Template:City of the Plague God Canon
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| “ | Wait. This discussion, and any subsequent questions, will good "much" quickly if you just assume I'm always correct. | ” |
–Belet to Sikander upon their first formal talk in City of the Plague God. | ||
Belet Amari is the adoptive daughter of Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess of love and war, and an ally of Sikander Aziz.
History
Belet was born in Iraq, supposedly to Dr. Faisal Amari, a doctor at a local children's hospital, and Nadia Amari, a civic engineer. Her parents were killed when she was a barely a week old, they were told to flee but stayed behind as others needed them. Ishtar took her in because she felt guilty about some the destruction of the wars she causes, and taking in a war victim eases her guilt. Ishtar would lie about who her parents were to give the girl a sense that she wasn’t the only one looking out for her, Belet knew it was a lie, but pretended to believe it to please the goddess.
She was raised in the lap of luxury and traveled around the world, Ishtar taught how to fight. However this lifestyle lead to her not making any friends as she had little time to bond with others her age. When she was three of four Ishtar forced her to take ballet lessons, much to her displeasure. At one point when she was in Paris, Belet mistook a model for a demon and attacked her.
City of the Plague God
When Nergal, Sidana, and Idiptu are breaking into Mo's, Belet comes to stop them with Kasusu. When she arrives, Nergal is choking Sik. Sikander sees her and thinks she's a ninja because of the way she's dressed. She demands Nergal lets him go. Nergal tells his demons to take care of her, but she ends up knocking out Idiptu. This makes Sidana stand down, Negal stops choking Sikander. She then challenges Nergal to a fight, but Nergal leaves. As Belet is leaving, Sikander asks for answers, but she doesn't answer.
The following day, she gets into an argument with her social studies teacher over Thomas Jefferson stealing his inventions from Cicero. When Sikander Aziz laughs at something she said, they are both sent to the principals office. As they talk she gets a call from her mom and they are approached by three bullies, Zack, Hobbs, and Clyde. When Zack demands her phone, she kicks him in the head and the other two back off. They exit school just as her mother arrives. She has her mother reluctantly stop a fist fight she nearly started and tells Sik that if he wants to know more he must come with them, he agrees and they take him back to their house. When they arrive she gives Sik a tour while her mother finds the kitchen. They get separated and she finds him in the weapons room. As she and Ishtar explain that the gods of Mesopotamia are still around, Sik gets freaked out by what they are telling him and tries to leave. However Ishtar stops him and shows him what she means, despite her saying it is too dangerous. After her mother shows him her memories of war, she checks Sik over and asks what he has that Nergal might be looking for. When they ask for his help in defeating Nergal, he refuses and leaves. She offers to call him an Uber, but he refuses. After Sik and his parents are brought to the hospital, she and her mother go to bring him back to their house. In the morning after her mother informs Sik that the only way to save his parents is to stop Nergal, she goes to join her in looking for him, but Ishtar tells her to stay put. She then heads out with Sik to find her uncle.
They head to a masjid in the Little Egypt section of Queens. As they walk, she gets an alert on her phone that students at Hudson Square are getting the same sickness as his parents. They arrive at the masjid and Sik instructs her to help pour water. Soon Ada, a homeless girl with knowledge of bizarre current events in the city, arrives and they ask her about anything strange that might have happened lately. After assuming she is Sik's girlfriend, she informed them of a shipping container filled with dead refugees at Gravesend in Brooklyn. They sneak onto the docks and search for the shipping container. They find it and discover cuneiform etching that translates to "Gilgamesh lied" and some couplets by Sidana. Just then they are discovered by three dockworkers who have been turned into minions of Nergal. She easily takes them out while Sik takes a hit from a chain for her. When all three are taken care of, she checks on Sik and is astonished that he is still alive. She helps him up and they head out. She laughs when he tells her the ballet lessons have paid off, but catches herself and stops.
