Chapter Text
Ea-Nasir did not like to think of himself as a very superstitious person. Or a very religious one, for that matter.
But right now, he’s pretty sure the gods are smiting him.
Still, let’s back up a bit. I don’t feel the need to explain to you who, exactly, Ea-Nasir is — if you hung out in the city of Ur roughly 4000 years ago, you’d probably hear about him. ‘Creative entrepreneur’, in his own words. ‘Scammer’ or ‘that conniving f^&khead’ to most others. You see, Ea-Nasir was famous for all the wrong reasons — reasons such as selling extremely shitty copper, bribing servants, and trying to pass off camel meat for high-quality cattle. He was famous for pissing off royalty in minor, untraceable ways like swapping out parts and stealing linens, he was famous for never visiting a client twice, and being notoriously hard to track down. Ea-Nasir was the type of man who jokingly thought himself a Robin Hood — if Robin Hood only stole for himself, and cared very little for women— and on a deeper level, simply did not care at all.
This is the principle reason why he’s crouched on top of a rooftop, hiding from an angry mob. He may have, possibly, pissed off the wrong person, he doesn’t know who — he has a lot of clients, after all! He sits in the half shadows, huddled amidst crates and strategically hidden by a well-placed awning, watching as the people rush by — shouts and cries of ancient Sumerian curses fill the streets, dust rising from below as sandled feet churn the dirt in looking for him.
Ea-Nasir, of course, is watching with a smug little grin.
This isn’t the first time a manhunt has been sent out for him. It’s all routine at this point — he has it down to a science. Oh look, they even have little torches! He thinks to himself, watching with smug amusement as the crowd of angry— nay, wrongly dissatisfied— customers screech to a halt in the cramped streets, and erupt into argument over which way he went. The heat of the sun beats down upon his neck as Ea-Nasir chuckles, resting his chin in his hand as he surveys the mob, crushed into the tiny side streets of his corner of Ur. Confused women watch from the windows with children on their hips, the little snot-faced gremlins laughing and reaching out with tiny hands for all the shiny weapons glinting in the street.
“LEFT!” One man screams, his robes covered in hay. “RIGHT!” Screams another, who’s caked in mud up to the thighs. To his credit, Ea-Nasir gave them quite the runaround, scrambling through houses and holes and mud pits all while keeping himself (relatively) clean. He’s gotten very good at it, after all!
“Shut up! Shut up, all of you!”
One particularly crimson-faced man roars, his hooked nose giving him a strikingly similar appearance to a deranged vulture, or some breed of exotic tumor.
“We don’t — ugh, we don’t have to find him to enact punishment, you dolts! Do none of you have brains?!”
He continues, bellowing at such a volume Ea-Nasir is briefly concerned for his lungs. He jabs a finger at the building Ea-Nasir is currently hiding on, and the merchant blinks, sitting up slightly — punishment is a fancy word for your average angry mob to use.
“Look! We have all his belongings right here, ripe for the burning!”
Ea-Nasir is very suddenly, and rudely, reminded that this is his house he’s hiding on top of.
“Woah, woah! Burn?!”
Ea-Nasir cries, very stupidly, scrambling to his feet, also stupidly. (To his credit, the average IQ in Ur was not very high.) He balances on the edge of his roof with practiced ease, waving his arms wildly — the crowd bristles like an angry cat at the sight of him, every face shifting to another shade of anger. He was about to shout something along the lines of “let’s all just calm down for a moment” but is rudely interrupted by a sandal being chucked at his head. Thankfully he’s very used to having things thrown at him, and so ducks, just in time.
“You bastard! ” An angry voice in the crowd screams, “My master told you would pay for the tricks you played, yet you did not listen! This is your retribution!!”
“Oh, so this is her doing!”
Ea-Nasir cries, laughing nervously and feigning a sudden realization. To be fair, he hadn’t meant to screw over Persian nobility, but, things happen! Still, nothing a little swindling can’t fix, right?
“Y’know, I would have thought she’d have more class than an angry mob, but, eh — listen, whatever she’s paying you, I can do double, guaranteed!”
Ra-Nasir proclaims, putting on his best “honorable man” impression, one hand placed solemnly over his heart.
Unfortunately for him, the crowd bursts out in laughter.
A saner or more foolish man would take a moment to feel offended, but Ea-Nasir is neither. With bribery off the table, he has only one other option; screw off to another city and start all over again. He had a good run here in Ur, but to be perfectly honest? Ea-Nasir was getting kind of antsy anyway. He’s not built to settle, and so there’s a wild grin on his face as he takes advantage of the crowds distraction to scramble off his rooftop, leaping down into an alley and running for his humble scammer life. He’ll just pretend it never happened, and prey on another clueless foreigner across the battlefield. If he uses a different name every time he trades, who can be warned of him? Nobody, that’s who!
Unfortunately, while running for his life, he doesn’t quite look where he’s going, and ends up running right into an unsuspecting bystander. The impact knocks them both to the ground, Ea-Nasir landing hard on his side as smoke begins rising from his house a few blocks behind him. The cheers are loud enough he can guess they haven’t noticed his absence yet, but that still leaves the stranger across from him to worry about, who might be part of the —
“Ishtar's tits you're ugly!”
