text: [Themes: sci-fi, cyberpunk]
  
  Now with the violence option, you need a fixer. A fixer is who you talk to about jobs. Someone who wants someone killed talks to a fixer and the fixer sends a Contractor to take care of the issue. It makes it harder for the employer to knock off the Contractor and has a system in place to make sure the Contractor doesn't walk off with the Employers money without doing the work.
  
  A Fixer can also set up a Contractor with various contacts that can set up the Contractor with the gear he or she needs for the job. Guns, armor, wetware implants, or even other specialized contractors if the job needs it.
  
  Now in your area, there are three reputable fixers that will take in someone with your skill level, which is to say without any applicable skills. Gary Jerome is a man that seems to spend most of his time in a booth of a diner. It's a fair assessment to make that anyone that sits at his table is either an employee or an employer of his. Secrecy with him is a bit of a joke. He has a lot of people meet him for breakfast lunch and dinner so you know there's work available. Of that you are certain.
  
  Mr. Lee is a local butcher. He uses the old-school cleaver to real meat kind of butchery. His bread and butter is the vat-grown stuff same as anyone else. Someone told me it's mass-produced in some sort of bacterial culture which is how you get the beef pork hybrids, but I've never seen the setup for myself. Now Mr. Lee also has some stuff that's real meat. Sometimes the rich guys from the upper city come down because they want to experience what gamey venison is like, or how real bacon sizzles. Every once in a while a block will buy a whole pig for a roast. With that being said, you can't tell who's coming to him for work, who's coming to him to have a problem solved, or who's coming to him for a ribeye steak.
  
  Your third option is Harvey Brown the Barber. The man runs a barbershop and can do anything you would like, he's got all of the traditional stuff that he can do better than anyone else, shaves, fades, traditional cuts. You name it. He can also add length to your hair if you want, your all-natural hair that is. Some sort of genetic sculpting he's got in the back. People from all over the city come by for a haircut. Some of the auto styling stations cut a few faces off a few years ago and barbers have come back into style. Mr. Brown was in the business before then and became a fixer to make ends meet. He's been rolling in money since then. Everyone styles their hair, so anyone could be a contractor or an Employer with him.
  
  Which one of these fixers do you thing you're going to try working for?
  
  > Harvey Brown, the Barber
  Mr. Brown's place of business is built as its own building. It has a parking lot on either side that separates it and one of those spinning red and white posts coming out of the wall next to the door. Entering the building you see there are glass barriers that separate the barber's chairs from the waiting area. There's a restroom off to the side that you step into to try to privately calm yourself down. You take a long drink from the sink to slake your thirst with before taking a number and sitting in the waiting room. Your number is finally called and you sit in the barber chair.
  
  "What can I do for you today?" Harvey Brown asks you.
  
  You can't afford a haircut. You didn't think this far ahead. If you could afford a haircut you wouldn't be drinking water out of a barber's bathroom sink.
  
  "I was actually hoping for work." You say.
  
  Harvey throws an apron around you and connects the buttons behind your neck. "I can do that. You don't have any training yet do you?"
  
  "I don't." You reply.
  
  Harvey sucks his teeth for a moment. "I can still work with that. I'm going to charge you for training though. You'll be paying for more than just my fixer fee. I assume I'll be doing the same for the charge for your haircut?"
  
  "Yes sir."
  
  "Just as well. It'll give me some practice. At least it's good to work with someone who's polite. Scan that yellow paper next to the door on your way out and text, High Fade, to it. I'll have someone get in contact with you."
  
  You get a high fade quickly enough and are sent on your way. Wandering around the streets you find the occasional place that offers free wi-fi and waste time until you go home to sleep for the night.
  
  > The next day.
  You wake up to a text that tells gives you a time and an address to be at. It's about four blocks away and in about twenty minutes. You rush to get there but make it three minutes early. The building is a warehouse office that's staffed by a man in his late middle age.
  
  "Good. You can show up on time. You passed the test. Now we can start the training."
  
