The tyrantrum bellows a jet of hot breath, swinging its tail along the earth. Hana's swords carry her into the air, soaring higher than her own legs could propel her with an aerial ace aimed at the drake's face. Its teeth were as deadly as swords, but she'd rather plunge toward the open maw, straight at danger, than die a coward on the ground.

"Aw, poor dog... hurt your pride? Don't worry, don't mean a thing by it!"

Hana sails upward, sword leaving her grasp at the crest of her leap. It arcs towards the beast and plunges through the one hole in the tyrant's unarmored face-- directly through the beast's eye, and out the back of its cheek. She grins, as the beast cries out in pain and fury.

Somehow, her blades always met their mark. One day her luck would fail her, but not today.

"Tongues and swords 're both kept sharp, y'know! But it looks like our little king here doesn't understand. Don't you just envy that?"

She arcs over the beast's head, her second sword carrying her along its trajectory effortlessly, as if she were weightless. Half-blind, the tyrantrum had lost her in the confusion, but it focuses on the sound of her voice and turns to face her with glowing jaws, preparing a dragon pulse.

Her eyes widen in surprise.

She responds with a curt smile, downing her second cup of sake.

"You're tellin' me."

She looks up at the ceiling for a bit, heady from the booze given to her by the Dog. The burning in her throat makes her a little braver than she may like, but even then, she recognizes that her lack of decorum is at the Harbinger's discretion.

Say the word and she'd find herself in another cell for insubordination, failure to carry out orders, getting captured, defecting, any number of excuses-- and that cell wouldn't be some office with bars installed on one end of the room. No, it'd be some deep, dark isolation cell, impossible to get out of.

"Love nothin' more than to bring you that man's head. You got my word on that, whatever it takes. But... strikes me as odd, you'd put my name forward for a failure.

"You got a personal stake in seeing him dead?"

She shoots him a glance of annoyance as the shadows around her body melt away. The kid falls, nearly in front of her. She looks him over, nudging him with her sandal. Probably twice as old as she was, the first time she killed a man.

Still too young, by far.

But Hoenn's changed. This kid's just part and parcel now, his death an everyday occurrence. She turns her attention back to the dog.

"Yeah? Bet that makes your owner proud.

"Y'know any commands other than 'kill'? What about 'sit'? 'Shake'? How 'bout 'roll over'?"

She laughs heartily at her own joke, licking her lips and tasting the cruel jape as if it were blood. She swallows her sorrow, security alert blaring over a loudspeaker and alerting the rest of the camp of their presence. For all their coordination, the swarm of origami blades were simply not swift enough.

"Nah... 'kill' is fine by me."

Her scorn subsides, turning her attention up the stairs where three men had poured out of the room, each eyeing her and reaching to their hips.

Shadows cast by a nearby burning barrel roil like the surface of a black sea. The assassin emerges from them noiselessly, covered in black. It moves unnatural, not the black of night, but some deeper pitch, defying the dark around them in all its malice, in its hatred even rejecting the dim moonlight.

The shadowy shape slips a sword beneath the nearest guard's neck, and crimson spills across the ground. It is just as dark and menacing as the shadowy woman, who stalks through the shadows to the next man, closes that space in mere moments, and finds his heart before he can even utter a word. She twists her blade, covering the man's mouth as she lowers him noiselessly to the ground, but there is no sound.

No sound, but the silent hiss on shadows that carries her voice through her cursed blades to her cohort, the black dog.

"So, the dog's got a conscience now? Unfortunate. Just don't let the bosses know."

"An' here I was, startin' to doubt Rocket's resolve..."

She grins at his words.

Even if she knew he was relaying orders, they weren't the sort of orders that would've come down from an underboss more concerned with civilian lives than his own. They were pragmatic, in a sense she could come to appreciate. Respect, if not despise.

They were the orders of one who had understood war.

"You ever killed kids, dog?"

Darkness casts a shadow over all, the only shroud she truly felt comforted by. She feels at home here. In her element. And it brought the impression of curiosity to her lips without her even meaning to, pretending to care what sins her fellow assassin was guilty of. But she spoke only to herself.

