After working on some pictures of Akira Ishikawa, I feel like perhaps this is where I should stay for some time. While "Four Stars, No Stripes" and the development of Kaze Sorataka's pilot story can still proceed, they're long-term and more epic. I have yet to get an actual story out and considering that Akira's assassin plotline is short and less complicated in terms of character development and time, I would like to finish this one.

I spent some time writing up the character profiles of the three characters that matter (two primary, one secondary). It does include the details of the plotline, including the ending but the more I draw, the more ideas in between are coming to mind. I already know the third illustration is Akira hesitating at shooting his "assigned" mark.

Akira Ishikawa

Age: 25
Height: 5’ 8”
Occupation: Assassin-for-hire
Syndicate: None (free agent)
Race: Japanese
Gender: Male
Country: United States of America

Akira started the life of an assassin at age 20, two years after his long-time friend Eiji began the trade. While educated, Akira was always interested in guns and began to see his job of killing certain marks as beneficial in cutting out the greedy and those who had death a long time in coming to them. However, unlike most of the assassins he knew or heard about, Akira’s moral standing disallows him from killing an innocent, especially children or spouses who had no awareness of the situation. This is seen as a weakness by many who know his name and amongst the highly professional; his name is mentioned with derision and scorn. Even his friend Eiji holds it against him for the trouble he gets himself into and Stolynski, a professional sweeper, makes it very clear that to him, Akira is a child playing grown-up games.

Despite this, Akira holds true to his moral bearing. The refusal to slay an innocent child that he had befriended a few hours ago and the subsequent shootout and escape from the ruthless syndicate that now wants him dead is what lands him in Eiji’s comfortable home. While living under Eiji’s roof, Akira is momentarily considered by Eiji’s syndicate head (boss) but he rebuffs the offer by refusing to draw the two syndicates into a brutal battle. Also, by being his own free agent, he can make his own decisions without having to knuckle under syndicate law. This gets him bloodied and schooled by Stolynski, who sees him as an ungrateful whelp and although Akira holds his own, Eiji plays peacemaker before things get lethal. Unfortunately, when betrayal from inside allows the enemy to start the attack almost unawares, Akira is killed in the upper levels of Eiji’s home. This action, which also mercilessly slaughters Eiji, leads to fierce retaliation from Eiji’s syndicate and embroils the two entities into revenge killings. Akira, in the mean time, is forgotten and unlike Eiji who merits a decent burial by the syndicate, is buried in paltry conditions.


Eiji Nakamura

Age: 27
Height: 5’ 9”
Occupation: Assassin
Syndicate: TBD
Race: Japanese
Gender: Male
Country: United States of America

Eiji is a highly experienced sweeper, having had nine years behind him in his trade. His reasons for such a cold-blooded occupation is more or less due in part to a high-risk life, security (the very reason why he became involved with a syndicate not less than two years in), and keeping tabs on his friend, Akira, who became a fledgling assassin later. As Eiji’s reputation rose, his influence allowed him a comfortable living in a high-security home, women, and state-of-the-art technology. This, he uses to keep track of Akira’s footprints, especially when matching up styles against different assassins. However, he considers Akira’s moral stance against killing certain people a detriment, even though he never badmouths him when others like Stolynski do. All the same, he throws it in Akira’s face and challenges him on it, hoping to change his way of thinking. To his dismay, his friend doesn’t back down.

Taking Akira under his wing was never something Eiji questioned despite the obvious conclusion that they would both be targeted. Finding his friend under fire and wounded, he lent a hand and made sure that they both eluded their attackers for the time being. This favor done, Eiji tries to convince his friend to join their syndicate. When Akira refuses for what seems like foolish reasons, Eiji is astonished and then shocked when Akira turns down his boss’s generous offer. Things get bloody when Stolynski interprets this as an insult and Eiji is forced to intervene before Akira is viciously beaten or killed. This is futile because a surprise attack of 3:1 odds (6 vs. 2) first takes him down and then Akira is shot to death in a winless battle. Because of his connection to his syndicate, his boss retaliates against the other syndicate for his murder. His slain friend, Akira, is conveniently forgotten during this time and given a shoddy burial.


Dmitri Stolynski

Age: 35
Height: 6’
Occupation: Assassin
Syndicate: TBD (same as Eiji)
Race: Ukrainian (Russian)
Gender: Male
Country: United States of America

Dmitri (aka Stolynski) has been a sweeper for many years and is considered by his peers in the syndicate to be a professional of the highest order. While he holds Eiji in respect because of the high level of work that the other man does, he finds Eiji’s silence in regards to Akira’s moral code cowardly. This leads him to believe that Eiji must hold some kind of favoritism or past relationship with the younger assassin. When Eiji brings Akira into the syndicate, Stolynski’s reaction is unfavorable and his dislike of the other assassin is made obvious. Yet, Akira, although startled, hides his discomfort well, Stolynski feels like it’s only right to put the younger man in his place.

This way of thinking is what moves Stolynski into a brutal schooling of Akira when the young man turns down the syndicate boss’s offer. To him, this disrespect towards their boss is disgraceful and he means for Akira to know firsthand how he would deal with that. Eiji, however, steps in before events get too bloody and Stolynski is surprised by how Akira stands up to him despite the difference in age, height, and strength. This earns Akira a slight modicum of respect in his mind, even if the dislike is still there.

Despite what one might think of Stolynski, he is not the backstabber who allowed the enemy to invade Eiji’s home and kill both of the assassins in an unfair match of odds. One of his friends, Mikhail, who find Stolynski’s dislike but lack of inaction weak, is the one to supply the code that overrides Eiji’s house security system. Mikhail, of course, is murdered for his silence. Stolynski, in a way of amends and feeling that respect is earned for how Akira went down fighting, is the only one to visit Akira’s unremarkable grave.