OOC: Application / Info / Contact
Here's where I'm posting Hijikata's app, and where you can post to say things like "ohmigod, you're so awesome!", "You're playing him ooc, you tart!", or "Here's an idea for a fun little plotline with him..."
♥
-Ket
PLAYER INFORMATION-
Name/Nickname: Ket
AIM/E-mail/Contact: Duinorwen / haikuqueen@gmail.com
LJ: cognitiveleague
CHARACTER INFORMATION-
CHARACTER INFORMATION-
Canon Character and Series: Hijikata Toshizou (土方歳三), from Shinsengumi Imon Peacemaker/Peacemaker Kurogane
In-Game Name: Toshizou Hijikata (Mr. Hijikata if you like your physical integrity intact, Toshizou or Toshi if you're a very close friend, a superior, or a man with nothing to lose)
Age: 31
Gender: Male
Position & Ship: The Convoy, Strategist
Appearance:
The phrase "tall, dark, and handsome" may as well have been coined specifically to describe Hijikata. He is a rather tall man, with wide shoulders and the sort of musculature that gives away his regular training in the martial arts. His hair is black, and worn quite long--reaching down past his waist even when braided or worn in a fairly high ponytail, which it typically is, to keep it out of the way. His eyes are also dark, and his face is attractive, but typically extremely severe. It's easy to overestimate his age just from the sheer amount of serious frowning that he does, though for many people, that doesn't seem to do much to kill his sex appeal. He lacks any distinctive scars or birthmarks. His wardrobe is small, but carefully chosen and well-maintained, each garment perfectly tailored, well-made, and (above all) indisputably classy. Even when wandering the countryside on foot or in the company of sky pirates, he's dressed well enough for the finest opera house in Bellcius--or would be, if he didn't tend to look just slightly suggestively disheveled at all times. Finally, there are two items he always has on his person: a well-used but well cared for smoking pipe, and an old pocketwatch given to him by his cousin Toshirou.
Personality:
Hijikata Toshizou can be extraordinarily difficult to get along with. "Grumpy" is the term most commonly used to summarize his temperament, though "stoic", "cold", "harsh", and "an old stick in the mud" all get their representation. Hijikata is strict, foul-tempered, prefers solitude to company more often than not, and generally does his best to drive people away from him before they can think of getting too close. He indulges often in his three favorite vices--in no particular order, tobacco, alcohol, and writing absolutely wretched poetry (there used to be a fourth vice, loose women, but he's given that one up as of when he found out that Souji was in love with him).
For superiors, he can be either utter Hell to work with or an incredible blessing: he has a chip on his shoulder towards the privileged classes, and takes badly to authority figures whom he feels don't deserve their power or those whose authority he hasn't willingly and consciously accepted, but once he gives his loyalty, he is fiercely protective and will do anything to further his leader's goals. In the workplace, he demands hard work, self-control, and excellence from himself, and sees no reason not to demand it from everyone else, as well. He can be harshly critical, but all in the name of the common good and even the growth of the people he criticizes. He is serious, driven, strong-willed, and ruthless when he has to be, willing to do whatever it takes to achieve his objectives.
Deep down inside, beneath a thick layer of pipesmoke and bad attitude and professionalism, Hijikata is actually a good man, even sensitive at times. He cares deeply for a select few people, and would do absolutely anything to safeguard their well-being and happiness (all the while making excuses to avoid anyone seeing him as a caring, decent human being, God forbid). His Machiavellian side is tempered by an understanding of the rarity of innocence in a chaotic world, and a desire to protect those who still have their idealism. When things go badly, he tends to blame himself, even if he later externalizes that blame as anger. He's motivated by two desires, which in his mind are close to synonymous: to be recognized for his strength and capability, and to protect the people who are close to him.
Abilities/Weapons:
Primary weapon: Pistol. Hijikata is nothing if not a pragmatist, after all. He's no professional marksman, but if it comes to it, he's capable enough in a fight.
Secondary weapon: Rapier. He's studied fencing out of interest since his youth, though he's rarely done so formally, and he isn't a genius at it. He's good, but he can't compete with the best of the best.
Leadership: Hijikata doesn't want to be the leader in any given situation; he prefers to serve a leader he finds worthy, moving things along behind the scenes. However, his strength, confidence, and personal magnetism tend to win him a lot of loyalty... and when that doesn't work, he can always inspire obedience through fear.
