Looking down at the paper, the dog sees a kid. Oh, he’s legal. He can drink. He will be held responsible for his actions in the eyes of the law…[break]
But, he’s still a kid. Sure, he’s fought a lot of battles. He looks tough. Really tough… [break]
But even tough people can make themselves vulnerable. Hitoshi slinks through the alleys of this place. He moves with precise purpose through these streets. He’s looking for this John character. Hitoshi knows where this is going. He’s read this story. [break]
John dies at the end. [break]
Hitoshi spies him wandering about the docks. He’s stinking drunk. Unsure of how he even arrived at this place. How does anyone ever arrive anywhere? The assassin is no poet, no great thinker. He has no grand statement on the nature of life to make. He has his orders. He has a face. He has his sword. That’s all Rocket’s mad dog needs to know. [break]
“Yooo, buddy!” Hitoshi smiles as he walks up, dressed in the robes of a wanderer, his sword sheathed. “John?” A simple question. Bait on the hook.

Assassin

Post-Dormitum: Clash Mission; Vs. Hitoshi Inoue

"Hic." The youth eloquently replied as a voice cut through the silence.

A man he did not know, dressed in uncommon robes, out and about late into the night, calling him buddy, being all smiles.

Suspicious; obviously so. You would've needed to be an imbecile to not question the man's intentions.

That or drunk.

"'Eyyy, ya got m'name on the first try! Naaawt shabby... Hic!" He said with a stupid grin.

The assassin had (perhaps accidentally?) tapped into one of the colonel's hidden frustrations— people rarely knew who he was on sight, despite his many efforts over the past 4 years.

"What can I do for ya, m'm'my guy—hic! Ugh..." He stopped his words short, holding his stomach with a queasy look in his face. "O-oh, oh god..."

He held up a finger before hurrying over to the side of the docks, and hurling into the ocean.

Life takes weird turns. You get an order to assassinate a guy, next thing you know you’re helping him hurl his guts into the sea. Hitoshi kneels by the guy. Helps him out. Pats him on the back like you do with a buddy. What else is he supposed to do? [break]
“Alright, man. Let it all out. Had too much to drink? Man, it’s been a rough night for me, too.” Frankly, Hitoshi is surprised that he’s still awake. He’s gotten the tar beaten out of him. Most of his Pokémon are fainted. He doesn’t know the way the battle has turned out. Hell, he doesn’t really know what day it is anymore. Time is weird underground. [break]
Eventually, once the younger man is done expelling his guts all over the sea, Hitoshi helps him to his feet. Helps steady him. John is taller than him. Most men are. He starts pulling him back towards town. It’d be easy to just drown him in the sea, but that’s not quite Hitoshi’s style. [break]
He wants people to know it’s no accident. He leaves a bloodstained mark on the world. Every life taken is a mark of his craft. Even a dog can have pride. [break]
“You’ve had too much to drink, John-dono. Let’s getcha to bed, fella.” He leads the man in a danse macabre towards the alley that will mark the end of his life.

Assassin

Post-Dormitum: Clash Mission; Vs. Hitoshi Inoue

"It has...?" He asks between wretches, out of it as he empties his guts. As he finishes emptying his stomach, he seems to come to a simple realization, his mirth slowly dissipating as he tries to gulp for air while squeezing the planks beneath. "O-oh... Oh god, it has..."

It comes to him in flashes. Cut throats and scorched scales, crushed chitin and spilled blood. He clutches his head with one hand and his mouth with the other, trying to swallow hiccups that have nothing to do with all the alcohol in his system.

He puts forth no resistance as the friendly man helps him up and leads him about, too distracted by his memories and too poisoned by the alcohol to form a single coherent line of thought. To wonder why this stranger is trying to help him.

"T-thank you..."

He walks to his charnel pit as realization dawns in his eyes. John begins to see. He remembers. He feels. Hitoshi feels guilty for that. It would have been better to have just left him there. He might have fallen over, into the water, and drowned. What a mercy that would be. But, instead, he is consigned to remember. He will die with those burning memories on his mind. [break]
The alleyway is still. People are either asleep, absent, or glued to their sources of information. There’s a war going on. People are tending to their wounded, counting their dead. This man will soon join them. [break]
“Yo, John-dono? Do me a favor, will ya?” He asks the question so casually. Like he’s about to ask him to pick up some chips at the corner store. There’s no shift in his emotions as the knife comes out and plunges into John’s gut.[break]
“Die for me.”

Assassin

Post-Dormitum: Clash Mission; Vs. Hitoshi Inoue

Along with his memories slowly come a measure of unwanted clarity. And with that clarity, a measure of sense. Just enough for him to begin to wonder why they're in an alleyway.

Maybe a shortcut to the pokemon cente—?

Hitoshi Inoue said:

“Yo, John-dono? Do me a favor, will ya?”

"Yeah?" He says absentmindedly, caught between memories, thoughts and alcohol.

Until a sharp, agonizing burning explodes from his stomach, infinitely more painful than his earlier stomach aches.

He doesn't quite catch the other man's words as stares down and sees the knife in his gut, his ears ringing with the dull boom of his rising heart beat. His blood is suddenly pumping, full of chemicals telling him its time to fight or flight.

Too late for either; his knees buckle under him before he can make a decision, his ass finding the ground as his back slapped against a trash container with a metallic bang.

