Skip Baxter, the Most Dangerous Man in Turbo City, gently guided his cherry-red ’89 ’Vette into the strip mall parking lot, paying more attention to the incredibly photogenic and more importantly lethal-as-fuck hands resting on the steering wheel than the road. He’d been down to the police station no less than three times to register them as Deadly Weapons™ but never got past the desk sergeant, a tall woman with a laugh like a twat-tickled donkey. Hell, once he even showed up at a gun buy-back in the parking lot of the long-shuttered Niederman Toys building, even brought his own bone saw, but all they did was laugh at him.

Bunch of pansies, with their Glocks and their nightsticks and their pussy-ass radios to call for backup, Skip thought. I’m Skip Baxter, and I’m my own goddamn backup.

Skip eased into the reserved space with SENSEI emblazoned on the asphalt in front of Hawk Dragon Martial Arts, the dojo he’d founded two years before, and got out, the scent of baking conchasfrom the panaderianext door thick in the air. Idly, one of his Deadly Weapons™ wandered down to the thick roll of fat straining the elastic waistband of his tracksuit. He gazed at the OPEN sign on the panaderiadoor for a hot second before remembering he was supposed to be doing that stupid keto diet. Marsha swore by it, she’d dropped seven pounds. His complexion was already going south, a bright sheen of grease covering his face, clogging his pores. But he had to do something. Middle age was a real motherfucker.

At least he still had his hair. Thick, black, lustrous, cut in an exaggerated mullet hanging down between his shoulder blades, held back with a hachimakaembellished with the Hawk Dragon logo—a hawk, with dragon claws and shit, breathing fire. Totally badass.

Just like Skip.

Skip fumbled through his key ring until he found the front door key, nodding his head in time to the soft ranchero music leaking out of the bakery. He shoved the key in the lock and turned it, but the key didn’t want to go. He turned it back the other way.

Locking the door.

Skip frowned. He must have forgotten to lock up the night before. No surprise, that one little wiener kid, what was his name, Robert or Mark maybe, failed to stand the requisite ten fucking feet back while Skip was demonstrating a roundhouse kick. What followed was a shitload of crying—heavily frowned upon at Hawk Dragon Martial Arts—and the realization that little Robert or Mark’s nose looked slightly different than when he trotted through the front door at the beginning of class.

Specifically, it looked like a nose then.

Skip figured the kid was lucky he’d gotten caught with a roundhouse kick instead of a karate chop. A knifehand strike from one of Baxter’s Deadly Weapons™ might’ve sheared the nose clean off his face, and then he could have gone as Skeletor for Halloween and maybe he’d at least win a costume contest, because little what-his-nuts definitely wasn’t winning any karate contests any time soon. “It only takes three pounds of pressure to break a human nose,” was something Skip was very fond of saying, he’d even worked it into his vows when him and Marsha got married, and Skip didn’t understand a man who’d cry over a measly three pounds of pressure.

Even an eight-year-old one.

Then the ambulance came and Robert or Mark’s dad showed up and beat the shit out of Skip—when you’re an eighth-degree black belt, it’s not fair to trot out advanced karate techniques against a civilian, even a construction worker who outweighs you by fifty pounds. No, sometimes you’ve got to take your lumps, and you better believe Skip Baxter didn’t cry like a little bitch about it.

Granted, he didn’t remember everything that happened between the moment Robert or Mark’s dad shoved a greasy finger in his face and when he woke up in the parking lot with a pair of black eyes and a splitting headache several hours later, but Skip was damn sure he didn’t cry.

Given the fortitude he’d shown in the face of adversity, he figured he could be forgiven his failure to lock the fucking door.

Skip pushed the door open and flipped the lights on, hoping nothing had been stolen. Everything looked to be in its proper place, from the white wooden cubbies where students put their shoes to the sea of blue mats extending to the back wall. The glass case full of trophies for tournaments that technically never happened stood intact to one side of the door, and no gang graffiti defaced the Hawk Dragon mural on the wall.

No, everything looked like Skip left it, right down to the unfamiliar man standing in the middle of the room.

Wait, what?

“Mr. Baxter,” the man said, crossing his arms—weirdly long appendages, like a chimp or a monkey. He was tall, too, over six feet, and thin, wearing a black silk kimono and Ray-Ban sunglasses. His hair was bleached blonde, gelled and spiked, with the sort of elaborate fade Skip sometimes saw when he taught a charity self-defense class for at-risk youth.