Strategy: Hijikata has, since his youth, been interested in military affairs. While mostly self-trained, he has studied extensively, and has something of a knack for it. His time on the 4423 allowed him to put his ideas into practice and gain experience as a strategist. This is the area where he shines the most brilliantly.
How well can your character hack?: Medium-Hard. He's very logical and intelligent, and has studied and practiced wherever he can, but he's never received any formal instruction and it's not his primary area of study.
Weaknesses:
Physically, Hijikata doesn't have too many extreme weaknesses. He's in very good shape, eating well and exercising frequently, and is an above-average fighter, if not an exceptional one. However, certain of his bad habits (the drinking and smoking, in particular) do have negative effects on his body... even if he's too much of a stubborn old goat to admit to ever feeling under the weather. His sleep habits also deserve a mention--he burns the midnight oil studying and scheming, then sleeps as late as he can, with the result that he rather rarely gets all the rest that he ought to.
His psychological weaknesses are much more abundant. He's prone to addiction. He has bad reputations in most of the circles he's ever been in, whether they're for his ruthlessness or for his (former) habit of seducing other, more powerful men's wives. The seductions were in fact the product of a class-based inferiority complex--on a nearly subconscious level, he wanted to prove to himself that there was nothing more socially privileged men had that he couldn't get, a motivation which continues to influence his actions even now that he's settled into an actual relationship. He's very aware that his branch of the Hijikata family is poor and powerless, and thinks very little of those in the upper class who didn't have to work for their status. He's proud and a perfectionist, and doesn't like training or studying in front of people for fear of them seeing him in an unpolished, imperfect state. This, naturally, limits his ability to learn from others. He has serious attitude problems, including but in no way limited to a harsh temper and an instinctive disdain for more or less everyone who hasn't breached his emotional defenses. He fixates on things too easily. He tends to blame himself for things regardless of the logic or illogic of doing so, then lash out when he can't take the guilt anymore. He's paranoid. He's stubborn. He believes subconsciously that he's doomed to lose anyone he cares about, and therefore tries his best not to care. He hates himself whenever he can't protect everyone from everything, and that goes doubly for people he cares about who are hurt by sickness. More than double, maybe--after all, he's woken up in cold sweats from time to time since his childhood, after suffering nightmares about beautiful women coughing and drowning in blood. Oh, and he's in love with and has a huge soft spot for Souji--who has a chronic illness that resembles the one that took his parents and sister from him in his childhood. Basically, he's like a big bundle of flaws and good intentions, not that he'd let anyone know. Come to think of it, excessive pride's a flaw, too, isn't it?
History:
Toshizou was the youngest child born to a lower middle-class merchant family in Melior. His father died before his birth, and his mother and a sister when he was a small child, of a mysterious disease; he can only remember their faces from a picture one of his older brothers kept around. The eldest brother and their wife raised him from the age of four, and were effectively his parents.
Without true parental figures, Toshizou grew up wild. He had a great amount of contempt for those born in old-money families and the prestige they were afforded, born from seeing the hypocrisy and excess of the richer branches of his own family. This contempt manifested into a desire to outdo the upper class as a whole, which took many forms: trying to best the elite's children at studies, sports, and fencing, then later going so far as seducing their women behind their backs in an effort to prove he could have anything that they did. The one member of his upper-class extended family that he did get along with was his younger cousin, Toshirou, with whom he formed a close relationship.
His youth, though full of recklessness and indiscretion he would frown on later, was not entirely wasted. Much of his time was spent in study-history, politics, strategy, and fighting. After a short, doomed term of employment as eye candy in a storefront, he found another job to help support his family from his mid-teens: selling small mana crystals from door to door. This got him into the houses of the well-off, into the husbands' studies and the wives' beds. It also provided the valuable experience of travel, and taught him how to deal with people so they did as he wished.
When he was twenty-one, on a trip to Abantiare to discuss opening a business with an old friend there (the plans never worked out), Hijikata made a decision which changed his life forever. On his way to his lodgings from a house of decidedly ill repute, he happened to see a crowd of men gathered around something. "Something" turned out to be a scatterbrained (but very pretty) boy of twelve or so trying and failing to explain that he wasn't a worker there, he was just lost. Guided by his sense of honor, Hijikata couldn't ignore all the trouble the poor kid might get into, so he stepped in, posed as the boy's pimp, and let "bad business practice" drive the men away. He then tried to get on with his life, but Souji Okita had other ideas, and to perfectly truthful, Hijikata stopped minding the tagalong somewhere along the lines.
