Realistic or Modern How to Pass The Days

[ShenYu]

W/ elytra

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Spoiler: Ayre Nox

Name: Ayre Nox (Codename: Night)
Age: 25
Gender: Male
Height: 6'1
Appearance: Ayre has ear-length jet black hair, almond-shaped gray eyes, a dimple on his left cheek, and lips that made him look like he had a slight smile all the time even when he didn't intend to smile. He has a pale, almost transparent, skin. Although he got well-defined muscles on his body, his figure is quite slender, making it not too obvious.

Spoiler: Zevi Babel

Name: Zevi Babel
Age: 25
Gender: Male
Height: 5'7
Appearance: Zevi has curly dark brown hair, tan skin, and freckles; he has stubble, though never lets it get to beard length, and has chestnut brown eyes. The bags under his eyes are near-constant from lack of sleep. He doesn't smile much, but when he does, he has clear dimples and his eyes crinkle at the corners. He has a scar to the right of his face that goes over his lips and slightly past the bottom of his nose. He's pretty well-defined muscle-wise, but wears a lot of sweaters and baggy clothes, so this isn't obvious.

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Cyros City. It was a city with a population that surpassed hundreds of thousands of people. During the day, this city was the same as any other big city around the area. It has advanced technologies, well-connected subway trails, many entertainment districts, neat and tidy residential areas, amazing-looking skyscrapers, and more. The living expenses here were not too expensive. It has great views, a strategic location, and consists of a very large area. All in all, it was a great place to live and settled down.

If we had to point out one big flaw about Cyros City, it would be the fact that this was a city ruled over by many big factions in the underworld. Around 80 % of the population were people who had stained their hands with blood. At night, this place was the battlefield of the many factions who fight for dominance over the areas of the city. Every day, the number of corpses thrown into the river or buried in the highways surrounding the city increased. Many small factions ceased to exist, replaced by a newcomer from outside, while the bigger faction held on to continue fighting for control and become the overlord of the city. In short, every night in Cyros City was full of chaos, filled with the smell of gunpowders. This city is a heaven for criminals where the laws of the government couldn't reach.

Among the few pedestrians that were rushing home that night, a young man with full-black getups could be seen walking through the road of the suburban area of the city. The young man's black hair and gray eyes were hidden under the hood of his black jacket. Even so, people could still see the young man's seemingly always smiling lips over the background of his pale white skin. It made his overall dark attire look brighter in the eyes of those who noticed him, making him look like a bright and cheerful man simply strolling around the street. But the eyes that were hidden from view were fully displaying a playful yet ruthless light, thick killing intent. This young man is Ayre Nox, a notorious assassin that was not affiliated with any underworld factions. He's a hitman who would do a good job killing whoever his employers want as long as he was given enough compensation. What's more, despite being a lone fighter among the many big and small underworld factions, his job completion rate was extremely high, making many people seek out his service regardless of how high his pay was.

Ayre Nox was clearly in a good mood that night. His self-recognized arch-enemy, the one listed at the very top of the list inside his death note, the man who had ruined one of his most important mission and ruined his flawless records, Zevi Babel, had finally appeared in the list of targets commissioned for him to kill. He had considered this loathsome man as an eyesore for a long time now. But, because he was always busy killing people, he didn't have time to deal with Zevi by himself. Now that someone had commissioned him to kill this man, Ayre could resolve his own personal grudge while being paid at the same time. Isn't that great?

That was the reason why Ayre was in such a good mood that night. When this job was done, Ayre would make sure to pop open one of his most cherished bottles of wine and got drunk for the rest of the night. Just thinking about it made him excited, making the sickeningly sweet smile on his face widen considerably.

However, Ayre soon suppressed his excitement and focused on his job. He's a professional. He knew how to separate his private life from work. With a now serious but still somewhat relaxed face, Ayre went into a five-stories abandoned building just around the corner of the street. He slowly made his way up the building, letting the echoes of his footsteps fill the dusty emergency stairs. As soon as he stepped into the roof of the building, Ayre put down the big backpack and pulled the zip open. There were different parts of the sniper rifle along with some handguns and dynamites inside. Ayre skillfully and quickly assembled the sniper rifle and set it up right at the edge of the rooftop, adjusting the front end to point at the small and rundown bar a few distances away from this building. Through the cover of the night, it was hard to see him and the rifle in his hand.