Is the first thing Ea-Nasir blurts out, staring wide-eyed at the person he’d knocked into. They’re wearing perhaps the strangest set of clothes he’s ever seen, but that pales in comparison to their actual face. Their skin is pale and milky and almost sickly looking, the very shade of it making Ea-Nasir cringe — he’s not one to judge people by their looks, (many a fair-skinned noble has been perfectly willing to help him with a scam, after all) but this guy is just… wow. Bad wow. Like, ‘what did you do in a past life to make the gods hate you this much’ wow.
The Extremely Ugly Individual stares right back at him in universally-understood confusion, their pitch-black clothes (such thick fabric, the opposite of practical) smeared with the tan of street dust. Their eyes are — are blue! What an unnatural color for eyes to be — and the face! Beardless! Is this a particularly odd and terrifying woman, a very muscular boy, or some strange, mutilated fallen god? No, a god wouldn’t be that ugly, fallen or not!
Ea-Nasir’s eyes land on a shiny object, resting in the dust between him and Mr.Ugly, presumably knocked out of their hands on impact. It’s a glistening, rectangular thing. It looks like an ingot. It looks valuable.
Ea-Nasir immediately grabs it and runs.
“Mine now! Bye!”
He calls over his shoulder with a grin, stuffing the object into the folds of his robes and running for his life. Mr.Ugly lets out a strangled cry from behind him, shouting in some vague language he doesn’t recognize, and doesn’t even try to. He’s going to need funds to start his new business over in Persia, (he hasn’t frequented the west side of the empire in quite a while) and this shiny, ingot-looking thing is just what he needs! It’s a shame about his house though. He quite enjoyed having a bed for once.
Ea-Nasir finally hits a Main Street, crashing out into the main bustle of shouting street vendors. He’s hardly noticed among the crowds of merchants and shoppers, scrambling right over an Ox-drawn cart with no mind to the indignant shrieks of those within. He flashes the scandalized women his signature sleazy grin, vaulting over the opposite side and sprinting, sprinting, sprinting. If there’s one thing Ea-Nasir can do, it’s definitely that— he’s been doing it probably since he was born, in a back-alley somewhere. Growing up without a penny to your name will make you crafty, and very good at running. If he were being brutally honest, Ea-Nasir feels most at home when he’s running from someone — just so long as there’s something valuable hidden between his hands, or a satisfied grin on his face.
Unfortunately, the valuable thing in his hands right now is…not the best thing for him to have taken.
Now, yes, I know, you are a modern person and you have brain cells. You’ve deduced with your third-grade reading comprehension that poor Mr.Ugly was your average FBI officer yeeted backwards through time. You just barely held onto the description of the object Ea-Nasir stole, and probably assumed it was an iPhone or something. You are wrong and also a coward. What Ea-Nasir stole was, simply and plainly, a tracking device — the only reason it's bigger than a shitty Apple tag is because it operates through time and space, and that uses some firepower.
Now, this in and of itself is only moderately valuable in the time it comes from — but what’s far more interesting is the fact that the boys back at Mission Control have literally no idea the device has changed hands. They only see a little moving dot on a screen, which leads to this situation;
Ea-Nasir scrambles into a side passage, grinning like mad as he catches his breath. Ah, nothing like a good chase to start off the morning! His hands immediately go to his robes, digging through the folds for his prize. Best to at least identify what kind of ingot it is, so he doesn’t accidentally try and sell it for what it’s actually worth.
Then, of course, it starts glowing, and Ea-Nasir (understandably) kinda freaks out.
The ‘ingot’ in his hands starts to vibrate, colors and patterns flashing over its surface — Ea-Nasir yelps like a kicked dog, tossing it from hand to hand like a hot potato, releasing a long string of curses.
“Shit shit shit damn shit ass fu—“
He hisses, or the ancient Mesopotamian equivalent of such, holding out the angrily vibrating piece of metal like an awkward relative with a child they don’t want to be holding. Ishtar's tits, that probably was a disgraced god, and he just stole from it! Looking around wildly for somewhere to dispose of the damn thing — he may not be a very honorable man but disrespecting the Powers That Be is still a bad idea in his book — only to find that he can’t let go of it. His hands are stuck to the rapidly-warming metal, even as Ea-Nasir shakes it wildly, his cursing ramping up in severity.
The cursed ingot flashes twice, and then speaks to him.
“prɪˈpeə(r) fōr ˈtrænspɔːt”
“Huh?”
“prɪˈpeə(r) fōr ˈtrænspɔːt”
“But what does that mean?!”
Ea-Nasir shrieks, his mouth so wide open you could fit his ego down it. The accursed thing in his hands only buzzes louder, garbling out more strange sounds — are those words? They don’t sound like words, they sound like a goat throwing up. Is this the language of the gods? Because it’s ugly! And stupid! Is he being cursed!?
“ˈtrænspɔːting”
The ingot garbles at him, somehow sounding condescending. Ea-Nasir suddenly realizes he can’t move. He remains stuck staring at the buzzing, glowing ingot, desperately wishing he’d stolen something less cursed, and also less condescending. His eyes hurt from the loud colors lighting up its surface, rectangles and squares and— was that a face? Was that a face on there? —strange symbols flashing and removing themselves, his eyes unable to flick away. The colors subside with a sound like a vulture cry, the ingot going dark. Only for a moment however, before a perfect circle appears on it, blinding red on a grid of green, swirling around like a fish before jarring to a stop in dead center.
A light shines onto his forehead — and it’s important to note Ea-Nasir has been internally screaming during this entire experience — letting out a satisfying ping! Just before everything goes black.
Yep. The gods are definitely smiting him.