Suju Assassin, Chapter 2
Title: Suju Assassin
Genre: Action. Allegory.
Pairing: Ninja pairings. HanChul, mostly. Mention of others.
Rating: PG-13 for violence.
Disclaimer: The point of this story centers on the fact that you can’t own a human being. I’d find it rather hypocritical if I owned Super Junior and wrote this. Nor to I own Ninja Assassin.
Summary: A Ninja Assassin Parody and a Super Junior Satire. Hankyung escapes the oppressive rule of the Ozunu clan of Ninjas, his brothers slowly but surely following him into exile. It is not necessary for you to suffer through Ninja Assassin to read this. I don’t really pay attention to the plot of that movie after chapter 3, anyways.
I was going to try to post one of these a day. Let's see how well that goes.
---
Chapter 2
Chapter One | Chapter Three | Chapter Four
---
The decision had been made in a flash of emotion, and could not be taken back. The sacrifices made since then could not be forgotten.
Han Geng sighed and turned over in his bed, listening to the sounds of the still-active city. He had done what he could to contact his friends and inform them of yet another move, though this was mostly done indirectly, through email accounts that were forwarded and rerouted or through word of mouth between the members. Everyone had a basic sense of where everyone else was, but nothing else was communicated in writing.
Beyond that, he had only one phone conversation to his credit, with Heechul to inform him of the move.
“I find myself forced to relocate,” Han Geng said, looking over his shoulder through the glass of the phonebooth. People passed him as they continued with their routines, too busy to take notice of him, even if he searched every face for anything out of the ordinary.
“Then start the countdown,” Heechul sighed. “Check in is in ten hours.”
“Thank you,” he replied, pausing before he said goodbye.
Heechul seemed to catch his hesitation. “Hey, Hannie.”
“What?”
“Fighting.” The line went dead, and Han Geng was left alone with his thoughts once again. But at least it wasn’t as lonely.
There was a price for that reassurance, of course. Han Geng was once again reminded that everyone he knew was in just as much danger as he was - and that it was, ultimately, his fault.
---
High heels and Naomi Fisher did not mix. She fell to the ground, her right hand holding a disk above her head so it wouldn’t get scratched. She then crawled over to his PC and opened the disk tray, placing the CD inside.
It was a habit of Naomi’s to stumble into Corey’s office and take over his workspace. It happened often, but it usually only meant that someone was being too loud near her own office and it rarely involved the use of his computer.
“What is it?”
Naomi didn’t seem to hear his question, waiting for the screen to open and reveal the disk’s contents. A video player opened, and whatever he was supposed to be watching ended in less than a minute with the sounds of a struggle, and a man walking away under a streetlight, covering his face with his hand.
“And what am I looking at here?” Corey asked as the clip ended.
“He’s hot.”
“Who?”
“The ninja.”
“Naomi, you don’t know if he’s-”
Naomi slapped a hand over Corey’s mouth, leaning over him and hitting the playback button on her coworker’s computer. His head was stuffed into her armpit, and his reflection in the computer screen made him look like he wanted to cry. She didn’t know why - she put deodorant on and shaved her armpits and was wearing a suit-jacket so he didn’t have anything to complain about.
“Just listen this time,” she said, moving her hand to cover Corey’s eyes.
“What am I supposed to be - ow!” So now Corey knew why Naomi wore high heels even if she couldn’t actually walk in them. “Just listen,” she hissed.
It was the struggle she was replaying - there was a meaty sound of something hard hitting a body, and the clang of metal on metal. Then another clang, and a screech, and another meaty sound, and Naomi removed her hands.
A man walked out of the shadows, dressed all in black with his hand covering his face. Naomi paused again.
“He’s a ninja,” she said definitively, putting her hands on her hips. “And he’s pretty hot. Not scarred up at all.”
“One eye and hair does not an attractive face make,” Corey sighed. “And any thing could have made those metallic sounds.”
“They were swords. Swords don’t make sounds like baseball bats or pipes. That screech you heard was from swords.” She clicked a few keys and zoomed in on the man’s face. “And you don’t need to see his whole face to tell he’s hot.”
“If your tastes run that way,” Corey sighed again. “Where is this tape from?”
“There was a rolling blackout that started in the area of the assassination of the candidate for Russian Prime Minister around the same time. This video was from a camera running off of a generator. Some agoraphobic old art collector had the system set up. Completely internal.”
“How did you get your hands on it?” Ok, even if it wasn’t ninjas, this was new. This was something they could work with.
“I don’t like to kiss and tell.”
“Tell.”