The following morning she wakes Sik up early for combat training and is bewildered by his lack of combat training. She leaves to find wooden swords and returns to find him easily taken out by Sargon. Later that day as she demanded Ishtar tell her her plan, she remains tight lipped and calms her mother when Sik talks back to her. Shortly after she and Sik move his mattress to her room and she tells him about her birth parents after he sees a picture of them. Later Sik wakes her up when Nergal attacks and she grabs Kasusu before heading outside. They see Nergal at the end of the block and he demands Sik, just then the cats transform into their true Lamassu forms and Ishtar arrives. After she reluctantly hands the sword to her mother, the two gods fight. As her mother and Nergal fight, she and Sik urge the neighbors and Daoud to evacuate. Sargon saves them from a demon and she takes out one as well. However Ishtar is impaled by Nergal and she watches as her mother turns into stardust. She readies herself to attack her uncle, but Sik convinces her to run and she obeys. Once she is out of sight however, Sik surrenders. After he is hit by a train escaping Nergal, and believed to be dead, she identifies the supposed body when Daoud chickens out and attends funeral prayers at the masjid three days later. When Sik calls her, she thinks it is a cruel joke until she realizes it is him and she agrees to meet him at a restaurant. When they meet up she hugs him and they go to a hotel owned by a friend of Ishtar's. She explains how bad things have gotten and yells at Sik for comparing Ishtar's death to a mortal's. After Kasusu gives her a pep talk, she listens to a plan Sik has.
They go to Central Park to find the owner of the ring her mother gave Sik and find it occupied with New Yorkers trying to escape the plague. They find Sidana and Idiptu with some plague dogs and hide in some nearby bushes. When they are seen she readies herself to fight to the death, but is pulled away by Sik as the demons are shocked to find him alive. They hide in a glass ziggurat that they demons can’t see and walk around. They come across a gardener who says the ring belongs to him. The man reveals he is Gilgamesh and they ask him for help in defeating Nergal and he refuses. They sit down for vegan sweets and he tells the two how he actually did eat the Flower of Immortality and faked his death before becoming a farmer. They beg him to help defeat Nergal, but he says he gave up fighting, much to her anger. He reveals that he fed the rest of the flower to a snake that created more and eventually Sik's brother found it and made more. She has a realization when the King of Uruk says the plant made its way into Sik's system and asked where it is. Sik says it is in the community garden and they head out. As they walk it starts to rain and she hails a taxi. Unfortunately they see Sik and the news and the driver forces them out of the cab and screams for someone to call the police. She tries and fails to force her way out, but Sik gets them out by threatening to cough on them. When they reach the garden, they discover that it has been bulldozed to make room for a parking lot for condos. She blames Sik for allowing this to happen by not tending to the garden and goes to fight Nergal herself. When he blurts out her mother made him promise to look after her, she starts to cry and rips up the picture of her fake parents before getting in a taxi. She tries and fails to stop Nergal as New York City becomes more infected and she retreats to Central Park where she befriends a snow leopard who escaped from the zoo and names her Qareen.
Two weeks later she runs into Sik again and brings him to the ziggurat. She is surprised he was in Kurnugi and still wishes Ishtar was alive. When he shows them the flower, Gilgamesh says he will make an antidote to put the the city's water supply just as Nergal finds them. She readies for a fight as the demons demand their surrender and Gilgamesh unleashes a thunderstorm with hurricane level winds. Sik tries and fails to get her to retreat as Sidana attacks the boy, she stabs the rat demon and slices off his tail, killing him. However she gets dowsed with his poison and scratched by his claws, Sik tries to use a petal to heal her, but Idiptu snatches it out of his hand before he can. Sik carries her out of the park and she berates him for not fighting, but agrees that he would have been ripped to shreds. She insists she is fine as her wounds get worse. Sik places her in a shopping cart and tries taking her to the hospital. They pass the deli to find it boarded up after being burned and vandalized. Daoud calls them inside and patches her up in Sik's parent's room after telling them the hospital is overrun with the infected. After Sik finds out Daoud turned the flower into perfume. He gives her some and, after a delayed reaction, she is completely healed. They explain to Daoud that the flower grants immortality and they decide if they should give what was left to Daoud or try to distill more to cure the city. They choose the latter and Daoud gets his kit. As she examines the now healed scar on her abdomen, she wonders if she is now immortal or not.
As she and Sik wait in her mother's car, Sik pushes a button and it transforms into a chariot hooked up to the lamassu. They take flight as the poxies attack and Sik stops the lamassu from killing the infected. When Daoud comes out with a pint of perfume, they pick him up just as Idiptu bursts through Georiou's, bent on revenge for Sidana's death. As they fly to the hospital, the toad ambushes them and they end up in an abandoned office building. She catches the perfume as it is about to roll out a broken window as Sik and two of the lamassu save Daoud and kill Idiptu. She and the others tell him to go on without them and he obeys. After Sik deposits the perfume into a storm cloud that rains it all over the city, she finds him on the asphalt and nudges him away. They find themselves surrounded by dozens of poxies and Nergal. As her adoptive uncle goes in for the kill, he starts to evaporate as the poxies are cured. He pleads with Belet to spare him, but she goes in for the kill, however he evaporates before she can.
