Dancing With The Devil

Mixed Martial Arts Style: Pallotolla Danza (Bullet Dance)

An tailor-made original martial art developed by Dante and his friends in order to incorporate the use of firearms as an additional choice of martial combat along with normal melee weaponry and the basic bare-handed style. It combines the principles of a variety of martial schools from Aikido, Capoeira, Jeet-Kun-Do, Parkour, Taekwondo, and Taijiquan, and combines them with the grace and beauty of ballet. The end result was a hybridized style which Dante’s friends dub as ‘a badass gay man’s gun-fu’ in jest, but not one would even think of denying this unusual technique of martial arts and gun-play its due recognition as an art that not everyone can master, let alone use.

The Bullet Dance style of combat primarily makes use of the weight of the weapons held by Dante – usually high-powered and heavy guns – in order to provide immediate or additional momentum whenever he would strike or ‘aim’. It treats the gun as an extension of Dante, with his body freely moving with the weight of the gun held as well as with the recoil of each shot fired, using the kinetic energy of the reaction as additional momentum for another movement that could easily be chained one after another, making for a incredibly relentless and notoriously unpredictable performance of nightmarish style and lethal grace that seamlessly blends offense and defense.

Another facet of the Bullet Dance style is its core principle of ‘aiming’, although it would be more accurate to describe the method of shooting as blind-firing rather than aiming outright. The method to the firing system using this style heavily relies on precise estimations and hair-trigger timing since a split-second difference is all it takes to determine whether or not a hit would be a lethal headshot on an opponent or a fatal wound to any friendly unit nearby, making it extremely inefficient, if not outright stupid, if used by anyone else.

The supposed barrier of ‘inefficiency’ and ‘absurdity’ is the dividing line between the Bloodhound of Florence and everyone else, for it is with this style that Dante’s extremely honed perceptive abilities are displayed to their optimal efficiencies, with Dante pulling off incredibly accurate blind-fire that rivals that of a master gunman’s peerless accuracy. Along countless hours of religious practice with this style, and countless bullets fired, has led the young man to develop a degree of unity with mind, body, and weapon that truly makes the Bullet Dance Dante’s own.

While Pallotolla Danza is the style’s true name, Dante prefers to call this martial art by its Japanese name given to him by his mother, 彼岸花踊る – the Dancing Higanbana – for no other reason than aesthetic purposes. Also, if asked to describe his original style, Dante tends to describe it as simply "dancing with the devil."

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Florencia Arms Industries 13mm Automatic Anti-Enemy Combat Pistols: Le Faniculle (The Maidens)

Dante’s customized pair of twin handguns designed, created, and gifted to him by his father for his 18th birthday, largely based off the design of the Mateba 2006M, an Italian-made .357 magnum revolver. The whole Le Faniculle set is composed of two unusually long gunmetal-black guns made with buckypaper and palladium micro-alloy glass, with each firearm measuring a length of forty centimeters and weigh in at an astounding eight kilograms per handgun – heavy enough and durable enough to be used as an effective blunt-force weapon for close range combat, if needed.

The guns, which Dante personally named Laura (gun with the white cross, designed for right-hand usage) and Carmilla (gun with the red cross, designed for left hand usage) have an effective kill zone of 1100 yards and fire out high-powered 13mm bullets that effectively bore two-inch holes even in heavily armored human targets – a macabre testament to their power. Their clips, a modified push-out slider type located at the base of the pistols, can hold eight (8) standard .510 caliber rounds and five (5) .600 caliber ‘Stinger’ rounds, and their seamless-exit silver ejector ports located on the top near the hammer are purposely designed to be oversized in order to provide more exit room for a spent cartridge and thus dramatically lessen the instance of the weapon jamming.



Due to the ornate design of Le Faniculle, many people mistake the guns to lack the essential slide, but in truth, the slide mechanism itself is crudely fitted underneath the hard outer plating of both Laura and Carmilla to protect them getting damaged just in case they would be used in close-quarters combat as blunt weapons. The firing mechanism of both guns have also been crafted with possible close-combat applications in mind since Laura and Carmilla posses automatic firing pin blocks that prevents the gun from being accidentally discharged when dropped or when struck against hard surfaces, de-activated only when their triggers are pulled all the way back.

While blatantly cumbersome and provide horrible accuracy as a handgun if not either mounted to a stand, a solid base, or carried by a person with almost supernatural strength, when wielded by Dante using his personalized and specialized martial art, the Pallotolla Danza, designed with maximizing the killing effectiveness of firearms, these physical limitations turn from useless hindrances into incredible advantages, which the Italian arms dealer uses to achieve maximum effect combat efficiency in all ranges whether short, medium, or long.

.510 Caliber – A 13mm big bore hunting cartridge normally used against dangerous big game species. It has incredible stopping power and is famous for being one of the only bullets capable of bringing down an adult African elephant. This is the standard ammunition for the Le Faniculle handguns.

.600 Caliber ‘Stinger’ – The brain-child of Dante’s father, the Stinger round is an incredibly powerful anti-enemy cartridge manufactured exclusively by Florencia Arms Industries for its own private use but sometimes sold to select clients who have proven themselves as true allies of the Florencias. Encased in brass, the standard Stinger round is composed of five main components: (1) the primary ‘kick’ charge composed of gunpowder; (2) the solid-fuel rocket propellant; (3) the main explosive charge composed of thermite; (4) the mass-reactive detonator cap; and (5) a sharpened tip made from a small piece of silicon carbide.

When a Stinger is fired, it makes use of the small amount of gunpowder at the base which was precisely calculated to be just enough to propel it out of the muzzle of a gun it was specifically designed for, with the lowest caliber being that of a 7.62x51mm NATO round and the largest being a 20mm version for sniper canons.

Once in-flight, the heat resulting from the gunpowder kick charge ignites the solid-fuel rocket propellant which would allow the bullet to speed toward its target with added velocity thus giving it greater penetrative power. From there, should the Stinger round hit its designated target, the split-second fuse on the mass-reactive detonator cap ignites the thermite inside the projectile and detonates the entire bullet, shredding the target from the inside, but not before the sharpened silicon carbide tip bores the Stinger deep within the target to inflict maximum damage.

The resulting harm inflicted by a single Stinger round is ensured to be no less than massive injuries, both internally and externally, and mortal in all cases. In fact, even the giant hole caused by the mere entry of the bullet would usually be enough to kill any normal human being; the miniature explosion, internal conflagration, and white-hot shrapnel shredding the target from the inside merely act as insurance just in case a target was still alive.

Widely considered to be more of a miniature rocket than a handgun bullet, the Stinger is an artwork of engineering and death-dealing proficiency that makes a mockery of all conventional light, medium, and heavy personnel armor and makes short work of armored military vehicles, save heavily-armored tanks. An ‘over-kill’ bullet designed to inflict as much fear as it does damage, it is one of the reasons why few, if any, are brave enough to challenge the Florencia family in their near-total hegemony over the black market arms trade.