Over the years, Hijikata grew increasingly frustrated by the corruption and social stagnation of Ivonian society. For a man so ambitious, and an orphaned youngest child constantly hungry for recognition, it finally grew to be much, and at the age of twenty-four, he bought himself and Souji passage on an airship to Berum and never looked back. After five years of freelancing, getting by on Souji's mechanical genius and Hijikata's eye for opportunities, they took jobs on the 4423. In almost a year there, Hijikata found the first real, permanent home he'd ever really felt like he had, and gradually opened up to a number of the crew members. His relationship with Souji (then in his early twenties), always close and even affectionate, gained a romantic aspect, and he gave up his occasional flings in order to be with him. They were pirates, sure, but his life was more stable than it had ever been, even with the occasional emergency or international incident.
Then, suddenly, he had to leave the place that he'd found. One of his old flings' husbands, it seemed, was the leader of an organized crime group back in Ivona, and had put a hit on Hijikata years ago for humiliating him; he'd been safe before, since he wasn't in Ivona, but as the gang began to gain influence in Vohemar, that safety disappeared. He had a close call with a hitman on the way back to the ship from a night out drinking, and realized that this wouldn't be the end of the trouble. Not wanting to lead his enemies to the crew, or God forbid, to Souji, he did the best thing he could for their safety: he left them, and didn't contact them in case his communications were interrupted and put them in danger. He managed to leave town and head back to Ivona undetected. Knowing that he would only feel able to return to his friends if the hit was lifted, he settled in and cast out his webs for information. He set the gang leader up to look like he was betraying his own people, then contacted the man and offered to keep quiet about the "betrayal" if the hit was lifted. When he refused, Hijikata exposed him to the rest of the gang, who quickly took care of his problem for him. They lifted the hit, and gave him a moderate sum of money for exposing the traitor and giving them the opportunity to rise up and fill his position; satisfied of his safety, Hijikata began to try and contact his old crewmates, only to find that the 4423 had been decommissioned. He began instead to look for information on Souji Okita's whereabouts, which came when he got into contact with Pip Bernadette, who informed him that Souji was joining up with the Convoy. His next step, then, was clear.
SAMPLES-
Third Person (roleplay):
Hijikata took one last look around the apartment that he'd been occupying for the last ten months. It was hollow, an empty shell of a place, a blank slate for the next occupant to make their own as though he'd never been there. Strange. He felt like he was losing a home, but this wasn't it.
The news of the 4423's decommissioning had hit him hard--in his mind, it wasn't just a ship. It was the first place where he and Souji had had job security, a vested interest i staying around, friends. Home. He'd felt responsibility for the crew, as a strategist. He'd felt... affection towards them, even the obnoxious ones. Compared to that, this apartment had been an empty shell from the beginning. Leaving Ivona again wasn't losing anything, but he did have his concerns about what he had to go back to now. No one had heard from him since he left... he wondered how many of them would even be receptive to further contact from him, after the sudden way he'd broken off communications nearly a year ago.
Perplexingly, he found himself wanting to try anyway. Those people... hate though he did to admit it, they meant something to him, after all they'd been through together. But even if none of his old coworkers wanted to be around him anymore, there wouldn't have been a thought in his head of staying where he was. Ivona had never been for him, and the skies were calling. And even if he could give up on everyone else he'd ever met... There was one person he could never leave behind. One he'd already been away from far too long.
He snuffed out the lamp, and shouldered his bag. The weight of it was familiar, reminded him of his days wandering Vohemar with Souji at his side, or even further back, his days of peddling mana stones all around Ivona as a boy. It was nothing new, packing everything important into what he could carry with him--a few changes of clothes, his pipe and tobacco, his books and journals. Nothing excessive or unnecessary, just what he needed to get by.
It felt right.
Locking the door behind himself, he dropped the key off with the landlady and headed for the docks with a ticket in his pocket, more than ready to be on his way.
First Person (journal):
[Filtered to the Convoy | Voice]
[Hijikata's tone is clipped and professional.] This is the frequency for the Convoy, correct? I'm looking for work. With whom should I speak?
