Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

157 days before the extermination and before the Happy Hotel announcement

The I.M.P. office smelled of burnt coffee and residual gunpowder.

Moxxie was at his desk, but he wasn't working. His fingers spun a pen obsessively. He stared at a coffee stain on an expense report, though his mind was still on the bank of a murky river in the human world.

Millie, putting her axe away in her locker, stopped to watch him. She knew her husband well, and this wasn't the silence of someone tired — it was the silence of someone trapped in a thought.

"Mox..." she called softly.

Moxxie didn't react. The pen kept spinning: click, click, click.

Millie walked over and placed a warm hand on his shoulder. The imp gave a small jump and dropped the pen, which rolled across the desk and fell to the floor.

"Honey, are you still going over what happened today?" Millie asked, with genuine concern.

Moxxie let out a long sigh and rubbed his face with both hands.

"Well, honestly, a little, Mills," he said quietly, making sure Blitzo couldn't hear him from his office. "I know it's our job, I know the client pays, but... with those last targets, I think we should have made an exception."

He turned to look at her. His yellow eyes showed a vulnerability he rarely let show.

"When we threw the mother's body into the river... watching her disappear under the water brought back bad memories," he admitted, lowering his gaze. "It felt like watching the same mistake repeat itself... and this time I was the one making it."

Millie squeezed his shoulder a little tighter. She wanted to tell him everything would be fine, but she knew it would be a lie.

"Listen to me, Moxxie," she said, crouching down to his level. "Don't torture yourself over a contract. Maybe it was just bad luck; fate sometimes gives us targets that look cleaner on the outside than they are. Tomorrow the portal will open and we'll probably get a group of bastards who deserve every bullet."

She paused.

"Don't let one drop of dirty water put out your fire, okay? We're I.M.P. We kill because it's what we are, not because it's personal."

His wife's words gave him a moment of calm. Maybe that time had just been a cruel twist of fate. But the slam of Blitzo's office door shattered that idea instantly.

"Stop the presses, my little elite assassins!" Blitzo yelled, leaping out while waving his phone with manic energy. "I just hung up a video call and, if we pull off this job, we're going to receive a very nice sum of money!"

Moxxie felt a chill. He straightened slowly as he watched his boss slide over to stand in front of them, wearing a smile that showed too many teeth.

"Good news, sir?" Moxxie asked, though it sounded like he was expecting a sentence.

"Better than good, Mox!" Blitzo projected the targets' image onto the main screen. "A new client, a stack of cash, and a hatred that'll make your head spin. He wants the full package. None of this 'one target and we leave.' He wants us to wipe an entire family off the face of existence! Dad, mom, uncles, cousins, the kids... even the hamster if it looks judgmental!"

He said it while sending the photo of the whole family to the I.M.P. group chat.

Moxxie's face lost all color. His eyes stayed fixed on the screen, where a human family smiled in a garden. They weren't monsters. They were... normal.

"The whole... family?" Moxxie whispered, barely managing the words. "Sir, with this one it would be the third this month and..."

"Exactly!" Blitzo interrupted, ignoring his tone. "We're on a roll! It's fate, Moxxie. The universe is telling us: 'Hey, I.M.P., you're so good at killing families, here's another one.'"

Millie forced a smile that never reached her eyes. She looked at the screen and then at her husband.

Moxxie felt his stomach clench. The image of that family celebrating something as mundane as a birthday felt like an insult.

"Sir... this has to be a joke," Moxxie managed to say, pointing at the screen with a trembling finger. "Why? What could these people have possibly done to deserve a total extinction sentence?"

Blitzo let out a dry laugh and scratched the back of his neck.

"Oh, the usual, Mox. The everyday human drama. The client is the 'poor' cousin of the family. Apparently the guy spent ten years taking care of the cranky grandmother, cleaning up after her and putting up with her insults. And you know what he got from the inheritance when the old woman finally kicked the bucket?" Blitzo paused dramatically, mimicking searching through empty pockets. "A big fat nothing! Not a cent, not a gold watch, nothing. Just a 'you were a good boy.'"

Blitzo spat on the floor.

"The guy is furious. He wants revenge and he paid us all his savings. He already deposited a quarter of the total so we can start sharpening our knives."

Millie, still holding that mask of professionalism, stepped in:

"And how much are we talking, boss? If it's an entire family, the price must have been... considerable."

Blitzo checked his phone.

"Well... he offered us around 40,000 $ouls for the full package."

The silence was absolute. Moxxie and Millie exchanged a look of stunned disbelief. In Hell, 40,000 was enough money to keep I.M.P. running for months.

"Forty thousand...?" Moxxie repeated. "And you're saying that's the quarter he already deposited? They just dropped ten thousand on us just for saying yes?"

Blitzo snorted and turned off his phone screen.

"Oh, I wish, Moxxie! Don't read my mind, it gives me anxiety. No, the 40,000 is the total, the jackpot. The guy isn't exactly a tycoon; hell knows what he had to do since he got here to scrape that money together. But hey, ten grand is ten grand!"

Moxxie stayed quiet for a second. Ten thousand upfront. Forty thousand total. To him, every bill smelled like stagnant river water.

"No," he said flatly.

Blitzo stopped dead. He turned slowly, raising an eyebrow, as if Moxxie had just spoken in a forgotten language.

"'No'? What do you mean 'no,' Moxxie? 'No' is a word we use for salads or when someone asks me for a raise. You don't use it on ten grand."

"I refuse, sir," Moxxie insisted, stepping forward. "I won't take part in this... mass execution. Not for that reason."

Blitzo let out a theatrical sigh and put his hands on his hips.

"Alright, my defective little employee, enlighten me. Why have you suddenly become allergic to success and paid murder?"

"Don't you even remember the last family we killed?" Moxxie asked, raising his voice. "It was three days ago, sir! Three days!"

Blitzo narrowed his eyes and thought for a moment.

"Let me check my mental archive of 'People Who No Longer Breathe'..." Blitzo muttered. "There were Martha's people, but that was weeks ago, a bunch of creepy fetishists... Then there were the... Millers? The Smiths? That family was pretty normal, kind of boring. But honestly, Mox, I don't remember who the last one was. All humans look the same when you blow their brains out — they're like meat clouds."

Moxxie let out a bitter laugh.

"You see? You don't even remember! You don't even care to know who we're erasing from the map!" Moxxie slammed his desk, sending the pen he'd just picked up flying again. "They were the Millers, sir. And they did nothing wrong. Nothing! They were just in the wrong place with the wrong relative."

"Oh, give me a break, Moxxie!" Blitzo waved his hands. "It's just another family. The world is full of them, they grow like weeds. Kill one and three more pop up in a New Jersey suburb. It's the circle of life, but with more gunpowder."

"But that family wasn't a bunch of damn lunatics!" Moxxie shouted, losing his composure. "They weren't psychopaths, they weren't killers. They were real people, with real lives, and we treated them like trash to take out on a Sunday morning."

Blitzo went quiet for a moment. The manic spark in his eyes faded and gave way to something much colder.

"Moxxie, we're in Hell," said Blitzø, locking eyes with him. "Nobody gets paid for having a conscience here. If you want to be a saint, you picked the wrong dimension. Here, the only sin is being poor and dead."

Blitzo stepped closer until he was invading his space. He smelled of stale coffee and cherry gum.

"Listen to me carefully, my little employee with a crisis of faith," Blitzo hissed, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "'Judgment' doesn't pay the rent on this dump. 'Soul' doesn't fill the van's gas tank. If that guy wants to wipe out his cousins because they didn't give him a gold watch, I couldn't care less. My logic is simple: I get paid, someone stops breathing, and you get a check so you can keep buying those opera scores nobody else listens to."

Moxxie stepped back, disgusted. He looked at Millie for support, but she was still caught between loyalty to the job and the pain of watching him fall apart.

"No," Moxxie repeated, with an icy calm. "I won't be part of this. Not today."

