“I’unno. Tell ya what, if they wanna make a spectacle out of it, just pay me and I’ll do it quick!” He speaks with a craftsman’s pride. Like any professional, he advertises his services with a self-assured smile. A shame that his profession is murder. [break]
“But somebody will come for ya. You’re a politician, right? You don’t get to where you are without somebody lovin’ ya. Someone out there’s plannin’ to getcha out right now. Of course, I’ll have to stop ‘em, but it’s the thought that counts, Elinor-chan.” He speaks of murdering her friends with easy nonchalance. He does not hate them, anymore than he hates her.[break]
“I don’t get the hype with these Rocket guys. They’re pretty weird.” He exercises his capacity to understate an issue.

[blockquotes]Hitoshi listens, focusing solely on her. He nods along, hearing the words. The deeper meaning of them are lost on him. There was probably a news report in Johto about Hoenn’s darkest day. There may have even been side effects of that terrible cataclysm that reached those foreign shores. He doesn’t know anything about that. All he knows, all he has known for half his life or near enough, is that he has to keep Yumi Hasegawa safe. [break]
“Uhuh, mhm.” He says with nods to show that he’s following along with the conversation. He likes her voice. If she gives long speeches, he can see why people would vote for her.[break]
“Well, you can always do better when you get out, right? I’m sure yer buddies will come along and pay a ransom for ya, Elinor-chan. Or they’ll kill everybody between Sootopolis n’ here and take ya. It’s what I’d do if the person I care about got taken by your guys.” He’s a well trained dog. He doesn’t say her name. She has a life to live, a cover story to maintain. [break]
“It’s never too late. Well, until you’re dead, I guess.” He senses distress and he tries to comfort. It is simply his nature when the order to kill hasn’t been given.[/blockquote]

He remembers days running on the street. Fighting for scraps of food just to get by. Refusing the help of adults, refusing to be fostered. All the raw rolling anger of rejection by his own mother made him rage in those bygone days.[break]
“Just kinda fell into it, the way you do any old job. I like using my sword. It beats flipping burgers or pushing pencils.” His mind flits to the empty eyed people flipping burgers all day, every day, just to make end’s meet.[break]
“How ‘bout you? How’d you end up doing, uuuuuh…whatever it is you did before you came here? Bein real, it’s weird that you’re here. These guys don’t usually keep prisoners.” He places the same wedge he always does between himself and Rocket, not even realizing what he is doing.

“Hitoshi!” He says with a grin. Swiveling around in his chair, he rolls over to the bars and looks through. They’re almost eye level. Nominally, he’s doing his job very well. Not like she can do anything while he’s looking right at her. [break]
“Man, this sucks. I don’t envy ya. Having to sit in there all day. It’s nice, getting to go home when my shift ends. I don’t usually kill people for free, but if I ever meet the guy who invented jail, he can get a one way ticket to hell free of charge!” He laughs, treating the ending of a life with all the gravity of picking daisies.

He is given one order.[break]

If this woman leaves this room, kill her.[break]

That, and none other. Hitoshi has been pulled from his normal job, guarding Rocket’s interests in its Sootopolis casino, to guard this mysterious woman. It speaks to how little he cares about the political structure of the region that he does not recognize her or even attempt to find out who she is. All he knows is that she’s a prisoner of Rocket. Anything else is irrelevant to him. They think he’s a consummate professional.[break]

The terrible truth is that he doesn’t care – at least about secondhand opinions. Dogs are creatures which form their own opinions. Whether everyone around a dog loves or hates someone, the animal’s opinion will always be its own.[break]

So, sitting outside of her cell, he peers inside. He sees a woman with long, pink, braided hair. A woman trying to find inner peace with meditation. She smells like a fighter. So, Hitoshi speaks. No one told him to be quiet.[break]

“Oi, that doesn’t work, you know. Meditation. Dunno how you manage to sit still like that…I’d probably try and claw through the wall or somethin’.” Just small talk, to pass the time. Hitoshi speaks to this woman with absolutely no malice. His voice isn’t dripping with sadism or contempt. He could be chatting with her in a bar or park from how he sounds.

Elinor Anderson

Hitoshi has always hated hospitals. Saving a life is far, far more boring than taking one. Saving a life requires precision and delicacy that he has, since his first sapient thought, lacked. His edge is sharp, but he is a tool with a blunt purpose. Such has always been his place, and so shall it always be.[break]

This hospital is a flurry of activity. It is confusion. A study in chaos. The League has lost, and many within its government do not even know that yet. People are falling through the cracks.[break]

Hitoshi is one such person. Paperwork got mixed up. He was found shot in Granite Cave. Three bullet wounds to the chest, another grazing his head. Countless stab wounds. Yumi’s blade has been beaten and battered, but it still holds.[break]

“Oooooi! More ice cream!” He shouts, laughing as nurses scurry to deliver him as much ice cream as he can handle. Given time, they will likely realize, as records are perused, that he is not there with the League. Quiet hero’s treatment will turn into suspicion, which will turn into questions, which will lead him to prison. This dog will find himself languishing in a cell. He’ll be far from the place he is supposed to be.[break]

But for now, he is another nameless hero of the League. Injured, broken, lost in the crowd. Waiting for the right opportunity to get sprung. They’ve even been kind enough to keep his Pokeballs close.

Yumi Hasegawa

"Oi, Yumi Hasegawa, I lived!"

