Gun Devil

The devil's complete hundred-percent shape from the November 18th rampage was never drawn on the page, though it reportedly carried a full complement of legs, feet, bone, and flesh. When the United States summons the twenty-percent fragment in its possession, the result is a towering airborne humanoid whose arms are rifles the size of buildings and whose skeletal torso is packed with disembodied, shrieking heads. A pistol's barrel and slide jut from its bony face, and in place of legs it trails six enormous belts of 7.62 ammunition. The bulk of each arm takes the form of an M4 carbine, joined by an AK-47, an M16, and a Mk18, while its head mimics the slide and barrel of an M1911 stripped of its hammer.

Once the devil seizes Aki Hayakawa's corpse and becomes the Gun Fiend, the body's hair falls loose and dark veins spread across the eyes and brow. A pistol barrel pushes out from between the eyes with the hammer protruding from the back of the skull, and one forearm gives way to an M4. In a separate guise, when Yoru reshapes the Soviet-held twenty-eight percent into a weapon, it manifests as a wholly black right arm sheathed in a stretchy lace glove, replacing the limb she had lost.

So little of the devil's inner character is visible that it never once speaks across the entire saga, whether from inability or sheer indifference. What can be inferred from the scale of its slaughter paints it as a malicious, self-serving thing that values nothing beyond itself. Makima brands it merciless enough that whoever destroys it would deserve any wish granted, and even while bound by the American president's contract, the devil pauses to butcher hundreds of bystanders, children among them, before bothering to pursue its actual target. Despite all this, it holds a bond with the War Devil, who regards herself as its mother, and the Soviet-held fragment tore free of its cell the instant Yoru cried out for rescue.

More than a decade before the main events, governments worldwide gambled on firearms as a defense against devils, which only drove up gun crime and unrest until dread of weaponry swelled across every nation. That fear gave rise to the devil, which announced itself on November 18th through a massive armed attack in America. It struck Japan for twenty-six seconds and left 57,912 dead, with Aki Hayakawa watching it raze his home and family in passing. Sweeping from country to country, it claimed 1.2 million lives in roughly five minutes before vanishing, leaving a deepened terror of all devils in its wake.

Eventually some unknown party brought it down, and the Soviets recovered its unconscious form. Its body was then divided among the powers: a fifth to the United States, just over a quarter to the Soviet Union, smaller shares to China and others, and the remaining third scattered as scraps of meat in devils' hands worldwide. Whenever the devil moved, its own flesh sloughed off like spent rounds, and any devil that devoured a fragment grew stronger, while large enough chunks drift back together to slowly rebuild the whole.

Hunting it becomes Public Safety's obsession, with Makima dangling a single wish before Denji as the prize for its destruction. When the American president trades a year off every citizen's lifespan for the twenty-percent fragment, the devil unleashes precise volleys capable of putting a bullet through every adult male within about a kilometer, every young child within fifteen hundred meters, and the heart of anyone born in particular months within a thousand. Makima survives the duel, yet the devil's remnants hijack Aki's body to rise again as the Gun Fiend, only for Denji to cut it down. Far later, Yoru summons the Soviet fragment alongside the Tank Devil and forges it into her Right Gun Gauntlet, a weapon she powers through a fresh contract tied to the Statue of Liberty.