Hiwa

Hiwa is a girl of young age who keeps her hair cropped short. She dresses plainly, in a white collared shirt paired with black trousers.

Stubborn to the core, Hiwa stood out as the only islander unwilling to submit to the pirates plaguing her home. That fierceness came with impulsiveness, since the moment Tashigi admitted other Marine swordsmen surpassed her, the girl wrote her off as weak, only later grasping the subtler meaning of strength after watching Smoker in action.

Hoping to outmatch the pirates who had taken over her island, Hiwa took up the blade roughly half a year earlier under Atori's tutelage, training with a bamboo sword; Tashigi judged that she had absorbed the fundamentals and little beyond them. The story opens with Hiwa stumbling on Tashigi at practice and asking for instruction. An hour in she waved off a rest, and when Tashigi began drilling beside her, the girl, assuming such effort was only for children, demanded to know why a Marine still trained. Tashigi's answer that stronger swordsmen existed struck Hiwa as an admission of weakness, and she stalked away, having overheard where the pirates were hiding. Bent on avenging the wound they had given Atori, she stormed their lair alone, was beaten, and ended up bound and slated to be sold into slavery. Tashigi soon raided the place herself; a watching Hiwa offered an apology, then dissolved into guilty tears when a lingering pirate shot Tashigi through the shoulder. A final attacker arrived strapped with bombs, but Tashigi smashed a window to let Smoker in, and he subdued the man and cut Hiwa loose. With the pirates rounded up, Hiwa resolved to enlist in the Marines and pressed on with her training.