Belet pays for the restoration of Mo's and visits the day before the reopening to deliver a box of flowers for Gilgamesh. She blushes as she hands it over. She shows Sik and scar she got after testing to see if she is immortal or not, which she discovered she is not. Belet reveals her plans to rescue Ishtar from the afterlife and tells Sik to stay behind. However she agrees to come inside to pet Sargon, who is now living with Sik and his family, and to try a new sauce Sik made.
Appearance
Belet is a girl in her pre to early teens of Arabic descent with short dark hair styled in a bob cut, brown eyes, and a dark complexion. She wears designer clothes, but prefers black combat clothing.
After getting infected by killing Sidana and being cured by perfume made from the Flower of Immortality, she gains a long jagged scar across her abdomen. She later gains a scar her arm after testing to see if she was immortal or not.
Personality
Belet is merciless on the battlefield and a good ally. She has a quick temper and always speaks honestly, which comes off as abrasive and may be the reason she has no friends at the start of the book. She has been all around the world and knows Latin well. Belet despises feeling weak, and loves to fight. While Belet is not very affectionate she does show affection on rare occasions, such as hugging Sik after he was believed to be dead for three days.
Despite her brave act in the battlefield, she often feels lonely. This is demonstrated when Ishtar leaves her to attend to other things. She desperately wants her mother's approval and attention. Belet also makes an effort to please others she cares about by believing, or pretending to believe, what they tell her, such as pretending to believe what Ishtar told her about her birth parents.
Abilities
- Swordsmanship: Belet is skilled with a sword.
- Battle Prowess: Being raised by a goddess of war, Belet is skilled in both armed and unarmed combat. She is about to wield a sword with great ease and can take out multiple opponents much larger then herself.
Items
- Kasusu: Her legendary scimitar.
- Credit Card: Belet has a credit card linked to her mother's account that has near infinite funds.
Relationships
Family
Ishtar, her adoptive mother.
Belet loves her adopted mother, however she is embarrassed by Ishtar's tendencies to display her wealth. She desperately wants to prove herself to the goddess of love and war and trains extensively in armed and unnamed combat. When Ishtar kept her plans to track down Nergal a secret from everyone, included her, Belet became infuriated and demanded her mother tell her the plan.
After Istar dies in the Battle of Venus Street, Belet becomes deeply saddened and considers taking Istar's place in Kurnugi, displaying her love for her adoptive mother and desire to have her back. She eventually gives up a switching places with Ishtar and decides to get her out of the afterlife instead.
Nergal, her adoptive uncle.
Friends
Sikander Aziz, her friend.
At first, Belet was mildly annoyed by Sik and questioned what Nergal wanted with him. As they searched for Nergal, the two grew close. She showed concern when Sik took a hit from a chain for her. After Sik was declared dead when a train ran over him, she attended his funeral prayers and was shocked to learn that he was alive and hugged him upon reuniting.
They had a bit of a falling out when they believe the Flower of Immortality is destroyed, she blames him for not attending to the garden and becomes upset when learning of the promise Sik made to Ishtar about looking out for her, believing it is the only reason he was with her. She leave him to fight Nergal and they reunite two weeks later after he gets the original flower from Kurnugi and hugs him again. She becomes concerned after she finds him in a crater on the asphalt shortly before Nergal's downfall. She pays for the renovations to his family’s deli and, blushing, hands him a box of flowers from Gilgamesh. When he offers to join her in freeing Ishtar from the afterlife, she turns him down, saying he should stay with his family.Belet and Kasusu are close, the sword allows her to wield it in battle and she speaks highly of it.
Etymology
- Belet is a feminine given name of French origin.
- Amari is a surname of Arabic origin.
Trivia
- Belet speaks in a British accent, making her first character in the imprint to speak with a British accent, and the second after Sadie Kane.
- She was given a one of a kind smartphone from Tim Cook.
- Belet wears unicorn footie pajamas with a tail and a horn on the hood at night, as she finds it to be a dangerous animal.
- She is a big Disney fan, naming most of the lamassu after cats in Disney films.
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