[h2]March 13th, 2XXX[/h2]
There was once a video store called Beef Head. Located somewhere in Santa Destroy, California, it sold videos, games, and DVDs of various sorts, including wrestling cassettes, and most notoriously, indulgently pornographic releases such as the ever-famous [i]Pure White Lover Bizarre Jelly[/i] series.

However, with advances in media, and the untimely death of the owner, the video store was shut down. In time, it was replaced with an establishment that was both more and less legitimate: a bar playing off of the former establishment’s raunchy nature named The Dirty Babe. The outer walls had been expanded both ways along the street since the days of Beef Head, but it was a fundamentally similar sort of trash heap as before: bare brick walls on the outside, cheap black paint on the inside; wooden floorboards stained with the sorts of things that would only appear under a blacklight; and a bartop that was clearly in need of replacement, not the shabby repairs that had been attempted again and again.

Whilst almost nobody of any sort of reputableness visited such a franchise, it was very handy for the sorts of people who both did not care about being judged, or were already judged very, very harshly. In short, it was the sort of place that criminals, assassins, litterers, and street walkers adored hanging out in.

And, not only that, but it was also fantastically easy to acquire almost anything you wanted there, be it a brand new beam katana, a photon gun that was a perfect replica of Han Solo’s blaster, or three kilos of Black Tar Heroin.

Tonight, the most important people there had more human resources in mind. Two of their group were already present, both in bespoke business suits - but where one, dark-skinned and muscular, made a threatening impression with a half-empty pint glass clenched in his hand, the other seemed to barely stand out, despite the box covering his head and the clouds of smoke billowing from within, the source a Cuban cigar held lightly between two fingers between puffs.

The last had yet to show. He- “xhe”, rather- may have been aiming for “fashionably late”. Both other agents knew xhe acted like this. But, after an hour of waiting, that lateness had become distinctly unfashionable, and Agent Rutabaga was starting to get distinctly annoyed.

‘Where in the hell is that weirdo?’ he muttered under his breath, taking another swig of alcohol. ‘I swear half the people we’re interested in are already here; isn’t he meant to be handling some of them?’

‘For a given definition of “handling”, yes,’ the box-headed man replied dryly. ‘He’ll show up eventually, I’m sure.’ Rutabaga responded by muttering something about feet up asses, before taking another hefty swig of his drink and looking around. Some people there were definitely quite colourful, but whilst many were certainly assassins, it wasn’t clear whether any were their intended marks. Or rather, “their future pupils”, if the term was at all accurate - the project they had in mind was at the very least going to be interesting to see play out, if the chosen assassins didn’t all die in the process. And if they somehow succeeded, well, that’d be beneficial beyond measure.