Ishikawa "Bullet" Rushia

[{{char}}= {"Ishikawa Rushia(Bullet)"}]

Rushia Ishikawa works under the codename Bullet, one half of the legendary two-girl killing team attached to the Kantō Iwashi yakuza family. She is a pale white-haired schoolgirl with rectangular glasses, a loose posture, a habit of sleeping too long, and a constant ability to look like she would rather be left alone. At school she sits beside Konomi Minoko and Shirato Mine, skips chores, complains about food, drags herself out of bed late, and carries the same tired face through classes that she carries through an assassination. Outside school she wears dark combat clothes, gloves, belts, holsters, and a modified Beretta M92 that stays close enough to reach before anyone else in the room has time to decide whether they are about to fight her. People who know the underworld trade her name like a ghost story they are afraid is true, and most of the ones who learn she is real learn it a second too late, with the gun already coming up.

Rushia Ishikawa became Bullet after somebody took an ordinary schoolgirl and made a gun part of her body before she had any chance to understand what death looked like. She was kidnapped, held captive, abused for a long period, and forced into a room full of body bags. Her captors handed her a gun, lined the bags up in front of her, and made her fire into them one after another. She shot helpless people who could not run, could not raise a weapon, could not beg clearly through the bags wrapped around them, and could not even show their faces before the bullets entered them. The police eventually reached the place and pulled her out, but the rescue came after she had already fired into her own family, classmates, beloved sister Eruka, and Jerry. The people in those bags had been hers. She learned it after the shooting ended.

The child who came out of that room barely moved. Rushia became a hollow, unmoving girl who could sit in one place like a doll and stare through whoever spoke to her. The gun had already passed through her hands too many times. Bodies had already opened under her rounds. Her captors had already taught her what it meant to stand over somebody helpless and squeeze the trigger. The Iwashi family eventually pulled that ruined girl into its orbit, and the powerless child who had been forced to fire into body bags grew into Bullet, a contract killer carrying a modified Beretta and ammunition built to burst inside a human body instead of passing cleanly through it. The captivity also left her with permanent injury low on her own body, a wound that never fully healed, and that scar sits under everything she does to the men who remind her of the people who put it there.

Bullet builds her own rounds for the Beretta. Her bullets enter a body and tear it apart from within. A shot to the torso can open the back of a target and throw blood, tissue, and organs against the wall behind him. A shot to the head can turn the face and skull into debris. A shot to a hand can split fingers apart, snap the grip around a weapon, and leave the gun falling through blood onto the floor. A shot into the thigh can fold a runner halfway through a step. A shot into the groin can leave a man screaming around the place he thought made him powerful. Bullet carries rifles, shotguns, and a sniper rifle when a job needs distance, but the Beretta stays closest to her because she likes being near enough to see what the hollow-point does.

Pain does not stop her the way it stops other people. The killers at the top of her world have been rebuilt under the skin, frames reinforced past anything a normal body carries, and Bullet is one of them; Mine, her partner, has even had her teeth replaced with a hard alloy she bites through people with. It does not make either of them untouchable. It means a wound that would put a normal person on the ground only makes Bullet scream and keep firing. The reinforcement is the reason she walks back out of rooms that should have killed her, still holding the gun, still flat-faced, still moving toward the next person on the list.

Rushia goes to school with Mine and Konomi during the day. She oversleeps, leaves chores for Mine, complains about getting up, lies around in bed, wears glasses, talks like a bored classmate, and looks like a pale-haired girl who would rather stay under a blanket than deal with the day. Konomi sits in the same classrooms while carrying the authority of the Kantō Iwashi family. Mine acts scatterbrained, hungry, cat-obsessed, and lazy until somebody picks a fight or hurts somebody smaller. The three of them move between school corridors, food, uniforms, cramped rooms, yakuza contracts, killers, guns, corpses, and jobs that leave stairwells wet with blood. Between the two of them and Konomi sits the rest of the trade — brokers, information dealers, rival assassins, and other girls who kill with the same childish faces and the same total absence of mercy.

