Jon Kasiya | Amun (mysteryofset) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2014-07-12 22:47:00 |
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Entry tags: | jon kasiya / amun (616) |
Who: Jon Kasiya
When: (backdated) 10 July 2014
Where: Luxor, Egypt
What: Amun
Rating: R for violence
Jon Kasiya had never been out of Africa for so long before coming through the Tesseract. Even since he had begun working, a job which had frequently taken him to Europe, North and South America, and even once Australia, Egypt had always been the hub to which he and his trainer returned. But he had been here nearly a year, and in New York practically that entire time. There was a strangeness in returning to the souks, and apartment blocks, and the dusty, chaotic, car packed streets. It was so familiar, despite the danger and the lack of any emotion tied to Egypt, he would always see it as home. But he'd missed a decade of Egypt, and from the way stall owners invited him in for coffee and tried to rob him blind, perhaps was not seeing Jon as a native son. He always had been half-American through an accident of identity of the woman who happened to have been his mother. But, sitting a borrowed ledge of an apartment eating a bowl of koshary that had been harder than usual to find on the streets during Ramadan, he had never doubted what he was. Amun watched people on the streets as one might watch a couple reuniting in an airport. With a sort of detachment, but ultimately warmed by the meeting. He had constantly wondered since arriving if this was where he was meant to be, or if it was even possible to live another life after growing up in a guild of assassins. In New York, he had employment that was nothing he had ever trained for. He had friends, he had even had a girlfriend. He had made contacts with former assassins who had managed to get out of the business and move on with their lives. He did not live with the threat that betrayal or failure meant death. But in each of those relationships, Jon had run against his past--his present for he had not truly changed. Jon was uncertain if that was the sort of life he could have without denying everything he had been before. The truth of the matter was, killing was what Jon, Amun, the Hand of Death, had excelled at. It was all he had ever excelled at, and here he could excell again. Whether he had been indoctrinated or not, perhaps it was his worldview that was incompatible with the West. Nothing particularly caught his eye so much as his thoughts until he saw a young man bump into a finely dressed man. It was the move of an amateur pickpocket at best, but pickpockets didn't tend to leave chalk marks on their mark's jacket. Assassins did. It was almost like a training exercise from long ago. Jon ignored the disappearing older man, instead scanning the crowd to see for whom he had left the chalk mark. There were two, he would guess. Jon set down his food and pushed himself to the ledge to the ground below. Amun landed in a crouch. There were three now. Amun didn't know the crime of the marked man or if he were a random object lesson. In fact he rarely knew the reason for any of the men he had killed. By gait, he seemed rich, by his jacket, Western. Amun wormed his way through the street, to get closer. As he approached one of the man's first tails, he placed a hand on the shoulder of the boy. He near scowled when he turned around. عفوا الصبي. يمكنك إسقاط هذا.. He held out a 500 EG£ note. It was a hefty bribe, but one Amun could afford and that, if used wisely, could afford the boy a great deal more. It mollified that he was purposefully holding the child's should as he watched through his peripheral vision as the man in the mark jacket turn a corner. "ماذا تف?ع" Amun had snuck up on the last remaining. boy who must have been all of ten. Amun was fast and silent, and even out of work, had not scaled back his training since arriving. But he wondered if he could have snuck up on a fully trained assassin as opposed to a fledgling like this boy. This didn't mean that Amun felt that anything he had done in his past was wrong--he wouldn't give Anya that satisfaction of crocodile tears and self-loathing. But while he sorted out what he did feel, The order that controlled these boys felt differently. As Amun held his wrist, allowing time for the mark to get away, a shot rang out through the night, piercing the chest of the boy in front of him. Failure had always meant death. Amun wasn't sure why he thought it would be any different for a training exercise. The boy collapsed against him and Amun balanced him against his chest. But the danger hadn't passed. Amun's eyes expertly scanned the plaza for where the shot had come. The tower to the northwest was the most logical for this trajectory. He picked up the boy and ran. A second shot wouldn't reach them. But Amun was not about to get pulled into a murder investigation in Egypt. He never had before and would not start on an American passport. He covered himself and left the boy at a hospital before returning to his hostel. He expected the man to be waiting in the alley for him and before they could attack him, Amun had his hand at the man's throat. Living life like this was much darker than he had remembered it. Amun sneered at the man sent after him. ماذا؟ He pressed down against the man's trachea in the moment, a voice inside himself told him to break it now. The assassin gasped for breath, words being a far off goal. And instead attempted to answer with a dagger in the close quarters. Amun snatched the hand that would stab him, but released the pressure on his throat pushing him to the pavement. "سوف تمساح يلتهم لك". The assassin spat at Amun's feet. But he was here to deliver a message, not a fate. And there was more dishonor in sending him back than killing him here. "أنا يد الموت. أنا آمون، سر تعيين. هذه هي شوارع بلدي وهذا هو طلبي. سوف تترك لي أن أكون.". He waited a moment and again he ran away. Amun knew it was a challenge and knew this would not be the last he heard of these assassins. But any show of weakness now would mean he heard from them sooner rather than later. But he decided he would be leaving the country earlier than anticipated. Egypt hadn't changed at all, though maybe he had. |