[ WP ] Assassination is a new legal tool in the business world . You are an old-school hitman , and despair at the quality of work some of these new recruits are leaving behind .

I despair, I really fucking do. 
 
 Being an assassin used to be a noble calling, you know? You ’ d climb to the top of some forlorn rock, enter a dojo, train under the watchful eye of a wizened sensei, learning the art of stealth; you were taught the honourable way of committing that most dishonourable of acts, murder; you ’ d come out of your training reborn; you were now more than a man, you were an *assassin*. 
 
 Nowadays? Nowadays people got no class, no flair, and, most of the time, *no talent*. 
 
 It all started with that ruling back in, what was it, 2035? It was during the riots, anyway. Population was at its peak; there was no food, no water, no jobs, no housing, everything had bottomed out, it was chaos. People were going crazy, they were literally killing each other in the streets. The government saw that it was powerless, they couldn ’ t just keep locking people up, so you know what they did? 
 
 They made murder legal. 
 
 But they did it in a money grabbing, bureaucratic, bullshit way: just like a driving licence, or a fishing licence, you could now, legally, obtain a licence to kill. 
 
 That ’ s right, just like James Bond. 
 
 But they wouldn ’ t just give it to anyone, no sir! First you needed to jump through *their* hoops. They set up these training centres all across the country: ‘ Murder Academies ’ they called them. They didn ’ t draft in any of the old pros, the senseis, as the instructors: no, they had the most soulless collection of dead-eyed drones, teaching from their government-mandated book of murder regulations. You wouldn ’ t think it was possible to suck all the fun out of murder but, somehow, the government managed to do it. You spent six months at one of these murder academies, then you paid for your licence, and then, theoretically, you were allowed to go out and kill with impunity. You were now, in the eyes of the government at least, an ‘ assassin ’. 
 
 But it ’ s always easy to spot these amateurs, these hacks, these *fakes*, ‘ cause they always do a piss poor job! You draft one of these agency clowns to do a job for you and you ’ re going to get a target on your own head, guaranteed. They ’ re sloppy, they just commit the murder and leave: fingerprints all over the joint, blood everywhere, witnesses calling it in... it ’ s a mess, frankly. Most people don ’ t have the head for it, but that doesn ’ t seem to put them off. There ’ s a knock-on effect for folks like me: we get tarred with the same brush, they give a bad name to the entire assassin brotherhood, and it pushes prices down; who ’ s gon na pay a million for a proper, co-ordinated assassination when some schmuck off Craigslist will do it for fifty bucks? Hell, some people do it for free, it ’ s a fashion trend! Walking down mainstreet these days is a fucking joke; you ’ re dodging bullets, knives, all sorts of crazy shit. ‘ Course it ’ s alright for me, I can handle it, but other people? The market for bodyguards, for bulletproof vests, for armoured cars has *skyrocketed*. Some people even have these drone-type things: throw one up in the air and BAM! Instant covering fire. It ’ s actually kinda impressive, really. 
 
 I was gon na instruct my kid in the ancient ways but, with the way things are going, I ’ m gon na pay for him to go to law school instead.
