Italicized words are in Japanese.

My name is Chizuru Yamaha. I have been all over the world in my duties as an enforcer for Chigusa Syndicate. From the packed streets of Beijing, to rain-swept London, to the slums of Rio, I have been the bringer of a silent death to those who angered my superiors. I do so in the ways hammered into me since I was a girl, since I was chosen to be trained as a shinobi.

Engine City is definitely the weirdest place I’ve been called to, though. The bosses in Osaka were getting some unsatisfactory reports from the group entrusted with making headway into the place. Profits weren’t anywhere near what was hoped and the amount of casualties was cause for alarm. I have been dispatched to the city to gain as clear a picture of the situation as possible before reporting back.

the reasons why progress wasn’t at the desired pace became clear almost immediately. The Yakuza weren’t equipped to deal with the kind of criminals that dwelled there. Our foot soldiers are capable of fighting heavily armed men, but men just the same.

Can we truly expect them to face down upright sentient bulls, nutcases with mech suits and the occasional vigilante? No. Even though I have no say in such decisions, I feel as though my presence will unnerve our syndicate members in the city rather than encourage them. They would see me as being there to punish, not aid. I should not be just there to assess, I should be actively helping them.

Failure is detrimental to our goals, it is true. However, the context of the situation makes it extremely difficult for me to simply write the failures of our expansion into Engine City to simply be the result of incompetence.

Criminals like the Desandre family from Colombia, the Red Crane Triad and the Tower Street Republic are groups our members are used to dealing with. People like Demo, Wipeout and the late Minotaur are something else.

And then there’s him. Hypnoman. He’s not some brute, but a spider lurking in the shadows controlling an ever growing web of enthralled women. He will be an altogether different challenge. There is no clear idea how many girls are under his sway but I am certain that all it would take is one ‘Sleepwalker’ becoming aware of my presence before he knows I’m here. He also has two lieutenants that appear every few nights: the Hypno Harpy and the Somno Siren. They do not favor any particular part of the city, so I will need to follow them at my first opportunity. They will lead me to their master and not even know it.

This mission will push me to the limits. Even if I try to hide in plain sight, disguise myself as a civilian I may end up running into one of his thralls. Although the prospect chills me, I do myself no service pretending it can’t be possible.

I’ve spent a good deal of time meditating on how to proceed. Perhaps if Hypnoman’s hideout could be located, we could send more shinobi after him. A pre-emptive strike.

There’s a knock at my door, and I open my eyes.

“Enter.” The door opened and a young man in a gray suit with a cigarette came into my room. Tadaki was a newbie, and not someone I held in high regard. I bristled when I looked at his hand.

“What’s your problem?” he asked. He looked at his cigarette.

“What, it bothers you that much? I thought you tuned out stuff like that.”

“Put it out or I’ll grind it against your forehead.”

“Fine. Fuck, I’ll get rid of it.”

He tossed it out of sight.

“Why are you here, Tadaki?”

“We’re investigating a massage parlor on Bowen Street. The owner’s acting a bit…weird.”

“And you need me to do what?”

“Look over the joint once we’ve got the workers in one area. You might have more luck finding anything fishy than the rest of us.”

I nodded.

“I’ll be ready in two minutes. Once we get there, I move out of sight of any cameras and go inside.”

“Swell.”