“Apparently all the people investigating the case were told to shut up. One of them didn’t. This is his work.”
“Have you interviewed him yet?”
“Oh, he’s dead.”
Corey raised an eyebrow. “That’s it?”
“The coroner’s report listed ‘natural causes,’ but in Russia that could be anything from being impaled on a red-hot poker to being poisoned, stabbed, shot, and thrown into a freezing river by four men of higher standing. But in this case, Old Lady said there was a lot of blood. Closed casket funeral.”
Corey rubbed his forehead. Well, at least the case was getting investigated. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. I want results. Impartial results.”
“I’m always impartial.”
“Leave.”
---
He did not remember a time when he had a name. Perhaps he had one, but when he was taken in by the Ozunu, all he remembered was clinging to it for a time until it slowly slipped away with the rest of the things that belonged to the past.
Without a name he didn’t have an identity to himself, just that he belonged to a collective. His training was brutal and long, and he learned to fight before he learned to read.
Staring up at the wall, he figured he learned to fight before he learned a lot of things, but one constant always came first. The Clan. The duty of any entity within it was to drive itself to sickness, exhaustion, and death for the sake of the clan and its secrets.
He had enough of that. His brothers were just as nameless as he was, and he had been taught from a young age that their pain would be his pain. Ninjas had to work as parts of a whole, limbs of a body, and the body had to protect all its parts. It could loose a limb but it would never function the same way.
The nameless trainee had taken the lesson to heart. He felt his brother’s pain when he was beaten in a spar, he felt his pain when he was cut for losing. He felt his pain when he was forced to drive a blade into another brother’s skin, or risk the more fearsome wrath of the patriarch. He felt the thirst and ache and betrayal of the one who refused. He felt the fear of the ones who knew their turn was coming soon.
He wondered if any of them could feel the frustration and anger building up in him.
There were two reasons for this, he supposed. The first was that he had just watched his best friend run off into the night where he would surely be hunted down and killed. Here the anger was directed at the clan - if someone didn’t want to do it, then they should be allowed to leave. The second was that he was not following him. In this situation, the anger was directed at himself, at his legs for not moving, and at his heart for being too weak to do anything about it.
He’ll be back soon enough, a malicious voice whispered in his mind as he turned around shakily and walked back to his bed.
He was on cooking duty in the morning. He needed his rest, and maybe by the time he woke up things would be clearer.
---
Indeed it was, early that morning, when all the trainees were called out to the courtyard after breakfast. He put his own chopsticks down - he hadn’t eaten any of it, and he had no appetite for the bland noodles anymore.
Actually, he didn’t think he could stomach much of anything. Not after hearing his brother dragged back the night before, or seeing bloodstains on the stone walkway leading to the kitchen.
He filed in after the rest of the trainees, waiting. They lined up, glancing at each other warily and noting mentally who was missing. A few people looked at him in an odd way, maybe remembering when he came in late the night before. He completely ignored them, gripping his chain-scythe tightly to keep from moving, to keep from punching them for not reacting when they saw their brother tied to the central post in the courtyard, beaten and bloodied.
Two members of their generation had already passed the test and gained their names - Kangin had been the one who finally caught their brother and he would be the executioner.
Kangin - the one that liked to brag and prank and spar with the man he was about to kill. He raised his sword, the tip to his bother’s bare chest, and hesitated for a moment, looking back at the others for some kind of approval.
It was approval he didn’t have, and he might have seen it in his eyes an instant before he moved. Not that it entirely mattered - Kangin was doubled over in pain them moment he blocked his scythe.
He didn’t really have time to observe something similar happening with all the other trainees as he sliced through the ropes that bound his brother, pulling him away from the post and running for the gates.
You see, his plan had been very simple, with only two real steps: save his brother and then run. He would run until his legs were mere stubs, and carry his brother on his back at the same time, or run on his hands if he had to, but right now, the important thing was running.
And maybe healing the shuriken cut on his left arm, but that wasn’t involved in running and was a little difficult to do on the fly, so it could come later.
“What’s going on?” his brother eventually gasped out. He noted absently that he still hadn’t let go of his arm, though the other man was perfectly capable of running on his own. Despite his injuries, they were still ninjas, and working through the pain was part of their training. “What happened to them?”
“I guess my cooking just didn’t agree with them,” he replied, staring at his feet as the path steepened. He let gravity pick up his speed; he would deal with the consequences when they hit the end of the trail. But he jerked to a stop when his brother planted his feet and refused to move.
“What did you do?”