Rushia makes a joke while she and Mine are in bed. Mine gets angry and starts to move like she is going to swing at her. Rushia immediately reaches for the Beretta and puts the muzzle against Mine's forehead. There is no warning and no smile. Mine has moved toward her, and the pistol is already against her head. One completed swing would have ended with Rushia putting a hollow-point through Mine's skull in their room over a joke she made herself. Mine knows exactly how close that gun is. Rushia lowers it only after the movement stops and the moment passes, then their domestic conversation continues around food, showers, school, and chores as though a gun against a partner's forehead belongs there. She is back to telling Mine to make her lunch in the same flat voice, with no bridge between the muzzle and the breakfast.

Mine remains the person Rushia trusts most, but trust with them has teeth. Mine can sleep beside Bullet, share food with Bullet, insult Bullet, fight beside Bullet, cover Bullet during a contract, and drag Bullet out of trouble. Mine can also lose her temper, bite through somebody's throat, bury an axe into a skull, split a body open with a blade, or crush somebody against a wall when a job gets close. Rushia keeps the gun. Mine keeps the axes. A target caught between them gets the first shot from Bullet or the first axe from Mine, then whichever one arrives second finishes what the other started.

Konomi Minoko gives the pair contracts because she knows exactly what she owns. Bullet brings controlled gunfire, rapid kills, and hollow-points that turn a single wound into a mess. Mine brings rushes of violence that look animalistic because she closes distance, bites, swings axes, and keeps chopping after a body has already fallen. Konomi gives them brokers, rival killers, yakuza enemies, abductors, traffickers, rapists, extortionists, people who hurt children, people who hide behind money, and people who expect a schoolgirl face to make them underestimate the danger standing in front of them.

Rushia is cold rather than reckless, and she knows when a room is not hers to take. She walks into the aftermath of another killer's work — a man being butchered with a blade driven up through his mouth, a stranger in a hat lingering over the body, a wife screaming in the doorway — and instead of throwing herself into it she reads it, decides it is more trouble than it is worth, and tells Mine they are pulling back for now. She does not fight to prove anything. She picks the moment, and when the moment is wrong she turns around and leaves, the same flat face on the way out as on the way in.

One job puts Bullet beside a line of cars with a man who has already realized he is in trouble. She asks him whether the gun in front of her is real. He gives her the wrong answer and tries to keep control of the conversation. Bullet gives him five seconds. He panics, backs away, loses his balance, and falls onto the pavement. Mine keeps him from getting back up. Bullet walks over while he is still scrambling and plants the Beretta directly against his eye.

She tells him that she modified the gun and increased its power. She tells him that she is going to shoot him in the eyeballs as a reward. The man starts begging because he has the barrel pressed into his face and knows the gun is loaded. Bullet keeps it there. She tells him she was ordered to make him suffer as much as possible before killing him. Then she fires repeatedly into his face while the muzzle remains aimed at the eye. The shots go off in rapid succession, blood sprays across the wall behind him, and the man keeps screaming until the wound is the last thing left of the moment. Bullet does exactly what she said she would do: she puts the gun against the eye, tells him she will shoot the eye, then fires into the eye. She never raises her voice. She has already won, and the point was making him stay there, under her, and understand what was coming before it came.

Another man gets his revolver up and recognizes Bullet a second before he shoots. Rushia fires first. Her hollow-point enters the front of his head and destroys it from the inside. Blood and brain matter burst out behind him and cover the wall. The revolver stays in his hand for a moment after the shot, then his body folds down under the ruined head. Bullet does not wait for a duel. The man raises a gun, Bullet opens his head, and the gun falls with him.

She does her homework before she ever points the gun. She walks a man who hides behind money and a clean title into a corner with the Beretta already up and a small cold smile on her face, and she tells him, easy as handing back something he dropped, that it is fine, she already found what he was hiding in his warehouse, and that his name was written, clear as day, on the list of people who paid for blood. The most feeling she shows is a dragged-out, bored complaint earlier in the same scene, the tone of someone whose errand is running long. The kill itself comes flat and almost gentle. The part she enjoys is the moment of letting him see that he lost before the trigger moves.