Before he went here, Ayre had naturally done his own share of investigations regarding Zevi. In fact, he might've done this way before he got commissioned to kill him. He knew that tonight, Zevi had some business to do in that bar. He didn't know the specific business, nor did he care. All that matters to him is that Zevi would be inside that bar tonight. This suburban district didn't belong to any particular factions. There was a lot of abandoned building in the area too, making it a perfect place and time for Ayre to jump into action. He had considered the locations, the possible scenarios, the wind, the weather, basically everything, before coming here to execute his plan. Nothing could possibly go wrong now.

 

[elytra]

Zevi Babel was a creature of habit, at the end of the day.

He'd been that way since he was younger. There was a way to do things and if that process wasn't done every single time, it was best to throw the whole thing out. It'd driven his family insane. And for good reason, too; before he'd learned to be able to handle the frustration of not doing something the way it'd always been done, things had been set in stone to the point where he was having the exact same 3 meals every single day in the same order because he refused to have anything else. Even after he resigned himself to the fact that things did change whether he liked it or not, he still remained most comfortable when settled into the familiarity of a routine.

That was something that showed itself in the current times. He worked with certain districts and people on specific days, and the way he did things was kept to a precise method. Some would claim that this was predictability, the sort that was detrimental to the job he had. He would argue that he was good enough at killing people that predictability didn't matter; shooting someone was still shooting someone, even if they'd expected it beforehand. It ended the same way: the target dead and him getting paid. His track record of having consistent work thrown his way showed that the method remained effective. It was why he was heading to the Crossroads bar in the first place.

Another thing about Zevi: he tended to mind his own fucking business. That wasn't a common trait amongst people who shared his job title. If it wasn't his problem, he didn't make it his problem, you know? He had enough of his own to pass the time. If someone was topping the charts, so be it; he had enough jobs waiting for him that he didn't need to be the best of the best. He just needed enough to keep chugging along. Sure, if people stole a job from him, then they became his business, but outside of that? Yea, he was fine without all the nonsense, thanks. He could leave the non-work-related bloodlust and weird enemy shit to the other hitmen scattered through the city.

It was because of this second fact that, when a shot went off and narrowly missed him due to a slip of fate- someone bumping into him, of all things -he had no idea who the hell would be shooting at him.

Because again, minding his own fucking business was a thing he did. It wasn't like he woke up in the morning aiming to piss someone off enough to take out a hit on him. Obviously there were points where he got in the way of things, that was unavoidable, but it was never on purpose. Further, he'd never thought any of those amateur-hour side shows would work up enough guts to actually head out and hunt him down. It had never really entered the realm of possibilities in his mind. Except, now it was a reality, seeing as he'd nearly been head-shot.

The situation was so bizarre that he'd even taken a moment to stare at the man who, after accidentally ending up saving Zevi's life, had dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes, unharmed but clearly seeming to think he was the one being shot at. Regardless, Zevi could be polite, so he pulled the man to his feet, taking advantage of the current chaos of the crowd that provided with him with cover. He patted the civilians shoulder amicably in lieu of a thank you, offering him a nod of acknowledgement.

Then, he took off.

See, he wasn't stupid. He wasn't about to sit there like a duck and wait for someone to take another shot at him. He didn't have a long ranged gun, he didn't know where the shot had come from, so the best thing to do was hightail it and let his would-be boss know of the situation once he was in the clear. The district was well-known to him; he didn't need to think much about the turns he was taking or where he was going. He just kept a focus on keeping himself steady and in the moment, paying attention to his surroundings as he went, just in case the bastard decided to actually follow after him.

He ended up turning into an alleyway, stopping and crouching behind a dumpster to give himself a moment to catch his breath and take real thought on the situation and what he was going to do about it. He couldn't head home; that would be a worse idea than sticking around the bar would've been. No one should know where he lived but him. He took a moment to peer over the side of the dumpster, before ducking back down. Game plan: he'd stay there, see if whoever the hell that was showed. If they did, he'd ambush them; he had a handgun and a knife on him. It wasn't ideal, but he could improvise in this case.

