A Saint~!

In a building not too far away from all the chaos created by Mikey and his friends, there was a boy not so much older than them sitting near a fireplace in one of his father's many workrooms.

The room was filled with a red carpet, a chandelier that produced yellow light, and some dark brown leather furniture inside of it. The room seemed to have a red theme going on as everything inside complimented said color.

There was also a large cupboard that hung on one of the walls of the room and was filled with bottles of wine and liquor.

The boy had a small glass with some yellow liquid inside of it that he would sip from every now and again as he read from a medium-sized brown book he had placed on top of the office table in the room.

There was a loud knock from outside, and as much as the person who did it tried to make it gentle, he could not hide his impatience.

"Enter," the boy said without looking up to see who would come in.

"My grace," a male servant said as he bowed his head immediately after entering. "Something unexpected has happened."

The man then went quiet as he waited for the go-ahead to continue with the news.

The boy turned another page from the book. On closer inspection, one could see that the book was filled with pictures of semi to fully naked women inside of it, and underneath the pictures were small descriptions describing other traits of the women and how long they had been active in the business.

The boy then sighed as he closed the book. "You know, I was originally looking for someone to bid my evening with to pass the time, but yet despite having so many options my interest has failed to pique. Perhaps I've grown tired of used goods."

He then grabbed his drink to take another sip from it.

"So tell me, what is this situation that you were in such a hurry to inform me of, so much so that you would even disturb me in my father's chambers?"

"My grace," the male servant answered. "I have received word that Mazino is dead."

"What?" the boy questioned as his glass slipped from his hand and shattered into pieces on the carpet floor.

There was a brief silence as he stared at his own mistake for a while before looking back at his servant and saying, "You'll clean that up."

"Yes my grace," the male servant replied without argument.

"Anyways, what you just said about Mazino, he's what!?" the boy asked.

"I have received word from one of the watchmen placed near his area of residence and they have reported to me that a strange gang of misfits had barged into his building earlier and started a fight with him. And that fight has led to his presumed death."

"I say presumed because I have yet to go there myself and confirm if this is true."

"I see," the boy answered. "Alright, it looks like I finally have plans for the evening. Prepare yourself, you and I shall depart from here to go and see what has happened over there at once."

"But my grace," the male servant interrupted. "What about the broken pieces of glass? I have to clean them."

"Get somebody else to do it. You are accompanying me now meaning you don't have the time for it."

"Yes my grace," the male servant replied with a smile as he left the room.

"So, Mazino is dead? I don't believe this." The boy sat back in his chair as he thought about the situation.

He had once warned his father about Mazino in the past, saying how he had gained so much influence so quickly and was becoming a threat to their family, but his father never took it upon himself or others to either stop or threaten Mazino.

His father simply told everyone in the family to leave him alone.

This action was seen as strange to the family because Mazino was causing all of this ruckus in their territory. They had every right to warn him if not outright kill him but yet they were all told not to do anything at all.

2 weeks later, Mazino met with a tragedy that greatly diminished whatever power or authority he had and pushed him back down into a state where he was nothing more than a well-dressed thug.

When the boy tried asking his father for answers or if he had anything to do with it, his old man ignored the question as he went along with his day.

"Mazino, what happened to you?" the boy asked as he stared out a window in a small state of shock.

****

One cold night in a city in California, Mazino was making his way back home after striking a deal with some high-class gangsters to trade guns and other services between their groups.

But despite his successful negotiations, he couldn't shake off the feeling that something wasn't right about that night.

He felt like there was a knife placed behind his back at all times, pressing against him slowly until it would shear away at his blood.

Mazino almost didn't go home that night, but after being talked out of it by his men he was convinced that he might have just been tired and needed some rest. So he went home with them.

He reached his beautiful complex that housed multiple bedrooms for all of the people who had and would join his family, and it was filled with a fragrance of lilies that would help calm his mind after a day's work of business,

Mazino had himself a cup of tea.

Everything felt normal at first until he realized that a small portion of his men were absent. They had not yet reported in to him about their daily earnings at work, and since they were not in the building, it meant that they were missing.