He turned and walked toward the door with a trembling hand on the doorknob. Each step echoed on the wooden floor like a sentence.

"Fine, go cry in a corner, you little coward!" Blitzo roared from the center of the room. "But don't expect to get paid this fortnight! Not a single damn cent!"

Moxxie didn't turn around. His shoulders trembled slightly, but he kept his head high as he walked out into the hallway, leaving behind an uncomfortable void.

Blitzo stared at the closed door for a second longer than necessary. Then he snorted and turned to Millie, who stood in silence with her arms crossed.

"Fine, maybe Millie and I will be enough," Blitzo muttered, pacing back and forth. "But no... if we fail, we lose the thirty grand left. It's an entire family; we'll need covering fire and someone to watch the perimeter while we do the dirty work."

He stopped suddenly and punched his palm.

"Loona! Loona will fill in for the crybaby. She's got claws, she's got attitude, and most importantly, she doesn't break down crying over the ethics of a river."

Millie raised an eyebrow.

"Loona?" she asked, making air quotes. "Isn't she supposed to be 'sick'?"

Blitzo rolled his eyes.

"Obviously the poor thing had a nervous breakdown from overworking herself, Millie. Being the face of this company is exhausting, she deserves a quality rest."

"Seriously, boss?" Millie replied. "She spends all day glued to her phone. More like a breakdown from doing absolutely nothing but scrolling through social media."

"Details, details!" Blitzo was already dialing his adoptive daughter's number at lightning speed.

Meanwhile, in Blitzo's apartment, the atmosphere was radically different. Loona was sprawled across the bed, the light of her phone reflected in her blank eyes. The room smelled of cold pizza and existential indifference.

Suddenly the phone buzzed with a video call. Loona let out a grunt when she saw Blitzo's face on the screen, but accepted after the fourth ring.

"What do you want, Bitz?" she asked in a monotone voice, faking extreme exhaustion, practically dragging her words. "I told you I feel like an exterminator ran me over with a truck."

"Loony, my treasure!" Blitzo's voice came through the speaker, shrill. "Listen, we've got a special mission. The pay is great, it's one of those family slaughters you love so much... or well, that I love so much."

Loona sighed and closed her eyes.

"Pass. My mental health is deep in the red, and getting out of bed requires an effort I'm not willing to make for some low-budget contract."

"Wait, wait! Don't hang up," Blitzo yelled from the other end. "If you help us out, I'll give you Moxxie's full paycheck. Every cent of his wages for these two weeks goes straight into your pocket, plus your cut of the bonus."

Loona went still. The money instantly cleared away the "mental fog" she claimed to have. She slowly sat up and perched on the edge of the bed.

"Moxxie's entire paycheck?" she asked, making sure.

"Down to the last cent! The little guy got all dignified and decided he didn't want dirty money, so I thought: 'Who better than my girl to enjoy that dirty, delicious cash?'"

Loona was silent for a moment. Then greed won.

"Fine," she said, recovering her cold tone. "I'll be at the office in ten minutes. But I want the deposit the moment we're done."

"That's my girl!" Blitzo exclaimed with glee. "See... money is all it takes to get your attention."

Loona ended the call without responding, tossed her phone on the bed, and stood up with a sigh. Back at the office, Blitzo pocketed his phone with an ear-to-ear grin and looked at Millie triumphantly.

"Problem solved. We've got a team, we've got motivation, and we've got a family to wipe off the map. Let's get to work!"

Millie simply nodded, though her gaze remained fixed on the door through which Moxxie had walked out, wondering whether the price of those forty thousand dollars might end up being too high for what was left of their home.

Moxxie walked through the streets of the Pride Ring with no clear destination, hands in his pockets and shoulders tense, as though still carrying the echo of Blitzo's voice. With each step, the noise of the Pentagram City seemed to swallow him a little more: rusted horns, engines growling like sick beasts, harsh laughter spilling out of poorly lit bars, arguments in the middle of the street that anywhere else would have ended in homicide, but here were barely part of the scenery.

An empty can rolled until it knocked against his hoof.

Moxxie looked at it for a second. Then he kicked it listlessly. The metal shot across the sidewalk, bounced off the blackened pavement, and came to rest beside a drain leaking red steam.

He kept walking.

Above the deformed buildings and flickering neon signs, the hell sky stretched like an open wound: dark red, heavy, motionless. There was nothing in it that suggested peace, comfort, or promise. Just a suffocating vastness that seemed to regard every damned soul with the same indifference with which an executioner watches a waiting line.

Moxxie looked up.

"Am I really that weak...?" he murmured to himself.

The question dissolved into the street noise, swallowed by a distant horn and the distorted music from some nearby dive. Still, he kept turning it over, as though repeating it in silence might pull out a different answer.

Why did it affect him so much? Why couldn't he just do what Blitzo expected of him, pull the trigger and stop thinking?

He swallowed.

Maybe his boss was right. Maybe he'd spent too long pretending he could do this job without getting stained on the inside. After all, what else did he really know how to do? He wasn't strong like Millie. He didn't command respect like Blitzo. He didn't have Loona's ferocity or the coldness needed to move through Hell without letting something hurt.

He looked down and saw his distorted reflection in an oily puddle. He was only good for shooting. The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth.

He kicked another can, this time harder, as if he could unload into that scrap of metal all the rage he hadn't released inside the office. The can spun away and disappeared under a parked car, and the metallic clatter echoed along that stretch of street.

That was when he heard the voices.

"Hey."

Moxxie didn't look up at first. He thought it wasn't aimed at him.

"Eh, you. Yeah, you, the short well-dressed one."

He stopped.

In front of him, stepping out of a narrow alley between a betting house and a processed meat shop, three vulgar-looking demons appeared with easy smiles. They wore cheap suits, too tight for their bodies, and that unpleasant confidence that only comes from being in a group. One chewed something with his mouth open. Another toyed with a folding knife between his fingers. The third, a tall demon with scars on his jaw, watched him with a mix of surprise and hostility.

Moxxie frowned slightly.

"Can I help you?"

The tallest one let out a dry laugh.

"Get a good look at him," he said, not taking his eyes off him. "I swear on my horns, if that's him."

The one with the knife tilted his head.

"Yeah... shorter than I imagined, but he does look like him. Same smug face."

Moxxie blinked, confused.

"I think you've mistaken me for someone else."

The three exchanged a glance. Not a look of doubt. One of confirmation.

The tall demon stepped forward and spat to the side.

"Don't play dumb, Crimson."

The name hit Moxxie like ice water. For an instant, his stomach clenched in a way completely different from what the argument with Blitzo had caused. This wasn't guilt. This wasn't shame.

It was something older. Something he knew too well.

Moxxie kept his face tight, forcing himself not to step back.

"I'm not Crimson."

"Sure you're not," the knife one mocked. "And I'm a damn seraphim."

The third let out a laugh.

"What? The old man changed his look and decided to wander through our territory alone?"

Moxxie felt the street narrow around him. Traffic noise still hummed. Lights still flickered. A couple of sinners passed half a block away, too accustomed to other people's violence to pay attention. Nobody was going to intervene. Nobody was going to stop this if it went sideways.

His fingers tensed inside his pockets.

"I told you, you've got the wrong guy."

The tall mobster smiled, showing his teeth.

"Well, we say otherwise."

And he took another step toward him. The other two moved almost simultaneously, spreading out to cut off his escape. It wasn't an exaggerated gesture, not even threatening at first glance. It was something worse: a natural, automatic movement, the kind of coordination that belongs to men accustomed to surrounding someone before they realize they've already run out of exits.

Moxxie noticed it immediately. The alley behind him. The wall to his right. The rusted car to the left.

They were cornering him.

"Last time," Moxxie said, trying to keep his voice steady. "I'm not Crimson."

The third one spat on the ground.

"If you're not Crimson, worse for you. Either way we've got something to vent."

The tallest advanced another step.

Instinct. That was all Moxxie had time to feel. Not a moral decision, not an elaborate calculation. Something more basic: years of training, of surviving in a place where hesitating for a second could mean ending up as a stain on the pavement.

