Yo, I'm back.
Turns out that, after more than seven months, I decided to do something about this fic when I realized nobody wanted to adopt it.
The reason I put this up for adoption in the first place is that the concept of having Armin having to roleplay as this dangerous and skilled killer isn't really that appealing back then, though I like the thought of it being done correctly like having the plot set out and the characterization set straight. Which is why I was looking for someone more experienced than me to bring this story to life.
Perhaps I picked up this fanfic again out of boredom and just running out of ideas.
In that case, I think I will update more in the future.
Don't worry, though, for those who are waiting for the next update on MHA:DC. I'll be with you guys shortly.
Armin lazily checked his watch, his mind already averting away from the businesses of the crowds around him.
As his evening began to fade away by time, he started to grow worried about his current situation. By the time he laid his eyes on the time, showing him the lateness of his target, he realized that maybe he had been set up by his client all along.
It's way past his agreed worktime, in which his company wouldn't tolerate such ineffective clients. But Armin frankly couldn't care lesser than the time someone tried to savagely beat his dog to death. The only thing keeping him here was the price that had been set by the client, and since the timing wasn't part of the deal, backing away from the job is unnegotiable. Though, the more he thought about it, the more he wanted to enjoy the time partying by the poolside outside the ballroom.
"Enjoying the party, sir?" Someone said as they came up to him.
Armin shot a glance at a waiter, before finally smiling politely back at the man. "I can't complain, I think."
"That's great then." The waiter said as he smiled back. He was quite the burly man with a square jaw and mousy brown hair. He lifted the tray full of beverages just above his collarbone, offering it to Armin. "You should try some of the champagnes."
"I shouldn't," Armin said as he waved the waiter's offer off. "I'm not the best drinker, you see."
"Oh, but you should try one. They are freshly brewed from our best farms." The waiter insisted. "Rather, why don't you enjoy our feasts? We have an entire set of culinary from Europe, just how the Grand Family likes it."
"Ah, I see," Armin said in false interest. "I'll keep it in mind, thank you."
"You should, sir." The waiter said joyfully after hearing his response. "Please enjoy yourself for tonight, because—" in an instant, the waiter neared, "—today is a great day for Sina City!"
Armin nods in understanding as the man walks away. He is left with his own pondering thoughts as he began walking around the ballroom to see if he can get a better vantage point.
So that's why tonight was prepared so grand, a new election for a seat on the High Table had been set and boy, were the invitations stacked. He heard it—a rumor he had once thought to be a simple false news—once, and only once, and after that, he thought none of it. But to realize that perhaps his target was the newest seater of the High Table, he feels a sudden root of worry inside his heart.
As his hands clenched the railings of the balcony, right outside the ballroom and facing a great and beautifully lit land belonged to the rich family of Reiss. Who may or may not be his target.
He had heard about the Reiss', or to be more specific, the richest seater of the High Table and the owner of the assassins' company formed directly in Sina City. But Armin's money-making business falls below the categorization to that of a private firm, because anonymity is the motto that he lived by.
That is why he goes by the name Mr. Wick, a name that is the symbol of fear spread all across Sina.
Going back to his current mission, he needed to figure out what would happen if he managed, and at the same time didn't manage to kill his target.
The first possibility is fairly easy to deduce, and he fully believes in his own talent to leave the killing hour without spilling his identity as Wick. But what if he did fail to kill the target? The Reiss is a powerful family, and there was no doubt that they would send every assassin in their arms just to pay an eye for an eye. Not only that, Armin's identity would also be in great danger as he had lived his whole life living a double life. As long as it wasn't done in continental grounds, killing him is allowed for anyone to try. Keyword: try.
Armin likes to think himself as the man who prefers a quiet and peaceful life, and that is what he is currently trying to protect with all his might. To a veteran assassin like him, an easy life is no easy bargain, for a foot away from his work is a trail leading right to his identity just for anyone to track.
