Koki Ishimura lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering where it all went wrong.

Koki had tried his best in his career, he had done everything he could for Yokogawa and their ideals, he had cleaned up messes for them on three continents, and he had harmed his home life and personal health working overtime for Yokogawa's needs. How had Yokogawa repaid his efforts? By exiling him to some backwater AmerIndian country that was lucky to even exist, and calling it a "career advancement opportunity". What lies.

Then once he got to the Regina offices, he had to deal with that little vermin Kenta Kawasaki, an ambitious rat who wanted to climb up the Yokogawa ladder at anyone's expense. Kenta sabotaged Koki's career by leaking an anti-metahuman statement Koki had made in a private meeting, when management met to decide who to employ for a security job. It was a statement any honest, traditional-minded Japanese citizen would make in his shoes. Here in this backwater Council though, it cost him a promotion, which Kenta got instead. All Koki got for being honest was lectures from his superiors about how they needed to abandon certain anti-metahuman ideals in their old culture, how they needed to embrace diversity in order to achieve their long-term goals, the usual crap.

In addition to being a rat, Koki had recently found out through a private eye that Kenta had a habit of seducing women in their 30s, and his latest seduction target was Koki's wife, Junko.

Koki loved Junko dearly. Even as she aged and gained weight, she was still the most beautiful, important thing in the world to him. But he couldn't give her children, due to Koki being unintentionally sterilized after inspecting a nuclear power plant in Europe. This gave Koki desperate feelings of inadequacy that impacted his sexual performance, and it put a lot of stress on their relationship. It seemed Kenta swooped in as Junko's "stress relief", as the private eye caught them at a small-town motel that charged by the hour. In fact Junko had been out of the house for the past couple days "seeing friends", and Koki knew Kenta hadn't been seen in the office for the past couple days either. So his wife was probably maintaining the relationship beyond a one night stand.

Koki wanted revenge. Badly.

But Kenta Kawasaki was the golden child, the shooting star of Yokogawa, and Koki couldn't challenge him to a duel as a matter of honour and kill him. This wasn't the samurai era anymore. So he had to play the political way instead, and tear down Kenta's reputation. Koki found out details of a shadowrun put together by Kenta, and leaked them to Aztechnology, the run's target, in a bid to get Kenta fired. However, Aztechnology made a total mess of defending things, six security personnel died, and somehow it was all Koki's fault for giving them "bad intel". Koki's contact within Aztechnology said sending a Strike Team to kill Koki was being seriously debate, so now he was in serious danger. Koki then tried to contact the mysterious ace shadowrunner Leon Eagles to extract him and Junko from the country, and maybe even kill Kenta in the process, but was frozen out by every source and couldn't make contact.

So now Koki was almost out of options, and felt like he was going through the motions in life, waiting to be killed. His security system had been shut down twice this week, and it seemed like general neighborhood outages had been taking place for the past few days. Koki had slept in fear for the past couple nights, with a powerful Warhawk Revolver near his pillow, but now he was so depressed that he almost wanted the Strike Team to bust in his house now and get it over with.

Then he heard a small noise, and it felt like the air in the house shifted. Koki checked his phone, and got a notice that the back door was opened. He checked the camera feed app hoping it was Junko, but saw two figures, one tall and one short, with guns drawn, entering his house.

Suddenly, his desire for survival, something he thought he had cast aside entirely at this point, kicked in.

He didn't want to die.

He wanted to hold Junko in his arms one more time.

He wanted to have a beach house near clear waters, where he could sit with Junko and maybe watch an adopted child of theirs playing in the surf.

He wanted one final cup of his favourite plum sake.

He still wanted to live, and he wanted to make everything right.

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So he wasn't going to make it easy for these bastards, whoever they were and whoever sent them.

