter in front. It rested peacefully, completely silent, having already screamed out its cacophony of gunshots - hungrily awaiting a new magazine to feast upon.

By its side stood seventeen bullets marked with the cryptic passages of "9x19 FMJ" - currently serving as candles on a missing cake. The gunman slammed the bottle on the bar and licked his lips in glee. It was his annual big day, after all.

"... H-HaAaappy birthday to youUu~..."

His drunken voice echoed through the cantina, breaking the fellow patrons' deathly silence.

"... O-OooOoh haaAaappy birthdaaay… Toooo… HIC!... Tooo youuUuu!~"

A burly man to the right of the jolly fellow twitched. With his head buried in his arms, laying down on the bar, the singing must've broken him from some sorta deep slumber. His broad, armor covered body collapsed to the side, sending rivers of blood sprouting from the bullet hole in his forehead. The singer giggled at his post mortem spasms and fell into a fit of hiccups mixed with some retching. It wasn't nearly enough to stop his birthday song, though!

"Haaaaa-... HIC! …- AAAPPY BIRTHDAY…! DeaaaAaar… A-AndyyYyy…"

He spun on the barstool, barely keeping his balance.

"Haaappy birthd-... -Daaay… Tooo… To myself, h-heh…"

And down the gullet went another healthy dousing of whiskey.

With Vinny resting by his feet, smoke still lazily seeping from the barrel, Andy turned to take a good look around the place. A gentle hint of burnt originium remained in the air, reluctant to leave the establishment, which has never felt such calming serenity and silence in its entire existence. Gone were the rowdy crowds, the chair throwing mongrels and drunken brawlers, replaced by polite, obedient puppets, sprawled motionlessly at their usual spots.

That's four hundred shekels for each one of these bastards. Even when drunk out of his mind, the prospect of making a decent buck still kept some parts of his brain operating like a Lateran pocket watch.

He sighed, lamenting his poor fate as a traveling merchant of death, only to be distracted by the bottle once more. Halfway through a healthy swig, the door to the cantina swung wide open.

Clinking, clacking, a pair of spurs entered the establishment, followed by an amused whistle. Without turning from his source of joy, Andy lazily picked Nuffer from the bar and slowly pointed the muzzle at the intruder.

The clinking stopped. A gentle whisper of the reaper standing by breezed past the boy. He chuckled.

"... Bang. Dead."

With a silly giggle, he lowered the empty gun and averted his gaze from the bottle. Amidst the corpses, the tiny lakes of blood and crumbles of innards stood a figure evidently sticking out inside the stuffy space. Clad in a coat as crimson as the puddle they stood in, with a rugged hat languidly drooping over their eyes, barely containing a storm of long, luscious gray locks. On their face laid a strange apparatus covering their mouth, connected to a machine tightly pressed to their chest by a pulsating tube.

At the sight of the lowered gun and the laughing child, they grasped the face mask, pulling it to the side to reveal a wide, knowing smirk. With the unnaturally rough voice of a woman who couldn't go a day without at least two packs of unfiltered cigarettes, she spoke.

"... Well, well. One hell of a massacre, pal."

Andy shrugged, reaching over the counter in search of another helping of bottled glee.

"... 'S just a job. You w-... with them?"

His eyes narrowed as the large figure approached, narrowly avoiding the dead fiends scattered all over the floor. Her spurs kept clanking out a melodic tune.

"Of course I ain't. Would've already been dead if I were, ain't that right?"

The boy's smile stretched far beyond the confinements of his face, as his fingers tightened around the neck of some mysterious bottle underneath the counter. He pulled it up, squinting as he read the dusty label.

"... Dead, why?"

"Well, ya were aimin' at me."

He let out a snort and cracked the cap off against the side of his stool.

"Aiming with an empty gun, miss. See, the, uh… HIC!... The slide's cocked b-back."

She glanced towards Nuffer, her dark eyes turning to slits.

"... Well, I ain't exactly all knowin' when it comes to handlin' them fancy guns."

"Uh-huh. And I'm not exactly in a… A state to be shooting anyone, either."

He flashed the older woman a smile and clinked his bottle against one of the seventeen bullets standing in front.

"Cheers."

With an amused smile, she watched him take one hell of a healthy glug.

"... Whew, pard. Didn't know y'all angels were so… Heavy headed."

"To be h-honest, me neither."

Andy gently put the bottle down, took a bullet from the bar and inserted it into Nuffer's chamber. His hands were too woozy and shaky to hold the gun up properly, instead opting for laying his elbow down on the counter, muzzle pointed at the mysterious woman. The slide flew forward, locking with a metallic click.