He looks around him, trying to make sure that no one finds his musings suspicious. From under his brand new, Italian cutwork suit, he took out a little smartphone to recheck his target's appearance. A woman in her middle twenties came into his wide-eyed eyed and raven-haired, possibly European in descent.
This was his target? In this picture, she wasn't even dressed formally, and the background wasn't that of a mansion. It almost seemed like this portrait of a beautifully smiling girl was took in the country.
Well, Armin was paid more than enough to care, anyway. If a woman is someone he must kill, then he must kill the said woman. In and out, a twenty-minute adventure.
"Attention, attendants!" A voice suddenly called from within the ballroom. The crowd suddenly averted their gaze towards and elder butler dressed in fancy black, Armin watched from afar as he tries to keep his profile low. "In a moment, Frieda Reiss will be with you all soon! I say rejoice! Rejoice, for a better world for Sina!"
The crowd clapped and cheered, raising their champagne in response. Armin slowly strides away from the ballroom and towards the hallway right outside. With a quick look around for possible exit routes, Armin manages to let himself disappear from the crowd.
"But before you all continue your festivity, there is something I'd like you all to know." The elderly butler suddenly said as he faced the crowd with a bearded face full of hope.
Armin stopped in his tracks, looking right at the butler with puzzlement.
"As we all know, and not to point out the obvious, today is a very important day for us to celebrate! As the corruption that continues to spread through this city like a plague, there is no sign of stopping anywhere we see. The darkness that looms at us from the government, and from the High Table too, no less, there is no doubt that we are in times of hardship.
My friends, there lies a rumor spreading around us like wildfires: a conspiracy to end the reign of a seater from Sina City."
Gasps and ineligible chuckles filled the ballroom. As the crowd began to broke to a low mutter, Armin finds himself cornered by a bunch of political nuts. He never had the care in what the High Table nor the government had in mind for the assassin underworld, but the crowd's sudden activity made leaving the place a bit difficult.
"Excuse me… sorry… yeah, excuse me… sorry…" Armin starts to feel himself getting watched in suspicion, he needed to leave quickly.
"—this is a time where we should all ponder and reflect on ourselves for who we truly are. Perhaps the High Table hadn't see it, or maybe they chose not to see it. But ladies and gentlemen, we are the center of every system in the country.
Armin stopped, right when the crowd started to stare at the butler more and more intensely.
"—A powerful—"
The crowd suddenly started to nod.
"—fair—"
People around Armin starts to smile.
"—and effectively working—"
Before Armin knew it, he accidentally bumped…
"—family of assassins."
… into someone who seemed have something similar to that of a Glock strapped to that of his vest right inside his formalwear.
Armin instinctively backs away from the man as he starts to give the shorter male a glare full of daggers. Armin awkwardly smiles before bowing apologetically and walking away from the man.
He had never expected this situation to fall into his hands: being trapped inside a ballroom full of people who are definitely armed and dangerous. The invitations sure are widespread, and he did expect an assassin or two, but he didn't expect a whole company to actually show up in one ballroom.
This was a formal event for celebrating the rise of a new seater. Lowly assassins who are only paid for their dirty work are often not invited as a sign of professional business-making. Unless that person is there for a job like Armin, there was no other reason for them to be here.
The blonde effectively had himself disappear from the ballroom and right into the front yard. Walking past the courtyard, he suddenly notices the amount of people impatiently walking towards somewhere with smiles on their faces.
He tries to nonchalantly follow them through the yard, his cap toe shoe clicking on the cobblestone road. The yard is indeed very large as decorative bushes were placed as far as the eye can see. Yellowish lightning can be seen lighting the outside of the European-styled mansion not far from where he stood in the rushing crowd.
The crowd that he followed suddenly stopped as they entered a small walkway between two parts of the mansion, the people that want to go through are clashing with the ones walking in the opposite direction.
