Unfinished Business

Beneath hooded robes, Kazuo slides along grim alleyways like an emaciated viper. His sunken eyes hold not surrender, but smolder with venomous purpose after years nourishing righteous fury in miserable exile. While usurpers toast his alleged remains above, Kazuo's gnarled fingers ritually polish the tarnished pistol that will herald his rebirth in blood.

The compound emerges from drizzling fog - once impenetrable stronghold, now clinging symbol for the weak regime. Kazuo's lip curls seeing careless sentries who chatter and smoke contentedly by the barred gates - just like generations of predecessors they probably lined up to execute with zealot passion after his fall.

Slithering silently through servant passages and long-forgotten tunnels, Kazuo enters his former palace potentate unseen as celebratory music echoes from the grand hall where his throne once gleamed for all to kneel before. Concealed behind dusty curtains and column shadows, the ghost observes the decadent festivities with regicidal eyes.

There! - Surrounded by major generals with medals glinting in merry torchlight sits the Usurper, Kazuo's second-in-command who betrayed his power-drunk emperor when tide turned against the teenage tyrant. Wine-flushed cheeks split widely as the turncoat responds to cackling cronies, oblivious to narrowed sights from a pistol that will soon rewrite future fates...

A shot then silence. Erupting screams. Primordial bloodlust fulfillment as Kazuo keeps firing even after corpses thud to imported rugs below. The throne, the empire - his unfinished business can commence again at last! And this time, with a lifetime's lessons in brutality engraved upon his soul, Kazuo resolves never to loosen violent hold over mankind again. The prodigal despot has returned to claim ownership over lesser beings once more.