[A pause, as though he's trying to decide whether to say something or not. When he does speak, his voice is just a little bit softer.] I've been led to believe that a close acquaintance of mine is working for your crew. Souji... are you there?
[/Filter]
♥
-Ket
PLAYER INFORMATION-
Name/Nickname: Ket
AIM/E-mail/Contact: Duinorwen / haikuqueen@gmail.com
LJ: cognitiveleague
CHARACTER INFORMATION-
CHARACTER INFORMATION-
Canon Character and Series: Hijikata Toshizou (土方歳三), from Shinsengumi Imon Peacemaker/Peacemaker Kurogane
In-Game Name: Toshizou Hijikata (Mr. Hijikata if you like your physical integrity intact, Toshizou or Toshi if you're a very close friend, a superior, or a man with nothing to lose)
Age: 31
Gender: Male
Position & Ship: The Convoy, Strategist
Appearance:
The phrase "tall, dark, and handsome" may as well have been coined specifically to describe Hijikata. He is a rather tall man, with wide shoulders and the sort of musculature that gives away his regular training in the martial arts. His hair is black, and worn quite long--reaching down past his waist even when braided or worn in a fairly high ponytail, which it typically is, to keep it out of the way. His eyes are also dark, and his face is attractive, but typically extremely severe. It's easy to overestimate his age just from the sheer amount of serious frowning that he does, though for many people, that doesn't seem to do much to kill his sex appeal. He lacks any distinctive scars or birthmarks. His wardrobe is small, but carefully chosen and well-maintained, each garment perfectly tailored, well-made, and (above all) indisputably classy. Even when wandering the countryside on foot or in the company of sky pirates, he's dressed well enough for the finest opera house in Bellcius--or would be, if he didn't tend to look just slightly suggestively disheveled at all times. Finally, there are two items he always has on his person: a well-used but well cared for smoking pipe, and an old pocketwatch given to him by his cousin Toshirou.
Personality:
Hijikata Toshizou can be extraordinarily difficult to get along with. "Grumpy" is the term most commonly used to summarize his temperament, though "stoic", "cold", "harsh", and "an old stick in the mud" all get their representation. Hijikata is strict, foul-tempered, prefers solitude to company more often than not, and generally does his best to drive people away from him before they can think of getting too close. He indulges often in his three favorite vices--in no particular order, tobacco, alcohol, and writing absolutely wretched poetry (there used to be a fourth vice, loose women, but he's given that one up as of when he found out that Souji was in love with him).
For superiors, he can be either utter Hell to work with or an incredible blessing: he has a chip on his shoulder towards the privileged classes, and takes badly to authority figures whom he feels don't deserve their power or those whose authority he hasn't willingly and consciously accepted, but once he gives his loyalty, he is fiercely protective and will do anything to further his leader's goals. In the workplace, he demands hard work, self-control, and excellence from himself, and sees no reason not to demand it from everyone else, as well. He can be harshly critical, but all in the name of the common good and even the growth of the people he criticizes. He is serious, driven, strong-willed, and ruthless when he has to be, willing to do whatever it takes to achieve his objectives.
Deep down inside, beneath a thick layer of pipesmoke and bad attitude and professionalism, Hijikata is actually a good man, even sensitive at times. He cares deeply for a select few people, and would do absolutely anything to safeguard their well-being and happiness (all the while making excuses to avoid anyone seeing him as a caring, decent human being, God forbid). His Machiavellian side is tempered by an understanding of the rarity of innocence in a chaotic world, and a desire to protect those who still have their idealism. When things go badly, he tends to blame himself, even if he later externalizes that blame as anger. He's motivated by two desires, which in his mind are close to synonymous: to be recognized for his strength and capability, and to protect the people who are close to him.
Abilities/Weapons:
Primary weapon: Pistol. Hijikata is nothing if not a pragmatist, after all. He's no professional marksman, but if it comes to it, he's capable enough in a fight.
Secondary weapon: Rapier. He's studied fencing out of interest since his youth, though he's rarely done so formally, and he isn't a genius at it. He's good, but he can't compete with the best of the best.
Leadership: Hijikata doesn't want to be the leader in any given situation; he prefers to serve a leader he finds worthy, moving things along behind the scenes. However, his strength, confidence, and personal magnetism tend to win him a lot of loyalty... and when that doesn't work, he can always inspire obedience through fear.