His eyes are wide open as he continues to stare at the knife, before slowly turning his gaze towards the other man.

"W... What?" He mumbles, before his eyes rolled to the back of his head, the rest of his body collapsing onto its side on the asphalt.

It’s murder without malice. [break]
Butchery without sadism.[break]
Death without hatred.[break]
He is a professional, doing a professional’s work. It’s passionless, the way he kills. He knows his job. Hitoshi knows anatomy as well as any doctor and he exploits what he knows. Killing and killers are so often romanticized. The ending of a life is an intimate thing. Yet he kills without intimacy. It’s just a job. [break]
He stabs the liver because the body cannot live without it. He traces the blade upwards and carves apart the lungs because there is no way to breathe once they have been punctured. Two red marks stab the kidney. Another the heart.[break]
Again and again. Repetition. Beauty in repeated motions. This killer does his craft well. Ends a life without bloodlust or malice.[break]
“I said…die for me.” He repeats politely.

Assassin

Post-Dormitum: Clash Mission; Vs. Hitoshi Inoue

He had died before. Once. All alone, where none could witness. It had been... much scarier then.

A whip to the head, right through the eye socket, pulverizing his brain and skull almost instantly. By the... tentacle(?) of an eldritch creature sealed underneath the catacombs of a blown up Church.

Man, 2021 was wild.

It hadn't hurt. It had been instantaneous; so much so, he hadn't realized he had died until he saw what remained of his original eyeball and grey matter on the floor.

It was nothing like this. The agony seemed to stretch on for a lifetime as the life drained out of his body. Each stab found its target, inflicting lethal wound after lethal wound on an already dead man, gifting him with inordinate pain to wallow in whilst in his last moments.

The words reiterated by his would be killer were wasted on him. He couldn't hear anything. See anything.

So this was dying... He wondered. If he were anyone else, would he have felt fear?

Relief?

---

The brutalized body was still on the floor, half sat up, with his head against the asphalt as blood continued to pool around him.

Looked prrretty dead.

It's a quiet murder. Other than the sound of his blade sliding into the body, it's silent. Hitoshi doesn't talk further. Eventually, it's done. The body falls. The deed is done. All told, a textbook murder. What happens next is curious.[break]
Hitoshi, thanking Ho-Oh for having remembered to wear gloves, gently picks the man identified as John up. He sits him up against the wall, puts him in a position that almost looks comfortable. Were it not for the copious stab wounds, John would look like he's just sleeping. The dog takes a cloth, wipes the blood from his knife, and sheaths it back at his side. There's nothing more to be said or done.[break]
His stomach growls. In a little bit, the Rockets will be along to pick him up. Maybe he'll hear about the victory they all managed to achieve together. Maybe not. No skin off his teeth either way. The mad dog goes to see if he can find any fast food to eat in the town.[break]
He does so while whistling, wearing the straw hat of the man he just killed. It's a bad habit of his - his only bad habit when he comes to murder. He'll take interesting knick-knacks off the body. Sometimes he'll wear them, sometimes he'll just toss them aside. Who can say what he'll do with the hat?[break]
By the time he's eating a bowl of ramen, he's forgotten all about John.

Assassin

Post-Dormitum: Clash Mission; Vs. Hitoshi Inoue

The Colonel had, if nothing else, one last trick up his sleeve.

Or maybe it was just his last comfort blanket after a long day.

As the assassin picked up the young man's straw hat, gleaming red orbs shone underneath the cap as a furious arachnid suddenly lurched towards him, its mandibles wide spread and gleaming with a familiar, venomous glow as it attempted to bite into the man's face with a fury.

“Eh?” He holds up the hat to examine it. When the little bug comes to strike him, Hitoshi doesn’t even notice. There’s just a casual flick of his blade. He doesn’t even know it’s a Pokemon until it’s already dead. The sword cuts. That is its designated purpose. It splits life in two. This meager little creature dies at the edge of his blade, just as his master did.[break][break]
Hitoshi dons the hat and walks off. The gentle slosh of the waves is the only dirge offered for trainer and Pokemon.

Assassin

Post-Dormitum: Clash Mission; Vs. Hitoshi Inoue

DEWFORD TOWN, BACKALLEY, 04:16 A.M.

"The hell was that about...?" He wondered outloud as he leaned back against the trash container, staring at his own reflection in the pool of blood around him. Needless to say, he was feeling very lightheaded— though the sensation was quickly dissipating.

Unfortunately, with the influx of new, clean blood—

"Shit." He said, scowling at himself. "I'm all sobered up now."

This fucking sucked.

Perhaps he should've been more worried about the fact that someone had just tried to murder him, but if anything, he could only be amazed at the fact that it had taken this long for it to happen.

"Gonna have a blast explaining this mess to the tailor." He muttered as he began to pick himself up. "Wait."

His head felt... very slightly light-er than usual.

No straw in sight.

Only blood, trash and dirt around him.

Well, that and—

"..." He stood silently upon the remaining halves of his Spinarak, and felt his blood pressure rise.

---

TALLY
100 MP for completing a Postdormitum Mission.
50 MP for participation in a Postdormitum Battle/Mission.
300 MP for losing.
50 MP for x5 posts.
200 MP for dead mon. (Spinarak)
TOTAL = 700MP