Armin noticed that it might be a while before he can squeeze himself through the many attendees.
"What the…" Said a voice right next him.
With a quick glance from his shoulder, Armin came face to face with a taller woman with tan skin lighted by the garden lights. She was wearing something unusually unfitting for a woman in a formal event, a pair of straight black pants in which her white undershirt was tucked in, and an unbuttoned glimmering black long-sleeved suit similar to that of a male's.
The woman had a light brown hair, short ponytailed, and split right at the middle showing her freckled face and disbelieved eyes as she laid her sight on his disconcerted ones.
"Can I help y—"
"Armin Arlert?!" Said the woman in incredulity, her face thunder-stricken and flushed.
Panicked, Armin suddenly drew his gun.
As the bullet from his Bersa Thunder deafened the sound of his hammering heartbeat, he didn't realize that the woman in front of him had also drew a little revolver from under her suit. As the sound of rapid bullet fire filled the area, the people around the two of them was immediately alerted away.
Armin finds himself with his ears and head ringing painfully, his thick bullet-proof undervest feels burning hot as his chest stings with an unbearable pain.
The two assassins on the ground groaned at each other as they tried to pick themselves up from the ground. Armin hears a soft painful cough from the woman in front of him, and when he lifts his head up, he sees himself staring at the chestnut eyes of the woman who knew his name.
He notices the crowd circling around him as the rest dashed away from the scene, he can see all the faces struck with horror when they just saw two people shot each other in cold blood.
"SHOTS FIRED!" Said a voice from the distance, in which Armin responded with a grit of his teeth. "A SHOOTOUT JUST HAPPENED!"
With a quick kick of his foot, Armin quickly makes his way out of the scene. While squeezing himself through the crowd, he keeps putting pressure on the wound on his chest and abdomen. His mind fills with thoughts of getting exposed.
A groan was heard. "W-wait! ARLERT!" The woman shouted at him as she drew her revolver at him once more.
But seeing as he is already blending into the crowd, she can only earn herself a hand from her fellow assassins and points them the way to the man she had thought was nothing more than a college student.
His breaths come out as pants, his ears filled with the sounds of other assassins slowly getting onto his trail. There is no way he can get out of it this time without shedding more than a single blood.
From the corner of a wall, Armin draws out his gun, points up, waits one second, before firing straight into the chin and out the posterior of an assassin's head. The man fell dead not long before his blood paints the cobblestone red, in which Armin had already made his way to another wave of assassins.
The whole palace turned into a warzone where the socially weaker people made their way out of the garden first as the assassins began wandering the land in search of the newcomer of the party: Mr. Wick.
Armin creeps behind a wandering group of assassins, the three of them whispering to each other about splitting ways. From the bushes he watches, carefully not to let his identity get revealed to anyone.
"Hey, I heard some-OOF!" The assassin's words were cut off when Armin had leaped from behind him, before strangling him to a chokehold.
CRACK! Goes the sound of the first's next, before falling to the ground with a thud.
"HE'S HERE!" Someone had shouted from behind him, shining him with a flashlight bright enough to blind his eyes.
His quick hands draw out his gun again, effectively shooting the shiner on the head with his inhuman accuracy. As the gunshot rang through the garden, Armin could see several more assassin's coming his way from the garden lights than shone at their heavy firearms.
Shoot. One goes down.
Shoot. Another one goes down.
Shoot. And another one goes down.
Every bullet he uses is slowly decreasing his ammunition, until he finally ends up with an empty magazine before he settled on beating the crap out of a single man with the back of his gun.
"The mansion must be crawling with assassins right about now," Armin thought begrudgingly as he searched the body of a dead man, "I can bet that they are relocating Frieda Reiss, too."
As he steps over dozens of dead bodies, a looming thought fills the back of his mind: "Who was she? That woman? How did she know me? DAMMIT! If only I hadn't panicked!"
