Gun Devil arc

Spanning chapters 71 through 79, this seventh entry of the Public Safety Saga, and its penultimate one, takes over from the International Assassins story before handing off to the closing Control Devil arc. It cashes in Aki's bleak prophecy, lays bare the scale of Makima's abilities, and shatters the makeshift family at the saga's heart.

Still rattled by her brush with the Darkness Devil down in Hell, Power grows closer to Denji at home. When Aki announces a visit to his family's grave up in Hokkaido, the two insist on joining, and for all their pestering Aki concedes the trip spared him his darker thoughts. Quietly he tells Kishibe he wants out of the Gun Devil campaign to keep Denji and Power from harm, and the Future Devil warns that Denji will someday kill the pair before a far worse devil emerges. Summoning the trio, Makima reveals the Gun Devil already sits captured and parceled out among nations, so attacking it would mean war. Desperate to protect his friends, Aki begs Makima for a contract, and she binds him to herself; Angel, recalling how she once made him butcher a village, resists but is overwhelmed and falls under her control as well. In Washington, the President burns a year off every American's lifespan to call up the Gun Devil expressly to kill Makima, the Control Devil. The Gun Devil rips across Japan, butchering civilians on its march toward her. She brushes off a headshot, shapes a halo from her own brain, and unleashes the borrowed contracts of dead hunters, sending the Punishment Devil to torment and destroy it. Makima then phones Denji claiming she failed, and dispatches the Gun Fiend, clad in Aki's body, to his door.

Recognizing Aki's scent at their front door, Denji and Power cannot accept what stands before them. The Gun Fiend slaughters bystanders while hallucinating a snowball fight with his friends and lays waste to the city. Civilians press their blood on Denji and beg him to act, and at last he kills Aki, who dies picturing his late little brother Taiyo. The Future Devil returns to remark that Aki perished in the cruelest way imaginable for Denji, priming the emotional collapse of the finale. The arc brings in the Gun Devil and the Punishment Devil.