Despite having over 300 family members he knew who each person was and where they were supposed to be at all times for fear that any one of them would be attacked by another family or group of gangsters who deemed them as a threat.

Around 30 or so members were missing.

Before he could even begin investigating this situation he felt his body shake as he began to lose his balance. The next thing he knew was that his face was on the floor as the world around him became more and more distorted.

There were voices all over the place and some people were yelling here and there as he could feel himself being carried away to another room. When he finally came to, four people were by his side. 3 were standing and one was crouched down observing him. Of the 4, 2 were dressed in black robes, one was standing and one was crouched down.

Mazino recognized the two who were in normal clothes to have been members of his family who had been with him during his negotiations earlier that day. And they were the same ones who prepared his tea after he had arrived back home.

"So you drugged me," Mazino said with a strain in his voice as his throat felt sore.

One of the two men dressed normally laughed as he began to call Mazino an idiot for being so trustful. He childishly pointed at him as he was proud of his achievement for tricking Mazino so tactfully.

"You never expected a thing," he cheered as he let out one last boastful laugh.

Then the man in the black robes who was standing pulled out a desert eagle and shot the laughing man in the back of his head. The laughs died down as the lingering sound of a gunshot took its place.

The other man in normal clothes panicked as he turned to the robed men and yelled, "Hey, this wasn't a part of the-"

*bang*

And just like that, the loud noise vanished as silence filled its place.

Mazino was in disbelief from what he saw. He could barely move as he was tied up and his body still felt disorganized from the drugs, yet he was sure that these two robed men just killed the men who had betrayed him and helped them take over his complex.

If not for the dead body of the first man who was killed falling down right in front of him, Mazino wouldn't have believed that this had happened.

The people who betrayed him had themselves been betrayed as well.

"Mazino," the crouched-down man said to get his attention. "Is it true that you have once had dealings with a woman called, the merchant?"

Mazino fell silent.

He now realized what this was all about.

Before saying anything he first brought his attention back to the dead body in front of him. He then calmly asked them this question, "Why did you kill them? They helped you didn't they? They could have been more useful to you."

The crouched man then pulled out a strawberry-flavored lollipop from his robe as he moved a bit forward and sat down on top of the corpse in front of Mazino.

"If they would betray you despite how well you've treated them and their friends, then what's to stop them from betraying us?" he answered.

"Fair," Mazino replied.

"And to answer your question, I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, 'merchant' you speak of?"

"Oh, I am pretty sure you know what I mean. She tends to have red hair and lipstick on her face and she goes around dealing weapons between people all over the world, and on rare occasions, she accepts favors as her compensation for them."

"She has never been caught once by any border patrol or special investigation task force despite how much she travels or moves around, and her methods of dealing are even a mystery to some of the world's greatest minds."

"She's so unbelievably that people relate her to Schrodinger's cat."

"She sounds like a myth," Mazino added.

"A myth that you seem to have had contact with," the crouched man continued. "Some would even refer to her as, death's merchant. Does this name sound more familiar to you?"

"I can't say it does," Mazino answered with an unwavering voice. "Speak of unfamiliarity, What family do you belong to? Because judging by my standards you can't belong to any one of the 5."

"Oh, and what makes you say that?" the robed man asked, a tad interested in his deduction.

"Well, I have been in this territory for a while now. I chose to start here for a reason you know. It wasn't just coincidental," Mazino answered.

"Let's see, there are 5 families, each which specializes in a different category, so let's call it the 5 powers. Drugs/sex work, guns, trade, information, and political influence."

"I chose to set up territory in this place because the family here is too busy getting their ***** *** with sex workers to even care about 'low lives' like me. In other words, their overconfidence in their power blinds them from seeing a bigger picture."

"Like Me."

"And I've studied this family and the way they work long before I even started my own. You guys are way too competent to belong to them."

"And your actions tonight cross you out from all the other families. I take it that you've stolen my weapons and since you are looking for some sort of 'merchant' to provide you with more, then that means that you are in short supply. So you lack the power of guns."