"... But, really, w-... HIC!... Sorry, who are you?"

She didn't seem all too phased about having a loaded firearm pointed at her gut.

"Someone's who's been lookin' for someone like ya, Exorcist."

Andy clicked his tongue in mock annoyance.

"I hate that nickname. H-How'd you people even come up with it…?"

He mumbled something else underneath his breath, letting out a long yawn.

"It's d-demeaning. I'm no "Exorcist", I'm Andy… I think."

"Alright, pal. Andy it is, then."

She gave a nod and crossed her legs, letting the spurs rattle some more.

"I'm tryin' to assemble a… Call it a lil' posse, of sorts. Got me a hot gig, government issued. New government, that is."

Andy tilted his head, eyes narrowing.

"New government?"

"Uh-huh. With the way things are goin', 's only safe to assume we're gonna have some major changes in the Royal Court soon. Anyhow, this one's on account of the Military Commission's will. Not that I'm much of a political snob meself… Neither are ya, I assume?"

His drunk mind took him a few months into the past, to a moment he would never forget. Staring into the face of this land's unyielding will to survive, the radiant ruler of all, filling him with a warmth he's never experienced before. He shrugged.

"Nope. N-No politics. Right, left, any side, really. 'S long as the pay's good."

"Oh, the pay's very good, Andy-boy! Good enough to knock yer socks off, ya little drunk."

She was getting so excited, just talking about it. Hasn't even mentioned what the job itself was about, yet the contagious enthusiasm had already started seeping into Andy's inebriated mind.

"A-Aha… And what're we doing? Robbing, killing, taking over, capturing…?"

"Oh, seekin', pal! Seekin' and destroyin'."

"Seeking… Who?"

Andy flinched as the woman pulled a sizable wanted poster from her coat and slammed it on the table, sending the bullets and booze scattering all over the place. The paper was fresh, still pearl white, no signs of ever being soaked in rain before. Must've been a REALLY hot job.

"Death row escapee, HIGHLY dangerous, highly elusive…"

She sent the boy a wink and grasped her face mask, taking a healthy swig of whatever ran inside. The apparatus on her chest buzzed as she closed her eyes in content elation, breathing in the calming substance.

"... And highly, very highly wanted by the Military Commission. Dead or alive, don't matter."

Andy's weary eyes ran over the poster, locking eyes with the perp. Devil like any other, jet-black messy hair, covering half his face, a pair of thick horns curving forward… And a certain hint of utter emptiness behind his eyes. Completely detached, like staring down a bottomless well.

"... What'd he do?"

"I dunno. Ya care?"

"Not really."

Below the picture, a wall of miniscule text waited to bore the potential reader with an incoherent rant about the criminal's tragic misdemeanors and crimes that eventually got him the chair. His eyes slid along the yappy tirade, stopping only when a five digit number seeped into his sight. Now that's a nice birthday gift.

"Five hundred… Thousand?"

"Ya got that right, pal."

"That's… Split, quarter of a million shekels-..."

"Oh, no, no. It ain't just the two of us, y'know?"

"...?"

She stood from her seat, rolling the poster up neatly and shoving it back into her coat.

"C'mon, ya sharp shootin' devil. Or do ya still need some more convincin'?"

A dandy smirk played at her lips, adding to her overall sassines. Had she been a few years younger, Andy would've probably been swooning all over her by now. He stood from his seat, barely keeping himself afloat this spinning floor, his legs nothing but a wobbly vessel.

"Coming, coming… HIC!... You're really persuasive, you know that? Got a real silver tongue, m-missy…"

"Missy? Please, Andy-pal, call me Betty! Iron-Gut Betty, if ya feelin' fancy."

"Betty! Betty, yeah, I like that. I like that a lot..."

He almost forgot about one thing, though. A little spin around the place had almost thrown him right off his feet. The woman stabilized him in place with her strong hands on his shoulders.

"But, uh… What about these here fellas?"

He pointed to a corpse at his feet, W's old knife sticking out from his neck. Then to another, with a half smoked cigarette in his mouth and a 9 millimeter wide hole on the side of his skull.

"Well? Not much life left in any of 'em, don't ya think?"

With her heavy cowboy boots, she nudged the side of one such gentleman, his face soaking in a pool of blood.

"Don't think they're goin' anywhere anytime soon, no sire. I reckon they'll be waitin' here for ya, 'till ya finish yer newly started business, Andy-boy."

Fair point.

