Game On 5.x

Honor and Trust

“There are two basis in the – no in any underworld.
Honor, ever heard about the saying 'honor among thieves'? Yeah, that’s because, in a way, it’s the most elementary truth of any underworld.
When people’s job is literally either to rob you of all your possessions, or kill you, how can you trust them enough to decide to work with them?
You can’t.
Unless they’ve got some sort of code of honor.
So you need to get to learn their code of honor quick – it won’t always be the same, sure enough, but usually, there are some overlaps. And then you’ve got to find, and pledge yourself to your own code.
Sometimes, for large groups like mafia, yakuza and such, it’s a well-known code.
Sometimes, it’s more personal.
All that matters in the end, is knowing the code of the one in front of you, and for that person to know your code.
And as long as those two codes overlap well enough – well, you have your new partner in crime.
But if the one in front of you doesn’t want to disclose their code, doesn’t trust you enough to unveil the core of their being, they don’t be stupid.
Run the other way.
Because if you can’t trust them to share their code – their honor – then you can’t trust them full-stop.
And in any underworld, not being able to trust your partner, is as good as already being caught.
Or dead.”

The sound of the strange speech, heard only in his deepest dreams, echoes in Alex’s ears, while Blunt is making his severely lacking recruitment speech.
He glimpses at the man’s second-in-command, so remarkably in command of her body and emotions, yet not quite able to hide how much she doesn’t approve of her boss’ decision in this case.
He watches carefully, as the man’s best technician isn’t quite able to hide his disapproval either.

His eyes widen when, for the first time, someone offers him a piece of Trust.
A part of a Code of Honor.
“I don’t kill children.” says Yassen Gregorovitch
And while the assassin is talking to his employer, it’s Alex he’s looking at.

The unwilling spy nearly dies anyway.
Great Britain’s children are safe.
And without any surprise, the Bank calls him again.

Alex had expected it.
After all, the strange speech is still echoing in his mind, and he can’t bring himself to ignore it.
Which is why he’s already told Jack to go back to the USA while he’s on mission – and left a letter to be read by his best friend one year after his disappearance.
Because the teenager already knows his clock is ticking.
Has been ever since his uncle’s death.

So the unwilling spy goes on the breach again.
He doesn’t like Wolf any better than before, even if the man saved his life – after all, the SAS soldier isn’t quite there yet.
He’s got a Code – but can it really be said that he lives by it when he’s such a gigantic hypocrite when it comes to the teenager that, beyond a team-mate, should have become a brother?

Missions goes by, and he meets the assassin again.
This time, it isn’t MI6 who sends him out.
Alex Rider steps out in the unknown by himself, to learn the truth, with only the last words of a dying assassin to steer him right.
It takes him some time to find the right people. But along the way, during the months spent among the Italian’s lower levels of the underworld, he confirms for himself just how much truth there is in the speech that haunts his dreams.

His own Code is slowly starting to take shape.
No children – he is living through it, and wouldn’t inflict it on anyone else.
And no lies.
Because, he’s found those Yassen told him about with his last breath, and they aren’t quite what he expected.
Be it among MI6 or SCORPIA, he’s surrounded by falsities and untruth, and he can’t deal with it anymore.

Because though he may be fed the organization’s party lines along with the rest of the students, Alex’s eyes and ears are open wide enough that he realizes he isn’t treated like the rest of the students.
Not given the same courtesy of merely being brainwashed – but being falsely brainwashed.
Because he is the son of John Rider, and the nephew of Ian Rider, and his family has done enough to SCORPIA that he would never be accepted among them.

And if neither Honor nor Trust are extended his way – then why should he give any in return?

He’s been used by MI6, and now SCORPIA is looking to do the same.
Except the later have committed a big misstep, one the British agency hadn’t been quite as dumb as to do.
They’ve trained him.

At the same instant, a bomb explodes in the latest Board reunion of the criminal organization. And Blunt falls to the ground, the sniper bullet of such a caliber it goes right through the bullet-proof widow of his office, through his brain, then ends its course in the inches-wide walls.

A few months later, rogue agent Rider is in Australia, and ASH dies too.

Before the teenager’s fifteen’s birthday, he’s got most of the intelligence agency and quite a few criminal organizations on his trail, so it’s really no wonder when a dead body identified as him finally pops up somewhere in Egypt.