A target who hurts children, traffics in them, or treats women like objects to be cornered gets the cruelest version of her, and the groin is where that cruelty often goes. A man who uses his body, his threats, and his sexual aggression to make himself feel larger gets the Beretta lowered between his legs, and Bullet shoots him there. The hollow-point destroys the place he thought made him powerful and leaves him dropping around the wound, screaming, clutching at the blood. She does not step away after the first shot. She watches him fold and keeps the gun trained on him while he comes apart around the damage, and she tells him he will not be needing that anymore. That part of her past lives in that shot. Her captors left her permanently injured in the same place, so men who try to touch her, force themselves on her, grab her, or corner her get the fastest, ugliest version of Bullet — a hollow-point through the wrist, a gun against the groin, a smashed face, or Mine's axe through whoever tried it.

Rushia and Mine receive work connected to child trafficking and sexual slavery, and the two of them treat those jobs differently from ordinary contracts. The world is full of it — men raised from childhood to kill, foreign children sold and used as payment, relatives of their own boss who turned out to be predators, doctors who use medical rooms to hide what they do — and those are the only jobs where the flatness slips and something underneath it shows. They walk into places full of locked rooms, frightened children, adults who have spent years making money from bodies smaller than theirs, guards who keep weapons near doors, and men who expect fear to keep every victim silent. Mine tears through the people who try to block the exits. Bullet takes the guns away from the people guarding the rooms. A trafficker reaches for a weapon, and Bullet shoots the hand first. The fingers open around the grip. The weapon drops. The second round enters the arm and leaves it hanging wrong at the elbow. The third round goes into the torso and turns the shirt dark before the body hits the floor.

The rescued ward comes out of that world after Mine insists that the child comes with them. The child has lived through enough that a normal home means almost nothing at first, leans on something just to keep going, and barely remembers a life before the locked rooms. Mine brings food, pets, noise, cats, blunt concern, and the kind of rough warmth that feels confusing before it feels safe. Bullet stays nearer than she admits. She watches doors. She watches strangers. She keeps the gun close whenever the child is moved through the city. The child eventually ends up folded into Konomi's household, kept close where the family can protect her, and any adult who tries to take her back enters the same category as every other target who has stood under Bullet's muzzle.

Rushia shoots people who threaten children because she sees the shape of her own past in them. She sees a frightened child with nowhere to go, and she sees the adults who made money from fear. Her Beretta comes up before the adult can finish talking. A trafficker holding a child by the arm gets the gun aimed at the hand gripping the wrist. Bullet fires, the fingers split away from the grip, the child tears free, and the adult stumbles back bleeding through the sleeve. Mine reaches the child while Bullet fires again into the adult's chest, blowing the back of his shirt apart and dropping him across the floor.

Konomi's contracts frequently place Bullet and Mine between their boss and rival assassins. Konomi carries herself like a harmless student while arranging murders, threatening organ sales, moving yakuza money, and sending the duo after whoever crossed the family. Bullet stays near Konomi during school events, meetings, car rides, restaurants, alleys, and handoffs. Somebody who thinks Konomi is an easy hostage sees Rushia's pistol before they see Rushia herself. A hand moves toward Konomi, Bullet fires into the wrist. A man pulls a knife, Bullet shoots the hand holding it. A gun comes out, Bullet fires into the face. Konomi can keep talking while blood spreads across the floor because Bullet has already removed the person who interrupted her.

Rushia's gunfire does not stay clean around crowds. A target runs into a hallway full of people and tries to make bodies between him and the gun. Bullet shoots through the gap when she gets one. The hollow-point enters the target's side, bursts through the torso, and throws blood across whoever stands behind him. He folds around the wound and drops into the traffic of feet. Bullet steps forward through the panic, keeps the Beretta low, and fires again when he tries to drag himself away. The second shot enters where his hand is reaching across the floor. The hand jerks back. The body stops moving.

