A dog sniffs blood. Drawn by the scent, he realizes too late that he is prey. Confident, having been supplied with evolution stones and other materials that turn his team into a force to be reckoned with, he strides forward. Confident in his victory, he feels like he could take on any of the Elite 4. Whether it’s Matias Silph, Katherine Fairburne, Melody Miro, or Callan Young, Hitoshi thinks he has them dead to rights. It’s an animal’s overconfidence.[break]
Two at once just means he gets paid extra.[break]
When he arrives at the designated spot and only sees him, his lips curl in annoyance. Putting a hand on his forehead, he sighs. Of course it’s this wise guy.[break][break]
“Oi! Oi! Where the hell’s the elite 4?! You guardin’ ‘em or somethin’?! Tell ‘em to come out and fight me!” Hitoshi shouts as he unleashes Baiken, his Kleavor. The Pokemon wastes no time, swinging his stone axe out at the trainer.

There's a lot of things a man expects might happen when he steps on a battlefield. He might lose his life. He might be maimed for the rest of his life. He offers everything that he has to a higher authority.[break]
Yet, Hitoshi must admit, he simply can not fathom what he is seeing when Jett jumps at him. He pulls out a gun. That much Hitoshi could expect. Guns aren't his style, but he can see the appeal. Inelegant, but they get the job done. The dullest dullard Dialga ever planted at this precise moment in time could manage a reasonable kill count with such a weapon.[break]
But to then flip that weapon so you hold it by the barrel and charge into melee...[break][break]
It took balls. It took creativity. It took panache. Hitoshi hated it already. He's a trained killer. Before he ever had a Pokemon, he had to learn how to fight humans on his own. In some sense, his connection with the creatures he keeps is deeper than most. He's a creature of their world merely pretending to fit in with humanity. He falls on the backpedal just quick enough to avoid getting brained by the gun.[break]
"What the fuck man? Trying to bash my skull in with a gun?!" He's taken aback, but he understands he has to play by these rules lest he fall here and now.[break][break]
He unsheathes his broken sword and tries to jab the man with the remnants of the weapon. A thrust to the ribs. Like the bashing blow, it lacks elegance.[break]
The battle between Kleavor and Gallade is similar. Kleavor, without proper orders and being thoroughly untrained, simply swings wildly at his opponent. There are openings any fool could exploit. Taken out of his natural environment and evolved through unnatural means, the Pokemon has never been forced to learn how to properly fight. His fury swipes will find little purchase.

The battle upon him, Hitoshi falls into the stance of a natural born genius. The age of swordsmen and knights is over, but someone failed to tell him the memo. He channels the spirit of the warriors of long ago, who trained to have a snowball's chance in hell against the monsters that roamed outside their homes. There's a flow to his movements, a warrior's instincts. What he's doing now isn't just his job. It's who he is at his core. A duelist getting to be what he's supposed to be.[break]
Once the shock's worn off, Hitoshi keeps a few things in mind. The weapon isn't meant to be used this way. The weapon is not even meant to be held that way. The weapon likely cannot perform its intended purpose or this guy is far stupider than he seems. It leads Hitoshi to adopt an aggressive, low stance, sweeping up with hands and sword. When his hand is batted aside, his legs sweep in to take him in the back of the knee.[break]
The fight isn't going well for Kleavor. He's hanging in there by merit of his strength and newfound vigor. A creature of rock and stone will not fall so easily, even with a sacred sword seeking to plunge into his depths. He moves faster than he should, blurring into several copies of himself. His new strategy is to double team the gallade, a brown blur, and move in close for the kill.[break]
"Who gives a shit how cute they are? You can just buy some time with people way hotter if you join the side that gets paid, idiot!" He says, oblivious to notions such as intimacy.

“Stop?” Hitoshi doesn’t pause. He keeps up the pressure. Even if his blade finds no purchase, he has a spare hand. One that is so very eager to find his opponent’s ribs. His thighs. Every part of him that he can hurt. There is no deeper meaning behind the pain he wishes to inflict on this good soul. He is simply a rabid dog, lashing out at the first thing that angers him.[break]
“Why. The. Hell. Would. I. Do. That?!” He growls the question in between blows, thrusting and barking and raging.[break]
His mother abandoned him. Most everyone in his life has. He’s here in a cave far below the earth with no friends and nowhere to go, and this guy says he wants to stop?[break]
Fuck that.

Jett gives this creature too much credit. The thing in front of him isn’t human. It isn’t a Pokemon. He’s just a dog. A dog lashing out at the world. Something uncollared, unclaimed, unloved. Something with no capacity to think beyond today. A creature unaware of its own mortality. A creature that has never, for a moment, considered if life has some deeper meaning.[break]
He exists. Therefore, he lives. He hungers. Therefore, he eats. He lusts, therefore he finds means to sate that lust. That is the measure of this howling dog, whose agitation only deepens as he comes to realize this man simply will not fight him back. It leads to another repetition of their first fight, but this time his strength is brought to the forefront. He lashes. He beats. He berates. He tears. There is a methodical tint to his blows.[break]
There is no human cruelty there. He goes for arteries and other quick means of death with a surgeon’s precision. Death is another thing for him – he doesn’t consider what it means to kill someone, either. The dog has no understanding of what he takes when he takes a life.[break]
“Who gives a shit about tomorrow?! It’s all about today!” Is his simple answer to the question asked by a man he means to murder.

"What's the point?!" The dog shouts as he puts his opponent on the backfoot. Clang after clang, beating the gun into submission. Hitoshi has about eight inches of steel left on his shattered katana. Most of the blade was abandoned somewhere far back in the day, where he stepped up to defend his Pokemon. The voice is a howl of frustration. As if this battle, fought with words as much as muscle, captured the essence of his whole life.[break]
"I'll wake up tomorrow and there'll be another mission. There'll be another paycheck. Any mistakes I make today are mistakes for the Hitoshi of tomorrow to solve. What the hell's the point of living any other way?!" This is what a lack of love does to someone. It removes the capacity for that sort of thought. He's vicious. Lashing out. Every cut is accompanied by a shout.[break]
Hitoshi doesn't know it, but he's lucky there isn't any elite trainer in the area. With how he's yelling, howling, and making a show out of this fight, he'd have drawn a crowd if there was one to draw. Instead, he just fights on the edge of the rift, drawn here by a man who simply did not understand him.

"Urf!" Hitoshi coughed up blood when the butt of the gun took him in the gut. The blood sprayed all over his opponent. And what does the dog do when he takes this hit? He smiles. He grins from the bottom of his heart. He laughs in the face of his opponent.[break]
"O-O-Oooooh.~!! That's what I like to hear, Jett-chan!" His whole demeanor changes when he has someone who takes him up on the concept of a fight. He cackles, raises his arms wide, and beckons the man to come closer once more. Twirling the broken katana about like it's a knife, he readies himself for the fight to come. The Mad Dog of Rocket bursts out.[break][break]
His movement is quicker. Frantic. Like lightning. Low, like a dog. Striking up. Acrobatic. His legs kicking about. Jumping from spot to spot. Never staying in one place too long. If his arms aren't swinging, his legs are. If his legs aren't swinging, they're moving. That's the essence of how this monster is fighting.[break][break]
"KUUUUUUURRRR!" His Kleavor shouts from across the way. He's caught the gallade between the blades of his axes. It's a precarious spot. He spins up and tosses the Pokemon away, trying to send him tumbling through the solid stone. This untrained monster is just as relentless as his master.