In the cemetery, Tom finally reads the seemingly whimsical letter Alex has updated after each mission, and smiles bitter-sweetly.
A few months ago, he would probably have been too innocent to understand by now – after months of seeing his best friend coming back home more and more a ghost of himself, he understands.
The letter is nebulous enough that only Tom could understand it. And the teenager, though it pains him, is happy enough never to see his best friend again, if it can keep the unwilling spy out of the hands of MI6, or any other bastard agency who would want to use him.
This is a goodbye Tom can accept – and his own push, to aim for a better life.

In a pub, two teenagers meet for the first time in real life.
“I would say I’m surprised by how young you are,” the former spy comments lightly “but given my own background, it would be rather hypocritical.” he admits easily
Besides – while the other doesn’t look older than him, he’s seen memories in his dreams. And as incredible as it seems, he knows the other remember at least another life.
One where he was the best hit-man in the world.
One where he’d lived and died by his own Code.

And, for a reason or another, some sort of higher being has given him the chance to share those dreams with Alex.
And the teenager is pretty sure this has saved his life – or at least, given him enough of an impetus to leave before the MI6 managed to break break him.

“I’m Carter Kane,” the other teenager introduce himself, with light green eyes far older than his body “shesh of the Per Sesen. And I'm older than is apparent.”
He smiles, and Alex’s eyes widen as the world around them seems to melt in a whirlwind of sand, and they suddenly aren’t in an older Scottish pub anymore, but by the side of a pool, near what looks to be an old-fashioned Egyptian house.
Though, in the distance – he can see an ethereal forest.
A hunter’s lodge.
A traditional Japanese house.
A strange, misshaped English house.
“You’ve successfully escaped one hidden world.” the teen whose speech had shaped his life tells him, “But there are countless others around the world.” a warm smile, “And life would be oh so boring for you among mundanes.”

Carter is right, though it takes him some time to honestly admit.
Alex would have been bored in the regular world – in fact, both the agencies and criminal organizations had counted on it to keep him tethered to their thrill-fulled world.

But thought he may not have been born with any magic of his own, the former teenager spy is, in fact, compatible enough to find himself a new family.
A minor Egyptian god, looking for a blood-brother to be able to access the world of the mortals once more – and who, in returns, gifts him with the holy powers of the shesh.

Fourteen-year-old Alex Rider would have never imagined his future to hold spying missions, pain, and death.
He wouldn’t either have dreamed about magic, and gods.
Sixteen-year-old Alex Rider has a godly brother, and holy powers at the tips of his hands.

By the time he’s twenty years old, his past catches up with him in the most unexpected way – when he stumbles upon Yassha, formerly known as Yassen Grogorovitch, in the Russian magical district.
This time, he is learned enough to realize the man is god born – a half-blood, with a mortal parent and the other a wild Slavic deity.
This time, they end up in a pub, then sparring drunkenly in the former assassin’s favorite training–ground – because, of course, half-bloods’ idea about training are that strange.
Somewhere along the way, the sparring becomes something else, and a few months after his twenty-first birthday, Alex Rider and Yassha are wed in a stone-circle.

Sharing vows of Trust and Honor.

The following reception is full of wixen, demigods and other creatures of the magical and mythological world, and even a few spies and assassins Yassha has kept up with.
And amdist the festivities, Luna Lovegood gives an approving smile at her former lover.
“Not bad for a first foray in meddling with Fate.” she teases, “Free Will?”
“It’s the bambina’s job to help heroes to go through their destinies…” a shrug, “But our beloved isn’t someone who would have ever forced an unwilling hero.”
“So instead, you helped him out.”
“I merely gave him a push in the right direction.” the god corrects, smirking, “The tools to Survive, his uncle had already provided him. Alex only had to realize that training him didn’t necessarily mean that Ian meant for him to success him at fourteen-year-old.” he laughs, amused, “Besides, Fate’s the one who pushed me in his direction.”
Luna isn’t surprised – after all, she’s met Fate too, and knows that her fellow goddess isn’t unreasonable.
And Alex is looking far happier doing the traditional knife dance with his new husband, than in any of the visions she'd had before Carter had asked her to help him to send dreams and memories to the boy, a decade earlier.