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Orphans were excellent tools. All children desire parents. All children want unconditional love. All children deserve it. Their minds are malleable, and on showing affection, they clung to the attachment of their parent figure like a deity to look up into their eyes and never waver in their fealty. [break][break]
That was something Toshihiro Shinada knew well. That was why he made an orphanage, and that was why he made the children call him father. That was why he would have an unwavering army that would never betray him when they grew up to become Yakuza members. But every so often, a child catches his attention, gifted as they are, with the potential to become something more significant. Someone wasted on the front lines of collecting money, smuggling Pokemon, running prostitution rings, or being used as bodies in familial conflicts.[break][break]
On one such occasion, a thin-boned boy with dull red eyes and scrappy bruises across his entire body stood before two dead men. His eyes were dry. It was apparent he had been the cause of this massacre, but he couldn't even be blamed. Toshihiro had known that, on occasion, some of his boys would take 'liberties' with the children. He turned the other cheek and let them do as they wished. However, today, they had gone too far.[break][break]
"Why did you kill them?" Toshihiro asked. The boy, who had been beaten nearly to death by the orphanage director, was now staring at him, not in fear or anger, but with curiosity. "Why did you kill them?" The boy said nothing. The quiet defiance in his eyes spoke volumes.[break][break]
And so Toshihiro changed the question. "How did you kill them?"
The boy didn't say anything for a moment, then looked away from him towards the corpses. He knew he had done it. That much was clear. He had just killed people. "I tricked them." Came his reply. His voice had been hoarse from bawling, fear, and terror. "How?" Toshihiro asked.
"A fishing line between two trees. Some Repel. I told them I would go to the police and then ran into the forest into a Beedrill hive." Toshihiro stared into the boy's eyes, black and pitiless. He had just cost him two grown officers, after all. "And their Pokemon? Why didn't they defend them?" The boy paused, looking up towards Toshihiro. "I swapped their belts after their training with Andrew. So they couldn't call their Pokemon out."[break][break]
On that day, Toshihiro named the boy his son and gave him a new name, Kagetora. And with it came his son's undying loyalty.[break][break]
Everyone seeks purpose, knowingly or not. It is the thing that grants joy and strength. It is the bedrock and foundation of life's otherwise meaningless miasma. [break][break]
For some, it's religion. For others, it's love and family. Others still, rally for the rights of people, communities, or ideals. [break][break]
Most often, these are not given. They are found. And people meander through life aimlessly until they see it. For Kagetora, however, his was presented at the point of his adoption. His purpose was a craft. And his craft was death.[break][break]
Toshihiro Shinada was not just a simple Patriarch of a Yakuza Family. While he commanded thousands of soldiers as a Patriarch under the Mubegumi Clan. As the years took their toll, his purpose was to find a worthy successor to his assassination school. And though many had shown promise, he had seen them as equally lacking in one aspect or another. [break][break]
Kagetora was given everything on the surface. He was the child of a wealthy family and a model student: Polite, hardworking, respectful, intelligent, and quick. Back home, however, the boy was brutalized. He was beaten, starved, tortured, and humiliated until only a shell of a human imitating someone was made. The first death an assassin needed was the self, and Toshihiro ensured to temper the emotions of fear and anger into his son, condensed into a fine blade to turn towards his enemies.
He was taught how to fight and wield Pokemon, a sword, a gun, a knife. How to use explosives, poisons, and any number of weapons to his advantage. How to move silently, use stealth, and manipulate his surroundings and other people. He learned how to infiltrate buildings, pick locks, and avoid guards. How to disguise himself, act cordially, to play a character. [break][break]
And when he was ready, he became a hitman under his father, killing enemies of the Mubegumi with his father's permission. And while his father was a man who valued results over methods, he had no qualms with the results Kagetora brought.[break][break]
Until his twenties, Kagetora would have lived such a purpose for the rest of his life. It was all he had known. It was all he truly needed.[break][break]
That was until the *fool* arrived.[break][break]
She was an idiot. An idiot with red hair, long locks running down her neckline, gleaming red eyes, a pretty face, and a knife-sharp, confident grin which betrayed her insecurities to those who could see it. An idiot who played rebel, who eschewed the dumb, pathetic family she had in Hoenn simply because she felt insecure.[break][break]
Kagetora studied this idiot who wanted his father's secrets and who wanted to be a killer. This foolish girl, in her mid-twenties, slaving away and putting herself in a spiral of death to try and prove herself to be better than her brother. At first, he simply watched silently, whether it was a beating given to her for her lack of focus, a misaligned sword edge leading to her inability to eat, or being tortured to increase her pain tolerance. [break][break]
Kagetora could not understand her, and he needed to know. He needed to know why this stupid Hoennian whore was trying to take his place by the side of his father. It was reconnaissance, nothing more. There was no way he would ever be able to be replaced.[break][break]
At first, he only spoke to her: gentle, lifting words, smiles, encouragement. Kyrenai Black was her name. He lifted her spirits up so that her hopes could be dashed again. Her eyes glittered with admiration for him, the smiles genuine, and he felt the rush of blood flood to his cheeks, and he felt anger coursing through his veins for allowing himself to think as such.