"They ever look up at your with big ol' innocent eyes, wondering what you just did to their parents? Not even understanding? What'd you tell 'em, in their last moments? Huh? 'Shhhh, now... Everything's gonna be okay... You'll see momma real soon, kid.' Shit like that?"

She spits on the ground, readying her blades.

"How many kids you think the League's killed?"

She sinks into the shadows, swords melding into the dark and carrying her forth in the dark.

Too many to count.

"Six month's wages, eh?"

Hana's words are contemplative and slow, weighing the worth of all that work before she assents.

"Well, been gettin' by with nothin' til now, so why not?"

She nods her head affirmatively.

"Whatever time and materials you need, they're yours. Cash, too, when I get it. You take installment plans, don't'cha? Ain't been in Rocket long enough to cover this, unfortunately.

"But I make good on my word -- you can count on that."

HANA'S ALIAS
TSUBAME → Aoki Hana
ROCKET STATUS (Optional): Unknown

She catches on quickly. A confident smiles plays on Hana's lips as she follows the woman deeper into the building, a more private setting for a suitably private consultation. She looks around, admiring the space before she responds.

"Hana. Codename's Tsubame. New 'round here. In Rocket at least, if not Hoenn. As for what I do?"

She pats her hip, where her doublades knock together in their sheathes. She can almost hear their angry whispering as they do.

"I'm a heavy. Grunt work, wetwork... whatever works."

She nods toward the forge.

"Need work on a Johtonian blade. Apparently there's this method of folding a cursed blade that'll channel the grudges of the previous wielder. Some old crone was tellin' me about it when she parted with the katana in question. Seemed pretty damn eager to rid herself of it. Said it ended her family line, you believe that?"

She snorts, laughing, as she unsheathes a blackened, brittle sword. Upon close inspection, it seems to be a honedge of some sort, though the spirit remains dormant inside.

"Looks like it survived a house fire. Just need it refurbished, I think."

She hands Aurelie the burnt blade, then removes a scroll from her hip and hands her that as well. Inside, instructions for this special craftsmanship are inscribed, the parchment brittle and old, a water-proof casing around it the only reason it hasn't crumbled completely. Only parts of it remain legible, but they're the most important parts, so it seems.

"Yep, still kickin'!"

The woman doesn't share his dour mood. If anything, she seems more energetic than she was when she left to kill Navy . She cheerfully begins to pour two saucers of sake, sliding one towards the underboss.

"And to that I say... banzai!"

She drinks, leaning on the edge of his desk. Only when she sets the saucer down does she respond to his order: a report of where she's been the last month.

"... Dewford's trashed, though I'm sure you've heard of that little escapade. Wasn't sure if it was you who sent Fox, but I'll venture out on a limb and say 'no', since you're so surprised to see me. Pity, thought I'd grown on ya!"

She smirks, recounting the events of howard slayte 's assault on Dewford. She spares the details about Regice. Surely the Harbinger will get more info on that than she could ever offer, probably from the man himself.

"Buncha our guys stormed Dewford, busted me outta the sheriff's cell. Fought the sheriff, twice. But he got the better of me the second time 'round, and locked me up. Kept me like his little pet. Made me wanna rip his heart out and feed it to him, I'll be honest...

"More sake?"

She turns, and begins pouring another saucer full of sake for herself.

The ship rocks, thrown by an Origin Pulse.

Hana's sea-worthy legs are useless, thrown out from under her. She balks. Her blades, thirsty as they are for blood, recoil from Montgomery James's throat at her command.

"Excuses! Gray's just an excuse! What's the point, if this is all gray!? What're we fighting for, if everything's just gray, if everything's the same!? If that's your truth, this is all pointless, ain't it!?"

The ship's stern seems to rise over their heads, thrown around like a child's bath toy. Hana stabs her sword into the deck, the shroud wrapped around her wrist keeping her balanced as she screams over the storm.

"Gray... you don't believe in anything, do you!? May as well be dead. You a dead man, deputy? 'Cause I don't spill the blood of dead men!"

She rages. Against the storm, against him.

This isn't the man with cold steel eyes after all. No Navy. Not even a poor excuse.

The ship rises under her, deck near parallel with the water. She slides, and her arm catches on the shroud. She yanks her injured shoulder, and lets out a noiseless scream of pain as the water rises up to meet her--