Redemption lies within

Pentagram City

Several vehicles began arriving at the location of a brick-and-mortar building before the occupants exited their transports to stock up on guns and ammo from the trunks of the vehicles. Meanwhile, within the targeted building where the gang of sinners had arrived, explosions and gunfire rang out from within the building. An ally or two would occasionally find themselves blown out a window from a grenade explosion. Said allies of the gang members would fall to the street and sidewalk below, their chests oozing out blood from the concussive trauma of the grenades they were expelled out of the building from. One ally even found himself having fallen on top of a broken car, his body collapsing the top of the car with his fall.

Inside the building, Joshua was doing his best to dwindle the numbers of the incoming enemies, who did not seem to let up as they rushed up the stairways and inside the main hallway of the apartments. He had been in a shootout for the last several minutes.

He was not alone at the very least, as the Serpent sinner he had come to know as Sir Pentious had made his usefulness evident by covering his flanks or outright splitting off from him to fire off his 'weapon' unto his enemies.

The two had separated during the whole haze of the ongoing firefight within the hotel. Joshua entered one apartment, and the serpent went onto the other to split the numbers. Evidently, the goons were after Joshua, as a majority went after him, while only a few went after Sir Pentious.

Presently, Joshua was fighting a lizard-looking enemy.

Jerking his head back quickly to avoid the swipe of a blade aiming for his jugular, Joshua retaliated back at the lizard-looking sinner by hooking his arm up under the arm that held the knife and jerked the sinner in with a hard blow to the head with his fist. After several harsh punches into the nose and forehead of the lizard sinner, Joshua quickly moved to release the sinner before kicking the man through the nearby bedroom door.

With a loud crash of wood, the lizard sinner's body crashed through what was most likely a very frail wooden door. While the lizard man collapsed into a heap atop the broken down door, Joshua surveyed his surroundings and noted most of the sinners were knocked out, dead for the time being, or had been blown out through one of the windows from the grenades he had on hand.

With haste in his steps, Joshua steadily walked to the nearby kitchen of the broken-down apartment. He bent down to pick up the two pistols he had previously used to unload his bullets into the enemies who were adamant about taking him out. Whoever was after him, the sinners that were involved dressed differently compared to the ones that had attempted to kidnap him the other day.

If anything, the attire of all the enemies look remarkably familiar to what the people in New Vegas wore, there was a word for it, mafioso style if Joshua was right.

As he checked the mags of his pistols, a groan or two would echo from the dishwasher and fridge; Joshua's eyes took a glance after swiftly clipping the mags back into his pistol and eyed the two sinners he had shoved and battered their heads into the appliances of. With haste and wrath, Joshua slammed the shark-looking demon's head with the dishwasher's door several times before shoving the demon's entire body into the appliance.

Joshua's eyes then quickly glanced at the fridge, as its door was broken off its hinges, while a gecko-looking demon groaned as he lay on the floor with his head still inside the fridge.

"Come on! It's just two sinners. We've trapped them like rats inside that building!" a voice yelled from the outside, prompting Joshua to cease his idleness and get moving.

With quick strides, Joshua stepped over a few bodies before backtracking after spotting one particular automatic weapon. Quickly reaching down and picking up the automatic weapon, Joshua checked the drum and noted it had a good weight to it without needing to check the amount. Joshua then latched the drum back into the auto submachine gun.

With a slight nod to himself that he had something to work with outside of just his pistols, Joshua hurried to the entrance of the apartment with haste in his steps before eyeing a nearby shark demon that had his body lain against the wall with bullet holes in his chest. Quickly reaching down to hoist the dead body up, Joshua quickly rushed out of the apartment while carrying the corpse in front of him in the direction of the stairway.

As heavy as it was, Joshua used the body as a meat shield. He predictably counted on a surprise attack from the stairway entrance to greet him as he rushed from his prior apartment and headed into the other apartment across while retaliating with the .45 automatic down the hallway.

"Fuck, he's using Butch's dead body as a shield!" one of the mafioso members shouted as Joshua dropped the dead body behind him after entering the other apartment.

"Gaagh, I got shot in the eye, damn it!" another member shouted, followed by rushing footsteps towards Joshua's location.

In the meantime, Joshua eyed the apartment, searched for Sir Pentious, and spotted a broken window. After some quick thinking about what most likely happened, Joshua reached into his vest to pull out a stun grenade and tossed it into the hallway before charging towards the window.

With a loud flashbang behind him, several shouts of surprise from the enemies hounding him down echoed from the hallway. Joshua, meanwhile, leaped and tucked his legs in to hurdle himself through the apartment window and descend below. He was on the second floor, so he had little worry of the drop as he fell to the ground below.

Below Joshua, on the other hand, Sir Pentious was busy bashing a raptor demon over the head with his blunderbuss. As the serpent sinner finished pulverizing the enemy of his in the head, he sat up on his coiled body and glared at the offender before him, "Haha, I win thisss duel!" he exclaimed with his arms raised while still holding his blunderbuss in hands, before yelping in surprise when behind him, Joshua landed atop a broken dumpster overflowing with trash with the sound of glass and metal breaking.