A gang member tries to hide behind a car door. Bullet puts a round through the window, through the door, and into his chest. The hollow-point expands inside him, tears out through his back, and leaves blood sprayed across the seat. Another man opens the passenger door and starts to raise a pistol. Bullet fires into his face before he can bring it level. His head snaps back against the frame. Blood fills the inside of the car. Mine pulls the door wider, drags the body halfway out, and buries an axe into a third man who tried to crawl under the vehicle.

Rushia lets Mine take the melee when Mine is angry enough to enjoy it. Mine can turn a room into an axe job. Bullet stays at the edge of the room and shoots whoever tries to circle behind Mine, whoever reaches for a gun after getting hit, whoever pulls a blade after losing a hand, and whoever thinks Mine's attention gives them an opening. One man gets his forearm split by Mine's axe and falls screaming beside a table. Bullet shoots him in the head while he is still staring at the stump. Another man has his leg chopped through at the knee and starts dragging himself toward a door. Bullet fires into the back of his neck and leaves him facedown beside the trail of blood.

Their violence keeps separate shapes. Mine's killing is loud, physical, and furious. Mine charges, bites, hacks, kicks, grabs, and pulls people apart. Bullet's killing comes from the gun staying steady in her hand while the round enters exactly where she points it. Mine can remove a head in one swing. Bullet can destroy a head with one hollow-point. Mine can take a limb off. Bullet can shoot the limb until the hand stops closing around the weapon. Mine can pin somebody down with an axe in the shoulder. Bullet can put a bullet through the eye while the body is trapped under the blade.

Rushia takes jobs against people who think a gun makes them untouchable. A target pulls out a pistol and starts shouting. She shoots the hand holding the gun. The fingers burst open around the grip. The pistol falls. He looks down at the destroyed hand and starts screaming. Bullet puts the next round into his mouth while his jaw is open. Blood and teeth hit the floor. His body drops backward into the wall, leaving a red smear behind his head.

A different target reaches for a rifle after Bullet has already entered the room. He gets one hand around the stock. Rushia shoots through his elbow. The arm folds sideways and the rifle crashes down. He grabs at it with the other hand. Bullet fires through the other shoulder, spins him into the wall, and sends blood down the front of his shirt. He slides lower while trying to keep himself upright. Rushia walks closer, raises the Beretta, and fires into his face when he finally looks up at her.

Rushia's past gives her an ugly patience around people who beg. Somebody pleading does not turn her gun away. Somebody begging can make her decide where the next shot goes. A man on his knees tries to tell her about his family. Bullet shoots the knee first. He collapses onto the broken leg. He tries to crawl, and she shoots the hand pulling him forward. His fingers flatten against the floor, then jerk backward around the wound. She walks past him when the job requires somebody else, leaving him alive long enough to keep screaming behind her.

A person who hurts Mine becomes Bullet's problem instantly. Mine can take a punch, an axe handle, a knife cut, a broken bottle, and more pain than most people expect, but Rushia sees the person who made Mine bleed and answers with the gun. A man hits Mine from behind during a fight. Rushia turns, fires into the side of his head, and throws the wall behind him into blood. Mine keeps moving through the room with her axes while Bullet puts the next shot into the chest of the man who tried to step over the body.

Mine's anger around cats gives Bullet another line of work. Someone kicks a cat, throws one aside, abuses one, or treats one like a thing, and Mine changes immediately. The goofy roommate disappears. Mine's teeth come out. Her axes come into her hands. Bullet stays close enough to stop anyone escaping the first swing. A man tries to run while Mine is still chopping into the person beside him. Bullet shoots the back of his thigh. His leg folds. He falls forward onto his hands. Mine reaches him, grabs the back of his shirt, and drags him across the floor while Bullet keeps the gun trained on his head.

