Heisuke Mashimo

A red crosshair inked onto his right cheek marks Heisuke out immediately, paired with the bandage that sits across the bridge of his nose. His brown hair juts up in stiff, broom-like spikes above dark eyes, and his frame runs tall and wiry over pale skin. For gear he favors a black jacket crossed by a green stripe and stamped with a shoulder patch, worn above camo shorts, dark socks, boots, and a loaded backpack.

Emotionally open to a fault, Heisuke is a guileless, big-hearted optimist who cries far more readily than most, a habit fed by years of being told he was worthless. His scattered thinking surfaces literally when Shin's mind-reading renders his thoughts as childish scribbles, and he is gullible enough to walk into Sakamoto's shop meaning to kill the man, get talked out of it, and leave clutching a bag of pork buns. What he cannot stomach are liars, and uncovering a deception can reduce him to tears even mid-fight. Off the clock he pours his scarce cash into treating the store's staff to meals, dotes on children, and comforts Hana whenever she misses her father. Even the cold professionals of the Order, Hyo and Kamihate among them, rate his warmth as his true strength rather than a flaw, calling him an assassin who simply does not fit the mold. He also tends to drop a casual 'Yo' into his speech.

Heisuke's marksmanship stands in a class of its own, the lone skill he sharpened to a razor edge after realizing as a boy that he was hopeless at everything else. He can piece together a rifle and put a round on Sakamoto's forehead in the instant he spends springing backward, and he once dropped four opponents in a single breath during the airsoft tournament, drawing praise from Sakamoto as the finest sniper he had ever faced. His academy feat of assembling and firing a weapon ninety-six times still stands unbeaten, earning him the nickname Dragoon among JCC students, and he later became the first to break Kamihate's distance record with a hit from 8.2 kilometers out. Pain barely slows him; he kept shooting after a blade went into his gut. His custom bolt-action rifle carries a scope and iron sights, while his ricochet rounds rebound off surfaces to reach targets no straight shot could touch. Perched nearby is Piisuke, the small pouch-wearing bird he treats as both a spotter and a good-luck charm, whose monthly feeding bill runs him ten thousand yen.