As Joshua rolled off from the heap of garbage, he stood back up to eye the serpent sinner with a straight look in his eyes. Before Sir Pentious could open his mouth to get a word out of exclaiming about his victory over the raptor demon, Joshua palmed the serpent's shoulder. He shoved him towards the alleyway exit, "Go." he ordered before sprinting in the direction that he had shoved Sir Pentious in.

While Joshua passed him, Sir Pentious, on the other hand, glared at the burnt sinner's back and slithered with haste after the man, "You dare order me around!?" the serpent sinner asked while palming his chest, miffed that the man would be physical in such a way by shoving him forward, "I will-"

"They're in the alley. Try and cut them off at the other end!" A mobster shouted from the opposite direction that Joshua was sprinting towards.

Sir Pentious's eyes widened at the realization that the burnt sinner was simply being pragmatic and hasty, "Right! Following you, it isss then!" Sir Pentious exclaimed quickly as he slithered with haste after Joshua.

"I see one of them, and it's a stupid-looking snake!" One of the Mobsters shouted as one of them entered the alleyway while Joshua and Sir Pentious were rushing in the opposite direction.

Taking offense at being called stupid looking, Sir Pentious charged up his blunderbuss until it was ready and quickly stopped to turn and aim through the narrow alleyway, "Foolsss! I'll ssshow you sstupid looking!" he yelled before firing off a beam of crackling energy through the narrow choke point towards the surprised looking shark and reptile demons.

Joshua, on the other hand, had already exited the opposite end of the alleyway before the narrow space was lit up by blue light; seconds later, Sir Pentious slithered his way out with a triumphant look on his face before making a surprised look as Joshua jerked him by the arm to take cover behind a broken down car. Shortly afterward, a hail of bullets pelted the area they once at before moving onto the broken down car that Joshua had pulled the serpent with him to take cover behind the broken vehicle.

"Can you drive a vehicle?" Joshua asked offhand as he pulled a grenade from his vest.

Sir Pentious, while looking down at his spent weapon with annoyance, looked over at the burnt sinner with a look of confusion, "Why you asssk? Can't you?"

Joshua pulled the pin out from his grenade before tossing it with great force to make it arc up through the air and land in the general location where the mobsters were firing from.

"Grenade!" one of the mafiosos shouted before the sound of an explosion went off, followed by shrapnel getting scattered. "GaaagH!" A mafioso shouted in pain.

Hefting the automatic weapon in his arms, Joshua quickly stood up during the lull of the shock the mobsters received from the grenade he threw and fired down upon them with several controlled bursts with his trigger finger.

Ducking back down behind the car, Joshua conversed more with the serpent sinner while eyeing the sinner with a sideways look, "Never had the opportunity to learn, now answer serpent, can you drive?" he asked quickly and steadily.

Sir Pentious gave Joshua a sideways look. "Yesss, though it hasss been a while sssince I mainly travel by blimp-" he hissed out before realizing he was speaking to the man that had downed his blimp more than once. "Hey, wait! You and I are enemiesss-"

"You will belay whatever hostility you have against me and the hotel," Joshua instructed in a fierce tone as he stood back up to fire down at the mobsters. Some had made an effort to charge at their location, but Joshua fired a well-aimed shot between the mobster's eyes and shut him down before he could reach their position.

Ducking back behind the vehicle the two of them had taken cover behind, Joshua glared balefully at Sir Pentious. "Now choose. Help get us to Carmine headquarters, or we will be pinned down."

Sir Pentious, a bit taken back that the burnt sinner would choose Carmine Headquarters as a safehouse retreat, narrowed his eyes at the man. "Why not just have me drive us back to that confounded hotel?" he asked.

With a serious look in his eyes, Joshua spoke sternly to the serpent sinner: "I will not bring this bit of trouble back to Charlie's hotel, that is why." He bit out with a glare at Sir Pentious.

'Bit of trouble!?" he muttered under his breath with a weird look directed at the burnt sinner before speaking more clearly. "...Fair enough…" Sir Pentious sweated a bit with a nervous smile as he backed up a bit away from Joshua and the attitude he was giving.

Carmine Headquarters

Situated at her office desk, she had tailor-made items to suit her needs, such as a variety of hidden weapons for emergency use and various hidden buttons to initiate any safety measures needed to stave off enemies. Carmilla was writing down number figures into a notepad while occasionally using a calculator to quickly do the math of her company's income and expenditures.

Putting down her pen, Carmilla looked up from her work and directed her eyesight towards one of her Daughters standing off to the side while writing something down on her clipboard. At the same time, she inspected a firearm propped up on a stand. "Odette," she called out in a sharp but calm tone.

Her attention drawn to her mother, Odette lowered her clipboard while looking up from it to give her mother her undivided attention. "Yes, mother?" she chimed back calmly.

"I don't have last week's ledger. Would you mind going down and grabbing it for me?" Carmilla asked her daughter, to which she earned a swift nod from Odette before her daughter excused herself to head out and grab the item for her mother.