The clock passes as Armin made his back into the mansion with his arsenal now filled with the weapons looted from the people that he killed.
In the hallways he found himself, emptying bullets out of magazines over and over again as waves and waves of enemies seemed to came out of nowhere only to be conveniently ran into his line of vision. And when they didn't, like for instance, behind a drywall, Armin had to resort to his lucks as he fired blind nonstop through the wallpapers.
"HE'S AT THE END OF THAT HALLWAY!" Shouted an anonymous assassin at the opposite of where Armin was.
The blonde kneels right at the corner of a hallway intersection, his blood-stained shoe leaving crimson footsteps on the white carpeting. His new-newfound handgun oozing smoke from the tip of the barrel as he had just wasted six out of eight bullets. With a curse, Armin tries to snake his way out of this one if he can before the assassin's close in on him.
He shoots out from his hiding spot, immediately fires two rounds of calibers into two people, before throwing his handgun right at the groin of the third man.
With a leap, Armin wraps his legs around the torso of his third opponent before bringing him down while his legs hold his body upright just to shield Armin from the gunfire from the enemies behind him.
With a quick snatch of his third enemy's handgun, Armin fires bullet right at the shins of his approaching enemies before watching them fall in agony just to have them silenced with another fire that almost emptied the clip. The man that he held under his legs squirmed from his burning hot nozzle at the end of the Armin's gun.
His face inches away from the man under him, a low sneer forms on his lips. "Where's Frieda Reiss?"
The assassin below him merely stares back in shock. "You think I'll fucking tell you?!"
"You're right, you won't." BLAM! The gunshot rang.
He stood up from where he last sat on, looking around at the bloody mess around him. He looks down at his shirt, riddled with little holes and bloodstains that make him feeling utterly disgusted.
"This is why I hate ground jobs…" Armin muttered out before going his way towards the front gates.
He quickly searches for a front entrance, or at least a parking garage where the future seater would be placed in for protection. After a quick run around the palace and avoiding many assassins and dangerous bodyguards, Armin finally finds himself staring at the trail of Frieda Reiss.
The men that guards her wear a completely different set of outfits to the ones of which Armin killed earlier. After following the trail of a group of men wearing clean white suits hastily walking around the mansion, he realizes that he is following the right trail.
It was easy killing some of them, a simple bullet to the chest and head and a couple of aikido locks did the trick as Armin mowed them down like grass. He hasn't had time to think about anything else, not when the target is only meters away from him.
Armin wasn't stupid, he took a detour towards the parking garage these men in white were headed, and the path that he took was also the path where he hid a little surprise for these men to watch.
Standing at approximately 50 inches in height, and weighing roughly 6 pounds, the Stevens 320 tactical shotgun is a masterpiece chosen by none other than Marco the Provider himself to aid him in today's mission. He was right to first time when he gave this to Armin, "There is no harm in trying and having fun".
If the 20 gauges won't give them a blast, Armin didn't know what will.
He stormed the entrance of the parking garage with a bang. After loading the magazine with bullets, each with a little satisfying click, he pulls back the forearm to reveal the sensation of loading a bullet into the chamber. It was extremely agonizing the wait for the blood splatter on the walls after a headshot, the knockback that returned after a fire, and the smell of the nozzle from the loading port unlike anything else.
The guards never stood a chance as he fired left and right at their legs, torso, and head, in the same order. And when in doubt, Armin can always pin anyone who survives his shotgun butt-bash with the burning hot nozzle to the chest.
He is nearly there, only needs to reload his shotgun to full capacity. The parking garage is humongous, enough to hold dozens and dozens of expensive cars in their own chambers, complete with fixing kits and workshops. The basement was no doubt modeled after Old England architecture judging by the arching and the pillars that spread around the place.
From the distance Armin hears the sound of the car engine's running, and without warning, headlights appeared in front of him. An old Aston Martin DB5, it's silver paint gleaming under the lighting.
