A (Not So) Quiet Evening [Closed/Jian]

Altair walked into his room exhausted.  It had been a long day indeed.  Altair had been out helping the workforce initiative build homes for Reim's Homeless.  He had even been able to work with the manager of the project, Azix Niraj. It was one of the things about King Lagi's speech that gave Altair hope for the future. Maybe someday, everyone could live a happy comfortable life together.  It would just require some work is all.

He walked into his kitchen and made himself the largest sandwich the world had ever seen.  Paired with a glass of milk, Altair sat next to his window on the side of his house and ate while watching the stars.  There was so much about this world that Altair loved.  The Majesty of it all.  The problem with the world was that not many got to appreciate this kind of thing.  Slaves were so common in Reim, that even with the new law banning slavery, that many simply didn't know where to go but back to being slaves.  and worse, some slave owners refused to follow the law, instead keeping their slaves hidden from public view.  Starting tomorrow, Altair would be dealing with that problem in particular.  The Sovereign would free them all.  By force if necessary.

Altair turned back to his sandwich and sighed.  Suddenly, he wasn't so hungry, knowing that there were people out there who wouldn't get to eat tonight.

This was going to be a fun job.

Being one of the world's few surviving consulting criminals, Jian had a lot of privileges to do with his job if people wanted to hire him. Often people weren't willing to hire him, but they clearly weren't desperate enough to need his services.

However, those who chose not to hire him due to his demands always seemed to come around. They would lose a few men or fail to get their target, and then they'd be more willing to listen. One of his favourite perks of the job was being able to choose his clients and being given the reason behind something being contracted.

In the case of a lot of the higher ups from Heliohapt, he had been recently contracted to kill a man by the name of Altair. Now, that in itself wasn't very interesting; killing people was kind of what he did.

However, it was the reason that he was being contracted that was interesting; this guy had led some sort of huge slave rebellion - thousands of slaves owed their freedom to this man, and people thought that was worth killing him over.

The funny thing about this situation was that, whilst he understood exactly why they would want to kill this man (he had cost a lot of very important people their free labour), this kind of person was the very type that he wanted to become friends with. He was being allowed to approach someone like this under the pretence of doing someone else's dirty work. Perfect.

Nobody would ever trust an assassin who aligned himself with a revolutionary so openly, eh?

---

Finding the guy, he thought, would have been the difficult part. After all, he worked under an alias and constantly wore facial concealing masks. However, if there was one thing that this guy had forgotten, it was not to be a fucking idiot and do his actions so publicly.

During one of the guy's "liberation"s, Jian had simply paid someone to follow him home and give him the location of his house. It was really the simplest way to do anything, and had wound up with some of the best possible results.

The house that he was having to break into was a very simple one. Like most from Reim, it didn't even have windows. Well, it did, but rather they hadn't wasted any glass on the windows; why would they - even with Reim's high level of "science" as they called it, the ingredients of making glass was VERY expensive. Not something that someone hiding out in a village would be able to afford.

This lack of glass gave him an excellent opportunity. Grabbing a hold of the ledge and pulling himself up above the barrier for a second to look in the window, he took note of the flickering light of candles in the next room. He had probably found his target... or the man was rich enough to afford to be wasteful with candles.

Climbing in fully, he allowed his naturally silent footsteps to carry him to the doorway of the man's room. What he saw was... surprising. Ignoring the man's good looks, he was just sat there staring at the stars. Were he actually going to be killing him, this would have been an easy job.

"You know, Sovereign, you need to look after yourself more. Just about any random stranger could break into your house and you'd have no way to protect yourself."

Altair Quivered out of his chair and crossed the room in an instant, drawing his blade as he ran.  This man invaded his home, and more importantly he knew who he was.  It would take a VERY good reason for Altair not to end his life right here.

Altair ended his stride with his blade pinned against the neck of the intruder.  "You have exactly ten seconds before i end your life.  I'd use that time to explain yourself."  The man was wearing clothes from Zou, and himself looked to be of that ethnicity.  Why was Zou interested in the Sovereign?  What exactly did they know besides his identity?  Where they aware of the situation in Heliohapt, and if they were, what kind of alliance did they have?