His hand came out of his pocket. The weapon appeared in his palm almost before his mind finished processing it.

The shot rang out like a dry thunderclap through the street. The muzzle flash lit up the mobsters' faces for an instant.

The demon with the knife barely had time to open his eyes before the bullet sent him crashing back against the alley wall. The impact sounded hollow, followed by a brief silence.

Then came the chaos.

"SON OF A—"

"HE SHOT!"

"GET HIM!"

Moxxie didn't wait to see the result. He spun and ran.

His hooves hammered the pavement as he threw himself toward the main avenue, dodging trash, drunk sinners, and an overturned food cart. Behind him, the mobsters' voices exploded in a mix of furious shouts and stumbling orders.

But the shot had done more than start a fight. It had woken the neighborhood.

Several blocks away, inside a bar with windows covered by metal blinds, two demons raised their heads at the sound of the echo.

"You hear that?"

"Yeah."

One of them reached for his jacket.

"Sounds like it's in our territory."

In another building, a group of thugs playing cards at a plastic table glanced at each other.

"That wasn't a knife."

"No."

One stood up.

"That was a gun."

Chairs scraped. Doors opened. The sound of the shot began spreading through the neighborhood like a stone dropping into stagnant water.

But it hadn't only caught the attention of the mob.

A little further away, on a quieter street, someone else had heard the echo. A vagrant raised his head slightly. He was sitting on the edge of a curb, hands in the pockets of a worn coat, eyes half-lost in the crowd passing by without a glance.

"A gunshot...?" he murmured. The question left his lips with more curiosity than concern.

He stayed quiet for a moment, as if weighing the idea.

"Although..." he added to himself. His eyes narrowed slightly. "If it's only gunshots, it's not that exciting."

He stood slowly, stretching his back like someone who had gone too long without doing anything genuinely interesting.

"Usually people who use firearms do so because they're inexperienced," he reflected calmly.

A small smile appeared on his face.

"But if by chance any of them know how to use their rúaj, have some spell I don't know..." His smile widened. "...then the challenge might be a little more interesting."

The vagrant looked in the direction the shot had come from. Then he shrugged.

"Besides, spending the day watching shows at supermarkets or wandering the streets aimlessly has already started to bore me."

He put his hands in his pockets and began to walk.

"Alright... I'll go take a look."

Moxxie turned sharply into a side alley, sliding on the wet pavement before leaning against a rusted dumpster. His breathing was fast, ragged.

"Damn..." he muttered through his teeth.

He peeked out. The mobsters were already coming. Not one. Not two. Many more. From corners, from nearby bars, from doors opening at the sound of the shot, armed demons began converging like insects drawn to blood.

Moxxie raised his pistol and fired. The first one fell before he'd even finished aiming. He fired again. Another doubled over with a hoarse cry and rolled across the pavement. Moxxie shifted his angle almost without thinking, using the edge of the dumpster as an improvised rest.

He wasn't fighting well. He was surviving.

He stepped back two paces and looked out again. A third appeared on the right. He fired. Missed by inches. Cursed under his breath, corrected his aim and pulled the trigger again. This time he hit.

But for every body that dropped, two new shadows appeared at the back of the alley.

"There he is!"

"Don't let him out!"

"Surround him!"

Moxxie swapped the magazine with tense fingers. They weren't trembling from fear. They were trembling from rage.

"No matter what I do..." he spat to himself. "Always... that damn man causes me problems... even when I already walked away from him."

He looked out again. Fired. A bullet tore sparks from the wall beside his head. Another shattered a streetlamp behind him. The alley sank a little deeper into a sick red light.

Moxxie ducked by reflex and fired again from beneath the wrecked car beside him. Someone screamed. Another body fell. He breathed deep. He was running low on bullets. He knew it by weight. By habit. By years of counting ammunition without looking.

He stepped out of cover again. Two mobsters entered at once from the back. He dropped one with a shot to the chest. The other managed to take cover behind a corner.

Then he heard the dry click of the nearly empty magazine.

Moxxie clenched his jaw. He couldn't stay there. He moved back, deeper into the alley, searching for a better angle, but it was already too late. Three more appeared at the entrance. One leapt onto the hood of a car. Another carried a sawed-off shotgun. The third was smiling as if he could already smell the blood.

Moxxie fired twice.

One. Two.

Then he pulled the trigger a third time.

Click.

Nothing.

The sound hit his stomach like a stone. Empty magazine. He reached into his pocket searching for another.

Empty.

He'd dropped it during the chase. Or inside the office. Or somewhere along the way. It didn't matter. He didn't have it.

The footsteps started closing in again. Slow. Certain. No longer in a hurry. They knew.

Moxxie backed up until he hit the frame of the wrecked car. He breathed once. Then again. He raised the empty pistol anyway, more by reflex than hope. By instinct, he dropped behind the rusted shell of the destroyed vehicle, using the blown engine and the torn-off door as the last cover he had left.

Too many.

Then a voice cut through the alley.

"Hey..."

It wasn't a shout. It didn't need to be. The mobsters stopped. The voice didn't sound scared. It sounded annoyed.

"Fighting like this is just going to get a stray bullet to kill someone."

Heads turned. A few meters from the alley, standing in the middle of the sidewalk as if he'd arrived walking without any rush, was a human man. Or something that looked like one.

Black hair hung disheveled across his forehead. A short ponytail reached the top of his back. His appearance was that of a human.

He wore an old black trench coat, worn at the edges. Underneath, a red shirt. His black pants were torn in several places, as if time or fights had passed over them too many times.

One of the mobsters let out a dry laugh at the sight of him.

"A stray bullet?" he spat, tilting his head. "You're seriously worried about some bastard from this place dying?"

The man didn't respond immediately. His eyes swept the alley, the bodies, the trash, the raised weapons... and, for a barely perceptible instant, the cover behind which Moxxie was still crouched. Then he looked forward again.

"Less than you'd think," he said calmly.

The mobster smiled, showing his teeth.

"Then get out of the way."

The man tilted his head slightly.

"But if someone who could still choose something different ends up hurt because of your carelessness..." his voice didn't rise, but lost all warmth. "That would bother me."

The shift was minimal. Enough. Something in his tone made even the mobsters hesitate for a second. Then one of them spat an insult and raised his weapon.

"Die then!"

The burst went off. Bullets cut through the alley air, destroying brick, tearing sparks from metal, kicking dust off the pavement. Moxxie flinched behind the car on pure reflex.

But the man didn't step back. Didn't run. Didn't throw himself to the ground. He only moved one hand. It was a small gesture. Almost careless.

The bullets stopped in front of him. Not all at once, but in an impossible succession of small suspended impacts, as if the air had suddenly become too dense to let them pass. They spun on themselves, vibrating in an irregular line before his open palm.

Silence fell.

One of the mobsters took a step back.

The man observed the projectiles with an expression of moderate interest, like someone examining mediocre tools at a second-hand market.

"Normal bullets," he murmured.

He closed his fingers. The metal dropped to the ground with a dry clinking sound. Then he looked back up at them.

"If you really want to do more damage, you should learn to reinforce your shots with rúaj." He paused briefly. "Or at least add some Enchantment to them."

One of the mobsters frowned.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

The man shrugged slightly.

"A simple spell. An impact charge. Heat. Penetration. Anything." He looked at the weapons with an almost offensive disinterest. "Shooting like this, with nothing else, is just wasting ammunition."

Moxxie, still behind cover, couldn't look away. It wasn't just that this stranger had stopped a burst with one hand. It was the naturalness with which he talked about it. As if he weren't showing off. As if, to him, it was barely common sense.

One of the mobsters gritted his teeth.

"Shut up with your nonsense!"

The insult broke the pause. The vagrant looked at him briefly, as if the phrase had confirmed something he'd already suspected. His eyes swept the weapons, the clumsy postures, the way they backed each other up through numbers rather than technique.