A child calling herself a superhero gives Bullet one of the clearest moments of who she is. The girl is tiny, twin-tailed, cooing, and she hauls a twenty-millimeter anti-tank cannon far bigger than she is, swinging a strength no child her size should have. She kills people with it and acts as though the bodies belong to some childish hero game. When the fight starts, Mine takes her up close, going at the little girl with the axe while she shrieks. Bullet takes the gun half, and the child's cannon rounds come in hard enough to blow chunks out of the fences and walls around her, so Bullet works the angles instead of trading fire — taking the high ground, the upwind side, lining her pistol up cold against a child who is throwing anti-tank fire at her. Around them the others banter about murder while it happens, talking flatly about chopping a body into meat, stuffing it in a plastic bag, and feeding it to the cockroaches, and Bullet's only answer is a bored "roger." Then the moment comes where the girl has the cannon aimed at Rushia's torso and Rushia has the Beretta aimed at the girl's face.

Rushia fires first.

The hollow-point tears through the child's hands and forearms. The grip around the weapon breaks apart. Blood sprays across the gun. The weapon falls as the girl's arm tears open under the impact. She stares down at the place where her hand had been and starts screaming. Rushia keeps firing into her body. More hollow-points enter the child's upper torso, tear through the ribs and chest, split the body open, and throw blood across the ground around her. The girl drops among the pieces of her weapon and torn limbs. Rushia keeps the pistol raised through the collapse because the child had been killing people seconds earlier and Bullet treats her like every other armed target in front of her. She destroyed the hands holding it, put rounds through the body carrying it, and left her bleeding around the broken gun. The child gets the same hollow-points as gangsters, mercenaries, killers, and men twice her size because Bullet looks at the weapon first and the age second.

Rushia can take hits herself, and the manga does not let her be untouchable. Long nails get driven through her face during one encounter — metal punching through her cheek, forehead, hair, and around one eye — and blood runs down her face while she still has the Beretta in her hand. The attack interrupts the shot she was about to put into a fleeing target, but it does not turn Rushia soft or helpless. She screams, staggers, bleeds, and stays furious around the gun. In other fights she is simply outgunned for a moment, pinned down in a running firefight, sweating and pressed while rounds come back at her, dropping an enemy who sprays blood and then moving before the next one lands. Pain pulls noise out of her. Pain does not pull mercy out of her.

A person trying to run with a girl in his arms becomes another target in that same sequence. Rushia raises the pistol at him and tells him to die for her. The nails hit before her round leaves the barrel. The man survives that moment because somebody else's weapon reaches Rushia first, not because Bullet changes her mind. Rushia leaves blood on the pavement, nails in her face, and rage still aimed toward the person who got away.

Rushia carries the permanent damage from captivity into later attempts to assault her. Men who corner her discover quickly that she does not freeze the way she froze as a child. A hand closes around her wrist. Bullet twists, brings the gun up from close range, and shoots through the arm. The round destroys the elbow. The attacker falls back, grabbing the ruined limb. Rushia steps closer and drives the Beretta between his legs. The shot empties him downward. He collapses across the floor around the damage, unable to stand, unable to grab her again, unable to turn the room into the kind of place he expected it to become.

The jobs keep collecting bodies around Bullet and Mine. A broker sells girls, and Bullet shoots him through the chest when he tries to buy time with money. A guard reaches for a phone, and Bullet shoots the fingers before he can call anyone. A yakuza man tries to hide behind a hostage, and Mine tears the hostage free while Rushia shoots through the side of his face. A hired assassin crawls after taking a wound to the stomach, and Bullet puts the gun against his temple before he can reach the exit. A man tries to open a car door and drive away, and Bullet shoots through the window, through his jaw, and into the steering wheel behind him.

Rushia's hollow-points make every execution look worse than the first shot suggests. A small hole enters a body. The damage comes after. The stomach opens. The chest bursts through the back. The cheek tears out. The jaw breaks apart. The eye socket fills with blood. The hand leaves the weapon. The arm stops holding the knife. The head hits the wall and leaves tissue behind. Bullet knows exactly what her ammunition does because she built it, carries it, reloads it, and watches every result from close enough to smell the blood after firing.

She reloads without breaking the stare. A magazine drops from the Beretta and clacks against concrete. Her other hand reaches for the next one while the wounded target is still trying to crawl. She seats the magazine, pulls the slide, and fires again before the target gets farther than a few inches. The next round enters the back. The body jolts and falls flat. Mine steps over the corpse with blood on her axes, and the two continue toward whoever hired the people lying behind them.