Strategy: Hijikata has, since his youth, been interested in military affairs. While mostly self-trained, he has studied extensively, and has something of a knack for it. His time on the 4423 allowed him to put his ideas into practice and gain experience as a strategist. This is the area where he shines the most brilliantly.
How well can your character hack?: Medium-Hard. He's very logical and intelligent, and has studied and practiced wherever he can, but he's never received any formal instruction and it's not his primary area of study.
Weaknesses:
Physically, Hijikata doesn't have too many extreme weaknesses. He's in very good shape, eating well and exercising frequently, and is an above-average fighter, if not an exceptional one. However, certain of his bad habits (the drinking and smoking, in particular) do have negative effects on his body... even if he's too much of a stubborn old goat to admit to ever feeling under the weather. His sleep habits also deserve a mention--he burns the midnight oil studying and scheming, then sleeps as late as he can, with the result that he rather rarely gets all the rest that he ought to.
His psychological weaknesses are much more abundant. He's prone to addiction. He has bad reputations in most of the circles he's ever been in, whether they're for his ruthlessness or for his (former) habit of seducing other, more powerful men's wives. The seductions were in fact the product of a class-based inferiority complex--on a nearly subconscious level, he wanted to prove to himself that there was nothing more socially privileged men had that he couldn't get, a motivation which continues to influence his actions even now that he's settled into an actual relationship. He's very aware that his branch of the Hijikata family is poor and powerless, and thinks very little of those in the upper class who didn't have to work for their status. He's proud and a perfectionist, and doesn't like training or studying in front of people for fear of them seeing him in an unpolished, imperfect state. This, naturally, limits his ability to learn from others. He has serious attitude problems, including but in no way limited to a harsh temper and an instinctive disdain for more or less everyone who hasn't breached his emotional defenses. He fixates on things too easily. He tends to blame himself for things regardless of the logic or illogic of doing so, then lash out when he can't take the guilt anymore. He's paranoid. He's stubborn. He believes subconsciously that he's doomed to lose anyone he cares about, and therefore tries his best not to care. He hates himself whenever he can't protect everyone from everything, and that goes doubly for people he cares about who are hurt by sickness. More than double, maybe--after all, he's woken up in cold sweats from time to time since his childhood, after suffering nightmares about beautiful women coughing and drowning in blood. Oh, and he's in love with and has a huge soft spot for Souji--who has a chronic illness that resembles the one that took his parents and sister from him in his childhood. Basically, he's like a big bundle of flaws and good intentions, not that he'd let anyone know. Come to think of it, excessive pride's a flaw, too, isn't it?
History:
Toshizou was the youngest child born to a lower middle-class merchant family in Melior. His father died before his birth, and his mother and a sister when he was a small child, of a mysterious disease; he can only remember their faces from a picture one of his older brothers kept around. The eldest brother and their wife raised him from the age of four, and were effectively his parents.
Without true parental figures, Toshizou grew up wild. He had a great amount of contempt for those born in old-money families and the prestige they were afforded, born from seeing the hypocrisy and excess of the richer branches of his own family. This contempt manifested into a desire to outdo the upper class as a whole, which took many forms: trying to best the elite's children at studies, sports, and fencing, then later going so far as seducing their women behind their backs in an effort to prove he could have anything that they did. The one member of his upper-class extended family that he did get along with was his younger cousin, Toshirou, with whom he formed a close relationship.
His youth, though full of recklessness and indiscretion he would frown on later, was not entirely wasted. Much of his time was spent in study-history, politics, strategy, and fighting. After a short, doomed term of employment as eye candy in a storefront, he found another job to help support his family from his mid-teens: selling small mana crystals from door to door. This got him into the houses of the well-off, into the husbands' studies and the wives' beds. It also provided the valuable experience of travel, and taught him how to deal with people so they did as he wished.
When he was twenty-one, on a trip to Abantiare to discuss opening a business with an old friend there (the plans never worked out), Hijikata made a decision which changed his life forever. On his way to his lodgings from a house of decidedly ill repute, he happened to see a crowd of men gathered around something. "Something" turned out to be a scatterbrained (but very pretty) boy of twelve or so trying and failing to explain that he wasn't a worker there, he was just lost. Guided by his sense of honor, Hijikata couldn't ignore all the trouble the poor kid might get into, so he stepped in, posed as the boy's pimp, and let "bad business practice" drive the men away. He then tried to get on with his life, but Souji Okita had other ideas, and to perfectly truthful, Hijikata stopped minding the tagalong somewhere along the lines.