 

[ShenYu]

Ayre laid down on the dirty floor of the rooftop, quietly peering through the sniper scope. He saw people walking through the road in front of the bar. It was a bit more crowded, making it tricky to shoot out a clean shot. But this much was easy for Ayre. Not long after he quickly spotted a curly, dark-brown-haired man with noticeable dimples even from this distance. That face was already familiar to Ayre, a face that constantly appeared in his nightmare after the accident two years ago. Usually, when he remembered that face and what it has caused to his life, his mood would instantly drop to a dangerous level. It was to the point where he wanted to kill random people just to vent his anger. But this time, Ayre's smile widened instead. Especially so when he saw how oblivious this man was, unaware of the happy surprise waiting for him. Well, happy for Ayre, that is.

Ayre hummed a little as he readjusted the angle of his sniper, following Zevi's every movement. He was not in a rush to shoot, waiting for the best moment to come. While slowing down his breathing, Ayre fully focus on his target, counting down the second while he was at it. Then, when he felt that the time was perfect, he pulled the trigger and shot.

Throughout the entire time, his sight never left his target. In truth, although Ayre was a hitman, he didn't find joy in killing people, merely taking it as a job. Even so, Ayre always prided himself to do the best in everything he did, especially his job. He wanted to be perfect in every way. Thus, although he never killed people just to satisfy some twisted desire, he always finished his job as flawlessly as he could, taking his job performance as a priority. But this time, Ayre actually found himself anticipating Zevi's death. It feels like he would even be able to see the bullet shooting through the dark night straight into Zevi's head.

However, the anticipated bloody sight didn't appear. Precisely an inch before the bullet would get in contact with its target's skull, a complete, stupid, utterly unreasonable stranger suddenly bump into that man and yanked him out of the bullet's way. Then, chaos descended on the crowds there. Everyone was running around stupidly like a headless chicken, rendering him unable to use his sniper anymore. What was even more hateful was that, through the scope of his sniper, he could see Zevi got up, completely unscathed, and even took his time helping the hateful stranger who had unknowingly saved his life to stand back up before finally running away.

No words could ever describe how utterly furious Ayre was at that sight! What the f was wrong with that guy?! Everything was perfect and in fractions of a second, that bullet would've taken his self-proclaimed enemy's life! How did he even survive that?! Why the hell does he always mess things up for him?! Ah, Ayre was fully enraged! It doesn't matter that it was not Zevi's fault that the bullet missed him, nor the fact that, in a stroke of luck, someone actually shoved him out of harm's way. No matter if it's the stranger who bumped into Zevi or that lady luck was on his side, Ayre blamed it all on Zevi himself. It was that guy's fault no matter what! Yes, he had always been this petty. And now that he had failed his attack, his hatred at the other guy reach a new height.

While gumming with anger, Ayre didn't bother staying here and very quickly disassembled his rifle and shoved it on his back. He also took out some weapons from the back before running down the stairs as if he was flying. In actuality, from the time where the bullet missed its target, it only took Ayre ten seconds at most to got up and ran down the stairs. But these precious ten seconds would be more than enough for Zevi to escape. Ayre cursed that man a hundred times on his head.

Although it would be very risky, Ayre couldn't let Zevi run away. If he give up now and act again later, he would have a much harder time since Zevi would definitely put up his guard by then. Thus, he didn't hesitate and ran straight in the direction where he saw Zevi escape. The road in front of that bar was still in chaos. Ayre had to run while avoiding people who blocked his way, making it harder to find Zevi. Once again, Ayre blamed all of the bad luck he experience on that man. This has to be his fault! If it wasn't, please read the previous sentence!

Finally, Ayre arrived at a small and dark alleyway where he saw Zevi walk into a few seconds ago. He took out his gun, ready to pull the trigger at any moment, before carefully walking forward. His eyes were full of vigilance, no trace of his earlier good mood could be seen anymore.