"Yeah? So why didn't you?"

She slurps her noodles freely, the noise she makes her compliments to the chef.

"Nobody'd give a shit. You're Beasts, beasts fight. Right? That's what you're there for, the finest dogs among us all. It ain't up to you to keep yourself in line."

She raises her empty mug and the poor waitress runs over again, setting down more ramen and beer before the woman. She hardly seems to get a break, between serving this insatiable woman and the rowdy crew of Leaguers on the other side of the bar. They erupt in a raucous cheer, and Hana shoots them a curious glance.

"Though I s'pose that's hard these days."

Her swords still hum in her hand. They long even now to drive into flesh, to slake their thirst on the living, to kill and kill again. Perhaps she may have given them that once, but they are tools for another now.

A man, who asks his sword what she might do.

What would Admin Fox want her to say?

"Spare them. Tie 'em up, take 'em in, interrogate 'em. Someone knew you'd come this way. No impromptu ambush has this level of coordination. You'd be gettin' an angry mob if this was really unplanned, and these guys don't look like they're doing this in the heat of the moment if you ask me."

She spits on the ground, on the bodies of dead men. The old woman stares at her with scorn, and she flashes her a wide smile.

"Ask me, first one who talks keeps their tongue. Reward the ones who'll keep talkin'. And if they lie, well, it's still there. Can always pull it out if you find they ain't tellin' the truth."

She says it with a grin on her face, no remorse at all.

Deep down, though, she wonders: was that too brutal?

The answer comes quick.

No. Not for the man who had burned Petalburg.

She looks up at him, sullen.

She had been denied her honor, paid for it with her life. A life given back to her by this man. She would do whatever he willed with that second chance.

"Very well."

Some life returns in her at that, in spite of herself. She seems almost disappointed in the suggestion that she should not disembowel herself here, with everyone watching.

She stands.

"I have other things to discuss, in that case. The civilians, for one."

She moves right along, as if nothing had happened, though the spectre of death does not leave the room.

The man in front of her looks like a corpse already.

"Saw you saving 'em during the battle. The League's plan already looks bad, using Kyogre as an opportunity to stage an assault rather than a rescue. Why reduce the number we could use in propaganda against 'em?"

He'd been working alongside Navy in truth. That was what she was really curious about.

But she likely couldn't broach the topic now without the Underboss having second thoughts on staying her self-execution.

Blood drips from her doublade's edge, and Hana gives the ape a wide smile.

"Ah, he's got his first taste..."

She could feel the power stirring within the blade, the way its very soul energized by the wound it had inflicted as if cutting away at spirit and body both. She raised her sword at the ape, readying herself for what was to come.

"Now it's over!"

Hana leapt into the air, propelled forth by her sword's brimming energy. She closes the gap in an instant, one step from ground to branch where the monkey king sat licking his wounds, and brought both swords in on him from either side in the shape of an X -- a valiant sacred sword technique.

The shadows shift, and a trained eye catches their movement even if the brain does not register it.

The woman's hand shifts downward just in time, not to defend against the blow, but if anything, to catch it. The edge of her sword pointed at the ground as the attack emerges, Hana is buffeted to the side, letting out a silent curse.

"Hah! And again I ask, what's wrong with bein' petty?"

A wide grin crosses the woman's face.

Her second blade slips from her grasp, falling into the void of her shadow beneath her. A moment later, and it appears from the kid's own, striking out at him directly with a shadow sneak of its own.

The lurching of the ground beneath does not disturb her.

She is not moved, even as she is raised.

The head remains steady, a ground. And finally, Hana presses a hand to it. Then, a ball.

Whatever comes, comes.

"So eager to save civilians you let 'em drown while you focused on fighting me."

Hana spits at the ground, on the name of those civilians who died because Montgomery was so caught up in his duel.

"I remember."

His vitriol spills off her back, punishing as a waterfall but no less able to be withstood with the right frame of mind. She empties herself of everything but the bare naked truth, the one thing she could never deny.

"The strong will get what is theirs, and so will the weak. That's your karma."

And hers, too.

A sudden bad taste in her mouth as she remembers Navy, and she spits again.

"You and I are too much alike. You won't find what you're lookin' for here."

Not here, not with this criminal.

"You wanna know the meaning of strength? Go find your sheriff, ask him what his priorities were the moment Kyogre breached the wall. Him, and the Harbinger and his little dog, too.

"There's your strength, your 'good'."

It wasn't enough to stem the tide. It never is.

But nevertheless, in spite of it all, they were the ones who believed in something.

"Nothin' more for us to say."

She climbs onto her skarmory's back, and the bird takes flight, soaring out over the flooded city and leaving the man behind her.