Then when she did fail, she was starved, deprived of water or food. Kagetora would slip to her and give her a meal every several days and water when needed. He didn't want her to become stronger. He needed her to know she was human and humans were fallible. They would only be able to take the mantle if they were tools.[break][break]
But it didn't work. The more she fought, the more kindness he gifted her, and the more hope he instilled in her, only proved to improve her. How? As Kagetora looked into those red eyes, gleaming with optimism and confidence, filled to the brim with fire, not emptiness, he wondered how she could derive that strength to improve, to relish the challenges that put her through the indignities that she suffered.[break][break]
And so, he began to coach her, stoking the competitive fire inside her. If she could become stronger, then so could he. Kagetora trained her not by using force but by using words. It was as if he was giving her his past, showing her the pain he endured, humiliation, and defeat. He shared himself more than just the edge alignment of the sword, the best way to walk across a tightrope, or how to disguise oneself perfectly by being completely innocuous. He shared his views and philosophy, and as she began to improve, he too found himself lifted to a new height as they clashed swords with one another.[break][break]
His technique improved alongside her. But his rage quelled. And that was not good. He understood this. Yet he could not stop himself. As they continued to work together, as Kyrenai became a full-fledged assassin, Kagetora grew weaker in his resolve. He masked it, continuing to be the perfect son that was needed. But now, the dying gasps of murder made him hesitate. He no longer relished inflicting violence on others to direct his anger onto an external force. He was dulled, and he had made himself dull.[break][break]
Toshihiro sensed this. His original plan was to use the foreigner to inspire jealousy and hatred within Kagetora, to stoke and fuel his desire to exceed his limits. But it had backfired spectacularly. Instead, the boy had become lovestruck, and instead of one purpose, the boy now had two. And the two purposes would tear him apart. Toshihiro had to act quickly to resolve this problem. If not the boy, then the girl. This was to be their final lesson. Never love, have hope, have joy, lest it is ripped from you. Once there was nothing there, the equilibrium would balance out.
Kagetora understood what was to come. When the letter came through to say that either he or Kyrenai was to be chosen, he acted with indifference. The preparations had been done years in advance, and now there was just one last thing to do; let the wind of fate decide where it'd blow.
Three sword masters stand amid a field of grass. The final selection of the head of the assassination school was to be done with physical skill. This was to ensure that there was only one way they could die; by each other's hand. Toshihiro needed the despair to infest deep so they would emerge from the chrysalis.[break][break]
Only, he'd never live to see it. After the first exchange of blows, Toshihiro was forced to draw his own sword, and within seconds, death took him, slain by the very two he had trained to become his successor. Kagetora stood before the dying breaths of his father. [break][break]
The words he asked him when he first adopted Kagetora rang through his mind like a bell. [break][break]
"Why did you kill them?" Toshihiro had said, looking down at the boy. "Why did you kill them?" [break][break]
"Why did you kill me?" Toshihiro now asked, looking up at the man he had raised. It was wordless, but it was given by the fading light from his eyes. And now Kagetora knew the answer. And he would answer it, as a final kindness.[break][break]
"Because I had to."[break][break]
Life passes from his father's lips. The blood drips from his sword. His eyes turn to Kyrenai. With this death, the successor would be separated, mastered by them both. At least, that was what Kagetora had told her. Strangely enough, as he watched her glittering smile of realized dreams, he knew for the first time that he had chosen correctly. [break][break]
He points his blade toward Kyrenai. "Only one," Kagetora said.
It was true, and only one person could leave here alive. Not as the successor of the assassination school. Only one person would be allowed to live. Reason follows nothing, no answer from Kagetora's end. And he pulled the performance of his life as he turned Kyrenai's fear and worry into hatred, spilling every criticism he'd held until now. Criticisms that were no longer true. Vile toxins flood into Kagetora's head, and he releases it like a barking dog. [break][break]
Until the light of hope fades from Kyrenai's eyes, until they harden into diamonds, steeling her resolve for what must be done.
Beneath the hills they stood on, the Shinada compound is raided. Gunfire and bullets, Molotov cocktails, Electrode explosions, Poison Gas. It was all for money and power, Kagetora said. He would live as Patriarch, comfortably, as a member of an opposing Yakuza family.
The swordfight ends with Kyrenai's blade running through his heart. The blade cuts into his spine, severing his ability to feel pain. It was a mercy that he could still look up into her tear-stained eyes. [break][break]
"It's okay..." he manages to utter. The silence is deafening. He hears nothing that comes from Kyrenai's mouth. But he reads it all the same.
There is a tinge of regret as those words are uttered. False memories of a family together run through Kagetora's mind—a wedding beneath a simple chapel, a house bathed in sunlight—a garden covered in flowers. Tea is wafting in the air. It's a light that's so brilliant and warm. He wished to go towards it. He maintains just enough focus to be able to see her face.[break][break]
In the following months, the rival faction takes over the Shinada family. When Toshihiro's body is found, he is identified as slain by Kagetora. Kyrenai was found to have acted only in self-defense. Toshihiro's dream of an assassination school dies with him. His yakuza family was shattered, killed by his only son. He is remembered as a flawed man who nevertheless cared for the needy who was murdered unceremoniously by a treacherous son.[break][break]
Kagetora died, disgraced by his family, known to the world as a patricide. His grave is unmarked, save just his name. His funeral is unattended, save for the monks and perhaps a visitor from a distance. [break][break]
But he died with joy in his heart. He died peacefully in the arms of his would-be lover, carrying him to the other side in a field of grass, knowing that she would live and remember him. And while it wasn't a beautiful end, he did not die a tool. He died human, with purpose planted in his chest. [break]
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After an indeterminate amount of time, consciousness flickers again, and desire, fire, and life spark inside him again. And Kagetora opens his eyes, staring up at Kyrenai at the Borders.
PATISSERIE HM RP