Nothing. No real discipline. No clear intent. Not a single variation that justified staying there.

He let out a faint sigh.

"No..." he murmured, almost to himself. "This has no point anymore."

He turned his body naturally, as if about to leave. Then he moved.

Moxxie didn't see the start. There was no flash, no distortion, nothing that looked like magic. One moment the man was still, standing in the middle of the alley, and the next his figure was barely a sequence of black shadows cutting through space. Speed. Pure and brutal speed.

The first mobster barely had time to open his eyes before receiving a dry blow to the liver. The air left him in a broken gasp and he dropped to his knees. The second took an elbow to the jaw so clean he spun on himself before collapsing against the wall. The third tried to raise his shotgun. He didn't make it. A knee to the abdomen doubled him forward and an open hand to the back of the neck slammed him into the pavement.

It wasn't frenzy. It wasn't fury. It was precision. Cold. Exact. Measured.

In less than a second, half the group was on the ground. Those still conscious went still. Not out of bravery. Out of bewilderment.

The vagrant reappeared where he'd been standing before, his trench coat still swaying from the inertia of the movement. He didn't even seem winded. He looked at those still standing with the same expression of serene annoyance with which a teacher regards particularly slow students.

He opened his mouth, as if finally about to finish his point.

He didn't get there.

One of the mobsters, pale and trembling, fired out of pure panic. The sound detonated through the air. The bullet entered clean through the vagrant's throat.

The silence that followed was so abrupt that even the echo of the shot seemed to cut itself in half.

Moxxie opened his eyes. So did the mobsters.

The man went still, neck rigid, with an expression of genuine confusion, almost offended. He blinked once. Then he brought both hands to his throat.

He tried to speak. Nothing coherent came out. Just a muffled, ridiculous sound, half cough and half protest, as he touched his neck with visible irritation.

The mobsters didn't fire again. Not because they'd recovered their nerve. Because the scene was too absurd to process.

The vagrant swallowed. Bad idea. His expression worsened instantly. He leaned slightly forward, made an annoyed gesture with his hand, and tried to speak again.

"Gh... kh—..."

He pointed at his throat. Then made a clumsy gesture with his fingers, as if asking for something. Water. He was clearly asking for water.

One of the mobsters lowered his weapon slightly, bewildered.

"Is he... asking for water?" he murmured.

Another, still with his pistol raised, swallowed.

"What in the...?"

Moxxie, behind the car, didn't know whether to run or keep watching.

The vagrant swallowed again, thumped his chest once with his palm, made a grimace of profound displeasure, and finally leaned to one side. He spat.

The bullet dropped to the ground with a simple metallic tink and rolled a little across the pavement before stopping beside an oil puddle. The bullet came out as if it had been a badly swallowed bone.

The man stayed still for a second, breathing through his mouth. Then he cleared his throat twice and passed the back of his hand across his lips.

"Well..." he murmured with sincere annoyance. "That's what I meant."

He raised his eyes toward the mobster who had fired.

"You probably moved the bullet to my throat."

The mobster went pale. Internally, he tried to cling to a miserable, desperate explanation. It was a coincidence. Just a coincidence.

With one blood-stained hand at his throat, the trench coat perforated, and his expression barely twisted by irritation — as if the problem had been not the receiving of the bullet, but the discomfort of having it lodged there — he looked up at the remaining group.

And stopped seeming amusing. Not because there was anger on his face. Because there was no longer any curiosity.

"Right," he said at last, his voice rough. "I think that's enough."

He moved.

No warning. No prior stance. Just a brief distortion of space that the eye could barely register as a shadow crossing the alley. The first thug dropped with a dry blow to the jaw. The second took a hit to the stomach and doubled over before losing consciousness. The third tried to step back, but a hand at the back of the neck and a knee to the chest sent him to the ground with the air knocked clean out of him.

It was fast. Not elegant. Not even particularly showy. Just brutally efficient.

When it was over, the alley fell silent again.

Moxxie was still crouched behind the car's frame, the empty pistol still in his hands. It wasn't just speed. It wasn't just strength. It was the way that man moved as if none of those lives — not even his own — had ever truly been in danger.

The vagrant brought a hand to his head, massaging his temple with annoyance.

"Hmph..." he murmured. "This turned out less interesting than I expected."

He stayed still for a second. Then he tilted his head slightly. Something had changed. His gaze shifted very slightly toward the cover where Moxxie was.

"I can still sense someone over there," he said calmly, without raising his voice. "Are you going to come out or are you planning to stay hidden?"

Moxxie tightened his jaw. He didn't answer.

The vagrant took a step toward the wrecked car.

It was then that a metallic click broke through the air. Not from Moxxie. From the back of the alley.

A mobster who had managed to hide behind a dumpster emerged with a different weapon. Its gleam was faint, clean, almost silver under Hell's red light. It didn't have the vulgar look of cheap metal. It looked... sacred.

The shot rang out dry. The vagrant barely managed to turn his torso. It wasn't enough.

The bullet pierced part of his side. His body shuddered with a real tremor. The black fabric of the trench coat split open around the impact and a red stain began to spread quickly.

Red. Human blood.

Moxxie held his breath.

The vagrant looked down at the wound, then raised two blood-stained fingers before his eyes.

"What is this...?" he murmured.

It didn't sound alarmed. It sounded genuinely confused. Like someone who had just found something that shouldn't exist.

He touched the blood with his thumb. Studied it a moment. Then looked at the embedded bullet, and something in his expression changed. Not pain. Bewilderment.

"Angelic Steel...?" he said, very slowly.

His voice sounded different. Quieter.

"Why are there bullets with Angelic Steel?" The question came out almost on its own, with no intended audience. "Who is doing this?"

He brought his other hand to the wound almost by reflex. He felt the heat, the pressure, and something more that wasn't just pain. His eyes narrowed.

"And not just that, the velocity was greater than a normal bullet."

He spat blood to one side. Red, thick. And he smiled. Not a wide smile. Not a manic smile. A slight curve of the lips, sincere.

"It had an Enchantment."

The vagrant's eyes changed. The sclera shifted from white to deep black, the iris to golden tones, as if instead of eyes he had two black holes.

The mobster, still holding the weapon with both hands, smiled back. The fear was still there, but now mixed with a desperate euphoria.

"Got you!" he spat, almost laughing. "Yeah, it got you, bastard!"

The vagrant looked at him as if he had just become interesting at last.

"Yes," he admitted. "That was considerably better."

He took a step to the side, moving away from the center of the alley. The blood kept dripping down his torso, but he didn't seem concerned. More like... attentive. As if he'd finally found something worth evaluating.

"Hey," he said then, with absurd calm. "Let's do something simple."

The mobster frowned.

"What...?"

"Let's be like the old humans of North America," the vagrant continued. "The Wild West."

Moxxie, behind the car, barely understood what he was hearing.

The vagrant turned sideways. One arm fell to his side. The other stayed near the wound. He didn't adopt a fighting stance. He didn't visibly prepare. He just smiled a little more.

"Let's see who's faster," he said. "You shooting... or me."

The thug swallowed. His fingers trembled around the blessed weapon, but not from lack of will. From pure terror.

The thug raised the weapon. He was barely about to pull the trigger. He didn't make it.

The vagrant vanished from the spot in a displacement so clean that Moxxie didn't even see him start. One moment he was still; the next he was already in front of the mobster. The hit to the stomach was short. Precise. Not a wild punch, but a perfectly measured impact.

The air left the thug's body in a broken groan. His knees gave way immediately. He didn't even understand he'd lost before he crumpled unconscious.

The blessed weapon slipped from his fingers. The vagrant caught it before it finished falling. He examined it for a moment with genuine interest. Then he closed his hand.

The metal creaked with a dry, unpleasant sound. The barrel deformed first. Then the stock gave way. Within seconds, the entire weapon was reduced to a useless mass of twisted fragments between his fingers. He let it drop.

Then he looked at his wound again. Blood still flowed.