She made her way on foot. The sky was the color of a bruise at her back, but she faced toward the glimmering golds that streamed off the chrysanthemum still blooming somewhere to the west, though she could not entirely say where. The trees and the hills had buries it already, and only the memory streaked across the clouds was left in its stead, soon to turn the colors of blood and rust.

The perfect hour for a duel, she thought grimly.

And she reminded herself, slowly, that she had yet to encounter the one she'd heard rumors of on the outskirts of Rocket territory.

There was no question the one the townsfolk had spoken of hurriedly, eyeing her sword set on the table in front of them. They were rumors, yes, to be taken with a grain of salt, especially when squeezed out of them at the threat of violence, but... she knew as they had spoken of her that they were, if nothing else, not liars.

Hana had seen the woman as well. Not here, but in her snow-white den. She had been the one to quell the storm, the calm in the midst of calamity, the one who had managed to squeeze peace from Declan Walsh himself.

And now she was here, somewhere, probing their borders and stirring the lesser of their ranks to go out and search for her. She wondered if she sought peace here as well, another ceasefire.

"You want peace? Come and take it."

She mutters under her breath, hand to her blade as she surveys the forest around her.

The sea air cuts her lungs like a knife and her heart beats in her head. Her hand falls to her blade. She can feel it humming with malice within its sheathe, screaming for blood.

Not yet, she tells it. But soon.

The pursuit has been hours in the making. She has kept her profile low as she darts between palms and rocks that dot the sparse beach. They lift their skinny hands like antennae to heaven, some radio signal from space that she will never know, never cares to know. But the frequency of the sea, the sand, and the clouds overhead, they fill her mind with a static that buzzes so harshly she can focus only on the trail, everything else but the pursuit drowned out into some colorless, lifeless backdrop for the chase at hand.

Eyes trace the dunes, and she finds what she is looking for.

Tracks.

A man. Two feet. And a canine. Four.

She is close now. So close it almost makes her giddy.

"And what's wrong with bein' petty, huh?"

A woman strides out from the underbrush in front of them, confident grin on her face and a wild look in her eye. Her hands rest on her hip, where two swords clack against one another for the first time, the woman no longer taking care to muffle her footsteps now she'd blown her cover.

"Looks like I lucked out. You're that kid. This'll be easy enough."

She takes no care for theatrics. A flick of both wrists and her swords are in her hand. They shimmer in the light of the sun, relishing the chance to draw blood in broad daylight.

"Not a lotta honor in killin' kids, but a gym leader? Now there's a story!"

She lunges forward straight at the kid, as swift and as short as she could make her every movement, steel blades screaming as they cut through air.

Screaming for the taste of blood.

Hana lets out a grunt of anger as her hopes are dashed, and the monkey's image flickers out of existence right in front of her. She had watched him carefully, but even that could not account for his speed and special abilities.

"Fuck, almost had 'im!"

She spins on her heels, too slow to bring her blade up in time to counter the ape's attack. It is Hitoshi's blade that meets the stick this time, and she's thankful for his help, even if it wounds her pride. She would rather be wounded physically.

"Now what, ape!?"

Hana takes the momentary pause in action to leap toward him, attacking him bluntly with all her strength -- an iron head.

The man once again casts it aside as gray.

Hana shakes her head.

"No. The only gray I'll accept is the edge of a blade. You can cast it away if you want, refuse to look at it because it burns, like looking straight into the sun, but me, I see it plain as day.

"I see the Truth."

The skarmory at her side scrapes its talons angrily on the white rock beneath them. White, and hard. Unbreakable, so everyone here had thought, til their day of judgement.

Til the day that Dahlia, Miro, and all the rest had decided that their blood would be a foothold to conquest.

"I don't want good.

"You Leaguers are ones who care to position yourselves as some force for good. But Rocket holds no pretense. It simply is what it is. You want to be good, fine. Go be good somewhere else. But first-- tell me, what's so good about all of this?"

She gestures to the pit beneath her, the ruined walls, the flooded city. The remnants of a battlefield.

"What 'good' did carrying out an assault rather than a rescue mission do for these people? Where's the good you wanted to bring in this sundered city?"

She scoffs.

"Tell me. Believe in something for once and try and convince me. Maybe if you're charismatic enough I'll help you cover up this little monument to the League's hubris, but I doubt it. Til then, leave me. Let me burn it into my memory so I never forget it."

Sitting. Waiting.

She sits beneath the waterfall. Consciousness flows by like the stream hitting her back, rolling off her.

Whatever comes, comes. What does not does not.

She breathes. She sits. She waits.