The headman gestures. Kobun head down the alleyways flanking the bar. Machiko pushes through the door at the front of the bar and enters a cataclysm of noise, rant rock so loud it rises to the level of static. The air is humid with heat and sweat, but the glimmer of feverish bipedal bodies shows clearly against the dark, as though human and metahuman burn with an inner light, and skin and clothes, flush with heat, are merely the shades enclosing many lanterns.