With a face that said he meant what he said, Altair started counting.  "10... 9..."

Abilities:

Magoi/Stamina: 240/250

Ooh, this man was scary. How cute he was, acting like he was a big bad monster. It was nice to see someone who actually had some balls, and he'd met so many "activists" who were actually just do-gooders without any stomach for conflict. The concept of someone like this actually having enough pith and vinegar in him to do something like this... it was beautiful.

"I have three very important reasons why you don't want to kill me. First of all, I know your secret identity. How many other people do as well? Is it just me, or is it an entire network of people?

Kill me, and you might very well be letting tens of people run off with your little personage all the way back to heliohapt and then think about how messy this pretty little house would get with your blood being splattered across the walls."

A single finger on the flat of the blade, he pushed it away from him, pointing towards the ceiling. There was a certain self-confidence in his body language that showed that, even though this guy could probably rip him to shreds if he wanted to, he still wasn't scared of what he was proffering.

"Second reason you don't want to kill me; I'm sent from Heliohapt. As long as I'm alive, you get to keep on living and doing your little miracle works, your acts of charity, and Heliohapt won't send anyone else against you because they don't want to waste any more money on a second assassin. That country's obsessed with putting all their eggs in one basket.

Fact of the matter is? I like you - I like the work you do, and as a fellow lover of freedom, I personally have no reason to want to hinder your work. Were it to get out I killed a good man simply for a pay-cheque... well, my business would go down and I'd be very depressed.

Rather, I'd like to offer assistance. It's not exactly like you had an ally check-in desk so how did you expect me to try and meet you, eh?"

Very little about the way that Jian was presenting himself would make sense to the man. His logic so far had been infallible - kill him and information would be sent to his enemies that would wind up with him being wiped off the face of the planet, scorched earth and all, yet there was a genuine interest in his deeds that was hard to ignore.

"and third reason... You can't kill me, you know why? Cos I'm too god damned pretty for god to let me die. Don't you agree?" A small, playful grin (like a cat playing with its food) crossed his face as he said that. He didn't really think like that, anyone of any appearance or age could die, he just knew from personal experience that jokes defused situations like this.

Altair kept his blade pressed against the neck of the intruder as he explained himself. He had made a mistake by acting so rashly. He had basically just made sure that this man knew who he was. If he had tried to play it off, this may have turned out differently.

The man started his explanation quickly. His first reason: He isn't the only one who knew his identity. That struck a particular nerve in Altair. He had always been vigilant when hiding his identity. He always wore a mask, and never told his name to anyone. Although, he guessed that it could be possible that SOMEONE out there knew who he really was. Either by tracking him, or using some kind of divining magic. In fact, more than likely one of the higher-ups from Heliohapt was more than likely keeping tabs on him somehow.

The man's second reason made it quite clear that that was true. The man's contractor was Heliohaptan. Altair let the man continue, learning a two startling facts. First, if he kept this man alive, they would send no other assassins after him. secondly, and probably most shockingly, the man wanted to help him. "Help me?" Altair thought. what a turn this conversation had taken. Altair was about to lower his blade when the man offered a third reason. Altair chuckled, but let it slowly turn into a genuine laugh. Though he had broken into his home, and threatened his secret identity, Altair found himself liking this man.

Altair put his sword back in its sheath, and smiled. "Alright. You've convinced me. So, you want to help me? Hmm... actually, i do have a few things that you could help me with. Here, take a seat. Feel free to eat what's on the table. It's an old gypsy food called a "Sandwich". a personal favorite of mine, but i don't think it'll catch on." Altair pulled up a chair across from his intruder turned guest, and began to tell him exactly what he could do for him. "As you said, as long as you are alive, they most likely won't send anyone else after me. At least for a bit. So, first, you can feed false information to those who would wish to do me harm, as well as tell me their plans on how to deal with me. Nothing like a little counter-spying to shake things up. Second, you can help me with my work. As the Sovereign the most vital thing i can use is intelligence on my targets. the more i know, the more i can prepare. So your job would be to gather information on my targets as discreetly as possible. I'll need surveillance both before and after i leave my mark, so you'll never have a slow day. Finally, i could use a partner. Someone to have my back while i complete the jobs. If you feel like you can handle all that, then welcome aboard." Altair stood and picked up his staff from across the room. "Of course, now that i've told you all this i can't just let you say no, now can i? So, welcome to the team, partner.