Over the years, Hijikata grew increasingly frustrated by the corruption and social stagnation of Ivonian society. For a man so ambitious, and an orphaned youngest child constantly hungry for recognition, it finally grew to be much, and at the age of twenty-four, he bought himself and Souji passage on an airship to Berum and never looked back. After five years of freelancing, getting by on Souji's mechanical genius and Hijikata's eye for opportunities, they took jobs on the 4423. In almost a year there, Hijikata found the first real, permanent home he'd ever really felt like he had, and gradually opened up to a number of the crew members. His relationship with Souji (then in his early twenties), always close and even affectionate, gained a romantic aspect, and he gave up his occasional flings in order to be with him. They were pirates, sure, but his life was more stable than it had ever been, even with the occasional emergency or international incident.
Then, suddenly, he had to leave the place that he'd found. One of his old flings' husbands, it seemed, was the leader of an organized crime group back in Ivona, and had put a hit on Hijikata years ago for humiliating him; he'd been safe before, since he wasn't in Ivona, but as the gang began to gain influence in Vohemar, that safety disappeared. He had a close call with a hitman on the way back to the ship from a night out drinking, and realized that this wouldn't be the end of the trouble. Not wanting to lead his enemies to the crew, or God forbid, to Souji, he did the best thing he could for their safety: he left them, and didn't contact them in case his communications were interrupted and put them in danger. He managed to leave town and head back to Ivona undetected. Knowing that he would only feel able to return to his friends if the hit was lifted, he settled in and cast out his webs for information. He set the gang leader up to look like he was betraying his own people, then contacted the man and offered to keep quiet about the "betrayal" if the hit was lifted. When he refused, Hijikata exposed him to the rest of the gang, who quickly took care of his problem for him. They lifted the hit, and gave him a moderate sum of money for exposing the traitor and giving them the opportunity to rise up and fill his position; satisfied of his safety, Hijikata began to try and contact his old crewmates, only to find that the 4423 had been decommissioned. He began instead to look for information on Souji Okita's whereabouts, which came when he got into contact with Pip Bernadette, who informed him that Souji was joining up with the Convoy. His next step, then, was clear.
SAMPLES-
Third Person (roleplay):
Hijikata took one last look around the apartment that he'd been occupying for the last ten months. It was hollow, an empty shell of a place, a blank slate for the next occupant to make their own as though he'd never been there. Strange. He felt like he was losing a home, but this wasn't it.
The news of the 4423's decommissioning had hit him hard--in his mind, it wasn't just a ship. It was the first place where he and Souji had had job security, a vested interest i staying around, friends. Home. He'd felt responsibility for the crew, as a strategist. He'd felt... affection towards them, even the obnoxious ones. Compared to that, this apartment had been an empty shell from the beginning. Leaving Ivona again wasn't losing anything, but he did have his concerns about what he had to go back to now. No one had heard from him since he left... he wondered how many of them would even be receptive to further contact from him, after the sudden way he'd broken off communications nearly a year ago.
Perplexingly, he found himself wanting to try anyway. Those people... hate though he did to admit it, they meant something to him, after all they'd been through together. But even if none of his old coworkers wanted to be around him anymore, there wouldn't have been a thought in his head of staying where he was. Ivona had never been for him, and the skies were calling. And even if he could give up on everyone else he'd ever met... There was one person he could never leave behind. One he'd already been away from far too long.
He snuffed out the lamp, and shouldered his bag. The weight of it was familiar, reminded him of his days wandering Vohemar with Souji at his side, or even further back, his days of peddling mana stones all around Ivona as a boy. It was nothing new, packing everything important into what he could carry with him--a few changes of clothes, his pipe and tobacco, his books and journals. Nothing excessive or unnecessary, just what he needed to get by.
It felt right.
Locking the door behind himself, he dropped the key off with the landlady and headed for the docks with a ticket in his pocket, more than ready to be on his way.
First Person (journal):
[Filtered to the Convoy | Voice]
[Hijikata's tone is clipped and professional.] This is the frequency for the Convoy, correct? I'm looking for work. With whom should I speak?
[A pause, as though he's trying to decide whether to say something or not. When he does speak, his voice is just a little bit softer.] I've been led to believe that a close acquaintance of mine is working for your crew. Souji... are you there?
[/Filter]