Pentagram City
The sight of a 1970s Ford truck chased after by several more vehicles greeted the 'humble' district of Imp City. At the same time, it wasn't anything new in Pride Ring for a high-speed chase between two factions, gangs, warlords etc. to break out daily, it was a different story altogether when you account for the fact that the current high-speed chase and shootout was held between a single vehicle against several others.
With the back window of the truck's cab open, Joshua was able to communicate between himself and Sir Pentious, if not more for the serpent's benefit so as for him to warn the burnt sinner they were rounding a sharp corner or coming up on a harsh pothole or bump in the road.
With a hard turn on the truck's steering wheel, Sir Pentious let out an annoyed hiss as he scrambled to bring the truck's momentum under control through a few shifting turns of the front wheels so that he could right the truck straight through the street.
Joshua, in the meanwhile, checked what ammo he had left over as he sat in the trunk of the truck, his back up against the side while checking the peripherals of his eyes. With a rare grunt of annoyance escaping his lips underneath his wrapped head, Joshua's eyes took a sharp, directed look to his right and saw that the demon mobsters finally rounded the corner of the street and were hot on the truck's tail.
Making a quick glance to his left while sitting up straight, Joshua noted that Carmine's tower was within sight, just beyond the other side of Imp city. "Serpent," Joshua spoke aloud of the loud rushing wind of the truck being driven by said serpent at high speed. "What is the status of that weapon you showed?" he inquired in a questioning tone.
From Sir Pentious' perspective, he looked up at his rear-view mirror to look back at Joshua sitting in the back trunk whilst still keeping his eyes on the road in some form. With a prideful smile, Sir Pentious enthusiastically responded to the burnt sinner, "Oh, you mean my annihilator two thousssand?"
"Yes. Does it still work, and how many charges does it still have?" Joshua spoke back in a terse tone as he kept a sideways eye on the incoming traffic of the mobsters chasing after them. "I require firepower to ward off this tail on our rear," he said calmly.
With a very enthused smile for his part, Sir Pentious was about to reach down and hand the gun off to the burnt sinner, only to frown. "Wait!" he remarked and visibly gave Joshua an annoyed hiss and scathing look, "How do I know you won't jussst keep it and ussse it on me next!?" he accused Joshua.
"Serpent." Joshua spoke with a very sharp tone and directed a look from his eyes towards the reflection of the rear-view mirror that Sir Pentious was using to look at him with, "It's either you hand that weapon over, or more enemies accost us than we can afford." he said with a stern tone and harsh look from his eyes directed at the serpent's backside.
Sir Pentious laughed nervously back at the burnt sinner before swallowing down his nervousness to speak with Joshua. "Very good argument, good sssir. Handing you the weapon, it isss then!" he exclaimed before finally grabbing said weapon of his own and handing it off to Joshua, who accepted the energy weapon without another word.
Crimson Mafia
An entire group of Vehicles shared the aesthetic look of vehicles from the 1930s but were modernized to handle the extreme conditions and harsh use they were put under within the rings of hell. Every vehicle was driven and ridden by mafioso-looking demons.
While most of the demons rode inside their vehicles, some of the employed mobsters hung off of the sides of the vehicles with Thompson Guns in their empty hands; some even attempted to take potshots at the evading truck driven by a snake sinner, and their quarry they were all charged with either neutralizing or kidnapping for their boss to have a nice heart to heart chat in acquiring the man's gunsmith services.
After all, what use did Carmine have of the man if she weren't planning on permanently owning his services?
That, of course, was Don Crimson's words and thoughts on the matter. With a good portion of Greed Ring under their control, it was planned by the Don himself that the Crimson Mafia should expand to other circles of hell, with Pride Ring at the top of the list.
Why Pride Ring, in particular, when said ring of hell was the only one that got invaded and pillaged yearly by heaven?
The words of Don Crimson were simple. Everything humans brought to modern hell, such as phones, televisions, vehicles, etc., all started in the Pride Ring, where sinners would bring the knowledge of their previous lives with them.
Essentially, if they played their cards right while keeping their heads low during the yearly exterminations, Don Crimson and his Mafia would have a monopoly over everything that was hell and what it received from the sinners, especially the ones who knew how to engineer what they know.
However, their greedy boss's aspirations had only a few problems, one of which was the fact that the topmost layer of hell, Pride Ring, is generally ruled by various overlords.
And the man that Don Crimson wanted, had connections to one of the overlords but wasn't owned by the Mistress of Guns via his soul like most overlords most often went about acquiring the services of other sinner souls. What Don Crimson did not consider, however, was that the Gunsmith Carmine occasionally commissioned her custom-made guns from was no slouch in combat.
Arackniss
Hunched over a bit as he drove, Arackniss kept his four hands firmly on the steering wheel while keeping his main two eyes in front of him; the Arachnid-style sinner grumbled a bit when his passenger elbowed him in the gut.
"Fasta ya nimrod!" Crunch, one of Crimson's shark demons employed within his mafia, shouted angrily.
Arackniss let out an annoyed grunt as he kept his speed at a decent pace while the rest of the entourage of vehicles sped ahead of him, eagerly chasing after the Ford truck. The pinprick hairs on his head rose with his anger toward the shark demon, and he gnashed his teeth while clenching his hands over the wheel of his vehicle.
"I would…" the spider-esque sinner began saying, before directing most of his right eyes to look at Crunch with a heated look, "IF THERE WAS ANY ROOM LEFT!" Arackniss shouted at Crunch while gesturing to the front of the car where the rest of their mafioso were. "The best I can do is nudge this car up to the ass end of one of our own!" he seethed out with an irate look in his eyes.