Good, the man had finally decided to settle down and take this conversation as a show of friendship and peace rather than an attack on the man's villa. It was good to know that the man's work hadn't caused him to become paralyzed by paranoia and fear of everyone around him. So many people fell to depravity by letting their fears consume them when they got to this level of notoriety, so it was good to see that the man was still sane and sensible. 

However, that being said, he did say something that made no sense - "Gypsy"? What the hell was a gypsy? It was apparently a group of people, judging by how he said it was their delicacy, but he'd never heard of a kind of person called a gypsy before. He didn't even recognize the word, and that was a very rare occurrence. 

Before he could even begin with asking about the first thing that he'd mentioned, he was already ranting about things he needed. It was good that the man was willing to let him get so involved in his work, it showed a certain level of trust that he hadn't honestly expected to get so easily, but.. well, it was a bit disconcerting that he was saying everything so quickly. 

"Okay, sir, calm down," Jian started, putting a hand in the air for a second, as a way to try and catch his attention properly. ", first of all - I have no problem with the first task, though I have somewhat of a better idea - I kill a slaver, claim that he's you, and get one of my "assistants" to send the corpse to Heliohapt. 

Keep your activities quiet for a while and by the time they realize that you're not dead, we can imply that there's multiple of you. An organization rather than a single person, and numbers terrify people more than a single strong person. 

It's an intimidation tactic I learned when I first got into this job - seem like you're more of a threat than you actually are and often people will decide you're not worth the effort."

This might have seemed immoral, especially considering how easy the man seemed to look at the concept of killing someone as a way to protect Altair properly. It was a sensible solution of course, implying that you physically couldn't kill him as there was an arm of him would make any would-be opponents think twice before making any rash decisions, but was he interested in letting other people take his credit? 

"Furthermore, we need to discuss who your "targets" are. I took out a group of slavers in a nearby city already - proof that even with Lagi's decree the black market is still full of illicit slaves. Yet, when it's done in such an underhanded way, getting information about who you're actually killing is a lot more difficult. 

I need to know where you want to strike and who you want to strike against, but from that I can give you the when, how and the price-tag for this little operation. "

This was something new that he'd introduced; the concept of payment. Of course, to almost anyone with a mind for business, this was obvious - There was a demand for someone who knew how these people worked and would be able to get information that would otherwise be inaccessible. That being said, it was a very large job and it wasn't something that the average joe could afford to do. 

"I am a business-man after all Sovereign - I can't just go around spending time I could be using to get money doing this business for nothing. This is how I get food on my plate."

Altair paused and listened to what the man had to say. His first idea was something that Altair hadn't actually thought of. Mask his death behind another man, a slaver. it would have to be someone less known about, otherwise he would be recognized, but that shouldn't be a problem. The second part to that plan was something that Altair had only dreamed of. It was only a lie as far as the man knew, but someday Altair really wanted to have multiple Sovereigns, in towns and cities across the world, protecting the innocent. It was a dream. But it was a dream that he was certain would come true eventually. "i agree. That is an excellent course of action. I leave it up to you to choose an appropriate candidate and deliver him."

The man continued, saying that his targets needed careful choosing. In addition, it would be more difficult since many of his targets would be under deep protection and cover. Altair was confident he could get the job done, but it was wise to be respectful of your opponent's power. as he was thinking of that, the man said something that caught Altair's attention. a Price Tag? Oh... Altair understood then. This man may be interested in vigilante work, but he still wanted to get paid for his services. Altair could understand. He had been content with just freeing the slaves, but this man made Altair realize that he would have to do more than just that. "Ok. I can't pay you directly, but i will offer you this. If my work is going to increase, and we take on larger and larger targets, we will need some source of income to keep our operations going. I will offer you a percentage of the loot we take from any jobs we do. This percentage is subject to change based on your performance, but as that shouldn't be a problem for you, you stand to make a nice sum. the rest we put into a fund for our future jobs. We can discuss the starting percentage later. Would this suit you?"