Weirdly, his voice was absurdly high—the kind of sound you’d get if you kicked Alvin, Simon or Theodore in the nuts. That set Skip at ease. Anybody with a voice that high had to be a pussy.

Still, his presence in the dojo was a mystery, and Skip hated mysteries. They made him feel stupid.

“I’m Skip Baxter,” Skip said, since nothing else was really coming to him.

The man slowly reached up, pulled his Ray-Bans off, and regarded Skip with one pale blue eye and one black one. “My name, or rather the name bestowed upon me, is Kundarai Saru. Do you know Japanese, Mr. Baxter?”

Skip shrugged. “Domo arigato?”

Saru smiled, revealing very expensive veneers. “I’m afraid that doesn’t really apply here, Mr. Baxter. No, my name means Glorious Warrior. A hard-earned name. Many years, many battles. Many enemies vanquished in my quest. A quest that has now brought me to you.”

“To me?”

“Tell me, Mr. Baxter, you fancy yourself a sensei?”

“Sho nuff,” Skip said, getting his composure back. He was a sensei, and this was his dojo. He hadn’t been paying attention to everything this Kundy Ricey Roo fella was saying, in fact most of it went right over his head, but he was Skip Fucking Baxter, the Most Dangerous Man in Turbo City, and even though technically this was an unincorporated area called Agave Gardens, they were only a quarter mile outside the Turbo City city limits, and Skip figured maybe he was the Most Dangerous Man here, too.

Outside of Mark/Robert’s dad.

Saru nodded, once. “Very good. And who was your master?”

Skip scoffed. “I’m my own master.” He supposed if you wanted to get technical Michael Dudikoff was his master, since he’d watched American Ninja about three hundred times (including twice on his wedding night, much to Marsha’s chagrin), but he doubted this dipshit with the frosted tips and the lady clothes knew who Michael Dudikoff was.

“Self-taught. Interesting.”

“What’s this about, anyway? I got a class.”

“Your class can wait, Mr. Baxter. I have traveled a long way, across oceans, lakes, rivers, other assorted bodies of water, to be here today. To find my destiny.”

“Cool story. What’s that got to do with me?”

Saru pointed to the case of trophies. “Every time I arrive in a new city, I seek out the greatest martial arts masters in town. And I kick. Their. Asses.”

Skip flexed his Deadly Weapons™. “I’d love to accommodate you, champ, but I think I’m coming down with something. Cough-cough. So—”

“Prepare to defend yourself!” Saru dropped back into a fighting stance, his hands gracefully arcing through the air.

Skip pulled his phone out. “Like I said, I’m busy, so I’d suggest you beat feet before I call the—”

“Hai-ya!” Saru lashed out with a kick and sent Skip’s phone flying. It bounced off the wall, landed on a mat.

“Ow!” Skip said, shaking one of his Deadly Weapons™. He sucked on his thumb, tasted blood. “Not cool, I just got that.”

“Worry about me, not your phone.” Saru circled, light on his feet like a moth fluttering around the dojo.

Skip backed away towards the door. “Okay, man, I’m out—” Whumph!

That sure didn’t feel like a door.

Skip slowly turned, found himself face-to-mask with some dude dressed up as a ninja—dark blue pajamas, demon facemask, eyes tight with malice. “Oh shit!”

“Oh shit is right, Mr. Baxter. Daisuke?”

The ninja shoved him.

Skip stumbled backwards, spun around, nearly knocked the display case over. His jaw hit the floor—he was surrounded by ninjas. Five, ten, more? They lined the walls, still as statues, some holding bows, katanas, sai.

What do you call a group of ninjas? Skip thought. A pack? A swarm?

A fuckload.

“Come, Mr. Baxter!” Saru beckoned to him. “Show me your Hawk Dragon style!”

Skip looked from the ninjas, to Saru, down at his Deadly Weapons™. Asked himself a very important question.

What would Michael Dudikoff do?

Probably not piss himself.

Skip Baxter ignored the wet warmth in his crotch and curled his Deadly Weapons™ into fists. They were shaking, undoubtedly from all the chi coursing through his body.

Skip let out the patented Hawk Dragon Martial Arts war cry, a fierce “Ca-caw!” following by a long fwoooosh (representing a dragon’s fiery breath, of course) and rushed Saru.

He didn’t even see the first blow, let alone the last.