With that errand she sent her daughter to do, Carmilla went back to finish calculating the prior week's sales before she could settle the matter of what her company had made in total for the entire month. Most of the income was soul dollars, but now and then, a sinner would sell their soul for her more prized guns if they couldn't afford the price.

Lately, many of her customers have been trying to sell their souls to own a Graham custom-made gun.

With her lips pursed and turned into a frown, Carmilla tapped the end of her pen on her desk. She was fortunate and unfortunate to have come across the man. Well, he was the one who came looking for her all those years ago. The man came looking for a quick job that would earn him income.

At first, she was skeptical that the burnt sinner was any good at gunsmithing, but eventually, her doubt came to respect. The man knew his way around a gun and was very good at repairing it as well.

She was fortunate to acquire the man's gunsmithing services when she first met him, thus making his affiliation with her a metaphorical stamp of authenticity and quality in the guns she had commissioned from him.

Unfortunately, she was unable to acquire the man's services full-time. If she were any other wicked overlord, she'd have plotted and schemed to acquire Graham's soul so that the man would work for her indefinitely but had thought against it, as it felt like a bad taste in her mouth at the time he made the thought of acquiring the man's eternal soul and service.

Carmilla already had a good thing going with her cordial business relationship with Mister Graham; there was no use in rocking the figurative boat.

Her personal phone broke her out of her musing as its ringtone went off, prompting her to lift a brow of curiosity as she pulled from her pocket her phone and read the ID of the very same burnt sinner she had on her mind. "...He's not one to call me…" she remarked with a surprised look on her face before resolving to answer the phone after the second ring.

"Yes?" Carmilla answered the phone as she held it up to her ear to speak through the phone to Mr.Gaham. "Is something pertinent for you to call between the two of us?" she asked with some curiosity dipping into her tone.

"Quite so," Joshua spoke back to her through her phone. "I require asylum for the time-" Several gunshots followed a pause in Joshua's voice fired off in quick succession on the other end of the call, causing Carmilla to lift a brow of interest to what was happening to Graham on his end of the call. " -Being. I have acquired a bit of a hit on me." Joshua responded to the Overlord.

Carmilla leaned back in her chair as she spoke with Joshua Graham, "I see…" she remarked while narrowing her eyes a bit, "...and you can't hide over at the princess's hotel?" she shot back in a question.

The sound of an automatic gun could be her fired off on the other end of the call before Joshua responded to her in a collected tone, "Miss Carmine, the details aside for later, if you grant me and my…"

"Aquintuence, until thisss isss over, we ssshall be acquaintancesss!" A serpent voice chimed in with a miffed tone.

"...Yes, we shall go with that…" Joshua responded in a dry tone during the call between him and Carmine. "In any case, I ask that you grant us asylum for the time being, and in return, I'll owe you a favor…"

While more gunfire was heard from the end of the call and tires screeching, Carmilla spoke back to Joshua with a genuine tone of intrigue while tapping her clawed finger on her armrest. "A favor, you say?" she drawled out before turning around on her chair to look out her window. "Strictly speaking, this is not a deal, but a favor on your word?" she questioned the man.

"Do you doubt the veracity of my word, Miss Carmine?" Joshua spoke back to her in a challenging manner, "..excuse me-" The sound of more gunfire echoed through the call before a vehicle could be heard having crashed. "Now, do you accept this owed favor you'll have against me?" He questioned her in an urgent tone, "...otherwise, deny the favor if you must. It matters not. I'll resort to luring this…trouble of mine to an appropriate spot."

"Are you crazy!?" the serpent voice yelled on the other end of the call, "Do you think yourssself a one-man army?"

"...yes?" Joshua's utterance seemed to indicate that he had considered the word and actually considered the merit of being called a one-man army.

"Hah, very well then, For I Sssir Pentiousss ssshall-"

Droning out the chit-chat between Joshua and whoever was with him on the other end of the call, Carmilla tapped her finger a few times as she weighed her options of having been owed a favor by the gunsmiths she'd come to know. Ceasing her tapping, Carmilla resolved herself and spoke aloud into her phone.

"Very well then, Mister Graham." Carmilla started saying as she turned back around on her chair, already hearing the distant sound of gunfire and tires screeching from outside, "I'll have my men greet you in through the back at the usual location." she finished saying as she stood up from her chair to stand away from her desk.

"Much obliged, Miss Carmine," Joshua replied to her before the call disconnected abruptly.

Carmilla pulled her phone away from her ear to look at it with annoyance. As much as it galled her to bring violence to her territory, it was more advantageous to be owed a favor by one of Hell's best gunsmiths.

Pocketing her phone away, Carmilla Carmina glanced over to the side and saw her Daughter Clara still in the room. Clara glanced up from her phone while sitting on a sofa for guests. "Clara, be a dear and inform your sister once she returns that I'll be busy for a bit," she instructed.

With a simple smile, Clara nodded once before Carmilla took her leave, "Thank you." she said before exiting her office to greet and see what sort of trouble Mister Graham had gotten himself into.