"Ten elites and thirty low-ranking ninjas. Just to kill four street rats wallowing in the slums?"
"Shut up! Kingpin gave up control of half the port, and this is the Hand's show of good faith. Tonight, I want those four heads on the altar!"
Inside an underground shrine in Hell's Kitchen, New York.
Several leaders dressed in scarlet ninja garb knelt on the floor, listening to the aged yet chilling voice from the raised platform.
"By our usual standards, an assassination force of this size would be more than enough to take the head of a medium-sized nation's leader. Go. Split into two groups. Cut that back-alley doctor named Yang Ming and those three masked freaks into chunks and bring them back."
"Yes!"
Forty scarlet figures melted into the darkness in an instant, as though they had never existed.
They were the killing machines the Hand took the greatest pride in, masters of ninjutsu, turtle breathing, and assassination. In their eyes, tonight would be nothing more than a one-sided slaughter with a foregone conclusion.
Dim yellow light filled Yang Ming's clinic in Hell's Kitchen.
Yang Ming sat in a swivel chair with peeling paint, holding a slender pair of surgical tweezers as he leisurely cleaned the dirt from beneath his fingernails.
Jessica Jones crouched in the corner, clutching a nearly empty can of cheap beer, her eyes slightly unfocused. She had just mopped the clinic floor, and the smell of disinfectant made her nose itch.
"Boss, did you piss off someone important lately?" Jessica took a swig and wiped her mouth.
"There've been more homeless people outside the clinic these past couple of days, and... the way they look at the door, it's not like they're waiting for handouts. More like they're looking at a morgue freezer."
Yang Ming