  The training involved walking into the warehouse proper and going over a few weapons on a table. You spend the next few weeks getting paid enough to cover a meal or two to familiarize yourself with a few weapons. Your trainer's name is Sir as far as both you and he are concerned. He teaches you how to operate a semi-automatic pistol and a pump-action shotgun. He also makes you go through a few "Conditioning exercises" every hour. The exercises change every time.
  
  Sir tells you "You need to be in the best physical condition of your life for this job. If you aren't you will either die or get caught. If you get caught by one of the corps or the government, they will find you guilty of something that's bad enough to decide they get to reprogram your mind. You won't be you anymore. You'll burn any contact you have and they'll get the same treatment. Dead is better in this world. Only one person dies that way."
  
  It isn't until the third week that you actually fire the weapons. By then you are intimately familiar with them. You fully understand how to carry and clean them. You understand how the mechanism of both of those weapons work, and you've lost some weight. You aren't in amazing shape but you're better.
  
  On the last day, Sir has you come in wearing Cargo pants. He tells you that you'll need to find other trainers in the future. He could teach you more, but you've already spent too long together. He gives you a box of .40 calibre pistol ammunition and a box of 12 gauge shotgun ammo. You conceal the pistol and break down the shotgun to hide away on your person. By the time you're ready to leave Sir has been gone for a few minutes. You walk out into the world with a few new weapons and the skillset to use them.
  
  > The first job for the barber.
  Two days pass by and a man meets you at the door to your apartment building. He doesn't say anything he just passes you a piece of paper from a notebook and walks off. The note has an email address and password that you check and on it you find your first job.
  
  "Okay High Fade, check this email daily for work. Sometimes there will be lots of jobs. Sometimes there won't be work for awhile. Dangers of Contract work. Save up appropriately. Your first couple of jobs are going to pay a little less because I paid for your training. Once you're caught up, let me know if you want more training.
  
  Here's your first job..."
  
  You have an address and picture of a man along with a few places other places he can be found. It's up to you how to kill him.
  
  > kill the man for the barber.
  Okay. There's no way that you're going to leave any of your weapons behind in your apartment. Not with those 14 other idiots in there. In the best-case scenario, they start telling people that you have weapons, in the worst-case scenario they steal them. You're not entirely certain where on the scale you would put accidentally shooting each other. So you're taking your weapons with you.
  
  You could just walk over to his address right now and shoot him. That would be the fastest way, but you don't know what, or who he has there.
  
  The list of other addresses includes a girlfriend's house, a grocery store, a corner store, and a bar. The girlfriend's house has the same problem his house does, plus one other occupant, the grocery store is probably a once-a-week affair, the corner store he apparently visits daily, and the bar he seems to spend the better part of the week at.
  
  > try to follow him from the bar.
  You wait until Friday. The bar is a sort of old bar you'd find in a small city back before the third world war. There's no real social class that's only allowed in this place and it's not a place bar fights are likely to start in.
  
  The target shows up about two hours after you have. You managed to get a no-stakes game of pool going and you continue to run it with about six others that cycle through the night on the two pool tables in the bar. Having an off-cycle on the tables lets you keep an eye on him. He doesn't get plastered but gets to a point where he certainly won't be driving home. A girl ends up showing up halfway through the night and they spend most of it together until last call.
  
  Everyone scatters out the doors and you follow the pair from about a block away. You feel some guilt about doing this to the girl but you realize that they're going to her house. So you draw your pistol, go through a breathing exercise and shoot him in the back. You turn off on a side street before you hear her scream in horror and loss.
  
  > Epilogue: The Shadow.
  This by and large becomes your method of execution. You do this for years and even just end up following people for the Barber to get information for other jobs. You learn how to follow other's routines pretty well. You spread out to other fixers. You were on good terms with the barber, but he just didn't offer the jobs that challenged you or paid well enough.
  
  You manage this for another ten years until it kills you. You get a target that doesn't have routines. She's some sort of ex-corporate security specialist that had clearly been through a lot. Well, she picked up on you trailing her and you caught a bullet for it. You never saw it coming like so many before never saw you coming.