text: [Themes: sci-fi, anti-hero]
  
  They're coming. You see them in the security camera, but you've known for days. You can't burn the people you've burned and not expect a visit from the Monkeys. Looks like four of them. Four gene mod chimpanzees, decked from head to toe in unmarked black fatigues; they're carrying neuro-linked, twin-barreled, neck-slung, plasma-smartguns, with probably a half dozen other hyphens you don't know about.
  
  It's fine. It's all fine, baby. You're Mohammed James Wang and you've gotten out of far worse. You grab the revolver from your desk and check the cylinder. Six .44 shots, and another dozen in your pocket. Analogue is best when you need to smoke a motherfucker on a budget. You sling your trillion-dollar briefcase around your neck. If you had to guess, you'd say that the gorillas planned to aerate you and take it. Any more than a small, deniable, wetwork team, and they risk acknowledging its existence. Classic.
  
  As you approach the window and aim the gun at the Safe-T-Glass, the window warns you, in harsh terms, that a suicide attempt will void your health insurance.
  
  "Like I have fucking health insurance," you say as you blast the window out and leap out onto the street below. You land heavily on a watermelon stall, earning yourself a barrage of Indonesian curses from the proprietor. You can hear your apartment door being incinerated on the second floor.
  
  > SELL IT TO THE YAKUZA
  You've got a buyer lined up. You're selling the briefcase to the Fukuhara Clan, the yakuza syndicate that runs illicit goods on and off the island. As the apes go through your apartment, you grab a motorcyclist and hurl him off his bike and into the street.
  
  "Hey, fuck you, man!" he yells indignantly.
  
  You point your gun in his face to discourage heroism and get on the bike. The engine sputters momentarily, and you curse the Indonesian, cheap-ass, piece of shit engine before it purrs in agreement and you take off down the street.
  
  You duck as a chimp fires a beam of scorching white light from the window. It hits a car behind you. The heat transfers through the car almost instantly, igniting the fuel, melting the tires, and leaving a fist sized hole in the driver's side door. As you drive away it explodes, sending deadly shrapnel flying through the air. If the spooks are willing to fire plasma beams in a major urban centre, they must really want you dead.
  
  You drive to the Laughing Buddha Bathhouse, a known hangout for the criminal syndicate. You know the owner of the Laughing Buddha, Eiko Fukuhara, is an infamous son-of-a-bitch, known for his short temper and brutality. It's expected that the clan will fall apart when he inherits from the old man. As you pull up in front of Laughing Buddha, your fingers close around the revolver in your pocket.
  
  > ENTER THE BATHHOUSE
  You walk in through the dilapidated facade, eager to get off the street and away from prying eyes. Inside is a nondescript waiting room with a few tattered pleather chairs, an old school, arcade-style ticket machine, and a bored doorman. There's nothing on the walls save for a calendar of Shinto holidays that's a few years out of date, and two Rocky Balboa posters. You approach the doorman.
  
  "You pay, you take a ticket," he says disinterestedly. He's a paunchy old Japanese man who doesn't strike you as much of a threat.
  
  You pay, and you take a ticket. You step out of the waiting room, walk down brusquely down a hallway, before arriving at the men's change room. You seem to remember that the fashion for the Japanese bathhouse involves being naked. While you're certainly not going to part with the briefcase, you wonder if being polite wouldn't endear you better to the Yakuza boss's son. If things go sour, however, you'll probably want your gun.
  
  > ENTER NAKED
  You strip down completely nude, and store your clothing in a locker. You tuck your gun in your jacket pocket, and then drape the sleeve over the handle for good measure. You close the locker and grab the briefcase, before exiting the hallway. As you enter the public bath, you're shocked by how pleasant it is.
  
  The bath itself is spacious and steaming, occupying the centre of the room. A dozen heavily tattooed Japanese men lounge nude in the water, leaning on their elbows and idly chattering. The walls, although dingy, are covered in a bamboo facade. Lamps on the ceiling imitate sunlight, and piped-in birdsong plays faintly. An old pair of nunchaku hang from one of the walls.
  
  As you step foot in the bath, every head turns to you.
  
  "I'm looking for Eiko Fukunara," you say. Your grip tightens on the briefcase.
  
  A wiry, lean-muscled man with immaculate hair stands. "I'm Eiko," he says. He has one of those faces that seems to constantly sneer.
  
  "I've got the briefcase for your father. I was supposed to meet you here," you say. You nervously grind the ball of your foot into the floor.
  
  "I know," he says. "The thing is, my father and I have had a falling out."
  
  You narrow your eyes. "That's unfortunate."
  