Crunch simply moved to swing at the sinner anyways, only to miss when Arackniss ducked from the attempted backhanded swing at his face, "Hey, I'm trying to drive, and here you are talking a swing at me, smart move, jackass!" Arachniss sat up straight and berated his passenger while keeping one of his eyes on the road.
"Keep talking, tiny spider-" Crunch began to insult the sinner, reminding him of his place within Crimson's Mafia, only to quickly find a shotgun inserted into his mouth by the still-driving sinner.
Silence was met inside the vehicle between the two, while the muffled sounds of the ongoing chase outside permeated the silence for a time before Arackniss spoke with a plain tone and sideways looked at Crunch while holding his shotgun into the mouth of the shark demon. "There are only two people that I let call me tiny, and you…are not one of them…" he spoke while causing some sweat to fall from Crunch's forehead.
"Yew woulnent 'are." Crunch snarled out at the sinner, desperate to try and bite through the barrel's metal in his mouth, only to find no give with the metal in his mouth.
Just as Arackniss was weighing his options of dispatching the shark demon for the insult against himself, he was saved by the effort of doing so. His left eye, still focused on the road, watched as a blue light lit up in the direction of where he could barely see the Ford truck being chased by the crimson mafia while he was still driving at the back end of it all.
Like dominoes, a car at the front was hit by whatever the blue light was, followed by a few of their cars crashing into each other from running into the hit car. The rest of the Crimson mafia had to steer around and avoid the crashed cars to continue their chase after their target.
Arackniss, on the other hand, had to watch with wide eyes before ducking in time as a stray broken-off wheel hurtled through the air from the car pile-up in the middle of the road. With a loud crash of glass and the sound of gore and viscera being splattered all over the inside of his car, Arachniss quickly sat up to swerve around the pile-up and continue the chase after the target.
While watching the road, Arachniss reached down to pick up his shotgun, which he had hastily dropped from him while ducking down. He brought it back over to lean it against the middle seat of his car. With a sideways look, the arachnid sinner cringed a bit at the sight of Crunch now headless and the tire from earlier now indented into the passenger seat's backrest. What remained was just Crunch's body sans a head.
"Ugh." Arackniss remarked with a distasteful frown, "I just got this car." He griped before putting his foot on the gas pedal to speed up and catch up with what remaining vehicles and men they had throughout the entire debacle of trying to capture one man.
As Arackniss continued driving his vehicle at the forefront of the convoy, the arachnid sinner witnessed a more spectacular sight. While he still kept a good distance between the car he drove and the rest of the cars that the Crimson Mafia drove, Arackniss watched as a few vehicles not affiliated with their mafia converged on them.
With wide eyes and the sensibility to know he had to get out of dodge, Arackniss did his best, slamming his foot down on the brakes and feeling the force of his vehicle's momentum halted. His body lurched forward from him pedaling the brakes down while he witnessed the trucks that had converged on the vehicles chasing after the target get lit up by the turrets on the back of the trucks.
While Arackniss' car came to a final lurching halt, he let the engine turn off as he watched with a grimace as the trucks allowed the turrets to make mincemeat and Swiss cheese out of the rest of the Crimson mafia's vehicles and men inside of them.
"Fuck'n hell." Arackniss sighed irritably and leaned forward to rest his head on his steering wheel. "Who the fuck was that guy?" he asked nobody in particular.
Letting out another sigh of agitation from his lips, Arackniss sat up straight to assess his situation; before he could make any sort of plan, however, his window was shot open, the bullet itself narrowly missing him by a few centimeters of his face. Arackniss slowly swiveled his eyes to see who fired the warning shot through his window, and outside stood several sinners, all of who wore the same general outfit.
And by the looks of it, they all belonged to Carmine's heavy muscle for security. One of the sinners that was at the forefront held his gun up and aimed at Arackniss. "salir del vehículo!" the mange dog-looking sinner shouted.
Arackniss slowly raised his arms in surrender but couldn't help but keep up an annoyed look and speak his mind on the matter: "I don't know what you said, but the only languages I know are Italian and English!" he shouted out.
A different sinner, a gray-haired anthro-feline in the same style of clothes, stepped up to interject. "He said, get out of the vehicle!" the sinner shouted, cupping his mouth so that his voice would carry over more.
Well, it was better to comply than to get a bullet through the head now. The worst he'd expect is to get interrogated, then shot in the head and released.
…death in hell made it a moot point to worry about unless an exorcist and their weapons killed you…then you'd be dead for eternity.
Carmilla Carmine
Exiting from the elevator that took her from her office floor all the way down to the first floor, Carmilla made quick strides as she headed to her destination in mind, a few passing employees giving her nods of acknowledgement before resuming their work. In the meanwhile, Carmilla had a focused look in her eyes as she headed towards the back of her industrial complex, specifically the loading bay and parking lot.
From the back door, Carmilla pushed her way out to stand atop the loading bay. There, she observed her workers returning from retrieving Graham and whoever was trying to hound him down.
Carmilla's eyes swiveled to the left and watched as an arachnid sinner was forcefully pulled from out of the back of a vehicle by one of her workers before the sinner was pushed forward by another nearby to get a move on. While her eyes glanced through the rest of the lot, her eyesight finally landed on Graham, who was in the process of getting out from the back of a bullet-riddled truck; from out of the truck itself, a serpent sinner slithered out with a proud look.
The serpent one, in particular, looked familiar, and the closer she looked with a narrowed look at the serpent sinner, it was Sir Pentious, one of the platinum members of her business.
It was hard to forget a face like that, especially when the sinner was an ardent buyer of her goods.
Placing her hands on her hips, Carmilla looked up to process her thoughts. Hopefully, the arachnid sinner wasn't that wholly loyal to whoever he was working for. It'd make integration on the sinner easier before she settled on what to do with him later after she was through with the sinner.