Why would an assassin pursue someone through time?

I'm currently writing a comic script for a friend's anthology, and I think I have an idea I'm happy with. The idea is that an assassin is chasing someone through alternate universes - sideways through time, as it were - and usually ending up in historical warzones. The problem is that I cannot think of a motive for the quarry - why is he running through time? - and a reason for the assassin to track him down and kill him. I also need to work out a way to flesh out the details without taking up too much space, as the story will only be 4 pages long. I'm having a bit of an ideas block at the moment, so any help would be appreciated!

I can't really think of a reason, myself. If I were an assassin with time-travel, I wouldn't bother tracking the "present" version of my quarry at all; I'd just go back in time a little bit to before the person knew I was after them and pop them in the head in their sleep or some shit. With time-travel, I would have, in theory (depending on how it works), limitless chances to kill the person and could choose almost any venue to do it in.

With only four pages, you're really constricted. What you could say is that they're not actually time travelling (intentionally, at least), but rather that they're teleporting and that happens to make them time travel. Thus, they would lose agency (i.e. they couldn't "aim" where they want to go) and, therefore, explain why the assassin must track the "current" version of his or her quarry.

I think, anyway. That made sense in my head, at the very least.

Hitler would be a classic.

• Hitler has escaped through a time portal at the end of WW 2 and now Doom Guy must chase down Hitler through all the hellish warzones in the world to put an end to the monster once and for all!

edited 3rd May '12 3:22:11 PM by Natasel

Get paid enough. <shrugs> The assassin just does what the client wants with the minimum of fuss to self and for the maximum of profit given the scenario.

As an assassin, if I could follow through time, I'd go to just before they time travelled and kill them, so I wouldn't have to bother chasing.

Perhaps the level of time travel is such where jumping to the future or past isn't possible, and it can only be done sideways through alternate dimensions as the OP said.

That being said, maybe the victim discovered this power accidentally at some point and the assassin was hired by a Big Bad to eliminate him before his influence in the other dimensions screws up their plans to use the technology for profit.

Go watch this movie

Sorry, should have made it clearer - the method of time travel is by travelling through parallel universes, so simply killing him in the "parent" universe is not an option.

So you wouldn't need a reason, would you? Assassin is paid/ideologically driven, target got away, assassin follows. It seems reasonably simple to me...

Indeed. The question you should probably be asking is, "who hired the assassin and why does he or she want your character dead?"

edited 5th May '12 3:00:38 PM by TwoGunAngel

Simple solution - the assassin doesn't have access to or much understanding of his quarry's time-travel technology. He's just piggybacking off his target's jumps.

As for why he'd want to kill him... well, the fact that his quarry can fuck with time (with potentially catastrophic results) should be reason enough. For an extra bit of It's Personal, maybe his meddlings hurt the assassin's loved ones?