"Yes..." he murmured. "Angelic Steel doesn't do the same damage to me since I'm not a demon, but contact with it is still risky."

He let himself drop against the alley wall with an inelegant slowness, like someone who had wanted to sit with dignity but had lost the right to do so approximately three bad decisions ago. He pressed his back against the dirty brick and immediately winced.

He looked back with suspicion, as if expecting to find a reasonable explanation, but the alley only returned a grimy wall, a questionable smell, and the certainty that he had just leaned his wound against probably the worst spot in the entire city.

"While the bullet stays inside, the rúaj doesn't work correctly," he said to himself. "So I just have to get it out."

He nodded once.

Logically, it was simple. Insert the fingers, locate the projectile, extract it.

An unpleasant task, yes, but within the realm of possibility.

Or at least that's what he thought for three glorious seconds.

He breathed deep. Looked down at his side. Inserted his fingers.

Nothing came from his throat.

It was a very tense and very brief silence.

Then he let out a scream that bounced off every wall in the alley, rose up the nearby buildings, startled two carrion birds perched on a wire, and probably made some sinner, three blocks away, look at the sky and say: "ah, look, another Tuesday."

He went completely still, fingers still inside, breathing through his nose with a composure that was clearly being held together by sheer stubbornness, poorly managed pride, and the fact that pulling them out too quickly would probably hurt even more.

He blinked once.

Then again.

"Right," he murmured. "That hurts."

He withdrew his hand with extreme care and examined it as if his fingers were to blame for having participated so unprofessionally in the operation.

He tried again. Slower. More carefully. Moved his fingers barely a centimeter.

The fabric around the wound pulled in the wrong way.

He went still.

Looked at the fabric.

Looked at the wound.

The vagrant withdrew his hand. Looked at his side. Frowned.

"Damn, I've never done this before," he murmured.

There was something profoundly humiliating about discovering, in the middle of a hell alley while bleeding out, that he possessed no knowledge of how to remove a bullet.

He tried again. This time from a different angle.

A wet, unpleasant sound came from the wound.

The vagrant froze.

He lowered his hand slowly.

Looked at the ground in front of him.

He remained silent for several seconds, wearing the exact expression of someone who had just accidentally touched something inside himself that never should have been touched.

"Damn, I only made it worse."

He raised one hand in the air, as if about to elaborate a theory.

"No, no. Wait. Maybe I didn't make it worse. Maybe I... modified it in an aggressive manner."

He thought for a second.

"No, I definitely made it worse."

He settled more comfortably against the wall, which was still a disgusting wall, but was now his disgusting wall. He thought. His eyes drifted to the wounded side, then to his own hands, then nowhere in particular, as if searching for an answer.

"I can't heal myself with rúaj while the Angelic Steel is still in contact," he repeated. "So the bullet has to come out first." A pause. "The problem is I clearly don't know how to do that."

He stroked his chin, leaving a blood smear on his own face without noticing. He considered his options.

"I could go to the mortal plane. Have some doctor take it out there."

The idea lasted approximately three seconds.

On the fourth second he remembered several relevant details: the cost, the effort, the amount of rúaj required, the fact that he was still injured, and that showing up bleeding in a human hospital would probably bring annoying questions like "who are you?", "how on earth did that happen to you?" and "blah, blah, blah."

"No. That would waste an absurd amount of rúaj, especially with the Angelic Steel in my body," he shook his head slightly.

He kept thinking.

The blood kept flowing slowly down his side, with an almost offensive consistency. He looked at the stain spreading across his clothes and tapped it twice with his fingers, as if he could convince it to stop out of politeness.

It didn't work.

"Damn, if I hadn't spent my energy going to the mortal world, I'd probably be able to teleport right now."

He paused and kept thinking.

"Do I take the risk and go to the mortal world? A hospital?" he murmured then.

The phrase hung for a few seconds.

His face took on an expression of deep calculation.

"No. I don't have enough money for a hospital."

He said it with impeccable seriousness. As if the real obstacle in the entire operation weren't the bullet lodged in his side, but the sad reality that private medicine was still an interdimensional scam.

He rested the back of his head against the wall and stared at the red Pride Ring sky for a long moment.

Then he frowned slightly.

He straightened up a little.

He counted on his fingers again.

"Alright. Options. One: I take out the bullet myself and pass out like an idiot in this same alley. Two: I spend rúaj, risk making it worse, cross to the mortal plane, find a hospital, and they discover that on top of being injured I'm broke. Three: I rest."

He lowered a finger.

"Or four..." he glanced at his wounded side. "I simply accept that I'm now a person with a built-in bullet."

He considered the option seriously.

Too seriously.

"Right," he said at last, with a deep and completely serene resignation. "So the option is: rest for a few weeks to recover my energy..." a brief pause. "...and just live with a bullet inside from now on."

He considered the option with apparent equanimity.

Moxxie was still hidden. He could run. In fact, he probably should run.

But something in him — maybe courtesy, maybe bewilderment, maybe a stupid need not to leave a scene like this without saying anything — kept him from moving. That man had saved him. Yes, he was still terrifying. Yes, he was clearly something far worse than the mob. But he was also bleeding on his knees in the middle of an alley, muttering about being bad at removing bullets from his own body.

Moxxie tightened his grip on the empty pistol a little more. Then he closed his eyes for a second. Breathed.

And began to rise from behind the car, still not knowing whether he was about to commit a stupidity or the minimum act of courtesy he had left.

The little imp approached the man, touching the vagrant's sleeve.

"I... wanted—"

He didn't get to finish.

The blow was instantaneous. The vagrant spun on himself with the dry violence of a pure reflex, not a conscious intention. His fist shot out in a short, brutal arc that connected squarely with Moxxie's face.

The sound was brief. Definitive.

The imp's body lifted slightly off the ground before falling backwards onto the cracked pavement, completely unconscious.

Everything went quiet again.

The vagrant stood motionless, arm still extended, as if his own body had acted before his mind could catch up. He blinked once. Then looked down.

On the ground, sprawled out, with an expression of frozen surprise on his face and his nose already beginning to feel the impact, lay a well-dressed little imp who was definitely not one of the mobsters.

The vagrant frowned.

"...Huh?"

He looked at Moxxie. Then at the car he'd come out from behind. Then at Moxxie again. His mind took only a couple of seconds to connect it all. The rúaj he'd sensed earlier. The cover behind the vehicle. The same direction. Not a new aggressor. Not a last thug.

It was... a civilian?

His expression changed. It wasn't immediate horror. First it was bewilderment. Then a slow, terrible understanding, and finally a sincere alarm so real it was almost ridiculous on someone who had just crushed a blessed shotgun with one hand.

"This can't be happening," he murmured.

He crouched down abruptly beside Moxxie, running a hand through his hair.

"No, no, no, no..." His voice began to pick up speed. "This can't be, this can't be, this can't be."

He carefully lifted one of the imp's eyelids. Then let it go and watched him as if expecting him to wake up through sheer willpower from outside.

"I hit a civilian."

The phrase left his lips with an absurd gravity, as if he'd just announced a national catastrophe.

He stood up again, stepping back.

"Right. Calm down. It doesn't matter." He raised a hand, ordering himself to calm down. "It doesn't matter. Just... I'll take him to a nearby hotel. Yes. That's fine. I'll get him a soda so when he wakes up his blood pressure doesn't drop. Then I'll let him rest and observe from a distance to make sure nothing happens to him."

He nodded once to himself. Yes. Perfect. Solved.

He put his hands in his pants pockets. His expression froze. He blinked.

He put his hands deeper in, feeling around the inside, first one side, then the other. Then checked the coat. Then back to the pants. Then the coat again. His breathing caught.

"This can't be happening."

He checked again, now faster.

"This can't be, this can't be, this can't be."

He pulled both pockets inside out. Empty.

He stared at the exposed fabric as if it were proof of the fundamental cruelty of the universe.

"Did I spend it all..."

His voice rose slightly, loaded with a desperation completely unlike what a wound, an ambush, or a blessed bullet would have provoked.

