RK/PMK: Chapter 18
Find the chapter here.
Notes for this chapter: Hiko's flashback narrative was actually hard to pin down and find a right place to write it within the entire Legends series. He was and still is also the hardest character for me to grasp and write in POV for, mainly because of his reluctance to cough up that background - and Watsuki's little to no background created for him (mystery becomes him though).
For the Legends series, his background is modeled to a similiar path that Kenshin and Soujirou took - the blood-soaked, regret and redemption sword path, except that he was fully aware of what he was doing in his capacity as an assassin for the Chrysanthemum Guards. It is with the arrival of the Black Ships and his realization that no matter what they do, the modern age is going to come and the age of swordsmen is over. He becomes incredibly bitter, cynical, and disillusioned with what he had been doing. His master sees that and thus decides to free him from the ties that bound him to the Guards - namely through the inheritance of the name of Hiko Seijuurou.
Hiko's eventual 'raising' and training of Kenshin is a result of what he percieves to be atonement for what he has done - and his hope that eventually, Kenshin would relieve him of his burdens. He had thought Kenshin had done that by dealing him a supposed mortal wound in the manga and anime with his learning of the succession technique. But it was not so, and thus his involvement with the Guards in Shadows is purely motivated on the fact that he is trying to protect Kenshin from what is to come - knowing that once the government deals with the Guards, they may once again, ask that Kenshin save them.
Notes for this chapter: Hiko's flashback narrative was actually hard to pin down and find a right place to write it within the entire Legends series. He was and still is also the hardest character for me to grasp and write in POV for, mainly because of his reluctance to cough up that background - and Watsuki's little to no background created for him (mystery becomes him though).
For the Legends series, his background is modeled to a similiar path that Kenshin and Soujirou took - the blood-soaked, regret and redemption sword path, except that he was fully aware of what he was doing in his capacity as an assassin for the Chrysanthemum Guards. It is with the arrival of the Black Ships and his realization that no matter what they do, the modern age is going to come and the age of swordsmen is over. He becomes incredibly bitter, cynical, and disillusioned with what he had been doing. His master sees that and thus decides to free him from the ties that bound him to the Guards - namely through the inheritance of the name of Hiko Seijuurou.
Hiko's eventual 'raising' and training of Kenshin is a result of what he percieves to be atonement for what he has done - and his hope that eventually, Kenshin would relieve him of his burdens. He had thought Kenshin had done that by dealing him a supposed mortal wound in the manga and anime with his learning of the succession technique. But it was not so, and thus his involvement with the Guards in Shadows is purely motivated on the fact that he is trying to protect Kenshin from what is to come - knowing that once the government deals with the Guards, they may once again, ask that Kenshin save them.