Koki grabbed his Warhawk Revolver and headed downstairs.

~~~

Leon moved into the house quickly, doing a room-by-room sweep. He knew Koki would likely be upstairs in his bed by this hour, but didn't want to discount the possibility of Koki having a midnight snack in the kitchen or something. Suddenly, Leon heard a creaking noise from the stairs, and Koki arrived downstairs and saw Leon.

Koki shouted something unintelligible in Japanese and opened fire, sending Leon fleeing for cover behind a wall with a couple wild shots. Sylvia hung back, out of sight and in a bit of a trance maintaining the illusion spells, so it was up to Leon, with a cheap hold-out pistol, against one crazy dude with a high-powered revolver, probably a Warhawk.

Who's bright idea was this again?

Nonetheless, Leon felt the adrenaline pumping. He rarely admitted it to anyone, but he loved the thrill of the moments like this, the dryness in your mouth, the rush of adrenaline, the knowledge that right now, you must kill or be killed, the second most basic human instinct besides having sex. Leon exhaled nervously, steeling himself, and after a third shot pumped dangerously close to his head, Leon popped out from cover and clipped Koki in the collarbone with a good shot.

Koki dropped his revolver and staggered, and after that it was game over for him. Leon put a bullet in Koki's kneecap to drop him, then fired a third round that missed, and a fourth round that didn't, raking a howling Koki Ishimura through the ribs. Koki was lying down on the ground, losing consciousness and blood rapidly.

Leon intentionally shot the wall near where Koki was once standing with his fifth round (as he wanted to look like a less than perfect shot, to add to the story he was trying to tell here) before walking over and killing Koki with a headshot, the 6th and final shot his Streetline Special could hold before a reload.

Leon breathed a sigh of relief. Koki had seen a bit of action defending the company over in Japan, and wasn't a terrible hand with his revolver, but he was probably tired and amped up, possibly waiting for that rumoured Aztechnology Strike Team to come and get him. Leon got lucky here that Koki didn't wound him under these circumstances, and he knew it.

Leon brought out an empty pillowcase from under his jacket, and started quickly going around the house, looking for anything of value. He grabbed Koki's revolver and checked the load on it, swiped a few cheap-looking gold candlestands from a mantle, then quickly dashed upstairs and started ripping out drawers, looking for anything of value. He worked messily, but efficiently, and ended up nabbing a few scraps of jewelry from the bedroom and a couple credsticks in an upstairs office. There was probably more to take, but Leon needed to get going before the neighbors went out to investigate. So downstairs he went, bumping and knocking over some objects intentionally as he passed to add to the chaos of the scene.

Sylvia followed behind, and was maintaining the illusion spell too, another reason to hurry. Leon had no idea how long the spell could last before Sylvia started feeling the effects of physical drain. She had lasted for a gruelling half hour maintaining a high-caliber Invisibility spell in Leon's infamous second shadowrun against Renraku, and ended up bedridden for a week after almost hemorrhaging and dying. Supposedly, this illusion spell was less intensive than the Invisibility one, and Sylvia had improved her great magical abilities even further since that run, but still, best not to play around.......

Leon and Sylvia dashed out the back door, Leon dragging Sylvia with one hand. A nosy neighbor screamed "Hey!" as they passed. Leon dropped his loot and blasted a wild shot in her direction with Koki's revolver, and the neighbor decided discretion was the better part of valour this evening, running off to her house.

Leon picked up the loot, made it to the truck, got in, and gunned it for the getaway. A few people were out in the alleys wondering what was going on, but Leon blew right past them. No sirens were heard in the distance, and deep down Leon didn't expect any, as the Regina branch of Long Arms could be notoriously slow at times in response to anything, even high-priority areas.

Sylvia eventually dropped the spell, took off her mask, and started coughing a bit, leaning forward in her seat and spewing a bit of blood on the dashboard.

"Sylvia! You all right over there!?"

Sylvia got out an "I'm fine, keep driving", before eventually the coughing died down, and she could focus on taking deep breaths and clearing her mind.

Leon drove with a pained expression on his face. He hated having to use Sylvia extensively in jobs like this. Magic was a funny thing, and even though Sylvia was such an ace shaman, who knew how the world of magic really worked. For all Leon knew, one wrongly executed spell and Sylvia could end up dead......

......Or worse......

Sylvia's breathing lightened though, and Leon drove with more confidence, rolling into the chop shop to dispose of the getaway, as a flunky hurriedly closed the dropdown metal door behind it.

Leon tossed the keys and a clip of printed nuyen bills at the chop shop owner, an oversized troll mechanic known as Cactus Mack. Mack eyed the bills carefully, then tossed Leon the keys to his second getaway vehicle, yelling at a flunky to get the green paint and a ball hammer.

Leon went in the back of the shop and out to the lot, where one of his "company cars" awaited, and drove off into the summer night.

Shadowrun (hopefully) accomplished.......