"I have no money," he repeated, now with genuine horror. "When did I spend it all? Oh, right. The damn shows, the lottery, the food from the store, and that horrible coffee from that street stall. And..."

He ran a hand across his face.

"What do I do?" he murmured, looking at the unconscious Moxxie. "Do I leave him here? No, I can't leave him here. Something could happen to him."

He looked around the alley. The dirty walls. The unconscious mobsters. The blood. The smell of hot garbage. The distant echo of traffic.

No. He definitely couldn't leave him there.

"Do I take him to the cave where I keep my things?" he asked himself out loud.

The idea died instantly.

"No. That's in the uninhabitable zones of Hell. This little imp wouldn't survive a single night there."

He began pacing in small circles, thinking with an inelegance that was poorly suited to someone who, until a few minutes ago, seemed to embody absolute calm.

"Think, think, think..."

He stopped. Looked at Moxxie again. Then raised his eyes, as if asking for patience from the sky itself.

"Right," he said at last, with resignation. "I suppose the best thing is to take you with me until you recover."

The decision seemed to return some stability to him. He crouched beside the imp and observed him for another second, as if checking he was still breathing. Then he lifted him with surprising ease, settling him over his shoulder as though he weighed almost nothing.

Moxxie hung limply and without much dignity, arms loose and head lolling to one side against the vagrant's back.

The man adjusted his balance slightly, ignoring the throb in his wounded side.

"This counts as a good deed," he murmured to himself, resuming his pace. "Probably."

And without another word, he began moving away from the alley, carrying the unconscious imp over his shoulder as the red lights of the Pride Ring slowly swallowed their silhouettes.

Barely ten minutes had passed since the door closed behind Moxxie when it burst open again.

The first thing through was the sound of heavy boots and the glow of a phone screen. Loona crossed the threshold without looking up, chewing gum listlessly.

"Already here," she said with boredom. "Where's the contract? And is my deposit confirmed?"

Blitzo let out a cry of joy and lunged to hug her. Loona sidestepped him effortlessly, leaving her adoptive father to crash into the water cooler.

"That's my little assassin!" Blitzo exclaimed, wiping a drop from his forehead. "Forget manners, we've got a family to erase and forty thousand reasons to smile!"

Millie, who was checking the edge of her axe, looked up with a grim expression. She looked at Loona, then at Moxxie's empty space. The contrast stung.

"Hey, Looney," she greeted flatly. "Ready for field work?"

"Whatever," Loona replied, pocketing her phone. "Who are we killing?"

"Some mediocre humans with a resentful relative!" Blitzo jumped onto his desk, sweeping aside files and horse photos. He rummaged through a drawer amid metallic clattering and pulled out Stolas's grimoire. He dropped it onto the table with exaggerated solemnity. "Since Moxxie walked out with his moral whining, we'll cut to the chase. We go in, we clean house and we collect."

Loona raised her hand without enthusiasm.

"Yeah, great. Do you have a name, an address, or anything useful?"

Blitzo's posture shifted instantly. Millie and Loona both noticed.

"Well..." he started, clearing his throat. "I don't have the full last name or the address. But I have this photo."

He held up the image: a family smiling in a garden. Loona raised an eyebrow.

"Seriously, Blitz? How are we supposed to find them?"

"Relax. I just need the client's last name." He checked his phone. "His name is Jerry Johnson. So we kill anyone with the last name Johnson."

Loona went quiet. The disappointment was visible all the way to her shoulders.

"Do you know how many Johnsons there are in the world?" she murmured at last. "We can't just go around killing people like idiots. Don't you have a less stupid idea?"

"Boss..." Millie stepped in. "Why don't you ask the client for the address?"

"I already did!" Blitzo huffed. "But he said that even though they live in the same state, they're not all in the same city."

Millie frowned.

"Then we're not lost. If we know the state and the cities, we just need to figure out who's actually blood-related to Jerry."

"Track the family tree?" Loona asked, now interested.

"Exactly," Millie nodded. "We're not looking for every Johnson, just the ones from his bloodline."

Blitzo snapped his fingers as if the idea had been his all along.

"That's exactly what I was going to say! Quick investigation, correct location, and fiscally responsible genocide."

"None of that sounded elegant," Loona sighed, "but it beats your previous plan."

Blitzo placed the grimoire at the center of the desk. The atmosphere shifted immediately; the room seemed to remember that this object wasn't a toy.

"What's the actual plan?" Loona pressed. "'Pray we land somewhere close' isn't a strategy."

"The client said most of them are in Ohio," Blitzo replied, checking his messages. "Toledo, Dayton, and a suburb near Columbus. We've got room to work with."

"We go in through Columbus," Millie decided. "A suburb will be easier to track."

Blitzo smiled sideways.

"Open the portal, boss."

Blitzo rested his hand on the book. The pages moved on their own, revealing astral symbols and elegant annotations he couldn't understand. He cleared his throat.

"By the sovereign star and the light of the upper world... open me a passage where the sun still reigns over Ohio, over the soil of Columbus... where the afternoon has not yet died and the moon has not yet claimed the sky."

The office fell silent.

Then the ink glowed with a bluish light. The symbols lifted off the page and the air in front of the desk split open into an oval rift with vibrating edges. On the other side was a suburban street bathed in golden light, trees and immaculate lawn. The contrast with Hell was brutal.

"Hate to admit it," said Loona, "but that's a good trick."

"Efficiency and interdimensional crime," Blitzo declared, closing the book. "We go in, we search, we confirm and we kill. No drama, no existential crises."

Blitzo crossed the threshold first, disappearing into the human light. Loona followed without a word. Millie was last; she cast one glance at Moxxie's empty desk, clenched her jaw, and stepped through the rift.

The portal shimmered for an instant before closing.

In the streets of Pentagram City, Moxxie opened his eyes with a muffled groan. His head throbbed as if someone had used his skull as a drum. For a second he didn't understand where he was. The sky of the Pride Ring spun slowly above him and the air smelled of hot dust and burning trash.

Then he noticed something else. He wasn't walking. He was being carried.

His body hung over someone's shoulder, swinging with each step like a particularly indignant sack of flour.

"What the hell...?" he murmured in a hoarse voice.

The memory came back all at once. The alley. The fight. The vagrant. The punch.

"Hey!" Moxxie protested, squirming a little. "Put me down! Put me down right now!"

The man stopped.

"Hm?"

The vagrant tilted his head back slightly, as if barely noticing that the small demon he was carrying on his shoulder was awake.

"Oh. You're up."

His tone was calm. Too calm. With a simple gesture, he lowered him to the ground.

Moxxie landed with somewhat unsteady legs, staggering a moment while he recovered his balance. Then he stepped back and looked at the man with indignation and nerves.

"What the hell was that?!" he exclaimed. "I was just trying to thank you and you hit me!"

The vagrant scratched the back of his neck with a slightly embarrassed air.

"Ah... yeah. Sorry about that." He smiled carelessly. "Reflexes."

Moxxie blinked.

"Reflexes?"

"I thought it was another attack," the man said with a small laugh. "It happens sometimes."

The answer was so casual that for a second Moxxie didn't know whether to get angry or just stare at him. Then something else caught his attention.

Moxxie narrowed his eyes.

"Wait..." he said, pointing at the man's side.

The vagrant glanced down slightly, as if only then remembering he was still injured.

The shirt was torn at the side. Over the opening, stuck in a way that defied all medical logic, was an improvised bandage made by himself, poorly cut and held in place with several pieces of adhesive tape applied without any delicacy, as if he'd tried to repair his own body with the same seriousness someone uses to fix a broken object.

Moxxie blinked.

Then looked again.

"...What in the hell is that?" he finally asked.

The vagrant looked at his own side calmly.

"Ah. This."

He gave the improvised bandage a small tap and then winced slightly, as if he'd forgotten he was still hurt.

"Yeah, that," said Moxxie, incredulous. "Why on earth did you do that to yourself?"

