"Any one of you looks at her funny and I WILL GUT YOU!"

-Grix Bloodshark, slamming two grown walruses into a wall while his niece, Mai, looks on with horror.

There are men and then there are sharks. And the best shark of them all was Grix Bloodshark. He collected debts, body parts, money, and the occasional lost soul or two. Apart from his impressive strength of body and mind, he was known to be an especially stoic frenzied hulking mass of rage and carnage tearing through Blood Fall's streets and canals. The reason for it simple:

"WHERE THE FUCK IS MY NIECE!" He roared right into the ears of one hapless underling after another, his bloodlust studied and noted by someone from afar, scribbling away in a pad which seemed to never end.

"He's in 31st ... no, 23rd ... no, now he's in 40th corner of Fifth Rib-C. Should I stop him?" As they said this, the platform they were standing on shuddered with eagerness.

Just then, Grix Bloodshark picked up a chunk of the building he was demolishing and threw it at his observer, who noticed almost a little too late of the coming threat. Fortunately for them, a shield flared into life and disintegrated the building matter into dust, followed soon by something resembling a mechanized laugh.

"I SEE YOU, MERC SCUM! WHERE HAVE YOU TAKEN HER!" Grix leaped up into the roof of a nearby house and with frightening speed began to close the distance to his target.

"He's coming for me. Plan F is a go." The figure leapt of his platform and glided away, all traces of him seamlessly blending into the background. The thing left behind did the exact opposite, unfolding and expanding out to consume space until its true form became clear; a 10 meter tall, quadripedal Logamaton, with two missile racks, four machine-guns, and one omni-directional hard-light emitter, guaranteed to bisect anything in its path to the thickness of a water molecule.

Grix Bloodshark was not impressed. His skin shook off the machine gun fire easily enough, and the missiles lacked the firepower to breach the shark's wards or integrated armor. But the emitter did give him pause, if only to be annoyed at the prospect of having to dodge an attack rather than simply shrugging it off as he's used to doing.

One more advantage the Logamaton had was its agility, as its legs found purchase in places and positions that seemed impossible at first glance, like hanging off the side of a building with only two legs just to get its emitter into an angle that managed to singe parts of Grix Bloodshark's back. At one point, the metal menace even found purchase on the air itself, clinging into nothing as it used its missiles as a smokescreen for yet another near-hit.

As he hung off the side of a ruined crocodilian skull, Grix Bloodshark found it all tiresome and decided to end things. His whole body convulsed as he vomited something out; a long, tar-encrusted wand which he immediately aimed towards the Logamaton with his free hand. The tar dispersed briefly, revealing the wand's a veiny surface, before collapsing to a single point at the tip and blasted out towards its target like a lance of pure darkness. The Logamaton tried its best to dodge, but the lance kept followed where it went, eventually piercing through and erasing the Logamaton's core, ending its operation.

Grix Bloodshark scoffed at the sight of his adversary's death and leapt away to once more resume his rampage.

Things in the Retribution Fields rarely changed, which might sound odd to the average inhabitant of the hellish realm. Indeed, it seems the very purpose and nature of the realm would dictate that chaos ruled without limit. And yet this was not the case, as cities and towns were a regular occurence in the realm, clinging to the periphery of whatever Godrealm was the closest one. It also applied to the beings living in such places, with their routines played out to all of their combinations over and over again without end.

For M'al Mai Chaur, such a played-out-tale could simply be titled "My Life", as there was no real struggle to be had when you were born lucky. With emerald eyes, gold hair, and marble skin, she was the greatest gift any parent could hope for.

For the early parts of her life, she was in Paradise, with no worries, no pain, and joys and happiness almost as good as what could be found in a Godrealm. And then reality came crashing down, quite literally so, in the form of an unusually large corpse from Blood Fall's Godrealm. Most of it landed on Danau Darah, but its tail whipped back and forth as it fell, and on its last pass, made a devastating sonic boom near Mai's home.

It was a disaster no one could have predicted, and it claimed Mai's parents. She herself survived by chance as the luxurious bathtub that was in her room happened to fly off in just the right way for her to be scooped into it and subsequently buffeted away to relative safety. The disaster was later called "The Bolton Disaster", but locals call it "Whiplash", which was later co-opted by a pop-grunge-rock band which subsequently failed, re-debuted with the same name, but with a different font and a different lead vocal, and somehow became a fixture in the neighborhood, much like mold in damp places.

From that point on, M'al lived with her uncle's family, the Hiurayas. Her aunt-in-law, a thin, shrimp-dragoness with a mean punch, spoiled her like she was her own child, but her uncle, one Grix Bloodshark, thought differently. He made sure she pulled her own weight in his house, and instilled a rigid, if sometimes dubious, sense of right and wrong, mainly predicated on whether someone stood in one's way or not. The young girl was also pushed into participating in self-defense of various forms, pushing her to develop a rather warped sense of health and fitness, up into her adult life.

And now I'm dead. M'al thought bitterly as she drifted in the oblivion that served as Death's waiting room, waiting her turn to be numbered amongst the truly dead.

The dead have no rights, beholden to the whims of those higher-ranked, which included pretty much everyone else in the Retribution Fields. Even slaves are higher up than the dead, especially if one were enslaved by the right kind of people. They are raw materials and processed goods, building ingredients and delicacies for the discerning palate. They are meat and gristle for the communal stew, and the boiling never stops.

In the midst of her quiet despair, M'al felt something grab ahold of her soul, or more specifically, her luck. She didn't know how she knew, only that this person's grasp was changing the thread of fate itself, taking apart her bad luck and consuming it utterly, letting out a content sigh before retreating.

As soon as it did, M'al found herself wrenched away from Death's waiting room, into the light of consciousness, to the being of flesh and bones once more. It was also an introduction to the pain of a 4th degree burn, and of other lesser injuries, and much like anyone else would do in her place, she screamed.