“I just poisoned them a little,” he said, shaking out his arm. “Aish! Besides the worst case of the runs they’ve ever had, they should all be fine by morning. I don’t know why you have to care so much - they were about to kill you.” His brother considered this for a moment, and seemed to hesitate. “Not everyone is going to be as affected by it. We need to get out of here.”
“You shouldn’t have gotten involved,” his brother said.
“You shouldn’t have gone without a plan!”
They stared each other down a moment longer, and he put his hands on his hips, waiting for an answer. He supposed he had it when his brother began running on his own, down the path towards the base of the cliff.
---
When they stumbled to a stop, the taller man could barely stand. He pressed his hand against the bark of a nearby tree, trying to steady himself, but his legs were shaking. In all his training, he had never run so fast or so far, and after this short rest, they would have to keep running.
It was bad enough that he had already tried to make this run the night before, and had been wounded as proof of that failure. He made it further this time, with help, but he didn’t see how it changed anything.
It would never end. They might have thrown off pursuit for a day, or a week, but it wouldn’t be long before the clan tracked them down again. He put his forehead against his hand and tried to gather his energy for another run.
“Have you thought of a name yet?” His brother’s voice cut through his concentration. He was leaning against a tree, panting, his hair plastered to his face.
“What?”
“You were the one who started this,” he sighed, standing up. He seemed to have to hold his legs in place to keep from falling back down, but in a moment he gathered himself and stumbled over, throwing his arm over his brother’s shoulder. “I thought you would think it through. What’s your name?”
“We don’t have names,” he replied, starting forward. They walked together for a few moments, the only sounds the sounds of the waking forest - birds, mostly, and the sounds of their panting. They still walked too carefully to make any noise, still pursued as they were by their brothers.
“Then I’m going to have to name you,” his brother sighed. “I’ve already thought up a name for myself, I’ve had one for a long time. Kim Heechul. I just never told anyone. Actually, I have names for everyone - it’s a lot less boring than calling people hyung or dongsaeng all the time and a lot more fun.”
He wanted to say that they wouldn’t get names until they completed their training, but no, that would never happen now. They were escapees, and they were about as close as they would ever be. They had killed people this night, and that was really the final test - and who was more fearsome an opponent than a fellow ninja?
“Do you want to hear your name?” His brother - Heechul - would not stop talking. Maybe it was a nervous condition, because he noticed it happen before. He would finish a particularly difficult training set, and would spend the entire night babbling - worrying if he had completed it correctly, analyzing his every mistake, chirping about his successes, or just babbling about what he had for dinner. “How does Hannie sound?”
“Bad,” he replied. “Can I have an actual name?”
“It’s short for Hankyung,” the other man pouted. No ninja should pout as much as he did.
“Han Geng sounds better.”
“Didn’t I say that?”
“You said ‘Hankyung.’”
“Yeah, I know. How is that different?”
Hankyung/Han Geng shook his head. It would be odd to have a name - he had always been ‘I,’ and everyone else had been ‘them.’ The only distinctions necessary after that were clan, employer, and prey. He had his brothers, but now it was Han Geng and Heechul against them, and ‘them’ was everything he had been part of before, and then the dangerous, antagonistic world.
Heechul could have his arbitrary identifications. He had more important things to worry about.
---
Time is waiting, we only got four minutes to save the world! No hesitating, we only -
Heechul was so very tempted to stab a fork through his cellphone. He never thought he would actually hate Madonna, but his new ringtone was bringing him very close to the breaking point. He thought he might be more cheerful if he was woken up by a song he liked.
He was wrong. He was very, very wrong.
But it wasn’t his alarm clock going off, someone was calling him. Someone was going to die, unless that someone was - “Donghae,” he whined, flipping open the phone. “Do you even know what a time zone is?”
Donghae didn’t pay attention to Heechul’s question, didn’t even say hello. Heechul thought his manners were usually better than that. . . . “Have you spoken with Hankyung yet?” he asked without preamble.
Heechul mumbled something incoherent in reply and curled his blankets more tightly around his body, his phone laying on his ear.
“They have his picture,” the younger man continued, “and a warrant out for his arrest. Hyung, if Europol is mobilizing. . . .”
“Donghae, I’m going to hang up on you so I can call Hankyung and yell at him,” Heechul replied, finally awake. “Call Leeteuk. Brief him on the situation. He can decide the next course of action, but for now, I’m going to put you two on high alert. Be ready to meet us if we need you.”
“Of course.”
“That means if we take any casualties.”
“. . . You won’t, hyung. Hang up like you promised.”
“Goodbye.”