The vagrant raised an eyebrow, genuinely confused by the aggressiveness of the question.

"Because I had a hole."

"I know you had a hole!" Moxxie exclaimed. "I mean why did you cover the wound with that!"

The vagrant looked down again and examined his own work with an almost offensive seriousness.

"Because according to me this is what you use for wounds, so I made one."

Moxxie's eyes opened a little wider. That answer didn't improve anything. In fact, it made things considerably worse.

Moxxie looked at the thing stuck to his side again. Now that he knew, it was even more obvious: it wasn't a real bandage, but a strange imitation, as if the vagrant had recreated the general concept of "medical material" from memory and then adhered it to his body with tape torn off by hand.

"You made it yourself?" Moxxie repeated.

"Yes." The vagrant answered.

"And you decided that was a good idea?"

The vagrant tilted his head slightly.

"I had to cover the wound."

Moxxie pointed at the tape.

"That's stuck on like you wrapped a burst pipe!"

The vagrant observed the tape, thoughtful.

There was a brief silence. Then the vagrant looked back up at Moxxie with the same absurd calm he'd brought to everything since setting him down.

"Hey," he said. "Do you know how to remove bullets?"

Moxxie took a second to respond.

He blinked. Looked at the wound.

Looked back at the vagrant.

"What?"

"Remove bullets," the vagrant repeated, pointing to his side. "Get it out. Before I get too used to living with it."

Moxxie frowned.

"Are you asking me to operate on you here? In the middle of the street?"

The vagrant shrugged slightly.

"Yes."

Moxxie opened his mouth to refuse.

Or to say that was insane.

Or to say they clearly needed another plan.

But the sentence didn't come out, because an uncomfortable part of his memory had already reacted before he could.

It wasn't a pleasant memory. Not one he liked to acknowledge. But it was there.

Before I.M.P. Before Blitzo. Before a lot of things.

Poorly tended wounds. Settling of accounts. Dirty jobs that couldn't end at hospitals. People who kept breathing through sheer stubbornness and others who couldn't afford to call anyone. Bullets removed with trembling but steady hands. Cheap alcohol. Clean rags. Biting down on belts or pieces of wood. Nothing elegant. Nothing professional. Just enough to stay alive.

Moxxie looked down for a moment. Yes, he knew.

Not like a doctor. Not like a surgeon.

But like someone who had once had to learn just enough so that someone else didn't bleed out in an ugly room or a worse hideout.

And that, in truth, was not a memory he wanted to dust off.

"...Yes," he admitted at last, reluctantly. "More or less."

The vagrant tilted his head.

"Perfect, a more or less is a yes to me."

"It means I know how to take out a bullet," Moxxie replied with irritation. "But don't expect hospital-level delicacy or anything like that."

The vagrant thought for a second.

"Staying alive is enough for me."

Moxxie sighed through his nose.

That was, in fact, a reasonable answer.

And it was still a bad sign.

"I can't promise it'll be pleasant," he warned, then added. "And it's going to hurt."

"Yes, I had deduced that."

Moxxie clenched his jaw.

The logical thing was still to leave that madman with his problem and walk away. But it was also obvious that if he didn't help him, the vagrant would end up trying to remove the bullet himself again. And given the medical atrocity stuck to his side, the result would probably be horrific.

So Moxxie, guided by his own internal morality, let out a slow breath.

"Fine. I'll help you."

The vagrant nodded, satisfied, as if they had just closed a completely normal Deal.

Then he started rummaging through his clothes.

Moxxie frowned.

"What are you doing now?"

"Looking for something to pay you with."

He pulled out a folded piece of paper and offered it with complete seriousness.

Moxxie took it by reflex.

He looked at it. It was a coupon.

An old coupon, crinkled and partially faded.

Moxxie looked up very slowly.

"You're trying to pay me for a bullet extraction with a discount coupon?"

The vagrant examined the paper.

"Yes."

"This is expired," Moxxie replied.

The vagrant narrowed his eyes slightly, as if only now considering that possibility.

"It is?"

Moxxie pointed at the date.

"Yes."

Pause.

"Well," said the vagrant. "At the time it was a pretty good deal."

Moxxie looked at him with spiritual exhaustion.

"Keep it. I'm not going to charge you."

"Then you'll help me for free."

"Something like that."

"Do you prefer 'armed compassion'?"

"I prefer you keep quiet and don't move."

The vagrant obeyed instantly, even straightening up a little as if he were an attentive student.

Moxxie began counting on his fingers.

"I need clean water. Alcohol, if you can manage it. Clean cloth or actual bandages. Fine tweezers. A needle no, forget it, I'm not sewing you up out here. Also something firm to bite or squeeze, because it's going to hurt quite a bit."

The vagrant nodded.

"Understood."

He raised a hand.

And began creating the items.

First appeared a container with water. The container had a more or less cylindrical shape, but was slightly tilted to one side, as if the concept of "cup" had reached him incomplete.

Then tweezers appeared.

Moxxie looked at them.

"Those aren't tweezers."

"They look like tweezers."

"They look like a dead insect!"

Then a white cloth appeared.

Moxxie touched it with two fingers.

"Why is it stiff?"

"Because I thought it would be more hygienic that way."

"That makes no sense."

Then there appeared a sort of elongated object that looked like a cross between a small knife, a thick needle, and a very bad idea.

Moxxie saw it and raised a hand immediately.

"No. Don't even think about bringing that near me."

The vagrant looked down at the object.

"I thought it would help."

"To commit a crime, yes."

The vagrant looked at everything he'd created and then back at Moxxie.

"You said a lot of things."

Moxxie let out a snort, pulled out his phone and started searching for images.

"Look. This," he said, showing him the screen, "are tweezers. Tweezers. See? Fine. Precise. Not a demon trap. And this is a normal bandage. Normal. And this is a decent cup. A cup that doesn't look cursed."

The vagrant studied each image with genuine attention.

"Ah," he said at last. "Now I understand."

He raised his hand again.

The objects disappeared and reappeared.

This time the tweezers actually looked like tweezers. The water was in something far less offensive to the eye. The cloth looked genuinely usable.

Moxxie checked each item carefully.

"...Good. This works."

The vagrant smiled slightly, pleased.

"I learn quickly."

"Yes. Try to keep learning without bleeding out."

He had him sit against the wall.

Moxxie knelt in front of him and carefully began removing that abomination held on with adhesive tape. When the last piece came off, the wound was exposed again, and Moxxie made a faint grimace.

It wasn't the worst he'd seen.

But it wasn't a friendly wound either.

And the memory came back all at once: small hands working fast, terse instructions, the smell of alcohol, blood too hot, the certainty that there was no time to get nervous. He didn't like his mind taking him there, but it also made his movements steadier.

He cleaned the wound first. As best he could.

The vagrant barely tensed, though his breathing shifted slightly.

"Don't move," Moxxie said.

"You're asking something extraordinary of me."

"Do something even more extraordinary."

Moxxie located the point. Probed carefully. Found the bullet's position by touch, the way he remembered doing before.

Not pretty. Not perfect. But effective.

He inserted the tweezers.

The vagrant clenched his jaw.

His fingers dug into the ground.

He didn't scream, but he came quite close.

Moxxie worked fast. He didn't hesitate much, because hesitating only made everything worse. He adjusted the angle. Gripped the projectile. Pulled firmly.

There was a moment of resistance.

Then the bullet came out with a wet, unpleasant sound.

Moxxie held it between the tweezers and exhaled.

"There it is."

The vagrant, slightly paler but still absurdly calm, looked at the projectile for a second.

"Right," he murmured. "It was definitely in there."

Moxxie let out a snort and set the bullet aside.

The moment the Angelic Steel stopped being in contact with his body, the vagrant's rúaj began to flow correctly again. The bleeding diminished, the wound began to close visibly, and the healing process resumed its course with a speed that made all of Moxxie's recent effort feel slightly insulted.

Moxxie looked at him with annoyance.