  "And delivering him that briefcase, free of charge, is just the thing I need to get back in his good graces." Silence hangs in the air for a moment.
  
  You place the briefcase on the ground and slide it backwards with your foot. You crack your knuckles and stand lightly on the balls of your feet.
  
  "Kill him, and bring me the briefcase," Eiko says.
  
  > NAKED BRAWL WITH YAKUZA GOONS
  They scream. You scream. The first yakuza soldier is on you in seconds. You duck beneath his haymaker and deliver a savage punch to his windpipe. He staggers, clutching at his neck. You dodge a punch from the side and trap the arm to your chest. You throw the second attacker into the third, and they both go tumbling into the bath.
  
  You fight like a cornered tiger. As you leap to the ground to avoid a flurry of blows, you sweep a man's leg and bring him to the floor. You lock eyes with him for the briefest of instants, just long enough to see the fear in his eyes. You grab his head and smash it against the concrete with such ferocity that blood sprays out in a thin geyser. His comrades back off.
  
  Already, you're feeling winded. As the yakuza soldiers regain their courage, your mind races for an equalizer. The gun is too far, but the nunchaku are not. As you grab it from the wall, you execute a flawless nunchaku kata. For a moment, the naked criminals seem to weigh their loyalty against their boss with their fear of the whirling doom that stands before them.
  
  As they charge, you crack the first man's skull open like a coconut. You swing your shin into someone's knee and watch it bulge in the wrong direction. As he cries in agony, you step back to avoid a savage punch from one of the gangsters. Your new assailant slips on the blood of his comrades, and you strike him in the jaw with the nunchaku. As he staggers away, clutching his mouth, you roundhouse kick his jaw with such strength that his teeth scatter like jacks in a children's game.
  
  Once again, the violence of your attack leaves them stunned. A layer of blood now sits atop the steaming waters of the bath. You redouble your attacks. You hack and bludgeon, kick and punch, dodge and counter, over and over, screaming a gutteral war-cry the entire time. When your assault is finished, you stand atop a bloody pile of dead and crippled gangsters. Eiko tries to flee, but you hurl the nunchaku into his ankles. He falls to the ground, breaking his nose against the tiles.
  
  You grab him by the hair and drag him to the edge of the water.
  
  "W-wh-who the fuck are you?" he squeals.
  
  "Never you mind," you say. "Where is your old man hiding?"
  
  > THE OLD MAN
  When Old Man Fukuhara enters his office, he finds you sitting at his desk. You're drinking his sake, and seated in his comfortable leather chair.
  
  His bodyguard, a lab-grown slab of muscle, immediately extends his arm-mounted monomolecular blades. Fukuhara waves him down. As he sits in the other chair, you get a good long look at him. He must be seventy five, but still carries himself with a poise and strength uncommon in the elderly. He built this empire himself, you muse to yourself. He must have been formidable.
  
  He chuckles as you pour him a shot of sake. "Your impudence is impressive," he says. "But I have to wonder, how did you get in here?"
  
  You wave a hand in mock dismissal. "All in good time, Fukuhara-sama."
  
  "Let me kill this man," his bodyguard says. His expression is neutral, but you can see the rage burning in his cybernetic eyes.
  
  "I will hear what he has to say," Fukuhara says.
  
  "I contacted you some time about the briefcase," you say.
  
  "Indeed. You did not tell me what was in it, but our... ah, what is the word. Net-runners picked up considerable chatter about it. It is an object of great value, is it not?"
  
  "See for yourself," you say. You place the briefcase on the desk. As he unbuckles it, your muscles tense. As the old man opens the briefcase, he gasps in horror. In the same instant, you unsheath the shuriken from your thigh and hurl it into the bodyguard's throat. He stumbles out of the room, gurgling and clutching at his throat.
  
  "You like what you see?" you say over the old man's weeping and gagging. As you walk around the desk, you admire your handiwork. Eiko's head, delivered in a briefcase. A fitting gift. "I must say, pretending to be a foreigner was degrading. And the plastic surgery was agony. Living as street-scum, even more so. It was expensive, hiring a netrunner to fake the darknet chatter around the briefcase, make it look like something valuable. But it was worth it."
  
  He manages to get a coherent word out: "Why?"
  
  You gingerly take the sheathed katana from off the wall. As you draw it, you admire the blade's marvelous balancing and fine craftsmanship. "You slaughtered my village. I've been training for this moment for twenty years. And you didn't even know who I was." You smile grimly.
  
  He opens his mouth, as if to speak, but you don't give him the chance. You behead the old man in one smooth motion. His head topples into the opened briefcase, where it rests alongside Eiko's. Father and son.