From the day Hitoshi stepped foot into the world of the Hasegawa, he has been a sword. The edge of his blade has been stained red with the blood of men and mon, all in service of another. An old legend of Johto says that blades choose their wielder. If one unworthy of them takes up the sword, they will fail their owner. It will go from hand to hand until, at last, it finds its destined hand.[break]

Once blade and owner are united, they are a mighty thing indeed. Both become greater than they were before by the act of using and being used. Such a person finds a deep secret of the blade, that it is a thing that defends. A sword can only defend something it truly loves.[break]

So, this sword wrought in human flesh comes to sit on a couch, looking out of a window in Slateport. His owner says there is time to relax, yet he finds relaxation at this juncture a dicey proposition at best. There is an unknown factor at play. Another blade. A woman sharing space with the one he has sworn his life, a coven sealed with other men’s blood.[break]

She is the one pulling Yumi into the sludge at the bottom of this city. He finds Rocket undignified, but theirs is a world suited for Yumi and himself. Cold logic dictates they would gravitate there, but all the same…[break]

He is weary of the woman who would put Yumi in such danger. Hitoshi does not care if he dies. A blade will, inevitably, shatter. Even the finest swords made by the finest smiths will decay with time. Yet, while the blade lives, it will seek to stop its owner from rusting.[break]

So, he waits. He tests the edge of his own blade, admiring how the light of the ceiling fan catches on the edge of the metal. Waiting for this Mei woman, who smells like danger, to return. He plans to talk to her. If he does not enjoy what he hears…[break]

It is a blade’s job to defend its owner’s life.

Mei Liu

"Yumi's get herself a new roommate, eh? Mei Liu's her name? Ooooh, dangerous. Might haveta get my sword out for this one."

“Any way the wind blows. Doesn’t really matter to me.” Is the answer given by the black dog as their ship sails at last into the cave. Their boat rocks as other grunts help pull them in. No one says anything about the bloodstains. That’s just the business they’re in, especially when they’re fighting for someone else’s glory.[break][break]
“Catch ya on the other side, girly. I’ll work with ya any time. Always nice to meet another girl from the homeland.” A rolling stone gathers no moss, but it still remembers the paths down which it has travelled. There’s another order waiting for him. An order to descend, rip, and tear.[break][break]
What a lovely day.[/bloclquote]

“Yes ma’am.” The grunt agrees, waving his hand at the Ceruledge. Jubei floats close by, following him out of the mist. His voice drips with something that treads dangerously close to sarcasm. A quick in and out skirmish. A bit of bloodshed. Discovering a new kind of murder. Quick. Simple. Easy. Just like he likes it.[break]
“Yer the boss, Ma’am.” And through the mist they walk, back to the waking world.

He hacks them, splits them, tears them. The blood on the deck isn’t their problem. There are bigger stakes today than petty battle. So long as these officers are the only problem they encounter, it’s no big deal. Just one of those things. Another head for the collection. Hitoshi chops at them with his sword. It’s an improper use of such a tool. With what he’s doing, it’s better to use a meat cleaver. With none on hand, he uses the next best things – Metagross and his sword.[break]

Their bodies are tossed into the soulless sea. Blood seeps into the water. Whatever hopes and dreams these men had sink with them. Sharpedo and other creatures of the sea will take care of them. They’re already out and about. If not here, in the calmer waters, then farther off in the middle of the pitched ship battle across the bay.[break]

It looks so fun. A shame that he can’t be there helping out.[break]

“Learned it fighting in Johto.” Hitoshi grunts. “Funny thing. When someone pulls out their funny ball, they can’t throw their pokemon out if you cut their hand off first.” He laughs, surprised to see she’s so calm about this whole thing.[break][break]

Not much farther now. Hitoshi takes the wheel and steers their ship. The cave can’t be far away now.

“No way in hell you’re eighteen.” The gungho gumshoe states. “If you’re eighteen, then I’m the crown prince of Kalos.” His boat bumps against theirs. The detective jumps up, his partner sighing and joining them up on deck. Both men, up close, are clearly taller than the eccentric duo bound together by the red string of Rocket.[break][break]
“It’ll be alright. We’ll just look around for a second and then take you back to town.” He reassures them. His partner doesn’t seem so sure about how this will go. His eyes are on the black dog’s sword.[break][break]
“A fuckin’ katana? The hell, man?” He laughs.[break][break]
It is the last mistake he will ever make. If Saki is an observant girl, she might notice how the calm, goofy smile drains from his face when the man laughs. Hitoshi’s hand trembles. Everything, their mission, the Rockets, his creed. All of it fades. Every sound is secondary to that laugh – the most grating sound ever concocted by man or god or devil.[break][break]
He doesn’t have legs. Hitoshi’s blade flies free and takes them clean out from under them in a stroke as smooth as silk. His sword’s edge is fine, paying no heed to bone or muscle or sinew. The detective falls onto the deck, bleeding. His partner, who did not chuckle, is speared through the brain by the sword. Improper, but effective.[break][break]
Turning the legless detective over, Hitoshi looks down at him with madness in his eyes.[break][break]
“No one laughs at me. Die die die die DIE!” Five stabs down into his gut like it’s a pinata waiting to be beaten open. Raw guts spill out across the deck, smelling like old dead things.[break][break]
Across the deck is a mosaic of brown wood and fresh scarlet blood.