amir shabah prefers knives (trollathon) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-03-28 06:40:00 |
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Amir Shabah didn't know the meaning of rest.
On the nights he wasn't moonlighting as the Brotherhood agent Phantom, flitting like a shadow over rooftops and chimneys with Rogue on his heels and the rest of Seattle fast asleep all around them, he was still... Phantom, dutifully monitoring the police bands on his compact scanner and scouring Rainier in search of the masked vigilante known as Nightwing. Though he went to bed late and woke up early, he didn't spend much of his time learning what the city looked like by day or trying to integrate himself into the hustle and bustle of society. In a sense, America wasn't any different from Algeria: He'd never had the time nor the inclination to shape a civilian identity and wasn't going to start now. That was what all the aliases and fake papers were for, so that even when he had to interact with the world they would never, ever really know him. Like his name implied, he would only be the pale, fleeting afterimage of a person.
Tonight he had made his usual escape from his tiny apartment via the window under the cover of darkness, whilst the front door was, also per usual, left to grow rustier and creakier with disuse. Scaling up to the roof, he paused at the top of the building only to double-check the fastenings of the light body armour he wore beneath his hoodie and then was off. Although he hadn't technically been assigned to track down any masks save for Nightwing, he still followed the vigilantes whenever he could, knowing instinctively how to escape notice, how to press into the darkest shadows in complete and utter silence. Rogue had explained once that these men and women posed a growing threat, but for now he wouldn't engage, though he was itching for combat. He was there just to watch, observe, taking mental notes that he could translate into a dossier for his own personal records.
It was disappointingly quiet this evening, he quickly discovered, only a few wails of a police siren here, a handful of petty scuffles there. Is that the best you can do, Rainier? He scoffed, just a warm puff of air beneath his face shield, and gracefully dropped to the ground where the light was weakest, slipping into a crouch as he darted behind stacks of mildewy boxes. There was a fight taking place now, but instead of rival gangs stabbing and shooting each other up over territory, it was between criminal and vigilante.
Boots barely stirring the gravel, he crept closer, trying to make out if this was a mask familiar to him, when something touched his leg. Anyone else might have gasped in surprise, but Amir simply shifted back with a flash of steel suddenly in his gloved hand, ready to attack—
A cat. It looked up at him with a curious mewl and continued to contently brush up against his leg.
"Damn you," he hissed under his breath. "Cease that this instant or I will eviscerate you, beast!"
The cat seemed to pointedly ignore his death threats, circling around one calf and then the other as it purred softly. Amir scowled and tried to shake it loose without standing up fully and revealing his location to the men only yards away, but the damn thing was persistent.
"Off. Now," Amir told it through gritted teeth, shaking his dagger at it. "That is your final warning."
Amazingly, the animal stopped, backing away a few feet to stare up at him. Its eyes glittered like gems in the darkness. Then it opened its mouth and let out a loud, high-pitched meow. Swearing soundlessly, Amir lunged forward, half-intending to skewer the foul little creature for defying him, but it only darted out of reach and ran headfirst into the rotten boxes, sending them flying with a terrific crash and a yowl.
"Hey! Who's there?"
Fuck. Spotted.
This was quite possibly the most disgraceful way of being discovered: his plans foiled by a mangy alley cat. One of the men broke away from the fighting to investigate, his butterfly knife out and combing through the air as if he expected someone to run into it. Amateur. Heaving an angry sigh, Amir hurled his dagger through the air; it found its mark with a solid thunk, blade buried all the way through to the heart. He was already impatiently kicking his way through the boxes to retrieve it before the man even fell to the ground like a sack of bricks. Wiping the blood off on the thug's shirt disdainfully, he returned the dagger to his boot. Tt, too easy. A cry went up in the distance—one he wasn't sure was directed at him or not—but he was already back handspringing away and vaulting off the lid of a dumpster to pull himself up and onto the nearest building.
He made sure to take the longest route to Hamartia, doubling back, making unnecessary detours, just to make sure he hadn't been followed. Finally satisfied, he began the climb up the fire escape to the seventh floor. There, a rudimentary trap was fixed around the window, one he regularly reset every time he went out. It wasn't for fear of being robbed, of course, because there was nothing to steal, but rather because one didn't make very many friends in his line of work. It only took him a moment to disable, and then he was slipping into his apartment and shucking off his gear.
"A perfect waste of my time," he muttered to himself, unlacing his boots and unceremoniously chucking them at the floor with one loud bang after another that would be heard in the unit below. "Damn—"
"Meooow."
He whirled on his toes, eyes landing on the window. "—cat?"
The alley cat pressed the fleshy pink pad of its paw against the filthy glass. How the hell had it followed him? Amir glowered at it for a long moment, and the cat only stared back unblinkingly, almost as if challenging him.
"Fine. Fine." He crossed the room and reopened the window. "You may enter. But I'm keeping my eye on you, fleabag," he added grudgingly, shooing the cat into his room.