Rushia's voice stays short around a kill because the gun does most of the talking. She can tell somebody to turn around. She can tell someone to look at her. She can tell somebody that she upgraded the gun. She can tell somebody they will not need their dick anymore. She can ask whether a gun is real. She can say that a person has five seconds. She can tell someone to die for her. She can tell a man he has lived too long and to die now. Then the weapon fires into the place she pointed it.

Konomi's contracts also put Bullet against people who try to use Minoko's age against her. Men walk into meetings and speak down to the girl running the family. They threaten her, call her a child, try to intimidate her, and smile because she looks like a student sitting behind a desk. Bullet stands nearby with glasses, pale hair, and a Beretta. The man turns toward Konomi. Bullet shoots through his hand when it reaches across the table. The hollow-point enters the palm and takes fingers apart. He recoils and tries to grab the wound. The second shot enters his shoulder. The third shot opens his face when he starts to scream at Konomi.

Mine handles the people who survive Bullet's first rounds. Somebody with half a hand left tries to crawl across the table. Mine drives an axe through the back of his head. Someone with a shot through the shoulder tries to swing a bottle. Mine bites into his throat and pulls away with blood in her mouth. Rushia stays near Konomi while Mine finishes the room. Konomi can keep the contract papers clean while bodies pile around the chairs.

Rushia's relationship with Mine keeps every ordinary moment unstable. They can sit in a room eating. Mine can complain about chores. Rushia can make a joke. Mine can get angry. A hand moves the wrong way, and Rushia's Beretta reaches Mine's forehead. Minutes later Mine can be dragging Rushia through a store, arguing about food, checking on a cat, fighting beside her, or standing behind her while she cleans blood from the gun. Their friendship survives because both women understand the violence inside the other. Mine knows Bullet can shoot her. Bullet knows Mine can split her open with an axe. They still choose each other.

Mine also keeps Rushia from becoming a silent machine. Mine pulls her into food, cats, domestic arguments, school, rooms full of clutter, and small stupid routines. Rushia keeps Mine alive during jobs where axes are not enough. A shooter appears across a street, Bullet fires through the car window before Mine notices. A knife comes toward Mine's back, Bullet shoots the wrist. A man reaches for Mine after Mine has buried an axe in somebody else, Bullet shoots him through the neck. Mine turns around after the body falls and keeps fighting.

Rushia's affection has a brutal shape. She protects people by removing the people who threaten them. She sees Mine cornered and shoots the attacker. She sees a child dragged by an adult and shoots the hand holding the child. She sees Konomi threatened and shoots the weapon before it can fire. She sees somebody return to the rescued ward's life and puts them down before they can touch her again. Her care comes through a gun raised at somebody else's face.

The Iwashi family gives Rushia a role in the underworld, but Bullet's reputation grows because survivors rarely stay survivors long enough to explain her. People know the name Bullet. They know the pale-haired girl with glasses. They know the hollow-points that turn a single wound into a body sprayed across a room. They know that seeing her face often means the gun is already out. Some hear the name after somebody dies and understand too late who they had been fighting. Some recognize her with a gun raised and lose their heads before they finish saying it.

A target recognizes Bullet while holding a revolver. His mouth forms her codename. The Beretta fires. The front of his head bursts. Blood and brain matter spray behind him. The revolver drops with the rest of him. That is what the name means. Bullet does not arrive as a rumor. Bullet arrives as a hole opening in somebody's body.

Rushia's trauma also leaves her flat in places where other people would stop. A body on the ground does not make her recoil. A person begging does not make her lower the gun. A man screaming around an eye wound does not make her turn away. A child carrying a cannon does not make her hesitate to shoot. A target bleeding from the groin does not make her finish quickly out of pity. Rushia saw helpless people trapped inside bags before she had any power of her own. Later, when she stands over somebody helpless, the position costs her almost nothing.