"Fantastic. Now it turns out you could heal yourself after all."

"Yes," the vagrant replied calmly. "But I needed you to take out the hard part."

Moxxie pointed a finger at him.

"Right," he said. "Thanks for helping me. I suppose I can be on my way now."

He turned slightly, as if about to leave.

"Wait!" Moxxie's voice stopped him.

The vagrant turned around again. The imp took a deep breath, gathering his nerve.

"Who are you?" His yellow eyes fixed on him. "How in hell can a... vagrant... be that strong?"

The man was quiet for a few seconds. He seemed to consider whether to reveal his identity or not. Then he sighed.

"I suppose there's no harm in saying it." He brought a hand to his chest with a casual gesture. "My name is Nathanael."

The name hung between them.

"Nathanael?" Moxxie repeated.

The man nodded.

"And I'm strong because I had to train to recover a part of my power."

That made Moxxie frown with genuine confusion.

"Train?" he repeated. "But... wait... are you a demon or something?"

Nathanael shook his head gently.

"Now I'm human."

The sentence left Moxxie completely frozen. The imp looked him up and down as if trying to verify whether he'd heard correctly.

"Human...?"

Nathanael shrugged.

"Well, technically yes." He looked at his own hands with a certain calm. "Though it took me more than a millennium and being on the edge of death several times to master my spell and recover this level of power."

Moxxie opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"Millennium?"

Nathanael raised one finger.

"But the idea remains the same." He leaned slightly toward him with a calm smile. "If someone trains enough... and learns to use a special-grade spell..." He gestured gently at the air. "They can get quite far."

Moxxie went quiet for a second, processing every word. Special-grade spell. Training. A thousand years. None of it fit the idea he had of power in Hell. There, strength wasn't built. It was obtained. It was stolen. It was bought. It was negotiated through Deals.

"Spells...?" he repeated, still confused.

Nathanael nodded naturally.

"Yes. In fact, most Overlords become strong that way."

Moxxie blinked.

"How?"

"The Deals," Nathanael continued, in a calm tone. "They're a special-grade spell."

He didn't need to explain further. Moxxie felt a slight chill. The Deals. Of course. He understood that in his own way. Souls. Power. Control.

The imp hesitated a second before asking the question.

"So..." he swallowed. "Are you an Overlord?"

Nathanael looked at him. His expression changed. It wasn't anger or irritation. It was something drier. Firmer.

"No."

The answer landed with different weight.

"Being an Overlord means taking ownership of other people's freedom," he added, in a low but clear voice. "Turning people into resources. Into tools." His eyes drifted for a second, as if looking at something that wasn't there. "And I always wanted my own freedom," he continued. "And that of those I came to care about."

The silence became denser.

"The idea of using Deals..." he paused briefly. "Would mean becoming exactly what I always despised."

Moxxie didn't know what to say. He knew what Overlords were. But hearing someone talk about them like that, without fear or admiration, only with rejection, was strange.

"Then..." Moxxie murmured. "If you're not an Overlord..." He looked up. "Where does all your power come from?"

Nathanael didn't answer right away. Instead, he watched him.

"Hey, little imp," he finally said. "Why are you so interested in that?"

The question caught him off guard. Moxxie opened his mouth... but didn't respond immediately. He could lie. Say something simple. Something safe. But he didn't.

He looked down for a second, tightening his fingers slightly.

"Because..." he started, voice lower. "I don't understand it." He looked up again. "I don't understand how someone like you... in a place like this... can have that kind of power." He paused. His voice tightened slightly. "And... it makes me think that maybe..." he hesitated, but finished the sentence. "...I could stop being weak."

Silence returned.

Nathanael didn't respond immediately. He just watched him for a few seconds. Then he spoke.

"You want to stop being weak?"

Moxxie nodded almost without thinking.

"Yes."

Nathanael tilted his head slightly.

"Why?"

The question was simple. But it wasn't.

Moxxie went still. His mind began moving faster than he could sort. The easy answers came first. To survive. To do my job better. To not die. But none of those were the real one. His jaw tightened.

"To..." he started, but stopped.

His gaze wavered for a second. Then something else appeared. The river. The sound of water carrying the body. His mother's shoe. That image floating for a few seconds before disappearing. His chest tightened.

Then another memory. Martha. The chaos. The moment everything spun out of control. The instant he hesitated. And they almost died. Blitzø. Millie. Because of him. Because he wasn't enough.

Moxxie looked down, his fingers trembling slightly.

"Because..." he breathed. "I'm tired." He clenched his fist. "I don't want to keep being... the one who only shoots."

His voice wasn't strong. But it was steady. He looked up.

Nathanael didn't interrupt him. But something in him shifted. Barely perceptible. The corner of his mouth moved a millimeter upward. It wasn't a smile. It was something prior to that.

"I'm tired of being useless without a gun." The air between them grew heavier. "I'm tired of..." he swallowed. "Even though years have passed... since that time..." His voice broke slightly, but he didn't stop. "When I was a kid... I couldn't do anything."

Silence.

"And now..." he continued, tightening his fists. "Even as an adult I can't." His eyes hardened. "I can't stop Blitzø. I can't decide anything... And..." he clenched his jaw. "I can't prevent... that maybe the people who don't deserve it..." his voice dropped. "...end up dead."

The wind of the Pride Ring passed between them.

"It's not just about killing," he added. "It's about having no choice." Moxxie held the gaze. "And that... I'm done with it."

Nathanael exhaled very slowly through his nose. His eyes, which had been still the whole time, settled on Moxxie with something different. Not pity. Not analysis. But respect. A respect that comes from seeing someone considered weak find the courage to change.

The silence that followed wasn't uncomfortable. It was evaluative. Nathanael didn't respond right away. He observed him. Not like someone judging. Like someone measuring.

No one has the right to dictate...
...that in your life you won't achieve your fate.

He didn't look at Nathanael. His gaze drifted somewhere between the ground and the red Pride Ring sky. His mother. He remembered her. The way she sang. Light. Warm. As if the world still had a chance.

Let the rain finally fade away...
...with the clouds that are leaving today.

Moxxie inhaled. Slow. The air came in with difficulty. But he didn't break.

Your dreams are going to be reborn...
...your attitude will make them grow

His fingers moved slightly. The trembling was still there. But it no longer commanded.

erasing the marks of a cruel yesterday's show.

He exhaled. Steadier. The voice changed. Not in words. In weight.

Though winning may feel uncertain still...
...don't let the doubt destroy your will.

Moxxie closed his eyes for a second. The river. The body. The mistake. All still there.

I know that fear won't bring you down...
...with steady steps you'll wear the crown.

But this time... he didn't let it stop him. Silence. One heartbeat. Then another. His hand closed. A fist. And when he spoke, it wasn't like before. With determination and rhythm.

"Keeping my fist held tight and closed...
...my gaze always forward."

He didn't say it. He held it. As if each word needed space to fall. He raised his eyes. Direct. Without hiding. His voice didn't waver.

"My strength has finally found its place...
My strength is vibrant, full of grace!"

The air seemed to align with him. It wasn't fear. It was decision without guarantees.

"What is it that could happen to me?...
...not knowing well where I'm supposed to be."

He breathed. His chest tightened. And then, with determination.

"and even unsure of what to do...
...no more doubts, I'll push right through"

The sentence landed firm. Louder with each moment. With an echo that ends in determination

"no more doubts starting today...

... no more doubts come what may, may, may, may...

...woah...

...no more doubts starting today"

The last echo dissolved in the red air of the Pride Ring. Nathanael didn't speak.

He only watched him. With that same calm that had accompanied him from the beginning. But something in it was different now. Like the silence after something heavy falls and the ground finally stops shaking.

He closed his eyes for a second. And exhaled.

Slowly. Like someone releasing something they'd been carrying for a long time without realizing it. Like someone acknowledging, without words, that what he'd just witnessed wasn't simply an imp deciding to train.

It was someone choosing to live forward.

When he opened them, he was no longer looking at a stranger.