It took him a few tries to throw Vinny over his shoulder and pull the knife from the poor devil's throat. Nuffer was especially stubborn, refusing to enter his holster, no matter how hard the boy tried.

Watching his futile attempts, the silver haired merc sighed and took the gun from him and giggled. She slid it into its sheath without much trouble.

"... Hopefully yer better when yer sober."

"Much… HIC!... Much better."

"Mmmm. Heard you used to run with 'at sack of shit W, yeah? Bastard died in an ambush, no?"

"Uh-huh. The old one, yeah."

Betty tilted her head in confusion.

"Old one?"

"It's a long story."

"Hopefully a good one, Andy-boy. Got a long way to go and a buncha faces to keep happy all throughout."

She led him outside, guiding through the storming ocean that was the corpse riddled floor. Just what he needed right now was an obstacle course he himself had made.

"... How many faces? Three? Four? I work best in a four man type of situation, I think, hehe-..."

As he pushed the door open, his eyes were immediately assaulted by the bright sun's playful glimmer. That, and a concert worthy crowd gathered in front.

Burly, stick-like, tall and short. Men, women, everything in between.

Some eyeless, some handless, one or two even faceless - an utter freak show.

With their horns standing tall, their ears pointy and sharp, they all turned towards the boy, an ocean of eyes locking right on him. Andy couldn't help but feel a tiny bit self conscious, even despite his drunken state.

Clad in a surprisingly bland array of dim colors - long cloaks, revealing dresses, heavy homemade armors, mountains of tactical gear, even simple everyday attire, the devils didn't seem to mind him at all. Some threw a few remarks amongst themselves, snarky one liners and a bunch of "about damn time"'s, others gave the boy a wave. Kazdel bred all sorts of warhounds, some seemingly with more proper manners than others.

The lady in red closed the door behind her and grabbed a mighty machine standing by the bullet-tattered wall. A mess of hydraulics, moving plates and hissing pipes, all joined together to create the finest life taking instrument ever conceived by the most insane minds of this land. She took one last breather from her face mask and connected it to the core of the weapon.

Steam erupted from each hole and slit with an ear piercing fizz. She cackled at Andy's startled reaction, as he watched the thingamajig assemble itself into a somewhat shield-like shape, then lazily crawl onto the woman's back. It dug into her spine, armored plates spreading all over her body, trailing along her arms and legs. A real, working exoskeleton.

"Never seen a beauty quite like this before, ah? Better than all yer fancy guns, Andy-pal!"

Eyes wide with wonder, he could only nod and stare as she gave him a pat on the shoulder. Her touch, strengthened and amplified by the contraption's power, almost sent him plummeting to the ground. She held him up with just one hand and showed the poor boy off to the rest, holding him like a prized trophy.

"Got our last sharp shooter right 'ere, fellas! Next stop, DOWN SOUTH!"

A wild roar arose from the crowd as they all cheered in unison. Raising their arms, their prosthetics, blades, crossbows and guns. Hell, even arts manipulating staves. Everything was there, from light firepower to contraptions that looked like they could level an entire city block with ease. Andy couldn't help but giggle in wonder.

"Who are all these people…?"

"Ah? These lads and lasses, Andy-boy?"

She put him back on the ground. The grin stretching on her face was just as contagious as her laughter.

"Kazdel's very finest of the finest! The upper crust! The cream of the crop!"

Her steel covered arm flew towards the crowd.

"... Only the best A grade mercs I could find! And convince to join, of course."

Oh? That could only mean one thing, right?

"So, am I, uh… Am I also a-...?"

"Uh…"

Her smile faltered as she scratched her chin with those thick, metallic fingers.

"... Your name DID come up a few times here and there."

"Oh?"

"Uh-huh. Some recommendations, too. And, uh…"

"Recommendations?"

"Yeah. Mostly that one ginger meathead, though."

"Oh."

Hedley was still looking out for him. How adorable.

Andy took a few wobbly steps towards the crowd. Low conversations, loud snickering, lively talks, happy insults, unenthusiastic cheers, you could find just about anything there. A man with a blade for an arm shook his hand. A red-headed beauty shot him a wink with her only good eye. A few fancily dressed vampires offered him a crimson toast.

And he was ready. More than ready. Maybe not fully sober, but overly ready nonetheless.

With his dead, dearest friends close, he let the crowd fully consume him, like a hungry organism assimilating another into itself - to twist and turn him to its will.

He knew its attempts would be futile. He was his own person, now. An equal to everyone he exchanged gazes with. A seasoned player of the endless merc game. A real mogul of war!

And his drunken mind was set on finding the perp and sending him on a one way trip to the other side.