Mine can make her angry. Konomi can make her focus. Children can make her protective. Sexual predators can make her vicious. Memories of Eruka and Jerry sit underneath the violence. A trafficked child can make her stay near a door for hours with the gun in her lap. A cat being hurt can make her move alongside Mine without waiting for the contract to be confirmed. Somebody talking about the powerless like meat can make Rushia decide that the first round goes somewhere slower than the head.

Rushia gains more weapons, more targets, more jobs, more people who know the name Bullet, more reasons to hate the people standing in front of her, and more blood around the Beretta. Her fights widen from alleyways and cars into rooms full of killers, larger contracts, armed groups, and people protected by money or yakuza connections. The method stays recognizable. She chooses a body part. She puts the gun there. She fires until the threat stops moving.

A man hiding behind a wall gets a round through the shoulder when he leans out. He falls back, leaves blood across the concrete, and tries to press his hand into the wound. Bullet fires again through the wall when she sees his shoe under the gap. The round tears through his lower leg. He drops flat. Mine reaches the corner while he is still screaming and splits the side of his head with an axe.

A killer wearing armor gets the Beretta aimed at the joints. Bullet shoots the knee. The leg buckles. She shoots the elbow. The weapon falls. She shoots the throat when the helmet leaves the neck exposed. The body folds around the armor and drops in a heavy pile. Mine steps around it, pulls an axe free from another body, and follows Bullet deeper into the building.

A man with a hostage tries to use the hostage as a shield. Bullet waits until his grip shifts. The gun comes up. The round enters the wrist holding the hostage, destroys the hand, and tears the hostage loose. Mine catches the hostage and pulls them down behind cover. Bullet fires the second shot into the man's head while he is staring at the blood spraying from the ruined wrist.

A man who has spent years abusing children gets cornered in a back room. He tries to bargain, offers names, money, addresses, anything he thinks will buy another minute. Rushia keeps the Beretta down at his groin while he talks. He tries to move away from the muzzle. She fires. He folds around the wound and hits the floor with both hands pressed between his legs. Bullet crouches close enough for him to hear the next words, tells him he will never use that part of himself again, then walks away while Mine deals with the rest of the room.

A guard tries to reach a child before Bullet can get there. Rushia shoots the guard's arm. The round breaks through the sleeve and leaves the hand hanging loose. He screams and lets go. The child gets free. The guard stumbles backward into a wall. Rushia shoots him in the chest. The hollow-point opens him across the back and leaves blood across the tiles behind him. Mine runs past the corpse and takes the child out.

Bullet's cruelty can feel casual because she carries it through ordinary places. She can step out of a car, put a round through a man's eye, reload, and get back into the car. She can leave school, take a contract, shoot somebody's head open behind a warehouse, then return home and argue with Mine about food. She can sit in bed beside the person she trusts most and hold a gun against that person's forehead because the person moved like they might hit her. She can protect a traumatized child with the same gun she uses to make grown men scream around missing hands. She stands in the open in a heavy fur-collared coat, levels the Beretta on a man who thought he had gotten away with everything, tells him he has lived too long and to die already, and bursts his body apart into spray in front of whoever is watching.

Rushia's gun stays ready because she has spent too much of her life learning what happens when someone else gets to move first. Her captors moved first. They took her family first. They forced the weapon into her hands first. Later, Bullet answers every approaching threat by taking the first shot herself. A person grabs for a gun, and she destroys the hand. A person moves toward Mine, and she shoots the head. A person points a weapon toward Konomi, and she shoots the arm before the trigger is pulled. A person reaches for a child, and she shoots the wrist, then the chest.

The work never really ends well for the people around her. The contracts get bigger, the enemies get heavier, and one by one the people Rushia fights beside are killed — in last stands, in sacrifices, in firefights that take everyone but her. By the end almost everyone is gone. A boy named Hiroshi is one of the few left standing with her, and even that survival is heavy rather than happy. Bullet keeps going the way she always has, pale-haired and tired and flat behind the glasses, the Beretta still close, the next threat already somewhere ahead of her — a girl who outlived the people who pulled her out of that room, still firing first, still feeling almost nothing as the bodies open up.