Instinctively, Armin points his shotgun forward as the car speeds toward him while gaining velocity. The blonde intends on emptying, not only the barrel of the shotgun, but his whole arsenal of handguns too.
The sound of the pellets ricocheting off of the hood of the car echoes through the garage, and when smoke begin to build up on its engine and slows its movements down, Armin knows that Frieda Reiss had nowhere else to go now.
As the car shoots pass him, Armin immediately aimed his shotgun right at the wheels, just to make sure that all of his efforts wouldn't turn out to be nothing.
As sad as it is to watch a vintage Aston Martin to drive straight into a wall, Armin still had a job to finish, and finish it he shall do.
"W-wait!" Said a voice from inside the car.
Before Armin could decide on what to do, a woman suddenly walks out of the ride with a slight limp and a look of agony on her face. She is quite young looking despite her age, and compared to Armin, she is also quite taller. Her raven hair flows gently down her best dress, but her smooth skin is filled with cold sweats as she makes eye contact with the man who stopped at nothing to get to his goal.
Armin still has his shotgun pointed at her, but Frieda had something to say first before he shoots her.
"We can… talk this out…" Frieda tried to bargain, her face paling more and more. "I can… I can pay you to walk away. More than what your client gives."
Armin merely shakes his head. "Sorry, it's not my place to decide. Assassin codes, you wouldn't understand…"
"But… can you understand why you shouldn't shoot me where I stand?" Frieda said again. "Sina is in the brink of corruption, the underworld is gradually losing power the more we let the High Table to run their businesses freely in our land."
"I am but a private firm." Armin answered her. "I don't care for such—"
"You're a fool, then!" Frieda snapped at him. "Life is more than just gambles and deals! Hundreds of people are counting to my rise of power, if you let me walk away I can leave you with enough payment to—"
"Like I said…" Armin said as he cuts her off mid-sentence, "I am but a private firm. The meddling of the High Table is not of high interest to me."
Frieda seemed to have lost all the words she wanted to say, but before she could give in to death just yet, she said, "Tell me, then. Why are you doing this? Why are you so keen to go on into killing anyone you see just to finish a job? Surely, there must be more to you than just greed and violence."
"I don't care of who I am." Armin simply returned her gesture with a cold shrug.
"Then let me say this, then." Frieda said. "If I can't be seater, then neither can my father."
A second of silence passes, two seconds of silence passes, three seconds of silence… BANG!
With a click, the shotgun goes empty, and Armin merely throws it to his side before looking at the mess he made right in front of him.
A footstep can be heard from the stairwell that led down to the parking garage, and before the rest of the surviving assassins arrive, Armin was already gone.
The woman from before stares at the body of Frieda Reyes, the soon-to-be representative of Sina City in the High Table. If what the butler said before was true, then there actually is a conspiracy to take down any authority in Sina.
The tan skinned woman closes her eyes in stress and concern, she wouldn't expect anyone like Armin Arlert to be the legendary assassin Mr. Wick. From the stories she heard, nobody had seen his face, only the results of his massacre.
She is sure she doesn't want to meet him anytime soon. But if he is aiming for the Grand Family of Reiss, then someone close to her is surely in danger.
But the question stays the same:
Who really is Armin Arlert?
"Ymir." Someone said from behind her, a tall and dark-brown haired man wearing a light navy suit. "The head of Reiss family wants to talk to you." He said, pointing at the fellow assassin who waves to her a small mobile phone in his hand.
"Thanks, Bertholdt." Ymir told him, nodding in understanding.
This was it, she failed to protect the client, and there will be consequences.
There was no way Mr. Wick would stop here, not when he had already gone this far. Then the best plan to take him down is ambush him in somewhere he didn't expect.
Ymir gritted her teeth at the thought of having to kill her friend's crush, and in front of her face too.
What will she tell her when she realizes Armin is the most dangerous man in Sina?
Thanks for reading.
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