About Duc....

As I understand it ,a battle with prison imperial squad=death to the loser. Duc faced Dan in such a battle and lost. I thought he died (he dissapeared like all the others). However, next episodes reveal him alive, although heavily injured. So my question is:
Is Duc an exception to the rule, "loser will die?" All the others died... (right? right? or are they still alive?)
Or do losers really die in a shadow game Prison Imperial Squad battle?

If it's gonna spoil the anime (just finished ep 46) then don't go into full detail

Episode 47 will explain somewhat.

Just watched it! I see.....so Duc was doomed to the same fate had he not escaped? Or did Zazie intentionally exempted him (unlikely, because he said "I don't need a broken toy" or something like that).

Also, are Zazie's assistants male and female, or 2 boys? You can never tell with such ambiguous looks (I'm talking to you, pink-haired guy..)

That much I don't know. My guess is that Zazie probably didn't intend to use Duc from the start, because he just saw him as a toy. Maybe he would have after Duc wasn't useful anymore though, but then he escaped.

I think the pink-haired one is a girl, but that's just my guess because the voice is more feminine. But then that's not really a good way to tell because a lot of male characters in anime have female-sounding voices. Oddly, they don't even have names, or voice actors listed in the credits.