Hänsel

Hänsel behaves with an unsettling mixture of childish playfulness and extreme cruelty. The twins speak about killing with the casual excitement other children might reserve for games, reflecting the environment in which violence became normal to them.

Their psychological development has been profoundly damaged by exploitation. The twins learned that inflicting suffering could keep them alive and gradually incorporated the roles imposed on them into their identities. Their attachment to one another is therefore both intensely close and shaped by shared trauma.

Hänsel is confident enough to believe that killing makes the twins stronger and extends their lives. This distorted logic helps them interpret continued survival as proof that violence is not merely necessary but inherently rewarding.

In the Hänsel role, the twin primarily uses a large axe in close combat. Despite the child's small body, Hänsel is fast, agile and capable of killing adult opponents with brutal efficiency.

The twins are also skilled at infiltration and ambush. They exploit their harmless appearance when useful and are comfortable moving through criminal environments where most adults initially underestimate them.

Their effectiveness comes from unpredictability as much as formal technique. They show little normal fear of injury or death and readily use extreme violence before an opponent understands the situation.

Hänsel and Gretel are brought to Roanapur as assassins during a dispute involving local criminal organizations. Their employers expect the children to function as disposable killers, but the twins quickly become far more difficult to control than anticipated.

Their attacks eventually bring them into conflict with Hotel Moscow. After members of Balalaika's organization are killed, she deploys her former soldiers and begins hunting the twins with military precision.

Hänsel eventually confronts Balalaika's forces and is trapped by the Hotel Moscow operation. The twin occupying the Hänsel identity is killed, while Gretel attempts to escape Roanapur separately.

The arc forces Rock and Revy to confront victims whose own suffering has transformed them into perpetrators of horrific violence. Their age does not erase the danger they pose, but their history makes their fate markedly different from that of ordinary professional assassins.

Gretel is Hänsel's twin and inseparable companion. The two exchange the names Hänsel and Gretel, making the identities themselves shared roles rather than fixed names belonging permanently to one child.

Balalaika becomes the twins' most dangerous enemy after they attack Hotel Moscow. [Balalaika mobilizes her veterans to eliminate them, and the twin acting as Hänsel is ultimately killed during the resulting hunt.](#spoiler)

Rokuro Okajima becomes emotionally affected by the twins' circumstances after learning more about their childhood. Their history confronts Rokuro Okajima with suffering that cannot be neatly separated from the atrocities they themselves commit.

Revy understands more readily than Rock that the twins are lethal regardless of their age. Her response to Hänsel and Gretel reflects her harsher understanding of what prolonged abuse and violence can do to children.