Prologue and Postlogue

- Why am I training again?

As this thought runs through the 5-year old's head he keeps stretching his limbs with weighted clothes.

- Because I don't get food otherwise.

He keeps stretching before beginning a weird kind of jog dancing while breathing through his nose only.

A tall seemingly agile and lithe woman enters the room as he starts to do his daily routine, not interrupting him but looking with a stern gaze at the boy's technique.

- "it's a dog eat dog world out there" is what she usually says, to justify this training.

Making a few corrections to the jog-dance, the woman proceeds to make breakfast and eat half of it, she then turns to the boy and says; "as usual you have to work for your food".

He proceeds to get in position to do pushups, as he's about to start she mutters "wait."

He looks toward her with a curious look, while she only responds with "keep that posture, don't falter."

- Everytime…

As he begins feeling his muscles tire and his breath hastening he thinks of the food, the plate would usually be filled with a weird mixture of food, and while it didn't taste any good; he never felt hungry as long as he ate it once a day.

As he collapses he can hear her mumble with food in her mouth "oh well done, begin pushups."

- urrgh.

he musters his belly strength as he begins doing pushups shakily, after about 20 his belly gives in and he collapses on the floor again.

"alright, stretch"

He begins his stretching routine as usual, though starting with the abs first.

"I guess it's time I taught you the family trade skills, are you willing to learn?"

As he looks towards his guardian with a serious countenance he spends some time considering it, before answering "can I eat first?"

"sure"

As he continued to eat he kept stealing glances at the woman, she was beautiful in a scary way; femme fatale vibes flowing off of her.

As he kept eating he thought about the offer made, all he knew of the "family trade skills" were their sinister nature.

"can I ask what our family trade is?" the question was almost inaudible, the woman was adamant that they were a family, though she rarely answered questions directed at her or her work, or his origins, he only knew that while he was adopted, he is still a part of her family apparently.

"as you probably know already, our family lives outside the law, there are many branches to our family, our organization known as wildcard, because of the weird access route; we usually deal in anything from stealing to drugs to assassinations to bodyguard services. Though our branch is specialized in assassinations and intelligence gathering, the skills involve those areas, along with a bunch of useful skills used for reconnaissance."

Surprised by the answer he didn't know how to reply so he just kept eating.

Once he finished up he again voiced his concerns; "will it be hard?"

"yes"

"…"

- so, what, do I have any alternatives?

"Alright, I'll learn the family skills."

- No, I don't. She knows I can't go anywhere else.

"the training will include a set of basic assassin skills along with French, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, Italian, and a few more languages, basic reconnaissance skills and more, but first off, follow me"

After that, he followed his guardian to a training ground with a bunch of other kids running around in formations or being guided through some training regime.

Looking around she picked a girl about double his size, in height, and brought them away from the others, before telling him to kill her.

Unease washed over him while the girl reached for the ground and grabbed a bunch of gravel, seeing the girl get into action he decided to go with the flow, while considering his options he also picked up a bunch of gravel from the ground before dodging the girl's charge, and shielding his eyes.

He feels gravel land on his shielding hand so after the hail he lowers it only to get another shot of gravel into his eyes, not realizing that she picked up another bunch of the gravel he tried to rub it out of his eyes, while the girl ran around his back and performed a choke hold on him.

As he felt the blood pumping to his brain slow down, he was struggling to breathe and tried struggling free of the girl's choke hold, but the girl was way older, and way stronger than him in the first place, he had no business trying to release the hold, so he went for more drastic measures.

Jumping up and curling up his own body to an extent that his foot would reach her head, his weight pulling her forward, his kick landing on her head leaves her hold weak and she seemingly dizzy from the kick, but while the hold weakened it didn't stop, and he was still in her hold, so when he landed on the gravel, by using the ground for momentum he knee-kicked her face.

"urrgh!"

The grip loosened enough from that kick for him to wrangle himself loose and wheeze for air, while trying to get enough air he picked up gravel before kicking gravel towards her face, and just like she did, he threw the gravel in his hand a bit later, but she kept her guard up a second longer than he did.

Seeing this he ran up to her to kick her, because she was crouching the kick landed squarely on her jaw, rattling her consciousness, while she is still disoriented he decided to climb onto her back, holding onto her torso with his legs in a lock, holding her throat in a choke hold, while she struggled, she was still very disoriented and weak, but as she realized the danger the lifted them both up and threw herself onto her back, effectively smashing him into the floor. He didn't let loose, but he felt the air leaving his body as he was smashed, he probably couldn't take any more of those smashes.

"ple.. huu.. please" he heard her hoarse voice, but he knew, if he didn't kill her now, that would be the end, either he killed her, or she killed him, his guardian wouldn't compromise, as he had learned time and time again. If he hesitated now, he would be done for.

"it'll take 2 – 5 minutes for her to pass out, then another 5 minutes for all of her braincells minutes to be to die, do it for 7 minutes after she passes out to be sure."

And he began counting;

1..2…3.....2m 34 s he could feel her going limp in his arms, the temptation to to just let go overwhelmed him along with exhaustion, after about another minute the body began twitching ceaselessly, unconsciously, and about three minutes after that the twitching stopped.

he then continued holding on for as long as he could, his arms heavy, his breath ragged, his back aching. He had long since stopped counting, there was no point he felt, if he couldn't pull through after all of that it wouldn't matter anyway, so why not give his all?

That said, controlling his strength when strangling was hard, was he using enough strength, too much? Would he be able to last if he used that much strength?

After what seemed like forever, his guardian spoke up;

"check if she's breathing, check if her heart is beating."

He moved on to check; no pulse, no breath, he nodded towards his guardian, she nodded back and took the girl by the collar, and threw her into a huge machine, an incinerator.

"what you will be learning is not how to fight. You will learn how to kill. You will be taught how to counter attacks and how to fight with different weapons, but should you ever have to resort to using these skills, know that you're a failure as an assassin. By killing her you've shown resolve to survive, you've shown resolve to kill, and you've shown the physical prowess required to do so, but that was a soldier, you're an assassin. You rely on the shadows, you rely on the element of surprise, or more precisely; you rely on never notifying your presence to the enemy ever. The death should be silent, and unseen, there should be no witnesses, not even your target in his last moments. Welcome to the world of assassinations, you don't have a name, because names are used to identify people, not shadows, but you will be given a codename, with which your reputation will be tied to."

-twelve years later, in paris. –

In the middle of a huge crowd, a person suddenly begins spurting blood before collapsing on the ground, all the people at the scene is interrogated but no suspect is found, the death; by Wildcard

A random playing card lodged deep into the carotid artery on the throat, even cutting into the windpipe.

The playing card clean of off any traces, just a sheet of metal, inexplicably thin and sharp, but still sturdy enough to not bend easily, signed off with "yours truly" in cursive.

The murder gets assigned to the mysterious serial killer "Wildcard" for his tendencies in leaving a playing card at the scene of the crime, and his killings never following any kind of obvious pattern.

Up until now there have been over 2300 sightings of the wild card, all of which across the globe, assumed along with many undiscovered, most killed the same way, by cutting the carotid artery, the most dreadful serial killer the world ever saw, and the most effective assassin on the market.

Never misses a mark, not a single failed mission, a perfect record.

Seemingly no preference for targets, the nightmare of high priority targets, but depending on the target the price may vary vastly.

And the sole marketer for the vastly increased price of thick scarves.