"If you had political influence then you wouldn't have dealt with me yourself and would have gotten some government lackey to do it for you like some cheap police officer who is desperate for a promotion."

"The ones who deal with information don't kill so easily as they believe they can get value out of people no matter how minuscule it may be, which only leaves one family for you to fall under."

"Except ever since the old leader stepped down and retired to become a family man, that family lost the balls to even think of pulling a stunt like this in another family's territory, so you can't belong to them either."

"No, you people are something else, something different, something more desperate. So much in fact that you are willing to chase down a fantasy, a ghost, a story of a fake person that doesn't exist just to increase your chance at achieving a higher power."

"It's sad really."

The robed man then kicked Mazino in his mouth with a smile on his face as he said, "Wow, you sure do talk a lot."

Before he could kick him again he got interrupted by his companion.

"Stop," his colleague said to him. "He is just trying to agitate you to get information from your reaction. And what you just did right now proved his point." He said with a sigh as he slapped his face in disappointment.

"Let me take over," he said as he moved him aside.

*Tsk* the man with the lollipop let out as he walked away.

"From what I've heard," the second man said as he stood in front of him, "One of the conditions for dealing with her is pretending that you never did. That would explain why it's so hard to find any reliable information about her whereabouts."

"Alas, our time here will be cut short. We have more pressing matters than to play with you. I will let you know one thing before we leave though. We will kill all those who have betrayed you here tonight on your behalf. After all, we don't want them either. You can call it a gift from us to you for your services."

The man then stood up, walked away to one of the curtains in the room, and took out a lighter as he set the place on fire. "Of course, we will need some place to cremate the bodies after all."

Mazino watched as the room started to be engulfed by flames, he was filled with anger from being so helpless against these people who were burning down his establishment. Before he could get another word out to try and get them to stop, the first man with the lollipop in his mouth knocked him out.

When Mazino came too, he was woken up by the scent of burning wood and coal from the fire that consumed his house. And mixed inside that scent, was the smell of flesh and blood being burnt with it.

Mazino knew why he had been left to live after his encounter with those people. Before being knocked out unconscious, there was a brief moment in which he could hear what was being said by those around him.

The two men had left him alive in hopes that he would contact the merchant again so that they could finally track her down for themselves.

This was the only reason why they didn't just burn his body with the rest of them all in that building.

As Mazino looked at the fire that burnt his house, he remembered his first encounter with the merchant. How impactful she was on him, how she changed the course of his life, and even the nickname she had given him upon their first meeting. Marzi.

He thought to himself as he watched everything he had to get burned away, "I will have a lot of renovations to do and will need to find a way to make back as much money as soon as possible."

He then gritted his teeth in anger as he declared out loud, "I WILL COME BACK FROM THIS!!"

****

As the boy and his male servant got to the scene of the report, they were astounded to realize that the strange group of misfits that had barged into Mazino's area of residence were all kids.

All of them were lying either unconscious or exhausted on the floor next to the gangsters they were fighting from Mazino's group.

No thugs and no adults helped them. It was as if this were some sick joke that was being played for them to believe. The boy refused to believe that this was true, that was until he got close enough to see the undeniable proof laid out in front of him.

On the other side of the building, two corpses were laid out not too far off from one another, each with their faces smashed so hard that one could no longer discern who they were anymore.

If not for the hair and the clothes they found on him, they would have never come to guess that this one corpse once belonged to a man so powerful that he could've threatened the 5 families had he been left to grow.

"Who did this?" the boy asked as he looked around for an answer. And that he did find when he saw a boy not that much younger than him crying by a pillar close between the two bodies.

The crying kid was tightly hugging the body of his dead friend with one arm, as his other hand had too much blood on it for him to use.

He was all by himself, sitting in such despair that he did not even notice that somebody was walking towards him until they had stopped themselves in front of him.

As Mikey looked up with sorrowful eyes and tears running down each cheek he asked the unfamiliar face standing by him, "Who are you?"

The boy looked at him with a curious glance as he thought about the situation before him. After a brief silence, he smiled as he stretched out a hand towards him and answered his question, "A saint~."